The King of Glory

[0:00] Turn to Psalm 24. A little bummed I missed Psalm 23 last week.

[0:12] I heard Matt did a good job. This is a wonderful psalm also. Psalm 24, the King of Glory. I will read it out loud and then go through it together.

[0:30] A Psalm of David. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of His salvation.

[1:06] Such is a generation of those who seek Him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of Glory may come in.

[1:20] Who is this King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty. The Lord, mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of Glory may come in.

[1:33] Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of hosts. He is the King of Glory. Selah. Selah. The welfare of the people is often contingent on how powerful the nation or the kingdom to which the people belong.

[1:55] So subjects of a powerful kingdom or nation experience prosperity and peace like we do here in the U.S. While subjects of weaker kingdoms, nations are frequently embattled and impoverished and manipulated like pawns by more powerful nations around them.

[2:13] And knowing this full well, David's a king, he's a politician, and he writes Psalm 24. He writes that the God King whom Israel serves, He's the King of Glory, rules over all creation.

[2:26] And because of that, he writes that the subjects of God's kingdom ought to submit to His Lordship and not to anyone else. He should rely on, rest on His Lordship. So in verses 1 to 2, he tells us that God is the conquering king.

[2:40] Verses 3 to 6, that He is the holy king. And in verses 7 to 10, that He is the glorious king. So the first, verse 1 to 2, read, The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.

[2:54] For He has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. So the earth is the Lord's, and that's the personal name of God that He revealed to Israel, right, the Lord.

[3:06] So it's not that the earth just belongs to a generic God, but it belongs to Israel's God. And not just the earth, but the fullness thereof in verse 1, which indicates not just the earth, the structure of it, but everything that is contained in it.

[3:20] The world and those who dwell therein. And why does it belong to the Lord? Of course, the easy answer and simple answer is because He made it, right? And that's the answer that David gives too.

[3:32] Verse 2, For He has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. But there's something a little more subtle going on than that, simply saying that, well, it belongs to God because He made it.

[3:43] Because, as you might know already, that obviously Israel was given by God the land of Canaan, right? And in it, they worshipped a god named Baal, their neighboring nations did.

[4:00] But King ousted these Canaanites from Jerusalem, established the kingdom of Israel, and established the capital of his nation in Jerusalem. And according to their myth of the origin of the universe, there was a god of chaos, and the god's name was Sea.

[4:20] Another name of the god was River. So Sea and River. And it's Baal, according to their mythology, their king, who came and said, you know what?

[4:31] You don't need to worry. All the other gods were kind of cowering and afraid of this god of chaos and unable to do anything. But Baal, their chief god, comes and says, don't fear. Lift up your heads.

[4:43] In fact, that's later quoted as well. And he says, and trust in me. And then he defeats this sea and establishes, basically, the Canaanite kingdom.

[4:54] And so David is here referring, alluding to that in a polemical way to intentionally challenge that view. And so here, he doesn't name it, right?

[5:05] So he just says, seas and the rivers. He doesn't acknowledge that they are God. He depersonalizes it and he demythologizes it. It's just another aspect of God's creation.

[5:17] He made it, the sea and the river that you call God, the God that you feared. And it's not Baal that came to conquer. It's God, Yahweh, the Lord, who came and founded it upon the seas, created the earth.

[5:31] And Paul also quotes this verse, Psalm 24, verse 1, in 1 Corinthians 10, 25 to 27. And this context, polemical context, really illuminates it. Because he's telling believers that they don't need to have any qualms about eating food that was eating meat, in particular, that was sacrificed to idols.

[5:47] And in saying that, he says this, eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

[6:00] If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner, you are disposed to go, eat whatever is said before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. Right? So he's quoting this, and it's so fitting.

[6:11] Because what he's saying is, you know what? These people may have sacrificed this meat to the idols. But you know that these idols are not God's. Right? They're nothing. God alone is the creator.

[6:22] He is the conquering king. And since all of the earth, the fullness therein belongs to him, you should be able to eat that with thankfulness. Because it's his, ultimately not. It doesn't belong to the idol. Because idol is nothing at all.

[6:34] So that's kind of what Paul's referring to. And this also enables us to really enjoy God's creation. Right? Because it's his. He belongs to it. And he created it for himself, for his glory.

[6:46] But also for a man to enjoy as the pinnacle of his creation, as we'll see this coming Sunday. And so, having established that God alone is the conquering king, then he goes on to talk about how he is the holy king.

[7:00] And he makes the connection that God dwells with Israel. In verse 3, he says, Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in his holy place.

[7:10] That's a reference to Mount Zion, which can refer to Jerusalem and the whole city of David. And by extension, also the entire land of Israel.

[7:21] This is the residence of the almighty conquering king. And because the holy God dwells in it, it's a holy place. And David asks, And who shall stand in his holy place?

[7:35] This place is set apart. It's consecrated. It's holy other. It's different from all the other places in the world. How can anyone stand in it? And then he gives the answer. This was probably used in the liturgy in the worship of Israel.

[7:49] So, they will enter in the worship sanctuary. And they will ask, Who shall stand in the holy place? And they will answer in this way, verse 4. He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully.

[8:05] Right? And clean hands is a metaphor for innocence with regard to action. And pure heart is a metaphor for innocence with regard to one's heart, to one's motives.

[8:17] Right? So, Jesus echoes this in Matthew 5.8. When he's blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Right? So, this teaches an important truth, that God cares not only about what we do, but also about why we do it.

[8:32] Right? He cares about our motives. If really all that mattered was what we did, then it would be actually kind of manageable. Right? And that's what the Pharisees did.

[8:43] They thought they always did the right things. But because a pure heart also matters to him, why we do these things, this makes the standard much, much higher.

[8:53] We must not only have external conformity, but eternal conformity to God's laws. So, he says, they need clean hands and a pure heart. And the further characteristic of a person who has clean hands and a pure heart is that he does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.

[9:12] Lifting up one's soul is a Hebrew idiom for worship. And so, he's saying that whoever would approach God must not worship any idol. He must worship only God.

[9:23] And he says, all idols, anything else that people might worship other than God, is what is false. That's, again, a polemical language. That word can also be translated vain, or false, vanity, emptiness, or superstition.

[9:39] So, David is saying that all who do not worship the true God, the conquering king, the holy king, they're worshiping superstition. They're being superstitious. They're worshiping emptiness, a vanity, a false, something that is false.

[9:52] And kind of correspondingly, he must not swear deceitfully. Swearing an oath before God was considered inviolable because God is inviolable, because he's unchanging and eternal.

[10:07] So, any oath, as is said before God, had to be kept. Oath keeping was not a matter of experience, but allegiance to God himself. And so, he says he must not swear deceitfully.

[10:19] And only those who live in that manner are those who truly seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. So, he's the holy king. And God is the conquering king.

[10:30] So, we've seen him. He's the holy king. And then, finally, God's the glorious king. And David writes about this in verses 7 to 10. A wonderful exchange here. Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in.

[10:44] Who is this king of glory? The Lord strong and mighty. The Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift them up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in.

[10:55] Who is this king of glory? The Lord of hosts. He is the king of glory, Selah. This situation probably recalls the time when the ark of God, which represents the presence of God, was brought into the city of David, into Jerusalem, to represent God's abiding presence with Israel.

[11:18] And so, God had just delivered Israel from all their enemies, all their neighboring nations, the Canaanites. And so, the glory and power of the Lord is foremost on people's mind. And so, they are talking about how he is mighty in battle, all these military terms.

[11:31] He's the Lord of hosts, which means the Lord of the armies. And as I mentioned before about the kind of Canaanite mythology, their cosmogony, right?

[11:41] The expression, lift up your heads, also comes from that, right? So, that's when Baal came on the scene and told the other cowering gods, lift up your heads, O gods, and called up to trust in him.

[11:54] And that's what David's referring to here. Except, again, he uses, transforms that in a political way. He doesn't recognize that there are any other gods. Rather, he changes, so he's speaking to gates and to doors.

[12:07] And it says, And it's not Baal to whom we should look and trust in, but it's Yahweh, the Lord. So, he says, Lift up your heads, O gates. Because the King of Glory is coming in, is coming into the city and dwelling with them, we can take part and we can be encouraged, and those who are discouraged can lift up their heads.

[12:27] Because he is trustworthy and he is mighty. And this is helpful for us as we try to apply it. And that's because the seas and the rivers that represented chaos in Near Eastern mythology, and how God established his kingdom, the earth on it.

[12:46] And we can think about what in our lives might be the seas and the rivers, the chaos, right? The disorder, the disappointments, right? The suffering.

[12:57] Anything in our lives that may lead us to be downcast, to hang our heads low. And then we can think about the fact that God is the conquering king.

[13:09] That he rules the world. That nothing is outside of his control. And he establishes his rule and imposes his rule over all creation and over all of history. Then when we remember that, then we can lift up our heads.

[13:22] And he says, Lift up your heads, O gates, O ancient doors. Because the subjects of God's kingdom are to submit to his lordship. And to know that he is the lord over all our lives and situations and not anything else.

[13:33] So we don't need to look to the idols of our hearts, or to anyone else, or to any other god for comfort. But we can turn to him as the glorious king, the holy king, and the glorious king.

[13:48] But this leaves us with the question, Can anyone truly meet the qualifications of having clean hands and a pure heart? Right? Doing right actions and having the right motives for it.

[14:02] And thankfully, David, I don't think, is understanding this in an absolute sense. We can see this in verses 5 to 6. Because not only does he say that those who will approach him must have clean hands and pure hearts, but he also says that when he comes to God, he will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

[14:22] Such is the generation of those who seek him will seek the face of the God of Jacob. So the person doesn't have absolutely perfectly clean hands and pure hearts, but when he approaches God in seeking him, therein he receives the righteousness of God.

[14:38] In seeking the face of God, he receives blessing from the Lord. And this truth ultimately points to Jesus, as we know. In 1 Corinthians 2.8, Christ himself is described as the Lord of glory.

[14:52] Here he's talking about the king of glory. And then 2 Corinthians 4.6 says that God has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

[15:04] So we can seek the face of the God of Jacob and behold his glory and have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shine on us when we seek the face of Jesus Christ and for his righteousness.

[15:16] When we recognize and when we rely on him and on the sacrifice he made on the cross to atone for our sins, to impute his righteousness to us, that's when we receive blessing from the Lord, the righteousness from the God of our salvation.

[15:30] So just to close, let me remind you, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, the Lord of hosts, the King of glory, that's the God, that's the King, that's the Lord of glory whom we serve in Christ.

[15:47] And so with that, let's turn to him in prayer and submit all our needs and petitions to him. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[15:59] Hahaha. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Séerлин hall. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[16:11] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[16:21] Amen.