The saints of the early church looked to Psalm 16 for their hope.
From this psalm, they stood in the face of the crowds and declared, “God had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.” The world would never be the same.
What did they hear in Psalm 16 that moved them from fear to faith?
The psalm captures the confident cry of a King.
David wrote Psalm 16. But it’s not David’s voice we hear in Psalm 16; it is Christ’s.[1]
David sets his hope, not in his life being preserved, but in the Holy One who would come after him. David would die and see corruption, but not so with God’s Holy One. David was a king, but not the Risen King whose corpse saw no corruption.
Yet, since the Messiah passed through death and out the other side, we may also sing with David: “Preserve me, O God, for I have taken refuge in you as well. Your Holy One faced death that I might know the path of life.
Donald Grey Barnhouse, a well-known Presbyterian pastor of the past century, told a story to his grieving children as he drove to the funeral of their mother (his wife).
On the way to the funeral, an enormous truck had pulled past them, throwing its shadow across them. [Barnhouse] asked his children, ‘Would you rather be run over by the truck or by the shadow of the truck?’ The eleven-year-old had said, ‘Shadow, of course!’
‘Well, that’s what happened to your mother,’ Donald had replied. ‘Only the shadow of death passed over her, because death itself ran over Jesus. But he rose again, He lives—and so does she, in heaven!’ [2]
Whether standing at the graveside of a departed loved one, as I and countless others have, or facing down one’s own diagnosis of death, in and because of Christ, we may personally take up the resolute cries of Psalm 16, just as my dad did at his death.
We have been hit with the shadow, but Christ with the truck. And with that poet-parson George Herbert, we may confidently say, “Rise Heart, Thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise without delays.”[3] He is risen, indeed.
(The preceding is an adapted portion of an article that appeared in Christ Over All on April 13, 2026. For the full article, see Brad Baugham, “Psalm 16: Rise Heart, Thy Lord Is Risen,” Christ Over All, 13 April 2026.)
