This morning our sermon is from Psalm 24. If you would like to follow that, and I encourage you to do that and to keep the Bible open, Psalm 24 should be found on page 582 in the Pew Bible. Again, hear the word of God. A Psalm of David. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. For he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place? 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. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah. Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. 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. Who is this King of Glory? the Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory, Selah. Shall we pray? Heavenly Father, again we thank you that you have provided your word to us, that you reveal yourself to us through it, that you make it clear to us not only who you are, but what our response to that should be. what you've done for us. So help us today as we go through this passage to see indeed who you are, what you've done for us, and what our response should be to that. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. You may have noticed, those of you who've been attending here for a time, that we typically sing Psalm 24 as we go to the Lord's table to celebrate here at First RP. And you probably wonder, well, why that particular psalm for celebrating Lord's Supper? Well, I'm sure there are plenty of others we could pick, but this one I think you'll see, in case you're wondering why, I think you'll see as we go through it this morning, why it is a very appropriate psalm to sing when we go to fellowship together at the Lord's table. When I was a kid, my mother was my Sunday school teacher at one point, and she had us memorizing parts, each kid was memorizing different parts of Psalm 24, and I remember the part that I memorized, or at least the part that stuck with me, was about the issue on verse three, where it says, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully." Well, the whole psalm had me confused, but that particular part stuck in my head, the idea. Clean hands, what's that got to do with anything? And a pure heart, what does that mean? And I think my mother was amused at my confusion over that, but she tried to explain it, but again, I didn't quite understand it. One of the reasons why this psalm interests me is because of that memory as a child, thinking about that and various other things in it that seem kind of puzzling, as is often the case with psalms. A lot of the psalms can be quite puzzling to us, but I think you'll see in this psalm something very important. It is a messianic psalm. Now, technically, they're all messianic psalms, meaning they're all talking about Jesus at some point or another. As a matter of fact, the whole Bible is talking about Jesus. But this particular psalm is very much messianic in telling us about him, who he is, and what he did. And I think that's important for us to understand, so that we know that we may indeed enter in to worship God in his holy presence. why we can do that, who's the King of Glory, and what has He done to make it so that we may indeed be able to enter into the very presence of God to worship Him, and that we may go to His table to celebrate the Lord's Supper with Him. So think of that as we go through our passage, just exactly be looking for Jesus in this passage. Let me give a little background before we get into the actual words of the psalm. It says it's a psalm of David, which means it was written by David. It was attributed to him and probably written around the year 1,000, roughly that's the time he lived, 1,000 BC, which was 1,000 years before Jesus showed up on the scene as a man. And there are different explanations for why the psalm was written and what its purpose was. Some people think that it was written by David with the return of the ark to Jerusalem. Remember, the ark was at Obed-Edom's house, and in 2 Samuel 6, Paul, or in 2 Samuel, Paul brought the ark, not Paul, David brought the ark I've been preaching on Acts so long I just automatically say Paul, sorry. David brought the ark back and remember he was dancing before the Lord as they brought the ark back in the city. There was a group of people with him, a regular procession like a parade coming in and he was dancing and his wife Michael was embarrassed by him and she was really angry with him because she thought he made a fool of himself. But he was trying to glorify God by showing that he was a appreciative of God's being able to come finally to go and dwell in the ark where God made his presence in the city of Jerusalem in a tabernacle that he would have made temporarily till the temple would have been made later by his son Solomon. But at this point there was no temple, but still God's presence in Jerusalem on Mount Zion was an exciting thing. So that's very possibly why he wrote the psalm originally. And it could have also been, according to some of the scholars, it could have been written as showing a king as he was in victory after battle, again, leading the procession. Again, they would take the ark with them because God was the one who actually defeated the enemies. So they acknowledged God being with them in their center when they fought against their enemies that God had sent them to fight. And they would win because of his presence. So bringing the ark back to the city after a battle, the king riding on a donkey, showing that he was the triumphant king. But indeed, God would have been the one that was being celebrated. So again, it's very possible that that's when this psalm was used. And then later, and this was probably after the Babylonian exile, when they rebuilt the temple, it became used as a regular part of the liturgy by the priest. They would celebrate, as a matter of fact, this is significant, I'll get to this later, this would be on the first day of the week, Sunday, they would celebrate using this psalm. And it was sort of like the Psalms of Ascent, although it's not one of the Psalms of Ascent, but still the idea of making this trip to Jerusalem, to the holy city. And so the priest would The priest would be singing this on their trip into the city. Again, this was something that was done on a regular basis as they celebrated Yahweh's presence amongst them. So there are three parts to this psalm. Some of the liberal scholars have tried to claim that this was three separate psalms. That's because they don't understand it. The psalm is one psalm with three parts. They're called strophes, the separate verses. And the first one talks of our Creator, verses 1 and 2, who our Creator is and how He owns everything. The second part tells what the requirements are for fellowship with God, with Yahweh. That's verses 3 through 6. And the third strophe, verses 7 through 10, tells of the King of glory, the one who fulfills the requirements that are necessary in order to be in the presence of God in those verses 3 through 6. So we're going to go through that and look at these various aspects of this psalm, and remember Who we're looking at? We're looking at this King of Glory, who He is, and why we should worship Him, and how we can worship Him. So think of that as we go through this. First of all, He deserves our worship because He is the Creator, Owner, and Sustainer of all things. There's a parallel structure in these verses. You'll see this often in the Psalms and you even see it in some of the Proverbs and other places in the Bible. But you'll see this a lot in this passage and you'll see it here in these first verses. This idea that you have one line that says something and then the next line kind of repeats it but maybe with some different wording. It's always good for deaf people like myself when you repeat the second time using a couple different words because I'll understand you better. But seriously, this is more for clarification of meaning. And so sometimes the second line sounds a little different, but a lot of times they're saying basically the same thing. So we're looking at these first verses. It says, is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein." The earth and the world obviously are referring to the same thing, but when you look at the latter part of that, it says the fullness or the bounty or the many riches of the earth. We'll sing the riches, I believe, in our version. The riches thereof. We think of riches maybe as gold and silver and those sorts of things. This is determined to fall off. Gold and silver and those sorts of things. But I think what we're really looking at here is when it's referring to the riches, going down to that second part of the verse where it says, those who dwell in it, that's the people. God made the earth for us to dwell in, his people. It is our home. You know, we have people today in the crazy left world saying that we're parasites on the earth and we should be done away with, basically, because of how horrible we are. Well, we've done a pretty bad job. I'm not going to argue that. We have been lousy stewards. We started that in the Garden of Eden when we fell. But we are not parasites. God made this place for us. He made it for himself also, a place to meet with us. And so that's why it's saying that the earth is the Lord, and it's really saying that the people who dwell therein, specifically his people, but all people, he made it for all of humanity and the world and those who dwell therein. We remember from this that he made the earth, looking at verse 2. It says, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters. Again, there's that parallel structure. Founded on the seas, established upon the waters. The ancient Israelites thought of waters as being chaos and dangerous. Remember when we read Revelation where it says eventually there will be no more sea because the sea was seen as a dangerous thing. It represented evil to people. So when God created the earth, He created it, Genesis 1-2 says, the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And there's another parallel there. But the idea, again, was God, the waters were everywhere, and there was chaos, but he brought chaos, he brought from that chaos order, and he created dry land, which, of course, was for us to dwell on. But then the question is, who's it talking about when it says God did this? Well, in the New Testament, In John chapter 1 we read that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and that's referring to Jesus. In verse 14 it says, he became flesh and dwelt among us. It was very clear it's referring to Jesus. So Jesus was what? He was the creator. In Genesis 1.1 it says, in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, that's referring to Jesus. It's very important we understand that. Jesus is God. in the flesh, but he's God. He's just as much God in the flesh as he was before he came to earth, and he always shall be God. But then in John 1, 3, it explains how Jesus created everything. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. Very clearly, the word of God was the creator of all things. So, that means that when we look at these first verses, we're talking about the Creator. And again, when we look at that from the standpoint of the New Testament, it's very clear that Jesus is that person, the Creator of all things. Well then, when we go on through this passage in the next section, the next strophe, verses three to six, again, we can see that we can worship him because he is pure. He's the only one who is pure. We're fallen, we are sinners, there's no human that you should worship but Jesus, and he lived a perfectly pure life. Again, let me read those verses. It says in verse 3, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy presence? We sang Psalm 15 earlier, and you may notice very much similarities between Psalm 15 and this part of the passage, verses 3 through 6. Psalm 15 kind of expounds upon this idea. Again, Psalm 15 was also written by David, but you can read that and see. I'm not going to read it, but it says we already sang it. You can see how there is kind of like an expansion of the ideas that are here in verses 3 through 6 of Psalm 24. But it talks here in both of them in Psalm 15. I will read the first verse. It says, O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? And then back to our passage, it says, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place? Again, parallel construction. What's the holy hill of the Lord? Well, when God created the earth and put man on it, he put them in a place called the Garden of Eden. And Ezekiel 28 verse 14 talks of this. When God is condemning the devil and telling him why he deserves his lot, he says to him, you were an anointed guardian cherub. So Satan was a good angel before he fell. An anointed guardian cherub. I placed you, you were on the holy mountain of God in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. Ezekiel was saying that the Garden of Eden was a mountain. We don't think of that very much as being the case, but God made the Garden of Eden as a mountain, is what he's saying here. The mountain of the Lord. So here on earth, there was a place that was called the mountain of the Lord, and it was where God came to meet with his people and with his council, the angelic beings, including, at that time, Satan, who became an enemy, as well as other members of the holy council of God. This whole idea of a mountain. where people meet God is something you see in the Bible regularly. Moses went up on Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments and to talk with God. Throughout the Bible, the idea of mountains are there. A lot of times, the Old Testament folks were making high places that they shouldn't have made with the idea of reaching God and maybe reaching one of the other gods while they were at it. But nevertheless, that idea of going up to a mountain to ascend to the presence of God, he's above us, so we ascend to his presence. And so the question that's being asked here is who will ascend to the hill of the Lord? Again, Jerusalem, there was a temple. So the people would be ascending up Mount Zion. It was a mountain. They would be ascending there to the place of God where the ark was, where representing the presence of God. So who can do this though, not just in Jerusalem on Mount Zion, but who can truly ascend, who can truly be in the presence of a holy God, and it answers the question. He who has clean hands and a pure heart. Well, somebody who has clean hands, again, when I was a kid I thought, what, cleanliness is next to godliness? Is that what you're saying? No. The idea of clean hands shows that your outward works are pure. Now, a person could be a very wicked sinner and still have what appears to be pure outward works. People in cults like the Mormons seem to be very pure to the world around them. So it's not just the external acts. The fact is, it includes that, but unless they have a pure heart, their actions are still filthy. Filthy rags, as God says, if you truly don't have a pure heart. And then it goes on to say how this is, and again, this is rather subtly said here in this next two parts of this verse four. It says, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully? Very, very subtly what it's telling us is about the Ten Commandments. The first part says about lifting up his soul to what is false. Actually it's referring to an idol. He does not lift up his soul to an idol. We sang about that a little bit ago. He does not worship idols or anything false. That shows the first four commandments, which again show the love of God. If you are keeping the first four commandments, you will not lift your soul up to anything that's false. And then who does not swear deceitfully, that refers to our interrelationships with one another. Commandments 5 through 10, how we treat our fellow man. Such a person would not be deceitful, not treat his fellow man wickedly. again shows again what Jesus said, two greatest commandments, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. That is the fulfillment of the law. And so it's saying this is somebody who fulfilled the law. So who is that? Well, and then it goes on to say, he will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation, such as the generation of those who seek him who seek the face of the Lord God." Again, we see here, there's a kind of a cross structure here in that verse 6. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. So you could kind of conflate that to say, such is the generation of those who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Who is it that seeks the God of Jacob? Well, none of us by ourselves does. No one seeks him, no not one. So it's not talking about us. at this point. It's talking about somebody who is perfect and pure. Somebody who is perfect and pure is somebody that we should worship. Just a little side road here for a second about that word sela. You see it a lot in the Psalms, and I think it's about four other times it's found in the Old Testament. And it's an odd word, and nobody really seems to know for sure what it means. But it probably was used for liturgical purposes, or maybe for a musical notation. And it might mean, if it's a liturgical purpose, it might mean that the priests were saying at this point to lift up or to exalt, as in lifting your hands. But we're Presbyterian so it can't possibly mean that. Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that in there because it pops up twice here in verse 6 and then again in verse 10. Again, who is this that's perfect? Who is this that's holy and that we should worship because He is? Well, we go on, the last strophe of the psalm. And this one who is, he deserves worship. He deserves our worship, not only because he's holy and perfect, but because of what he has done for us. Looking again at verses 7 through 10. It starts with this first verse and then there's a repeating, not exact repeating, 7 and 9 are very similar, almost identical, but not quite the same. But they both have this idea of lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors. It's personifying these gates, these doors. And again, it could be talking about the gates of the city of Jerusalem, or it could be talking about the gates and doors to the temple, or both. At any rate, that's what it seems to be saying. But the idea of opening up is talking to whoever is in charge of them, actually. Open them, so that the King of Glory may come in. And then the question is asked, who is the king of glory? We read earlier, and I want to get this parallel, because I think it's very important. We read earlier from Matthew chapter 21, the first 11 verses. And in that particular passage, I think we are seeing a fulfillment, in a sense, of Psalm 22, or 24, I mean. I think we see a fulfillment in that. What is going on there in that particular situation? Remember Jesus was coming down with his followers. He had been up in Caesarea and he had determined at that point he was setting his face for Jerusalem with the knowledge that he was going to go there and be murdered. He knew that was his job here, was to come to Jerusalem and be murdered. and he knew that it would be happening on the Passover. So he came down to Jerusalem, and he had a bunch of people with him, his disciples, as well as various other people that came along the way and met up with him, and these people were impressed by him. They'd heard him preach, and they'd seen his miracles, and they thought, this very well must be the Messiah. And so when they came to Jerusalem, they were excited about him. They were putting, he's riding on a donkey like a triumphant king. They put down their robes and they put down palm leaves down on the robe to make the way for him. And they're praising him and they're saying, Hosanna, who saves. They're saying all these wonderful things about him as they approach the city. And I see a very similar picture there in the Psalm 24 as they're coming to the city. And remember what it said in that last verse there. It said, somebody in the city is looking out and they're saying, who is this? And they answer, he's Jesus of Nazareth, the prophet. They don't necessarily call him the Messiah, but they know he's somebody very important. And again, I think some of them think he was the Messiah because they thought he was gonna come and be a Davidic king, taking over Jerusalem and taking back Israel from the Romans and making Israel what it was in its heyday under David and Solomon. That's what the Jews were looking for in the Messiah. And that's probably what these people saw. The people in the city, on the other hand, are going, who's this? Well, they didn't know much about this guy. And so I think that's kind of what we're seeing here, that kind of interaction between the two. Again, when this was done by the priest, it was on the first day of the week, Jesus came to Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday, the first day of the week, so unknowingly they were They were lining the psalm up with Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem. And this psalm was also apparently done by the priest as kind of an antiphonal psalm. Some of you who are old like me remember a song called Hey Paula from the early 60s. A guy named Paul is singing to his girl, her name's Paula. He says, hey, hey, Paula, I want to marry you someday. She responds by saying, hey, hey, Paul, I want to marry you too. And it's kind of a sappy love song. But I'm using that to just give you an idea of what an antiphony is. The idea of somebody sings and then somebody responds to that. Well, apparently that's what the priests did when they would celebrate this as part of their liturgy. They would say, who is this king of glory? One group. And then the other group would respond by saying, the Lord, strong and mighty. The Lord, mighty in battle. And then things repeated, lift up your heads, O gates, O lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. We see, again, there's repetition there. The idea of his being strong and mighty in battle, the Lord of hosts, that's who he is. And again, this is referring to Jesus as he came into the city. He was murdered, as I said, on a cross later that very week. He was put on a cross. But when he came to town, it was as if he had already accomplished that because it really technically was a fait accompli. It was done before he ever came because God had established that it was going to happen. And he knew that it was going to happen, that he was going to come and defeat his enemies and become king of kings and lord of lords in the flesh in his messianic role. In 2 Samuel 6, chapter 6 verse 2, again back to that when David brought the When David brought the ark into the city, it says, and David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Baal Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, who is called the name of the Lord of hosts, who sits enthroned on the cherubim. Again, the ark represents him as sitting in that with the angels above him sitting in the ark. on his holy throne. But that word, the Lord of Hosts, is sabaioth, which means The Lord of Hosts, and that word is what is being referred to here again when we see that He is the Lord of Hosts. That means He's the Lord who is head over all the host of heavens, the armies of heaven, the angels of heaven. He is the Lord of them. He's the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and He comes into the city of Jerusalem. and establishes it firmly that he has indeed defeated his enemies. He's defeated Satan. He's defeated Satan's co-workers, and he has defeated sin, and he is ultimately, as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15, the final defeat is death. He defeats death for us. So it's talking about Jesus when he ultimately comes to be established as King of Kings and Lord of Lords when we look at this passage here. And so again, now we go back now, so now that we've established Who the King of Kings is, who the King of Glory is, it's Jesus. He has obtained His right as King of Glory by what He did on the cross. And now about you and me, going back to those verses three through six again, because of what He did. He's our Redeemer, so you and I can be looked upon the same as He is looked upon. We know we're filthy sinners. We know that we don't deserve anything from God. We know that we are fallen. We inherited that from our first parents, Adam and Eve. But you and I, you and I can ascend into the hill of the Lord. How is that? Well, because His death was for us. He died for our sins. And when he died for our sins, he was able to provide us forgiveness. And when we receive that forgiveness from him, we receive not only forgiveness, we receive his righteousness. Christ lived a perfect, sin-free life. And it's important for us to remember that. We're not just saved, we are saved and his life is now, his pure, righteous life is attributed to you and me as if We lived a perfect pure life as he did, a perfect sin-free life where he never broke either the first or the second table of the commandments. You and I have that from Jesus Christ as we put our faith in him. We are seen then as people with clean hands and pure hearts. Our hearts, we've been given new hearts. Our hearts of stone were removed and we were given hearts of flesh. We don't worship idols. We are lovers of our brethren and lovers of God. We don't swear deceitfully. We receive the blessing from the Lord. We receive His righteousness. We receive his salvation, which you see in verse five. We are the generation who seek the Lord. Jesus was the original, and you and I are because of him, because of what he did. You and I seek the Lord. We seek the God of Jacob because of what he's done for us. So, as we approach the table of the Lord, remember this. The reason why we can come into his presence, when we have a call to worship at the beginning of the service, it's so unique, it's so important to be here. If you can be together in worship, especially physically here, I know some people can't be physically here, that's fine, but if possible, you should be with the congregation with worship because we are collectively coming into the presence of God as his people to worship him. That's what happens when we have the call to worship. We're in the throne room of grace before our very God. And when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we get an extra special dose of that. We get this physical representation of the body and blood of Christ to make it even stronger, to make it even more impressed upon us of exactly what's going on. Christ died for us and what He's done for us. So the King of Glory is who we're talking about. He's the one who made this all possible. So let's think of that as we come together shortly here to celebrate the Lord's Supper.