Psalm 16
August 9, 2020
preached by Pastor Ryan Bouton
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Guide for Home Worship

Time of Reflection Quotations

“An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, “If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.”

~Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods

“What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

“The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.”

~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Idols are rarely solitary. Our lives become infested with them.”

~David Powlison, “Idols of the Heart and ‘Vanity Fair’”

“‘You are to have no other gods.’

That is, you are to regard me alone as your God. What does this mean, and how is it to be understood? What does ‘to have a god’ mean, or what is God?

Answer: A ‘god’ is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore, to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. As I have often said, it is the trust and faith of the heart alone that make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true one. Conversely, where your trust is false and wrong, there you do not have the true God. For these two belong together, faith and God. Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.”

~Martin Luther, The Large Catechism

“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

~1 John 5:21

Sermon Passage

Psalm 16 (ESV)

¹  Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
²  I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you.”
³  As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.
⁴  The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply;
their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out
or take their names on my lips.
⁵  The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
⁶  The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
⁷  I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
⁸  I have set the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
⁹  Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
¹⁰ For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.
¹¹ You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.