Chesterbrook Taiwanese Presbyterian Church

Here’s an easy way to remember Psalm 16:

Look Up: “You are my Lord, apart from you I have no good thing…” (v.2)

In the midst of David’s suffering, he looked up at who God is and he reoriented his life around God rather than hs circumstances. David reminds himself that God does not owe him anything and that everything good thing comes from God. When we are going through difficult times, “look up” and remember that apart from God, we have nothing.

Look In: “The sorrows will increase for those who chase after gods…” (v.4)

When we focus our sights on God, it gives perspective to who we are and our propensity to run after the temporary joys of this world. The sorrow in which David speaks of is not sorrow that life normally dishes out. But there is a kind of sorrow that is self inflicted and that we bring upon ourselves when our ultimate joy is something else other than God. When we bank our lives on achievements, degrees, relationships, or possessions as our ultimate joy, we will face eventual sorrow because these things, although good in themselves, are not meant for our lives to revolve around. We can properly enjoy things of creation when we enjoy the one who creates. We need to look into our hearts and examine what things we’ve put before God.

Look Back: “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places…” (v.6)

For Israel, the story of salvation was the Exodus. David looks up, looks in, and now looks back to the story of God’s deliverance of his people. Our faith is a backwards faith, meaning that its a faith rooted in historical acts where God does something that we ourselves could not. We too, were mired in slavery, and only God could miraculously free us and deliver us. The Exodus points to the ultimate deliverance when Jesus came to pay the ransom with his very own life, in order to free us from our sin. We look back to the day Jesus died and rose again as our ultimate hope.

Look Forward: “because you will not abandon me to the grave nor will you let your Holy one see decay…” (v.10)

It’s quite remarkable that David would have such faith while his very life was being threatened. His great hope was that his future was in God’s hands and that even in the face of death, he could rejoice. In Acts 2:31 Peter says, “seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave…” Not only is our faith a backwards faith, but also a future faith. David’s hope lies in the fact that his descendant would one day come and take the throne to be the true King. We look back at the coming of Jesus and simultaenously look forward to the day when Jesus comes back. Our ultimate hope is that our King will return and make everything in this world that is wrong, right again.

This story was told by Ken during our Vision Weekend:

In my mind, the vision for this ministry was birthed long ago. Back then, our church was called the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church of Northern Virginia. It was a relatively new church with no building. Since its inception, TPCVA has always rented from churches and schools all over Fairfax County. It seemed logical that the next step for the church would be to purchase a building or build one from scratch. However, Pastor David Chen and his wife Susan were not convinced that this was God’s will for the church at that time. He felt that it wiser to invest in the next generation rather than on buildings. Pastor Chen convinced the leaders when he offered to take a pay cut in order an English pastor could be hired. A few years later, the Chesterbrook Presbyterian Church graciously passed on their building for our permanent home. I heard this story during my second year in seminary and was impressed with such Kingdom minded decisions. (more…)