Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2813
“You will show me the path of life: in Your Presence is fullness ofjoy; at Your right hand there are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11.
I THINK YOU must have noticed, while I was reading the Psalm from which my text is taken, that I expounded it partly concerning David and partly concerning David’s Lord, Jesus, the Messiah. It often happens, in the Psalms, that you can scarcely tell whether it is David, or Jesus, or both of them to whom the writer is referring. Oftentimes you lose sight of David, altogether, and are quite certain that he is not there, while, at other times, the words seem equally suitable either to David, the type, or to Jesus the antitype. I think that this fact is very instructive to us. It looks as if the Hoy Spirit intended, even in those ancient times, to let God’s saints know that there is a mysterious union between Christ and His people, so that almost all things which may be said concerning Him may be said, also, concerning those who are in Him. They are so completely one, they are so intimately united in bonds of mystic, vital, eternal union, that it would not be possible to always keep the sayings concerning them apart. As two bank-divided streams flow side by side for a while and, at last, melt into one river—and you can scarcely say which river it is when they are joined in one—so Christ and His Church are united in one mighty stream and, therefore, what is said of the one may, at least in some sense, be said of the other. O Christian, treasure up this precious thought! You are one with Jesus and, consequently, much that is said concerning Him may also be said concerning you!
In this 16th Psalm we are sure that there is a clear reference to the Savior because to no one but to Him could these words be absolutely applied, “You will not leave my soul in the abode of the dead; neither will You suffer Your Holy One to see corruption.” All other bodies see corruption, but His holy body did not. His birth was not according to carnal generation. His Human Nature was perfect, untainted by evil. Such a body belongs to no one else, so these words are, in the fullest sense, only applicable to our Lord Jesus Christ. Yet we feel no hesitation, as Believers, in taking them to ourselves, at least to a very large extent, remembering that our Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “Because I live, you shall live also.” And that He prayed, “Father, I will that they also, whom you have given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory.” This proves that we, also, shall tread the path of life which He has trod—that the Presence of His Father, in which He is glorified, is that same Presence which will make our Heaven! That the right hand of God, at which He sits, is the place to which He will also exalt us and that the pleasures forevermore, in which He Himself rejoices, are the very pleasures with which He will indulge our souls, for it is His purpose that His joy shall abide in us that our joy may be full.
This brings us to our text, in which there are two things of which I am going to speak to you. First, an assurance as to the untrodden path. And, secondly, an assurance as to the life to which that path leads.
I. First, then, we have here AN ASSURANCE AS TO THE UNTRODDEN PATH—“You will show me the path of life.”
If you take these words as referring to Christ, they must apply to Him as Man. As a Man, He was to die. His soul was to be, for a little while, separated from His body, yet, even as a Man, He spoke with perfect confidence to His Father. You remember that His dying words were, “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit.” “And having said this, He
gave up the ghost.” He spoke with the full assurance that His Father would show Him “the path of life.” Where did the spirit of Christ go when it left His body? In what mysterious way it entered at once into Paradise, it is not for us even to guess. There have been a great many questions raised in the Christian Church, in all ages, concerning this matter. Some, taking the words literally, have said that Christ descended into Hell and they have even ventured to affirm that He preached to the dead and delivered the spirits that were in that awful prison. All that kind of talk seems to me very like that which come from dreamland! We know, from our Savior’s own declaration, that He was in Paradise the very day that He died, for He said to the penitent thief, “Today shall you be with Me in Paradise.” But whatever pathway the human soul of Jesus took, it was not unguided—His Father showed to Him, “the path of life.”
His sacred body had to lie three days in the tomb, but it was not corrupted in the least degree. Dr. Watts very sweetly sings—
“There the dear flesh of Jesus lay, And left a long perfume.”
That body, lying in Joseph’s sepulcher, wrapped in linen and sweet spices through the love and kindness of Christ’s disciples, must rise again—and once more the Father showed to His Son, “the path of life.” How it came to pass that the Spirit of God worked upon that precious body and raised Jesus from the dead, we cannot tell, for the work of the Spirit is secret and mysterious. But those blessed eyes of Jesus opened again and the pulses of His human heart began to beat once more—and He stood upon those dear feet that had been pierced by the nails and He unwound the napkin from His head with those very hands that had been fastened to the Cross, but which would never again suffer pain, for He had risen from the dead no more to die! As the first-born from the dead, His Father had showed to Him, “the path of life.”