From Glory To Glory: The Story Of Christ In Psalms 15–24 (Part 4)—Psalm 16 And Christ’s Resurrection

by on August 16, 2025 | Comment

Building a fire requires balancing. Specifically, you have to balance the use of kindling with the use of longer burning fuel. Kindling gets hot and bright fast, but it also fizzles quickly and fades. Fire has to be fed by sustaining fuel. Without more robust fuel, the fire will die no matter how hot and big it erupted with initial enthusiasm.

Psalm 16 points us toward the difference between kindling and fuel for the heart of joy. Life is full of reasons that stir up happiness in a flareup of good emotion. Although lots of things can spark quick and hot moments of happiness, far fewer of those things provide reason for lasting joy.

In Psalm 16, David reminds us that the fullness of joy, that lasting contentedness that we all long for, is found only with the fuel of God’s abiding presence with us. God’s presence is like wood with deeply burning embers rather than straw that burns up quickly. God’s presence is what will keep us burning in joy throughout the ups and downs of life.

The Psalter is a book with a unified theme of instruction about life with God, specifically as we know God by taking refuge in his king. It is a book about the law and the gospel. It is about training us in the godly response to the full spectrum of experience and emotion that we encounter in the Christian life.

This series walks through Psalms 15–24 as a distinct and unified collection of psalms about getting to enter God’s presence. Psalm 15 and Psalm 24 frame this collection’s attention on the issue of who gets to ascend God’s holy hill. It reflects upon our quest to know that blessed experience of abiding in God’s direct presence. This installment considers how Psalm 16 fits into the developing point that Psalms 15–24 make about Christ—namely, it teaches about Christ’s resurrection.

Placement

Psalms 15–24 contain a story arc that begins and ends in the same place. They tell the story of Christ’s incarnate life. Critically, these psalms start by telling Christ’s story in reverse order before shifting gears to tell it again in regular order. We saw in previous articles that Psalm 15 focuses on Christ’s ascension after he had risen from the grave, and that Psalm 24 will end this story arc with a focus on the resurrection and ascension.

In that respect Psalm 15, 16, 17, and 18 tell Christ’s story backwards in the order of ascension, resurrection, grave, and death. Then Psalm 22, 23, and 24 are going to tell that story again in the order of death, grave, and resurrection with ascension. In between, Psalms 19–21 reflect upon the life of God’s king and God’s disposition toward the righteous one. The outline of these psalms communicates something worthwhile. It reminds us that the story of Christ is worth hearing more than once. It reminds us that we might even need to start at the highpoint, that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, that he has ascended into heaven, and that he is ruling and reigning for his people.

This series will not dive into all the details of Psalm 16. It has already received treatment in Scott McDermand’s series.1 For further exposition and application, read Scott’s excellent work. Rather than repeat good things he has already said, we will focus more narrowly on how Psalm 16 fits into the developing narrative among Psalms 15–24.

Portion

David wrote Psalm 16 to show us that we have to repent and redirect. Clearly, he needed a reminder about what sort of joy would overcome hardship. He opens, “Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.’” The starting note places him in a bad place. He feels like his life is at its end.

As the psalm develops to teach us about true and lasting satisfaction, David teaches us where to plant our hearts: “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance” (vv. 5–6). God must be our portion for us to know a pleasant inheritance.

This is the hinge point in David’s psalm, and it is important as we consider how Psalm 16 focuses on Christ’s resurrection. So often, we hear that this statement, “The lines have fallen for us in pleasant places,” was invoked as thankfulness for kind providence in life. In context, however, that pleasantness is the psalmist’s decision in the midst of danger. It is not that we chase after the good things of life to make our situation pleasant. It is that we own God as our portion. Then and only then have our lines fallen in pleasant places. Our portion must be to be satisfied with God as the one who is the pleasantness of life.

People

If we hope to find pleasure elsewhere than God, we find ourselves climbing a ladder made of smoke. We cannot even see it, and it cannot ever hold us. When we consider this psalm as coming from the lips of Christ, we see why it guides us on the way to satisfaction and the fullness of joy.

Consider verse 3: “As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.” Now, ponder this verse as the words of Christ. Inasmuch as this psalm is about the risen Christ, this verse is his song about how much he loves his people. In the Old Testament, God’s people lived in the promised land. Now in the new covenant, God’s holy nation is comprised of every tribe, tongue, and people gathered in the church.

Reframed in new covenant idiom, what an amazing thing that Christ would say about his people: “As for the saints in the church, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.” Hebrews 12:1–2 instructs us in this very truth: “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” We cannot give up, not because we have the strength to continue, but because Jesus delights in us. When we feel at the end of ourselves, we remember that Christ treasures us. He finds delight in his people.

As we press toward recognizing Psalm 16 as being about Christ’s resurrection, we glimpse the gospel-grounding of Christ’s resurrection. God the Son assumed human nature and performed all his incarnate work for us and for our salvation. His human life, death, grave, resurrection, and ascension are all aimed at the goal of his mediatorial work to provide salvation for his people. As Psalm 16 moves toward the resurrection, we see that Christ had his people in view concerning his resurrection. As Paul explained in Romans 4:24–25, faith was counted unto Abraham for righteousness and “It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (emphasis added). Christ’s resurrection is joined with his work for his church.

Pleasure

We cannot make good and right sense of Psalm 16 without seeing that it is about Christ’s triumph. We will not be able to sing this song well and truly unless we see it is grounded in the indestructible victory of Christ overturning the grave and striding out of death, having defeated it for his people. This is a song about the risen Savior.

James Hamilton tries to untangle how David’s prayers for himself can be about Christ’s resurrection. He argues that David’s words could be about Christ because David understood himself to be “a pattern, or type, or the one to come,” so that when he spoke of himself, he was also consciously speaking of the one to come as well.2

From one perspective, Hamilton is exactly right. David does write with himself in view, functioning redemptive-historically as a type of Christ. From another perspective, Hamilton does not go far enough. God inspired David to write Psalm 16 with this typological significance so that Christ is its primary meaning. Psalm 16 is not first about David and secondarily about Christ. Rather, it is about Christ’s resurrection; it involves David inasmuch as it needs a historical anchor point to serve as the type pointing to the reality of its primary meaning.

As Peter preached the first Christian sermon after Christ’s ascension at Pentecost, he confirmed this view that Psalm 16 was written about Christ’s resurrection.

This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him,

“I saw the Lord always before me,

for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken;

therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;

my flesh also will dwell in hope.

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

or let your Holy One see corruption.

You have made known to me the paths of life;

you will make me full of gladness with your presence.” (Acts 2:23–28)

Note that “David said concerning him,” meaning he wrote about Christ (emphasis added). In other words, Christ told us through David that his Father would not leave him in the grave. Because of Peter’s apostolic interpretation, we have no doubt that Psalm 16 is about Christ’s resurrection.

The Father would not leave the Son in the state of death nor let him experience corruption in death. According to the covenant of redemption, the Father kept this promise by raising Christ from the grave. The Father had promised the Son exaltation even according to his human nature. So, Christ knew that pleasure awaited him even as he went to death. Psalm 16 gives voice to the Son’s trust in the Father: As he called for the Father to preserve him (Ps 16:1), he knew that the Father would not let him wallow in death.

Psalm 16 displays Christ, the triumphant Savior who knows pleasure from the Father. He has obtained those blessings as the second Adam in order to distribute pleasure to his saints in whom he delights. Psalm 16 reveals that before Christ ascended, as we learned about in Psalm 15, he rose from the grave. It reminds us then that our pleasure in God’s presence is guaranteed, because, after Christ died to pay for our sin, he rose from the grave to secure incorruptible life for us.

Notes

  1. Scott McDermand, “Psalm 16.”
  2. James M. Hamilton Jr., Psalms, 2 vol. (Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2021), 1:217–18.

© Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find this whole series here.

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