Psalm 16:11 You will show me the path of life: in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures for ever more. I. TRUE HAPPINESS IS NOT TO BE EXPECTED HERE. This is implied in the text. The world is not our home. This life is but a small part of our existence. Take a general survey of the condition of human life. How weak and helpless is infancy! Childhood and youth are vanity! How many dangers always attend us! Who is secure? Changes of condition and circumstances are many times as sudden as they are sad. God is good and wise, as well as great. His benevolence is as unbounded as His power. Joys are mingled with our sorrows. Religion does not undertake to preserve its friends from affliction, but forewarns them of it, that they may be prepared to meet it. And it is a mighty support and cordial under it. Moreover, we have never found in the world as much as corresponds with all the capacities, and fully answers all the expectations, and gratifies all the desires of our souls. II. WHERE SHALL WE PARTAKE OF THAT HAPPINESS OF WHICH OUR NATURE RENDERS US CAPABLE? We must die before we can thus live. Death will transmit the children of God to the glorious presence of their heavenly Father, and there shall they be blessed. III. THE PROPERTIES AND EXCELLENCIES OF OUR FUTURE BLESSEDNESS. 1. As to the degree — perfection. Nothing is wanting to render the joy complete. 2. As to the duration — perpetuity. The joys are for evermore. God is the fountain; and pleasures flow at His right hand in an endless stream. Reflections. (1) Give not up your prospects and hopes of heavenly pleasures, perfect and perpetual as they are, for the sake of any worldly profits or sinful pleasures. (2) To be without God's gracious presence with us upon earth is very grievous; and with that we ought to give no place to fear and dejection, fear of evils that may happen to us, or dejection under such as have already overtaken us. (E. Sandercock, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. |
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