As for the Saints in the Land

In Psalm 16 David declares his faith in God (verses 1–8), and then he gives us the assurance for his faith (verses 9–11). As part of his declaration, we see at least four ingredients: Petition, Association, Blessing, and Resolve. In the recent message on Psalm 16, I had to leave out the ingredient of Association for the sake of time, but I’d like to circle back for a minute to make some comments. We see David’s statement about association in verses 3–4: 

[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.

David names about two types of people: saints and idolators. 

There are those who pursue Yahweh, the Lord, the one, true God; and there are those who “run after another god.” Those are the two types of people, and then David describes his relationship to them. He delights in the saints; but the idolators, he wants nothing to do with them. Why is he saying this? Where does it come from?

I think this is David doubling down on his obedience to the first commandment. 

Remember the first commandment in Exodus 20:3 is “You shall have no other gods before me” and David is saying Yes to that. He indeed has no other gods before Yahweh, and in fact, he doesn’t even associate with those who do. 

Now we know from 1 Corinthians 5 that this can’t mean absolute disassociation from idolators, because that would require us to “go out of the world” (1 Corinthians 5:9–10). But this does mean, at a broader level, that our faith in Jesus determines our horizontal association. 

Again, this is broad, but it completely crushes the idea of identity politics that is so popular in our day. In Psalm 16 the world is divided into just two groups: those who worship the Yahweh, and those who worship idols — and the question is: Which is your people? 

Affinities and all secondary commitments are put aside. Between the saints and idolators, who do you love? Who do you want to be grouped with? Where is your loyalty?

It’s a “But as for me and my house…” sort of moment (see Joshua 24:15) — the kind of fork in the road moment we should imagine for ourselves in the midst an ever-splintering society.

David in Psalm 16, as a model of faith for us, makes it clear that he is with the saints. He will serve Yahweh.