1 Rejoice, the Lord is King:
Your Lord and King adore!
Rejoice, give thanks and sing,
And triumph evermore.
Lift up your heart,
Lift up your voice!
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!

2 Jesus, the Savior, reigns,
The God of truth and love;
When He has purged our stains,
He took his seat above;
Lift up your heart,
Lift up your voice!
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!

3 His kingdom cannot fail,
He rules o’er earth and heav’n;
The keys of death and hell
Are to our Jesus giv’n:
Lift up your heart,
Lift up your voice!
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!

4 Rejoice in glorious hope!
Our Lord and judge shall come
And take His servants up
To their eternal home:
Lift up your heart,
Lift up your voice!
Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!

Charles Wesley, 1744

Psalm 24 American Standard Version

The King of Glory entering Zion.

A Psalm of David.

24 The earth is Jehovah’s, and the fulness thereof;
The world, and they that dwell therein.
² For he hath founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
³ Who shall ascend into the hill of Jehovah?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
⁴ He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart;
Who hath not lifted up his soul unto falsehood,
And hath not sworn deceitfully.
⁵ He shall receive a blessing from Jehovah,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.
⁶ This is the generation of them that seek after him,
That seek thy face, even Jacob. Selah

⁷ Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
And be ye lifted up, ye ^[a]everlasting doors:
And the King of glory will come in.
⁸ Who is the King of glory?
Jehovah strong and mighty,
Jehovah mighty in battle.
⁹ Lift up your heads, O ye gates;
Yea, lift them up, ye ^[b]everlasting doors:
And the King of glory will come in.
¹⁰ Who is this King of glory?
Jehovah of hosts,
He is the King of glory. Selah

The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.

Psalm 24 is a beautiful song of adoration and worship to our God.

I picture Psalm 24 as a raucous worship romp, the type of song David would have danced like an ecstatic man to the presence of the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 6:12-22) as it is about to be reverently carried inside the Tabernacle. It has the feeling of crescendo behind it, particularly the last four verses. I can hear a modern-day array of drums of all sizes and shapes, the artists and their music pulsating out the question “Who is this King of glory?” over and over again with strength, triumph, sending electricity through a worshipful throng.

He is the Lord Almighty, and we can rest in him. So often we try to do God’s job. We put the weight of the world on our shoulders, thinking it’s our job to solve all of life’s problems. We forget that our only job is to worship and glorify the King, it’s God’s job to do everything else. The psalms have been clear that all of our problems in this life are not going to go away, but they are also clear that God defeats our greatest foes. God defeats evil. God is the ultimate victor, and we are on his team. We can rest, trust in him through all of the ups and downs of this life. Through the times we are drowning. Through the storm and the war.

Psalm 24 covenants us to seek God’s face. I love this picture. God wants us to see him. He wants us all to see his face shining upon you (Numbers 6:24-26).

God wants to see the expressions upon our faces, wants to hear each beat of our heart, and every thought from our souls as we encounter the power of God here,

A PSALM OF DAVID. THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S, AND ALL ITS FULLNESS, THE WORLD AND THOSE WHO DWELL THEREIN. (PSALM 24:1)

King David starts out this royal hymn by drawing our attention away from ourselves and to the One who owns it all. He does this by showing a contrast right at the beginning of the psalm, a contrast that should dramatically remind us of our place in the universe.

Starting with the title, the text literally reads, “Belonging to David, a psalm. Belonging to Yahweh, the earth.” As great as King David was, he was still only a mere mortal man. Even though he was a poet and prophet, wrote under the influence of the Holy Spirit, he was just a man. Anything he had and anything he accomplished was given to him by the grace of God (2 Samuel 12:7–8).

Fallen man oftentimes looks at the earth as if it belongs to him, or worse, as if the earth was just a lucky break in the evolutionary scheme of things. But “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

The earth belongs to Him and to no one else. He is the rightful owner. There is only one name on the title deed to the universe, and it’s not yours and it most assuredly, not mine. It’s Yahweh’s. That awe factor, magnitude of that thruth should serve as the only essential foundation to everything else in our lives.

Not only does the earth belong to the Lord, but everything it contains. That includes your home “your castle,” your car, your cash. More specifically, every single human being, without exception, belongs to the Lord. That includes your neighbor, your family, the homeless person, even you. “Know that the LORD, He is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves” (Psalm 100:3). We are stewards, good or bad, of what He has entrusted to us. It all belongs to God.

Since everything in the world belongs to God, why then do we spend so much time and energy accumulating and clinging onto the “rust prone” things of this world? Perhaps it’s because in the back of our minds we still believe they belong to us. We have not 0.01% yielded in submission to the sovereign ownership of God.

How are you and I doing in our perspectives of our place in the universe? Do you and I recognize and acknowledge the fact that you and I own exactly nothing in this world? Every one of our very life-breath comes from Him (Job 34:14–15)!

Psalm 24 proclaims the majesty and grandeur of God, but at the same time describes Him and His attributes in specific ways we can relate to. Let’s start with the first section of this beautiful Psalm and I will show you what I mean:

“The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness,
The world and those who dwell therein.
For He has founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the waters.” (Verses 1-2)

God is so indescribably, immeasurably big and powerful that He created the whole of time and space. Genesis 1 lays out the story that the eternal God spoke and created light and everything else in the world as we know it. He molded man into His image from the dust. That is an awesome and powerful God!

Yet, with the mess we have continuously made of things, why does not God just start from the beginning again and create something else? Why will He create a new Earth when He comes back?

The answer lies in Genesis 1 when it says after each of His creations or artwork – “And God saw that it was ALL good.” God loves the earth and the fullness of the earth; He just wants to redeem it from the fake hold the devil has placed on it.

The enemy is not the Creator or the Artist, he is just the usurper of the creation. God wants us to appreciate His earth from His eternal perspective, not despise it or destroy it.  He is after full redemption of our lives and the things around us.

On to the next section of Psalm 24…

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,
Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol,
Nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive blessing from the Lord,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek Him,
Who seeks Your face. Selah (verses 3-6)

Though God made the whole majestic earth, there is a place in Him and in His presence that goes echelons beyond Him just laying back, casually, passively, basking in the light He created, enjoying His creation here from a distance.  

His holy place is a place of revelation and love in His presence. It is a place of glory – a place where true peace, perfection, and extravagant love exists.

We always need to look at Hebrew Testament scripture in the light of New Testament revelation. I have heard this section of scripture preached from the pulpit as a “get your act together, so you can get into the presence of God” message. In the Hebrew Testament during the days of the tabernacle, the people would go through the outer courts, sacrifice their offerings, wash in the lavers and the pools of water, and come into the presence of God. They came in as instructed by God with formulas and patterns, but in the New Testament Christian life – this is a prophetic vision of what Jesus did for us on the cross. 

Through His death on the cross, He became our sacrifice, our ritual lamb, and our cleansing water. When we receive His blood and put our faith in the cross, our hands become clean, our hearts become pure, and we turn our faces from the idols of this world to the only true God. By faith, we receive the blessings and the righteousness of God through the sacrifice of the slain Son of God.

Only through Jesus can we enter into the presence of God. Nothing else can bring us in. Our responsibility in coming into the presence of God is simply this:

We have to acknowledge the truth of the absolute sovereignty of God and who exactly, exactingly we are without Savior Christ, receive the cleansing power of the blood, and walk in boldly into the throne of grace and into His presence.

Continuing on…. to another completely different section….

Lift up your heads, O you gates!
And be lifted up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?ancient
The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O you gates!
Lift up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts,
He is the King of glory. Selah (verses 7-10)

Can you imagine how heavy old gates are? Or what about giant wooden doors like in ancient medieval times?  Imagine now, after all these years, how hard it must be to get those gates open or lifted up. I am imagining the big fortresses of the great castle complexes, how many men it took to penetrate those gates or those walls. It might take an unconventional army of men to pull them open.

We are commanded here in this Psalm to open up the gates and the doors of our lives regardless of how heavy they are…. and with that command comes a covenant promise that the “King of glory shall come in.”  

They may seem heavy or impossible at times to lift up, but God is mightier. The Lord is mighty in battle. He is the Lord of hosts. As we seek Him by making ourselves available to His presence and receiving the power of His blood, the gates of our hardened and stony hearts, our sin darkened souls, spring open and we find freedom. He comes rushing in and overwhelms our narrow world view. 

God is not just the King bounded by earthly borders and boundaries, but He’s the “King of glory” and His glory comes into our lives and changes us forever.

Then we pause like the word “Selah” implies here at the end of this Psalm. 

Selah literally means – Stop and think about it.

We ought to give our mirrored selves a break in His presence. We stand in His glory which is undeniably unmatched and is unmatchable in all respects. The whole earth, as it pertains to our temporary lives, is redeemed and the fullness of His glory changes everything. “The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness”

Psalm 24 is a testament to the Sovereignty of over His creation and our lives.

As David did, as He sang and danced before the Ark of the Covenant, as he had the honor of welcoming the God of his salvation, before all of the people, we today have that self-same honor to welcome the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of the King of all Kings and the Lord of all Lords into the Tabernacles of our souls.

In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,

Let us pray,

God, give me perspective. Help me to stop trying to carry the world on my shoulders. Help me to see and feel that you are already carrying me. Help me to rest in you. Help me to seek your face and worship you! You are the King of glory! You are the genuine conquering King who has defeated Satan and evil. You give hope for this life and on into eternal life. You have saved and rescued us Jesus and I thank you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you that your love is so real and so deep and so true. You are the Lord Almighty, the King of glory. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.