A sermon by Rod Benson on Psalm 16.
It’s all very well to praise God in song on Sunday morning, surrounded by the people of God.
But what happens on Monday when I am alone in the universe, and I face familiar demons, and feel the panic rising; or I put the phone to my ear, or open an email, and there’s bad news – an unwelcome medical report, or a family emergency, or the last straw that breaks the camel’s back in a friendship that’s gone sour; or the world threatens to chew me up and spit me out, and there’s an urge to flee from virtue and fail a moral test?
It is in moments of disappointment, doubt, desertion, and darkness that our faith is most sorely tested. Psalm 16 may seem a strange text for reflection on suffering, but as we dig beneath the surface of its happy poetry, we discover vital lessons about preparation for suffering, faithfulness in suffering, and surviving in spite of the dark times each of us faces.
This is not a lament psalm. It is a testimony of confident trust in God. The short Psalm 15 is somewhat less confident, as David reflects on the kind of person who may “dwell in [Yahweh’s] tent” (15:1). David knows that only a morally pure and ethically upright person may enjoy close and vital fellowship with the Living God.
In Psalm 16, David is no longer thinking on the Sabbath about the sanctuary, the symbol of divine presence at the heart of his community, but about life in the world on a weekday. He implores God for protection, “takes refuge” in God, and declares that God is Lord and he is not. He confesses, “I have nothing good besides you” (vv. 1f).
Israel’s lament psalms speak out of the experience of deep anguish and pain; some reflect a feeling of divine absence or enmity. In contrast, Psalm 16 reads like the testimony of a person of faith who has weathered the storms, and overcome all that the world can throw at them, and now they rest in calm waters under a sunny blue sky.
David’s God is incomparable: there is nothing in the world that is greater; and there is no one in the world who is greater. His words suggest the calm of hard-won experience, new knowledge, a deep insight that God exists and is both great and good.
Just as important, in practical terms, is David’s conviction that God is the preeminent exemplar of the highest ethical good: the source and goal of all that is morally excellent, right, and true in the world. Verses 3–4 continue this thought with a contrast between good and evil people, faithfulness and apostasy, loyalty versus a wavering spirit.
In verses 5–6, David’s joy in God wells up and he declares, “You are my portion” (v 5a). Both “portion” and “cup” are terms used in relation to the allocation of parts of an animal sacrifice in ancient Israel. For example, Israel is described as Yahweh’s “portion” (Deut 32:9), and vice versa (Ps 73:26; 119:57; 142:5; Lam 3:24).
David knows he has no exclusive claim on God, but he “also knows that one can be so confident of Yhwh’s entire attention that it is as if one were the only person to whom Yhwh had to give it.”[1] He says, “[You are] my cup of blessing” (v 5b): life is good, regardless of circumstances or the challenges I face, because God is with me.
“You hold my future” (v 5c): it’s not random, meaningless or unknown.
“The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance” (v 6): the boundary lines on a map recalling the extent of the land promised in grace to Abraham, and the happy accident of the time and place of David’s birth, and his extraordinary journey from overlooked shepherd boy to king of Israel.
“It’s all grace,” he says. “All this goodness, all this blessing, all this ease and rest is a gracious gift from our holy, merciful and wise God.”
But that is not all. David is in relationship to the Living God, and that relationship is vital and active. There are present and ongoing blessings beyond all the goodness he has experienced in the past. In verses 7–8, David turns to praise, rejoicing in “the Lord who counsels me” and who “guides me.”
Yes, he still entertains troubling thoughts, but he relies on the counsel and guidance of God, engaged through prayer and sacred writings. Yes, people and events threaten to shake his foundations, but he trusts in the Living God, and declares, “I will not be shaken” (v 8b).
In the midst of suffering, whether sudden or slowly accumulated over the years, our instinct is to focus on the loss, pain, and diminishment. Instead, David places God at the centre of perception, and won’t be shaken.
In verses 9–11, David concludes his psalm of praise by audaciously affirming his complete security in God, extending even beyond death to the apparently gloomy and little-understood world of the afterlife. He is not speaking about a detached spirituality but an embodied faith that takes seriously not only the mind and spirit but his “body,” his “heart” (that is, his emotional life), and his “whole being” (v 9).
But this raises a practical problem: how will his body “rest securely” when, physically, it is inevitably subject to decay? The answer comes in the next verse: “For you will not abandon me to Sheol; you will not allow your faithful one to see decay” (v 10). David’s thought moves beyond present experience to eschatological hope, expressing confidence that death does not have the final word.
This is where Psalm 16 joins the Gospel narrative of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – the Easter story. The early church saw that Psalm 16 echoes in the experience of Jesus. He is the one who sets the Lord always before him, who entrusts himself to the Father even in great suffering, even in death on a cross. Jesus enters fully into all that the psalm fears: abandonment, corruption, the grave. Yet his suffering is neither accidental nor pointless: it is holy suffering, carried in obedience, love and trust.
In many places today, it is not popular to speak of the suffering of Jesus as redemptive, substitutionary, or paying a debt owed to God. Yet the New Testament witnesses are clear that the suffering and death of Jesus really does redeem us, take away the sin of the world, and make us holy. In Acts 2:25-28, and Acts 13:35, both Peter and Paul, both Apostles, quote this psalm and apply it to Jesus.
More than that, I can imagine Jesus reciting this psalm as he took his final journey to Jerusalem, as he entered the city on Palm Sunday, as he suffered mental torment in the Garden of Gethsemane, as he stood before Pilate, as he was led to Golgotha, as he hung on the cross, crucified between heaven and earth, for us and for our salvation.
“Protect me, God, for I take refuge in you” (v 1).
“Lord, you are my portion and my cup of blessing; you hold my future” (v 5).
“Because [the Lord] is at my right hand, I will not be shaken” (v 8).
“Therefore my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices; my body rests securely. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol; you will not allow your faithful one to see decay” (vv 9f).
As the resurrection of Jesus declares, death does not hold him; nor does corruption claim him. The grave is merely a door to eternal life. The Father raises the Son to life, transfiguring suffering, imbuing it with powerful meaning, confirming its redemptive efficacy. This is the power of holy suffering in the hands of a holy God.
This is why the last verse of Psalm 16 is so beautiful: “You reveal the path of life to me; in your presence is abundant joy; at your right hand are eternal pleasures” (v 11). I can imagine Jesus recalling especially this verse, as he is laid to rest in the tomb, as he descends into Sheol, and as he rises to new life before dawn on the first day of the week.
Notice how, in life, the psalmist (and Jesus too) was reassured that he would not be shaken since the Lord is “at his right hand” (v 8); and, in verse 11, there is a shift, and the psalmist (and Jesus) declares that “eternal pleasures” are present at God’s right hand.
What we believe shapes the way we understand and experience the world, and how we envision “reality.” Philosophers and poets have observed that thinking is often thought of in terms of “seeing.” The anthropologist Agustín Fuentes said, “to be human is to be able to believe.”[2] The writer Henry Miller, reflecting on his pattern of thought as he wandered through exotic landscapes, said he found his destination was “never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.”[3]
Most of us have an aversion to “triggering” words and actions, and seek to banish such triggers from our lives. The opposite of “triggers” is what psychologists call “glimmers” – glimmers of hope and solace that have the power to lift our spirits and reframe our circumstances.[4]
Psalm 16, I suggest to you, is a fine example of such “glimmering” that speaks to our suffering, and our human condition, and has the potential to lift our spirits, reframe the pain and loss we encounter in ways that make sense, deliver peace where there is turmoil, and ultimately bring glory to God.
Let this beautiful psalm speak to you when you need to repel a “trigger” and find a “glimmer” in your life.
Sermon 850 copyright © 2026 Rod Benson. Preached at North Rocks Community Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 12 April 2026. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020).
Rev Dr Rod Benson is General Secretary of the NSW Ecumenical Council and a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia serving at North Rocks Community Church in Sydney.
References:
[1] John Goldingay, Psalms. Volume 1: Psalms 1-41 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 230f.
[2] Agustín Fuentes, Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Believing (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), 116.
[3] Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronoymus Bosch (New York: New Directions, 1957), 25.
[4] On the notion of “glimmering,” see Sarah Moniuszko, “’Glimmers’ are the opposite of triggers. How to find them,” USA Today, 23 March 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2022/03/23/glimmers-opposite-triggers-mental-health-benefits/7121353001/
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