Our text for this morning is Psalm 24. Beloved congregation and our Lord Jesus Christ, this psalm has three very distinct parts. In the first part, verses one and two, the psalm speaks of the dominion of the Lord over his creation and of the fact that he has that dominion because he created all things. In the second part, the psalm speaks of the necessity of holiness in those who ascend to the hill of the Lord. who may ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who may stand in his holy place, he who has clean hands and a pure heart. And in the third part, the psalm speaks of the entry of the king of glory into Zion. Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in. Now those parts are so distinct, in fact, that it may be difficult for us to see the relationship between them. And it's going to be part of the study of the psalm this morning that we try to tie these three parts together and show why it is that David speaks of three such diverse subjects all in such a short space. I think we may begin by saying that there is in this psalm a kind of summary of the history that the scriptures record. The scriptures, we may say, point to three great events in the history of the world. One being the creation of the world. The second being God's establishment of his house in the nation of Israel in fulfillment of his promise. And the third being the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ into heaven. And it is those three events which this psalm talks about. Those three, creation, the Lord coming to dwell in his house among his people, and the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we see in these three events of this psalm, a progressing revelation of the glory of the Lord. We see that glory revealed first of all, of course, in his creative work and in his absolute dominion over that work. But we see that glory revealed more fully, more clearly in the establishment of God's house among his people. There he showed himself in a more powerful and in a more full way than he had showed himself as creator. And finally, he reveals the fullness of his glory in the entry of Christ into the holy place as the king of glory. There he reveals to us the fullness of his Godhead, the express image of his substance. Let's consider this psalm under the theme, the king of glory among his chosen people. The king of glory among his chosen people. First, his universal dominion, verses one and two. Secondly, his chosen people, verses three to six. And finally, his entrance into Zion, verses seven to 10. First then, under that heading, the king of glory among his chosen people, his universal dominion, verses one and two. There are two truths which those first two verses of the Psalm assert, very briefly. The first is, of course, that the Lord reigns over the earth and all that is in it. In fact, not only that he reigns over the earth and all that is in it, but that he is so much Lord that it belongs to him. belongs to him in its entirety. The earth is the Lord's and all its fullness. Remember how this comes to expression also in Psalm 50. Verses 10 and following, every beast of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all its fullness. The Lord reigns then, the Lord reigns over the earth, and the Lord reigns over all the creatures that he has made on the earth. The earth with everything that is in it belongs to him, its mountains and its hills, its rivers and its seas, its grain and its wine, and all the animals and beasts of the field and the forest. They all are under his sovereign dominion and all belong to him entirely. Now in the second half of this verse, if you look at it, you will find that the focus changes just slightly. The second half of the verse speaks not of the earth, but of the world. And that word world in Hebrew has to do especially with the habitable world. If you look at the commentaries in this regard, you'll see that they talk of that. It talks about the habitable world. And the second part of the verse, those who dwell therein is clearly a reference, not to all creatures, but to men. So here in this part of the verse, the Psalm is focused on the fact that the world, that is the part of the world that men inhabit belongs to the Lord and that the men who dwell in that part of the world also belong to him. Men are his. That's the special point of the second half of the verse. Men are his. They are his body and soul. They belong to him as the clay belongs to the potter. They belong to him as a slave belongs to his master. He is the sovereign Lord and he owns men. He owns men fully. He owns them body and soul. His dominion extends not only to all creatures, but also to all men. That's the first truth then that is established in this psalm. The second is that this dominion of the Lord, he has by right of the fact that he created. for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters. Now, this is not, people have got, a reference to creation in general, but it is a specific reference to Genesis 1, verses 9 and 10. And we can turn there for a minute to see how that reference is made. Then God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so. And God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. It's that specific act of creation to which this psalm refers. He founded the earth upon the seas. He established it upon the waters or upon the rivers. That is, it is as if the land, the dry land, which the Lord formed, has its foundations on the waters. The world was formed in and upon the waters. And there are many references to this in the Old Testament scriptures. We'll make reference just to a couple of them. First of all, you have in the law, of course. that we just read, that the Lord forbids us to make any graven image of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Earth and water contrasted, the earth standing above the waters. You find another reference in Psalm 136, that Psalm of praise for the Lord's loving kindnesses. Psalm 136, verse six, to him who laid out the earth above the waters for his mercy endures forever. And a fuller description of this creative work of God in Psalm 104, verses five and following. You laid the foundations of the earth so that it should not be moved forever. You covered it with the deepest with a garment. The waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke, they fled. At the voice of your thunder, they hastened away. They went up over the mountains. They went down into the valleys to the place which you founded for them. You have set a boundary that they may not pass over, that they may not return to cover the earth. There we have a description of land and sea divided and divided because God has set a barrier around the land so that the sea may not return again to cover that land. That's the work that the psalm refers to. God created the world, the habitable world for men to dwell in. He founded it upon the waters. He established it upon the rivers and gave it over to the sons of men. He is then very great. He is the creator of all things. He is the ruler of all things, and he is the owner of all things, the owner also of the bodies and souls of man. He is, in fact, the Lord, Yahweh. The one who is the eternal, who is unchangeable, and who subsists in and of himself alone, dependent on no other person or creature. He is the I am. That brings us then to the second part of the psalm, verses three to six, where we consider his chosen people. Now this Lord, who made the earth and all that is in it, and who rules over it and owns it, has made for himself a dwelling place on earth. That's not explicit here in the Psalm, but there was no need for David to make it explicit. It was too obvious, too frequently taught a truth for the people of God to need a specific reference to it here. There is simply, it is there simply by implication when David says, who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? God has, in fulfillment of his promise, come to dwell among his people. He has established for himself a house where he may come and live among men. And he has set that house upon a specific hill in a specific country of the world, the hill of Zion in the country of Israel. And that hill, because it is the place of the Lord's dwelling, has become a holy place. Who may stand in his holy place? It is holy because the Lord who dwells there is holy. So the question is asked, who may dwell there? Who may go up to that hill? Who may enter into that house? Who may come into the presence of the Lord? That question is very similar to the question found in Psalm 15. where David begins, Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle, who may dwell in your holy hill? And in fact, if you compare verses three to five of Psalm 24 with Psalm 15, you'll see that the structure of those two passages of scripture is very similar. You have first the question in each of these portions of scripture, who may abide in your tabernacle? Or in Psalm 24, who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? You then have the answer to that question in the verses that follow. And though the language of the two portions of scripture is different, the essence, the main idea of those two portions is exactly the same. Only he may dwell or only he may ascend into the hill of the Lord. Who is holy? That's the one thing that's necessary for entrance into the hill and the tabernacle. And then in the third part of each of these portions of scripture, you have this truth emphasized and reaffirmed. by a statement in Psalm 15, that statement is in the very last line of the Psalm, he who does these things shall never be moved. And in Psalm 24, it's in verse five, he shall receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. So the passages are very similar in their idea and in their structure. Now, this question with which these passages of scripture begin is a very important question, of course. It's not possible, if one has a right understanding of what the scriptures say here in this Psalm and in Psalm 15, to dismiss that question as insignificant. One cannot say, well, does it matter? Who cares who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? We all care. We all care, at least fundamentally, about this question, who will go to heaven? And that question, this question here in Psalm 24 is very similar to that. That question is important, people of God, because the hill of the Lord is the place of blessing. It's the place where the true purpose of our lives as creatures of God is fulfilled. It's the place, in fact, which God created us to inhabit. We've fallen away from that place, of course, through our father, Adam. But God created us to be on His holy hill, in His presence, to live with Him in eternal blessedness and joy. The question revolves then around the very purpose of our existence in this world. Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? That is, who may fulfill the purpose of His existence? There is no one, people of God, who may ascend into the hill of the Lord by right of his existence as a creature. Not now. God created us to dwell there, but since our fall, we do not have a right to be in that hill of the Lord, in that holy place, simply by the fact of our creation. We do not live in that house automatically by the fact of our birth, nor do we have by our birth a right to go into that house. We cannot come to that house by the operation of natural processes. We cannot win a place in that house by brute force. We cannot claim a right to dwell in that house because we are fundamentally decent people. We cannot even claim a right to be in that house because we have accepted Christ. There's only one who may come into that house, and the Psalms, both of these Psalms, make it very clear. There's only one who may come into that house, and that one must be holy. He who is of clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol or sworn deceitfully. Anyone who seeks to come into that house of God without that fundamental qualification will be denied entry. The Lord will not have him there. Remember what he says in Psalm 5. You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand in your sight. You hate all workers of iniquity. You shall destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the bloody and deceitful man. Those who come into the house of the Lord must be holy. Now that holiness is described in more detail for us in Psalm 24 in verse four. And we should look at the details of that holiness here. He who has clean hands first. That is, he whose hands are clean from the blood of other men and whose hands are clean from the stains of sin. That is, the man whose hands have been devoted to the work of the Lord and to nothing else at all. That's the external part of holiness. Secondly, he who has a pure heart. That's the internal part of holiness. That is, this must be a man whose thoughts are pure, whose desires are not stained with evil lusts and evil inclinations. This must be a man whose heart is consecrated to the Lord his God. internal and external, and they must go together. They cannot be separated. You cannot say I will have clean hands, but not a pure heart. For if you have clean hands, that is, hands that are outwardly in conformity to the law, and an impure heart, you are nothing but a hypocrite. And you cannot have a pure heart without clean hands. For he who has a pure heart will show the purity of his heart in the cleanness of his works, of his hands. Thirdly, he who has not lifted up his soul to an idol. Actually, people of God, I think it would be better to translate that, he who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood. An idol is one form of falsehood, of course, and the word is actually used sometimes to describe idols in the Old Testament scriptures, but it's more generally used to describe the idea, simply the idea of falsehood. Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood. But that expression, lift up the soul, is also an expression which is not always very clear to us. It's an expression that means to turn one's desire towards something, to long for that thing, to seek it. Who has not lifted up his soul, that expression is repeated in Psalm 25, verse one. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. And the idea there, of course, is that we long for him. Our desires are towards him. We want to be in his presence. Well, here, the Psalm talks about lifting up the soul to falsehood, that is, loving, desiring, seeking falsehood. Why that? Well, I think, people of God, because fundamentally, sin is that. At the very root of sin always lies this falsehood, that out of evil will come good. It's what Satan told Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when he said to them, If you eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will be as gods. And it's the lie, people of God, that we always embrace whenever we want to sin. We have persuaded ourselves that some good will come to us by this sin. It may be a very ill-defined good. It may be a very insignificant good. It may be a good that no one else would consider good. A good that we think is good just in the privacy of our own thoughts and desires. But it is nevertheless, you see, at the root of every single one of our sins that we have persuaded ourselves of the falsehood that sin brings good. who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood, nor sworn deceitfully. Again, David talks here about internal and external. He begins with the internal, the lifting up of the soul. And then it comes to expression, externally in the words of the mouth who has not sworn deceitfully. That is, our mouths must be devoted to truth. Clean hands, pure heart, souls not lifted to vanity, but devoted to the service of the Lord and tongues that speak no falsehood. hands, hearts, souls, and mouths, all devoted to the service of the Lord. That's the holiness that we must have if we will enter into the hill of the Lord. That holiness that we must have that truth is emphasized and reaffirmed in verse five, he shall receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. He and no other. Only this one receives blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. What does David mean by blessing? Well, I think the fundamental character of that blessing is actually to be in the house of the Lord, to have gone up into the Lord's house, to be able to stand there, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. to see his face lifted to shine on us with the light of his favor and his love. In righteousness What's that righteousness here? Well, I think righteousness, people of God, here in this psalm has the idea that God himself, the Lord who sits in that holy place, recognizes our right to be there. That's what he means by righteousness. The Lord looks at us and he looks upon all the works of our lives and he looks at what is in our minds and in our hearts and in our souls And he says, this man is righteous. This one is worthy to dwell in my house. It is the declaration by the Lord then that we have that right. He has not beheld iniquity in Israel. But that righteousness is not a righteousness which is inherent in us, not a righteousness which we have established for ourselves, because it is a righteousness, as David himself confesses here, which comes to us from the God of our salvation. It is a gift. We do not go about to establish our own righteousness. We confess the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. It is the work of his salvation on our behalf. We have received it from the God of our salvation. Now there's one more verse that we have to talk about yet here in the psalm, in the second part of the psalm, that is, and that is that last verse. This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face. The question is, what's the point? The psalm goes beyond what Psalm 15 says in this particular case. This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face. There are three things that are said there and those three things all serve to identify the specific people who do ascend into the hill of the Lord. In verses three, four, and five, David has asked a question and he has said, this is the character of the man who can ascend into the hill of the Lord. He's described people who may go up there, but he has not yet said that there are any who do go up there. In verse six, he specifically identifies the people This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face. Let's begin with that word generation. That designates, of course, a body of people who are related in some fashion. It designates the people of God, in fact, and it designates those people of God as those who have been begotten by him. They are a generation. They were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. God has begotten them again. God has made them new creatures. And God has by that creation, that recreation, fashioned them to be worthy of his house. Secondly, they are the generation of those who seek Him. That is, their souls are turned towards Him. They love Him and long for Him. They want to come into His presence. And people of God, in their seeking for Him, they do not seek Him in the slums of their own sin, but they seek Him in His holy house where He dwells. They seek him in the proper attire, clothed with the righteousness of Christ. They seek him where he may be found. That is on the hill of Zion. And finally, the verse says of them, this is Jacob. This is Jacob. That's the most difficult part of this psalm to understand, I think. Why call this generation of those who seek him Jacob? Well, the answer to that question, I think, lies in this, people of God, and this is what Calvin says about it too, that in that name, Jacob, is shown to us God's election and the particularity of that election. At the time that God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, God chose out of all possible people in the world, one man, Abraham, to whom he spoke his promises. And he said, I will be your God and the God of your children after you. just to Abraham, not to anyone else. That already was, of course, his electing grace at work. But then in the generations of Abraham, he did not speak that promise to all of Abraham's children, but only to one. He singled out from Abraham's children, from Ishmael and Isaac and the sons of Keturah, just one. Isaac to be the seed of the promise. And to Isaac, he said, I will be your God and the God of your children. And then after he had spoken his promise to Isaac, he gave to Isaac and Rebekah two children and singled out again, just one. He singled out Jacob and rejected Esau. It is the particularity of his election that is found here in that name, Jacob. Jacob is the one chosen out of all the peoples of the world and out of all the persons of the world to be the recipient of the promises of God, to hear God say to him, I will be your God. And it is to Jacob and his children that the dwelling place of God comes. God comes to Mount Zion. to the city of the living God, that city which stood in the heart of Jacob, his holy people, Israel. That's the point. It is then those who are elect according to the election of grace, those who because of that election are reborn according to the power of God, and those who by the power of God seek his face, who enter into the hill of the Lord. Those he has predestinated, those he has justified, those he has sanctified, and those he will certainly also glorify. That brings us to the final part of the psalm, verses seven to 10, his entry into Zion. Now there is here in this last part of the psalm, a dramatic change of scene. In verses three to six, the psalmist has asked an objective question and answered the question objectively, and then identified those who come into the hill of the Lord as those who are Jacob. But here, In this part of the psalm, we have a different answer to the question of verse three. In verse six, those who may ascend into the hill of the Lord are identified as Jacob, the generation of those who seek him. But in this part of the psalm, the one who is identified as ascending into the hill of the Lord is the king of glory. the places to which these groups of people come are exactly the same. The king is coming. And as the king comes, ascends the hill of the Lord, the cry goes up before him. Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in. There is a sound of great triumph and great exultation in that cry that goes up before this great king. He is the king of glory. He is that king to whom glory rightly and inherently belongs. He's not a king who has had glory simply bestowed on him, or a king who has won glory for himself by the power of his arms, but he is a king who is inherently glorious, in whom glory dwells. And so we may speak of him as the king of glory above all other glorious kings. This king comes as one who is strong and mighty. He has led armies. He has been mighty in battle. He has defeated enemies. And he comes now to ascend the hill of the Lord as one who is victorious. Praise is heaped on his head for all that glory that is in him and all those victories that he has won. Remember what Psalm 45 says about him. Gird your sword upon your thigh, O mighty one, with your glory and your majesty, and in your majesty ride prosperously because of truth, humility, and righteousness, and your right hand shall teach you awesome things. Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies, the people's fall under him. The king comes. The King of Glory. In answer to that question, who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? We see the King of Glory coming. And He comes, people of God, first by right of dominion. He is that very Lord who is described in the first two verses of the Psalm. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. It is that same Lord, that same Yahweh who comes. Who is this King of glory? The Lord. Strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle. He comes then by right of dominion, by right of having created and ruled over all things from the beginning. He comes in the second place by right of victory. For he has, as we've already said, fought And one, he has fought against the enemies of the Lord and against the enemies of the Lord's people. And he has put them all down. All the nations of the world, Satan and his hosts, sin and death, all the enemies of God's people have fallen beneath his feet. He comes then to the hill of the Lord victorious. And of course, as he comes victorious, the cry goes up before him, lift up your heads, O you gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors. And finally, he calms people of God by right of holiness. He is the one who is indeed clean of hands and pure of heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood nor sworn deceitfully. He comes as one who has in himself that holiness which the holy place of the living God demands. By all these rights then, our Lord Christ comes into the dwelling place of God. Now, how is that fulfilled? There are many commentators who speak of that being fulfilled in the bringing of the ark to the city of Jerusalem by David. It is possible also, I think, that there is an idea here that this psalm was prepared for worship in the temple, and that David had in mind the bringing of the ark into the temple after Solomon had finished building it. We don't really know whether that's the case or not, but what we do know, people of God, is that that ark symbolized more than anything else the presence of God among his people. The people wickedly misused that ark as a talisman against the Philistines, remember, in the time of Samuel. They thought that if they carried that ark into battle, that the Lord would automatically be with them there in the battle and would give them victory over the Philistines. And the Lord showed them the folly of their ways. But they knew, you see, that that ark represented the presence of the Lord. It is his footstool. and he is enthroned above the cherubim. That ark, more than anything else, represents the fact that God is living among his people. And so it may well be that this psalm is a celebration of the return of the Lord to his house, to that place which he has chosen among his people. But there's much more in it than that. There is a shadowy fulfillment of it, I think, in the triumphal entry of our Lord into the city of Jerusalem just before his death. Remember what the people cried? Hosanna to the son of David. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. But of course, the heart of this psalm is that it speaks of the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. It speaks of his exaltation to the right hand of God. When he comes as the king of glory, and it is cried before him, lift up your heads, O you gates. He comes as a king, and he comes to be seated at the right hand of the majesty on high. This is his ascension. There's a very important difference between the language of Psalm 15 and Psalm 24 in this respect. Notice that the question in Psalm 15 is, Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle? Who may dwell in your holy hill? Psalm focuses around the idea of abiding, of dwelling with the Lord. But here, the question is, who may ascend? the hill of the Lord. Who may ascend? The King of Glory ascends. And finally, people of God, this psalm, we see now it's a prophetic psalm, this psalm is fulfilled as we gather for worship on the Lord's Day. We come into the presence of God and the King of Glory comes to be with us here in this place. The shout of a king is among us. Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in. Having heard the word of God, let us say amen.