Psalm 16:3
I say of the holy people who are in the land, ‘They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.’
Who are the people you really admire? The ones you love to
spend time with? The ones you listen to? The ones whose lives you'd like your life to be a bit more like?
David's answer to that question is here in v.3: 'the holy
people'. That is, God's people. His fellow-citizens in God's kingdom. His brothers and sisters in God's family.
They are the people he thinks are 'noble' - the ones he
respects and admires. They are the ones he 'delights' in - they're not just the people he should enjoy being with. He
really enjoys knowing them! Here's a challenge to our value system. If the people we respect and emulate are the rich and successful, that tells us something about how much money matters to us. If the people we want to be with are the popular
ones, the 'in crowd' it tells us something about how much other people's opinion matters to us. And so on.
David's delight in God's people isn't because they're the
'best' people around, by any human measure. He delights in God's people because he delights in God. He wants to be with God's people because they share his love for God. They remind him of why God is so worth trusting and following.
If that's not our experience, let's pray that God would teach us to delight more and more in him, so that we will be drawn towards
others who share that love for God, rather than being drawn towards those who love worldly things most.
