Tuesday, May 8th

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Psalm 16:1-11

Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge.

I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”

As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight.

The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods,

I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips.

Lord you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.

I have set the Lord always before me.

Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.

You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

I saw my first computer when I was in college over 30 years ago. At that time I thought of computers as high tech gizmos right out of sci-fi movies. Batman had a computer, I didn’t. It was my senior year and I needed another math requirement so I was forced to take a class in basic computer programming. I did not do well in that class!

Today computers are more common than TVs and our lives and work depend on them. We have 4 of them in our house, not to mention our cell phones, which are really tiny computers in and of themselves. I work on two computers every day, yet I still don’t really understand how they work.

I just treat them like magic.

I open the laptop and the screen comes to life and I go to work. If, for some reason, the computer ever fails to function, I’m in trouble because I have no idea how the thing works or how to fix it.

But from what I do understand, all computers have something called an “Operating System”, which is the guts of the computer that allows the machine to process digital information at the speed of light and appear to be intelligent. In other words, the operating system is what makes the computer work.

And I think people also have operating systems; that is, we each have an emotional and spiritual system deep within our hearts and minds that serves to motivate and drive our behavior and decisions.

And I want to talk about 2 of the primary operating systems of our lives – particularly our spiritual lives.

One is DUTY.

The other is JOY.

Both are in the Bible and both are necessary in our spiritual lives. And I think both are in the Psalm we read today.

Lord you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

The “boundary lines” the Psalm-writer is talking about are the boundaries created by God’s truth. Just as a parent establishes “boundary lines” for a child by teaching him or her not to play with matches, or not to play in the street, so God establishes boundaries for us through the guidance of his word.

You could say that it is the child’s duty to live within the boundaries established by his or her parents. And you could say that it is our duty to live within the boundary lines established by the authority of our God. But if we stopped at “duty” we would only be getting half of the picture.

Notice again the language of the Psalm:

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

The phrases “pleasant places” and “delightful inheritance” don’t sound much like a duty to me, they sound like joy!

When a parent establishes boundaries, those boundaries are intended for the child’s well-being and joy and are motivated by love. Yet, quite often the child will experience those boundaries as being their “duty” rather than their choice and therefore as being that which inhibits their joy! And so the child will test or even violate those boundaries in pursuit of what he or she believes is freedom or fun, eventually with the result being pain, trouble, discipline, or all the above!

At this point in his life David has learned that God’s boundary lines can be trusted. He trusts that God is good and that God loves him enough to establish boundaries for his life. Furthermore, he trusts that the result of living within God’s boundaries will bring a delightful inheritance, or, to use another word, joy.

Are there places in your life where you are testing the boundaries of God’s word and will? Are you tempted, at times, to think you will be happier if you play in the street? If so, confess your struggle before God and ask him to help you trust his love for you enough to trust his boundaries for your life – not just so that you can fulfill your duty – but so that you can know his joy!

Pastor Brian Coffey