• Tue, 20th May 2008
• Tom Golding

Back when I was a kid, there was a program to protect children. Maybe it's still active today. If you were a child and were being followed or harassed by someone or if you had hurt yourself, you were supposed to look for a house with a blue star in the window. A blue star meant it was a safe place. The people who lived there had been checked out and were willing to help you if you were in trouble.

David cries out to God in Psalm 16, saying, "Keep me safe, O God, for I have taken refuge in You" (v. 1). Paraphrasing this through the image of my childhood, he's saying, "God, keep me safe. I've knocked on Your door because there's a blue star in Your window." "To take refuge" is a common picture in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms. In some places it's used of a bird hiding under its mother's wings. For David, it's probably more of a military image, hiding behind a shield, entering a fortified city, going up into a mountain stronghold. It's a picture of exercising confidence in God.

Have you faced some life and death situation? Maybe a car accident, a doctor's report, or perhaps something even more sinister? If so, issues like God's existence and the probability of life after death have taken on a much greater sense of urgency. How confident are you that He will deliver you?

To a large extent, that's the question answered by Psalm 16. The writer of this psalm asks God to preserve him from death. It's possible to read this psalm on two levels. The first level is that of King David. In the midst of some life and death situation, David cried out to God for help. And he gained confidence that God was going to save him. He would be delivered from death and would not die at that particular time.

But when the apostles read Psalm 16, they read it through the lens of Jesus Christ. Peter quoted this verse in his messagein Acts 2 and then Paul likewise in Acts 13. Both apostles saw it as the central passage predicting the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe both were interpreting the psalm typologically. In typology an earlier Old Testament event pictures a future event. The second event is like the first event, only "bigger." David was delivered from death by not dying. But the Messiah, David's greater descendant, was delivered through death by resurrection.

Both David and the Lord Jesus become models for us of the kind of person God hears and delivers. "You are my Lord, my good; there is no one above You" (v. 2). "I have placed the Lord before me continually. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken" (v. 8). Why should God have answered David? Because of how he viewed God. He took Him seriously and staked everything on God. Why should God have answered Jesus? Because Jesus was the ultimate righteous person who took God seriously and staked everything on God. And so Jesus was the ultimate person who was delivered from death.

We too can have confidence as we face our life and death situations. Many times God will deliver you and I from our trouble. But we know that God doesn't always do what we want Him to do or think He ought to do. For David it was deliverance from death. For Jesus, it was deliverance through death. Ultimately, all of us will die. But whether it's from or through, God will keep us. He wants us to have that confidence.