Not Ruled by Fear of Man: Resurrection Power in Psalm 56

From the sermon preached on April 5, 2026 | Psalm 56 | EASTER SUNDAY

The fear of man is not simply a matter of caring too much what people think. It goes deeper: it is the creeping belief that other people hold the final word over your life — your reputation, your security, your future. Psalm 56, read through the lens of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, offers a specific and honest answer to that fear. The resurrection does not call you to stop caring about people; it gives you a life that no person, no threat, and no loss can ultimately reach.

This is not a sermon about positive thinking or spiritual self-help. It is a meditation on why resurrection power is the only ground sturdy enough to stand on when the world turns dangerous.

King David wrote Psalm 56 while running for his life. He was not yet king — the prophet Samuel had anointed him, which made the reigning King Saul furious enough to hunt him down. At the same time, David was fleeing into Philistine territory, the nation of Goliath's people, who had their own reasons to want him dead. David was caught between enemies at home and enemies abroad, and he was afraid.

His first instinct was to preach truth to himself. In Psalm 56, verses 3 and 4, he writes: "When I am afraid, I put my trust in you, O Lord. In God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?" He was trying to rev himself up with correct doctrine. But read a few verses further and you can feel the strategy unraveling. He catalogs everything his enemies are actually doing — lurking, stirring up strife, watching his steps, waiting for his life — and the honest answer to his question becomes: a lot. Flesh can do quite a lot.

This is the gap between an embraced truth and an animating truth. Pastor John Starke described it this way in the sermon: he once stood at the edge of a frozen lake in Missouri, reading a sign that said "safe." He knew what the sign meant. He had the data. But he and his friends were still walking tentatively — until a pickup truck roared out onto the ice and started doing donuts. The knowledge had not changed. Something else had: it became real. David needed the same thing. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is that truck on the ice. It does not give you new information so much as it makes the old information finally, bodily, undeniably true.

One small honest step: Find one truth about God you already know but that has not become animating yet — and sit with it for five minutes today, not to analyze it, but to let it land.

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The reason fear of man runs so deep is not that people's opinions sting. It is that the logic of threat is total: whoever controls whether you live or die seems to control everything. If King Saul could end David's biological life, he could end David's abundant life too. Which is exactly why most of us make small daily surrenders — we calculate our courage, measure our generosity, stay quiet when we should speak, hold back when we should give. We are not cowardly people; we are people operating under a logic that the flesh has the final word.
The resurrection dismantles that logic at its foundation. When the Roman government crucified the body of Jesus of Nazareth, they did everything flesh can do. They whipped him, beat him, nailed him, and buried him. And on the third day, that body walked out of the grave — transformed, glorified, wounds still visible, and absolutely beyond their reach. Death had played every card it had. It did not work.
Psalm 56 uses two different Hebrew words both translated "life" in English. The word nephesh in verse 6 refers to biological, physical existence — the life that enemies can threaten and, yes, take. The word chayim in verse 13, "the light of life," refers to something more: the life of flourishing, abundance, and joy that only God gives. The resurrection has permanently bound both together in Jesus Christ, which means that even death is no longer the end of the story for those who belong to him. You can take risks that frightened people cannot take. You can stay in rooms that threatened people have to leave. You can give away things that hoarding people must keep — not because you are fearless, but because you are animated by something the flesh cannot touch.
One small honest step: Think of one place this week where you have been calculating instead of acting — and ask honestly: what am I afraid the flesh will take from me there?

When you are ready to think about what it means to live out this kind of courage alongside others, connect here with a community group that meets in your neighborhood.

The third movement of Psalm 56 is the most intimate. After meditating on his life — the two kinds of life that suffering can and cannot reach — David meditates on his tears. Psalm 56:8 reads: "You have kept count of my tossings. Put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?" This is recordkeeping language, accounting language. Someone is keeping a ledger — not of David's sins, but of his tears.

That contrast carries weight. Psalm 32 says the Lord counts no iniquity against the one whose transgression is forgiven — the record of guilt has been covered by the cross, forgotten because Christ bore it. But not the tears. Not the tossings. The Lord is committed to forgetting your sins and remembering your suffering. The Hebrew word translated "bottle" is better rendered wineskin, and the difference matters. A wineskin is not storage; it is transformation. Juice goes into a wineskin to become something more complex, more layered — fermented into something new without ceasing to be what it was.

This is what God is doing with your wounds. The evidence is Jesus himself. When the risen Christ appeared to the doubting disciple Thomas in John 20, Thomas demanded to touch the wounds before he would believe. Jesus showed them to him — and what Thomas experienced was not pity or horror. It was worship. "My Lord and my God." In Revelation 4, the multitude worships a Jesus described as a lamb who was slain; the wounds are eternally present, and they provoke eternal praise. What humiliation produced, the resurrection transformed into glory. The very thing that felt like diminishment at the cross became the site of exaltation at the resurrection.

Your tears are going where Jesus's tears went. Your wounds are going where his wounds went — gathered, bottled in the Lord's wineskin, and transformed into something that will not diminish you but glorify you. Nothing is wasted.

One small honest step: Write down one wound or grief you have been carrying, and tell God plainly that you are handing it to him — not because you feel better yet, but because the wineskin is real.

Apostles Church Uptown meets on Sunday mornings at Regis High School on the Upper East Side, at 60 East 85th Street — a short walk from Central Park, and not far from the neighborhoods of East Harlem, Morningside Heights, Washington Heights, and the Upper West Side where many in the congregation live and work. These are neighborhoods where people carry heavy things quietly and are not easily impressed by religious performance. The questions Psalm 56 raises — How do I stop being ruled by what people might do to me? Does anyone actually see what I am carrying? — are not abstract here. They belong to real people navigating demanding lives in a demanding city. If those are your questions, you are welcome at this table.

The resurrection does not promise that the flesh will stop trying. It promises that the flesh will never be enough. It cannot take the life God gives. It cannot reach the abundance God secures. It cannot waste the suffering God is already gathering and transforming. David ends Psalm 56 not by claiming his enemies are gone, but by walking "before God in the light of life" — present, free, and buoyant even inside a dangerous world. Resurrection power does not remove the fear of man by removing the threat; it removes the threat's final authority. Flesh can do a lot. But not enough.

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