Resurrection Sunday has a way of pulling our attention backward — to the cross, to the tomb, to the grief of that first Holy Week. And while there is real meaning in remembering what happened, the message of the resurrection is ultimately a forward-facing one. The stone is rolled away. The tomb is empty. The living are not found among the dead. Everything about Easter morning points ahead.
That idea is important, because most of us are far more practiced at looking back than at looking ahead.
A Man on the Run
To understand what it means to keep your eyes on the future, start in one of the most unlikely places in Scripture: 1 Samuel 27.
By this point in David’s story, he has already killed Goliath, served faithfully in Saul’s army, and married Saul’s daughter. But when King Saul recognized that God’s Spirit had departed from him and come to rest on David, jealousy took over. Saul was convinced that David would one day claim his throne, and so he set out to kill him. David spent years constantly on the move — not alone, but with his men, their families, his own wives — always running, always watching over his shoulder.
The weight of that kind of life is hard to overstate. It wasn’t a short season of difficulty. It was years of sustained pressure, grief, and uncertainty. And eventually, David reached his breaking point.
Then David said to himself, “Now I will perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than to escape into the land of the Philistines. Saul then will despair of searching for me anymore in all the territory of Israel, and I will escape from his hand.” So David arose and crossed over, he and the 600 men who were with him, to Achish the son of Maoch king of Gath… The number of days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months. (1 Samuel 27:1–2, 7)
David made a strategic calculation born out of exhaustion: if he crossed into Philistine territory, Saul wouldn’t follow. It worked — Saul stopped pursuing him. But the relief David found there was never really peace. It was just the absence of immediate danger. God had already made clear that David’s future was in Israel, not among the Philistines. Eventually David returned, and the running started again.
A Song Written in Crisis
David was not only a warrior and a king-in-waiting. He was a songwriter. Among the Psalms attributed to him are six poems called Mikhtams — sometimes called the Golden Poems. They share a common thread: they were written in times of deep crisis, yet they return again and again to trust in God. Scholars believe that Psalm 16, one of the six Mikhtams, was written during this very period — when David was living among the Philistines, weary and displaced.
Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in you. I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good besides you.” As for the saints who are in the earth, they are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those who have bartered for another god will be multiplied; I shall not pour out their drink offerings of blood, nor will I take their names upon my lips. The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; you support my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.
I will bless the Lord who has counseled me; indeed, my mind instructs me in the night. I have set the Lord continually before me; because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; my flesh also will dwell securely. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will you allow your Holy One to undergo decay. You will make known to me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; in your right hand there are pleasures forever. (Psalm 16:1–11)
Even in the middle of that season, David wrote with confidence about the future. He wasn’t cataloguing his grievances against Saul or rehearsing everything that had gone wrong. He was looking ahead — trusting that God had not abandoned him, that there were still “pleasures forever” at God’s right hand, that his Holy One would not be left to decay.
That last phrase — you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will you allow your Holy One to undergo decay — is the one worth pausing on. Because David wrote something in the middle of his own crisis that he may not have fully understood himself.
What Peter Saw
Fifty days after the resurrection, on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended on the gathered disciples. They spilled out into the streets of Jerusalem, speaking in languages they didn’t know, and a crowd gathered to make sense of what was happening. Peter stood up and preached, and in the middle of that sermon he turned to Psalm 16.
“Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know — this man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hand of godless men and put him to death. But God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held in its power.” (Acts 2:22–24)
Then Peter quoted the psalm directly:
“For David says of him, ‘I saw the Lord always in my presence; for he is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted; moreover, my flesh also will live in hope, because you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow your Holy One to undergo decay.'”
And then Peter made his point: “Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh suffer decay.” (Acts 2:29–31)
David wasn’t writing about himself in Psalm 16. He was looking ahead — through the power of the Holy Spirit — to a resurrection he wouldn’t witness in his own lifetime. He saw just enough of it to write it down. And centuries later, standing in the streets of Jerusalem with the Spirit of God on him, Peter looked back at what David wrote and said: this is who David was talking about. The Jesus you crucified is the one who rose again, exactly as David described.
This is one of the most stunning through-lines in all of Scripture. A man running for his life, sheltering among Israel’s enemies, wrote a song of trust — and embedded in that song was a prophecy about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
David was looking ahead.
Why Are You Looking Among the Dead?
The women who went to the tomb on the first day of the week weren’t wrong to grieve. They were going to do what they could — prepare the body, honor the one they had followed. But when they arrived, something had changed.
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. But when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothes; and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has risen. Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” (Luke 24:1–7)
Why do you seek the living one among the dead?
That question give me chills. The disciples struggled to move forward even after Jesus showed up alive — Thomas refused to believe until he could put his fingers in the wounds. It took the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost to finally set things in motion. But the resurrection had already declared something definitive: there is nothing left to find at the tomb. He has moved on. The past is not where the living Jesus is.
For those who are in Christ, the same declaration stands. We sit on the other side of the resurrection, with the Holy Spirit already present and at work. The direction that has been set is forward.
Running the Race, Looking Ahead
The writer of Hebrews captured this image with clarity:
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1–2)
No one runs a race while looking backward. That’s not how a race works. The image is deliberate — you face the direction you’re headed, and you keep your eyes on what is in front of you. The encumbrances the writer mentions aren’t only obvious sins. They include the weight of history, the things that pull our attention back when it should be pressing forward.
Notice, too, the model of Jesus in this passage. He knew the cross was coming. He knew exactly what it would cost him. And yet — for the joy set before him — he endured it, looking past the suffering to what waited on the other side. That’s the same posture we’re being called into. There are hard things in front of us, but they are not the end of the story. The race has a finish line, and the finish line is good.
Paul said something similar in Philippians, with characteristic bluntness:
Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which I also was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12–14)
Paul had a list of things he could have looked back on — the stonings, the beatings, the friends who walked away once he became a Christian. He had every reason to be stuck in the past. Instead, he made a decision: one thing I do. He forgot what was behind him and reached for what was ahead. Pressing on — toward the prize, toward the upward call — was not a passive thing for Paul. It was an active, daily choice.
Are you pressing on? Are you moving forward — not allowing past hurts, past failures, past seasons of despair or anxiety to define your present — as you walk with Jesus?
How to Press On With Purpose
Pressing on is not a feeling. It is not a matter of mustering enough emotional energy to feel hopeful. Paul addressed the how of it directly:
Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way as not without aim; I box in such a way as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:24–27)
No serious athlete shows up to compete without preparation and intention. Olympic athletes spend years training for a single event, and when they step onto the track, they are not thinking about anything except winning. Paul borrowed that same language for the life of faith. There is a prize — an imperishable one. The way to run toward it is with purpose, with discipline, with intentionality.
Does what you’re spending your time and energy on align with living for Jesus? That’s a question worth asking honestly. If something is pulling you away from that, it may need to be removed. And on the other side of that — are there things that belong to the life of God that you haven’t been putting in? Time in Scripture, time in prayer, time in community — these aren’t optional extras. They are how the race gets run.
The writer of Hebrews addressed this plainly:
Therefore, leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washing and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. (Hebrews 6:1–2)
This is a striking passage. The author is saying that there is a maturity in Christ that goes beyond constantly returning to the basics — beyond always starting over at the foundation of repentance and elementary doctrine. Growth is expected. Pressing on to maturity means doing the honest work of asking whether your faith today looks different than it did a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago. If it doesn’t — if the answer is that things feel stale, that growth has plateaued — then something needs to change. The race requires movement.
The Crown That Awaits
Near the end of his life, with the awareness that he was approaching the finish line, Paul wrote this:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:7–8)
He fought. He finished. He kept the faith. And now — looking forward — there is a crown waiting. Not only for Paul, but for all who have loved his appearing. For everyone who has pressed on, who has kept their eyes fixed forward, who has loved the return of Jesus more than they’ve been held back by what is behind them.
You have a future in Jesus. That is what the resurrection declares. It declares that death is not the end, that the tomb could not hold him, that the story is not finished. It declares that pressing on is worth it — that the prize is real, that eternal life with God is the inheritance of everyone who trusts in Christ.
The angel’s question at the empty tomb wasn’t rhetorical. It was an invitation: Why do you seek the living one among the dead? The same invitation stands today. Stop looking for life in the past. Stop dwelling in the tomb of yesterday’s failures or wounds. The living Jesus is not there. He is risen, and he is moving forward — and the invitation is to run that race alongside him, pressing on toward the prize, looking ahead to what God has prepared.
There is a crown laid up for those who love his appearing. Keep your eyes on it.
Peace,
Todd