God at my right hand
Psa
16:8
I have set the LORD always
before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
There
are probably many times when we read Scripture but just don't take
in what it means. What does he is at my
right hand mean? Perhaps we'd better look, first of all,
at general references to the right hand:
Gen
48:14 “But Israel reached out his right
hand and put it on Ephraim's head, though he was the younger.”
Israel put his right hand to make a special blessing. The right
hand was seen as the hand of authority.
Joseph saw what his father was doing and recognized its significance.
Ex
15:6 “Your right hand, O LORD,was majestic
in power. Your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy.” Israel
saw God's destruction of Pharaoh as an act of His right hand. It is
seen as the hand of power. See similarly
Psa 17:7, 20:6, 21:8 etc.
Ex
29:20 “Slaughter it, take some of its blood
and put it on the lobes of the right ears of Aaron and his sons, on
the thumbs of their right hands”. The right side was the
side designated hold, to be cleansed. The right hand was to be holy
.
Psa
110:1 “The LORD says to my Lord: 'Sit at
my right hand'” Jesus is seated at God's right hand in
heaven. It is the place of intimacy with
the Father and a place of rule.
This
intimacy is seen also in Psa 73:23, “Yet
I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.”
Have you seen pictures of little children holding the hand of their
parent? There is a safety and security
and intimacy there.
It
is this last reference that perhaps impinges most on our verse from
Psalm 16. It is first a sense of safety, closeness or intimacy. He
first says, I have set the LORD always before
me, which is an act of will on David's part, a determination
of attitude. It's like that which Paul says, “Set
your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Col
3:2). For David, his heart is open to the Lord at all times (v.7),
he seeks to have a God-awareness or, if you like, a God-consciousness,
at all times.
When
he knows the Lord's presence is with him, he knows that God's authority,
power and rule are there, working on his behalf. Because of this he
will not be shaken, and he will rest secure (v.9). Because of this
he knows that the Lord will not let death come prematurely (v.10).
When he knows the presence of the Lord, he knows there will also be
joy (v.11), because the Lord isn't just there, He's there to bless.
That's what David means when he speaks of the Lord who has “eternal
pleasures at your right hand” (v.11). God's right hand
is also a hand of provision .
Do
you see the two sided aspect of this? We have been considering all
these pictures conveying all these things at God's right hand, but
David is referring, in our verse above, to his own right hand. He
has an awareness that in all these aspects, God is there close to
Him. When it comes to his own authority and power, his own safety
and security, his own provision, they all exist because of the intimacy
that He knows – the closeness of the Lord to Him. He purposes to ensure
this: I have set the LORD always before
me. He puts the awareness of the Lord in the foreground
of his life, to ensure that he is always conscious of the
Lord's presence. Yet, to give the whole picture, his psalms indicate
the reality of life – sometimes we lose that sense of God's presence
and have to step aside, be quiet, wait on Him, until we regain it.
He is what he is, because God's there, close!