From Glory To Glory: The Story Of Christ In Psalms 15–24 (Part 1)—Introduction

by on July 26, 2025 | Comment

On Valentine’s Day, I took my wife to a restaurant that I thought was going to prove insanely busy. I called in advance and learned they were no longer taking reservations. It seemed like it was going to take a lot to get inside. It turned out that going earlier in the day got us right in no problem.

This challenge shows up often when we hope to gain access to a premiere place. I remember seeing huge lines of people around the theater when new Star Wars movies released. Access to the most exclusive restaurants may require knowing someone to get a reservation. It is very hard to gain access to important public officials because schedules are packed and standards are high.

Psalms 15–24 address this very question in application to God’s own presence. No more premiere place exists than the heavenly glory of God himself. His heavenly temple is where we all want to enter and even dwell.

This series works through Psalms 15–24 to highlight the unified story they tell about the incarnate Christ. Some of these psalms have already received excellent standalone series of their own (Psalm 16, Psalm 20, Psalm 21, Psalm 22, Psalm 23, Psalm 24). This series will not cover the details of these psalms that have already received fine exposition here. Rather, I will focus on explaining their connection to the theme of this series.

The main argument in this series is that Psalms 15–24 tell the story of the incarnate Christ two times over. This collection first tells it backwards, beginning with his ascension. Then it tells it again forward, ending with his ascension. These psalms highlight the major points of Christ’s incarnate life as he secured redemption for his people. They provide a masterclass in how the Old Testament was always foremost about Christ and his redemptive work.

The Psalter’s Scope

The Psalms are God’s inspired songbook so that we can sing about our Savior. Each psalm does stand on its own as a useful portion of God’s Word that teaches us to praise and to pray. Still, the Psalter also holds together as a whole book. It is a book about something unified, beginning somewhere, going somewhere, and ending somewhere. It has development and unity.

At its beginning, Psalms 1and 2 are the two-part intro to the whole book. Psalm 1 shows that the Psalter is about the law inasmuch as it teaches us to delight in God’s law. Then Psalm 2 shows that the Psalter is about the gospel in that it is about the king who is God’s Son claiming the nations as his inheritance in order to give blessing to all who take refuge in him. Thus, the Psalter teaches us about the law and the gospel.1

The Psalms then shift gears from the heavenly promises of Psalms 1–2 to the earthly experience portrayed in much of the book’s remainder. Psalm 2 introduced the king as the nations rage against him. Then, the next stretch of psalms reveals the king at prayer amid that raging, which is a major theme for the Psalter.2 After Psalm 1 and 2 as the introduction, Psalms 3–41 are, properly speaking, Book I, which focuses on David concerning the conflict of the nations against God’s king.3 Psalms 3–14 are a related group of songs about prayer in distress, including reflections on the human condition.4

The Psalms do not keep us in this distressed mindset though. They bring us back to the perspective of God’s promises as well as the pursuit of God. In this respect, we also need to remember that the Psalter aims at our instruction. That purpose of instruction includes many applications. As this book contains diverse kinds of psalms that express praise, lament, trust, despair, contentment, rejoicing, and so forth, one application of the Psalter is that it instructs us about the godly response to the spectrum of experiences and emotions that we encounter in the Christian life. The Psalms train us for how to process and react to whatever this life throws at us, especially in how we bring all those things to God.

Psalms 15–24 then bring us back in some ways to the heavenly perspective for relief from that focus on the raging nations. From one perspective, the earthly experience of the raging nations is still in view throughout these psalms. We find expression of turmoil and trial sprinkled in, reminding us of this reality. Rightly understood, however, these psalms are also clear promises about how God’s king would triumph over those raging nations in his saving work.

The Unity of Psalms 15–24

As well established in commentaries and literature, Psalm 15–24 is a unified block of songs in Book I. The whole section reflects on the question about who gets to enter God’s presence. The same issue shows up at the outset and at the close of this group of psalms:

O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?

Who shall dwell on your holy hill? (Ps 15:1)

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?

And who shall stand in his holy place? (Ps 24:3)

Psalm 15 is important for framing the topic for this group, and it puts our focus on rest in God’s presence as the main issue for this section.5 Psalm 24 makes sure we have not forgotten that this question has been the main theme for this whole grouping of Psalms.6 Psalms 15–24 then set out to answer this question about who can enter and dwell in God’s direct presence.

Psalms 15–24 work as a chiasm, which means that each one parallels another psalm in this collection to reflect the same point. We can outline this structure as such

Psalm 15 – Christ’s ascension

Psalm 16 – Christ’s resurrection

Psalm 17 – Christ’s grave

Psalm 18 – Christ’s death

Psalm 19 – God’s law as the standard for his king

Psalm 20 – Christ’s righteous life

Psalm 21 – Christ’s righteous life

Psalm 22 – Christ’s death

Psalm 23 – Christ’s grave

Psalm 24 – Christ’s ascension and resurrection

This little collection has Psalm 19 as its high point, the centerpiece for our focus.7 Surrounding it, Psalm 15 presents an ideal vision, Psalm 16 states confidence in that vision, Psalm 17 shows confidence in that vision despite the reality of trials, and Psalm 18 places the Lord front and center as the reason for that confidence.8 In these instances, the focus is on the individual, but at Psalm 20 the perspective shifts to the community of God’s people.9 Throughout, the question remains: How does one find access to the presence of God?

Christ at the Center

As we will see, each of these psalms turns out to be about a particular aspect of Christ’s incarnate work. Psalms 15–24 then tell the story of God’s savior-king and how he rescues those who take refuge in him. They tell us about his ascension, his resurrection, his burial, his death, his righteous life, and then about those same events in reverse order.

We are reminded that it is always worth telling the story of Christ Jesus. We cannot lose sight of how his person and work is the answer to that question, “Who will ascend God’s mountain?” Jesus Christ, the righteous has entered into the Father’s glory to enjoy it forever. He has done so in order to earn our entry there with him. Psalms 15–24 tell us how Christ takes us with him into the Lord’s temple to know God in blessing.

Practical Conclusion

What do we learn already? These psalms teach that God’s presence is what matters most no matter the situation. Just think about how this run of confidence in Psalms 15–24 follows right on the tail of Psalms 3–14, which were predominantly about crisis. Psalms 15–24 are about what is most important regardless of what is happening.

When things of life feel like they are pressing in on us, we can be tempted to lose sight of God as our true satisfaction. We can think that what we really need is relief from our earthly problems.

My chiropractor says that my neck has the beginning of reverse curvature, which happens when someone spends a lot of time looking down, maybe at a phone or maybe at books. The issue is that the neck starts to reshape so that it hangs downward naturally and takes on a different direction than it is supposed to have.

We can develop reverse curvature in a spiritual sense too. The neck of our soul bends forward so that we are looking down rather than up to see God’s presence. When crisis comes, we gravitate to looking down at ourselves and our own affairs. Psalms 15 teaches us to keep our focus on the question of who gets to come into God’s presence. Psalms 15–24 shows us that amid crisis, we must not forget that our greatest purpose is to know God’s presence. The placement of Psalm 15 in the Psalter highlights that God’s presence is our greatest need in peace or in trouble.

Notes

  1. See Harrison Perkins, “An Introduction To The Psalter On The Law And The Gospel: Psalms 1–2.”
  2. Bruce K. Waltke and James M. Houston with Erika Moore, The Psalms as Christian Worship: A Historical Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 103.
  3. O. Palmer Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2015), 61–62.
  4. Waltke, Houston, and Moore, Psalms, 47, 193.
  5. Bruce K. Waltke and Fred G. Zaspel, How to Read and Understand the Psalms (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 481; Carissa Quinn, The Arrival of the King: The Shape and Story of Psalms 15–24, Studies in Scripture and Biblical Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2023), 154
  6. Quinn, Arrival of the King, 36.
  7. Waltke, Houston, and Moore, Psalms, 290; Waltke and Zaspel, How to Read and Understand the Psalms, 431, 481.
  8. Quinn, Arrival of the King, 162.
  9. Quinn, Arrival of the King, 156.

© Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find this whole series here.

RESOURCES

Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

Subscribe to the Heidelblog today!


Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments are welcome but must observe the moral law. Comments that are profane, deny the gospel, advance positions contrary to the Reformed confession, or that irritate the management are subject to deletion. Anonymous comments, posted without permission, are forbidden. Please use a working email address so we can contact you, if necessary, about content or corrections.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.