All right, if you open your Bibles with me,
The poetic book of
Psalms, The
chapter number 24.
Psalm number 24.
God's word says, a psalm of David.
The earth is the Lord's, and
all it contains, the world and those who dwell
in it, for he has founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the rivers, who
may ascend into the hill of the Lord, and who may
stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood,
and has not sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive a blessing from the Lord and righteousness
from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, even Jacob, Selah.
Lift up your heads, O gates, and
be lifted up, O ancient doors, though the king of
glory may come in.
Who is the 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.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we're thankful for your mercy on us today.
You brought us all here together, but we pray that we would worship
you with all our mind, our soul, and our strength, that you bless
your word, our minds, and to our hearts, and you
bless your message in spite of the messenger in Christ's name.
Amen.
All right, so we're moving now as
we go through the Old Testament.
We were in historical books before, and in
our little short series on Ruth, and now we're moving into
the poetic books, and we're
in the psalm this morning by one of the great
poets of the Old Testament, the great grandson
of Ruth and Boaz, as we learned last time.
David, the King David.
And traditionally, David is said to be the author
of about 73 of the 150 psalms.
He almost wrote half of the psalms, some say more,
and some say less, but regardless of how
many, we can see by what he's written and from
other books in the Bible that David is a very talented
author of poetry of songs and
also a talented musician.
He played the liar and apparently so beautifully that it calmed
Saul, the king's spirit.
And so God, and his wisdom and his
grace to us, has placed songs and music
prominently in the word.
All throughout scripture.
We hear Miriam singing after the Exodus
from Egypt, and so often we see Hannah
saying, and the whole book of 150 psalms
for us to sing ourselves.
So we know from this that God himself loves music.
He loves singing.
He is the one who created it and put that in to us.
And he himself sings over his
people, Sephaniah 317, the Lord,
your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save.
He will rejoice over you with gladness.
He will quiet you by his love.
He will exult over you with loud
singing.
If that's not an encouragement to sing loudly as in worship.
I don't know what is.
God sings loudly over you, the
ones that he loves, and he is the one who gave us the
gift of singing and the gift of music.
And it's not given, that everyone will
be good at singing, or everyone that will be
good at making music, but it is
almost universal, that all of us have in our
hearts and our minds, an appreciation for music, and
appreciation for singing, because we are designed by
a creator who created it himself, and who appreciates
and loves it himself.
And he allows us to image
him by singing and by music.
And so David wrote this psalm,
the reason that I wanted to bring all that out
and is to bring us to our passage today to
kind of see how this poetic verse, this song
is put to music in the worship of the
creator of the universe by the Hebrew people.
And this was part of the Hebrew hymnal,
the congregation of Israelites hymnal,
the book of Psalms, has, just like our hymnal, has
songs for many different occasions, and
their songs for special days.
There are songs that are serious and sad.
There's happy songs, joyful songs, and then
there's specific songs that they use in their liturgy.
As they worshiped in certain ways.
They would sing these psalms.
They were used for all kinds of different situations.
There's several songs, these liturgical psalms
that were used for certain festivals, like
Passover, and the festival of booths,
psalms that they use at different times in the
worship of the temple.
And then there's a whole section of Psalms, uh, uh, in
Psalms 120 and a couple after that called the Psalms of a sense.
We talked about that before, that they would sing as
they would go up to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage
for the Passover.
And so here when we come to Psalm 24, we
come to a kind of liturgy, a liturgical
psalm that they would use to worship God for
the specific time that they were returning from battle
victorious.
It's a song of triumphal
entry for the Jewish, the
Hebrew warriors.
So God's law had prescribed many aspects
of life for the Hebrew people.
They were a nation, a true nation under God,
under his rule.
He even prescribed how a king should act,
and all the way from the top,
down to how men and women in their general
lives should act.
And the Hebrew people were a nation ruled by God himself.
He ruled through his word, his law, and then
and through prophets, and then through kings.
And so the law of God, included
many things that had to do with the running of the nation itself,
because they were a nation run directly by God.
So in Deuteronomy.
We have Deuteronomy chapter 19, where
God gives property law for the
Jews, the Hebrews.
And then in chapter 21, he
gives law about criminal justice and how that should be proceeded with.
But then in the middle of those two, in chapter
20, he gives laws about going to war
for the Hebrew nation, in
Deuteronomy 20, verse one, he says, when you go out to battle against
your enemies, and see horses and chariots and people,
more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them.
For the Lord, your God, who brought you up from
the land of Egypt is with you.
When you are approaching the battle, the priest shall
come near and speak to the people, he shall say to them,
hear, O Israel, you are approaching the battle against
your enemies today.
Do not be fainthearted.
Do not be afraid, or panic, or tremble before them, for
the Lord, your God, is the one who goes with you, to
fight for you against your enemies, to save you.
So they would remember, he told them to remember,
the God who goes before you, the God who's going to save you.
He's the same God who brought you out of Egypt.
And remember how he brought them out of Egypt with a strong hand,
and many miracles.
They were to remember the victories in the past.
And as they go into the current battle into the current fight,
they were going to remember those victories and apply those to
how God is going to bring victory over their current battle.
God was the all supreme monarch of the nation.
Even when it came to the time of the monarchy with
Saul and David and Solomon and the kings to follow him, follow them.
God led them directly through his word,
through prophets, and through the kings.
And so, because of this, when they were victorious,
they were to give glory to God
for their victory because he is the one who was
directly responsible for their victory in battle.
And this psalm recognizes that and was
probably sung as the Ark of the Covenant that represented
the presence of God, not the mother of Christ, by
the way, will return to its place after victory.
It would approach Jerusalem and go through the gates.
And then in Jerusalem, they would go up to Mount Zion,
where the temple was, and approach the temple for the ark, be
put placed back into the temple where it was supposed
to be, after a triumphal victory.
This was the triumph for parade
for the conquering general for the supreme
warrior for Israel.
David said exactly this when
he faced Goliath.
Goliath was mocking God's army.
And then when he called for a champion to
come forth to fight for the armies, David
came forth, and Goliath mocked Israel.
I said, you're sending a boy with sticks out here to fight like a dog.
Well, David said, in 1st Sam, Samuel 1745,
and David said to the Philistine, you come to me with
a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but
I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of
the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted.
This day, the Lord will deliver you up into my
hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from
you, and I will give the dead bodies of the army
of the Philistines, this day to the birds of the sky, and the
wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that
there is a God in Israel, and that all this
assembly may know that the Lord does not deliver
by sword, or by spear, for the battle is
the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands.
David knew exactly who was to win the
battles for Israel.
And then later, King Jehoshaphat prayed to God to save
Judah from the Ammonites and the Moabites.
And God answered his prayer.
He encouraged Jehoshaphat, encouraged his soldiers
to not be afraid because God is the one who wins all the battle.
2 Chronicles 20, verse 17.
You need not fight in this battle.
Station yourselves, stand and see the salvation
of the Lord on your behalf.
O Judah and Jerusalem.
Do not fear or be dismayed.
Tomorrow, go out to face them, for the Lord is with you.
And when they would return from those victorious
battles where they obeyed God.
They brought the Ark of the Covenant and God
won the battle for them.
They would come back to great celebration
in Jerusalem.
And this is exactly where this psalm would
be sung as they approach Jerusalem into the gates.
There was a back and forth between those that carried the ark
of the covenant, and those that were the gatekeepers of the
city and the gatekeepers of the temple.
And every time they would return as a reminder to those
who fought for Israel, and those who stayed
behind, that it was God himself,
who fought for Israel.
God won the battles for them, not their strength,
not their military prowess, not their great kings or
their great weaponry, or whatever.
It was God who won.
God is the king of glory.
God is the ultimate sovereign of Israel,
and not only Israel, the whole world, as they praise
him in this song.
And that is the truth that we need to be
reminded of ourselves, that God is
the one who wins battles, and the Holy Spirit
himself placed these words in the heart of King
David, as he wrote this song, so that we could
all be reminded that we must look
to God who wins every battle.
And so there's 3 parts of this that I
want to bring out, in the 1st one, in verses one and two,
is we look to God who wins every battle, because
he alone is sovereign over everything.
Read verses one and 2 with me again.
The earth is the Lord's, and all it contains, the
world and those who dwell in it, for he, has founded
it upon the seas, and established it upon the river.
This concept, as we've talked about many,
many times of the sovereignty of God over
all things, is a hard one for
us to grasp as men.
We have been men and women, people, as
creatures.
We've been reading through the book
Trusting God by Jerry Bridges on Wednesday
night prayer meetings, I commend that to you, the
book and coming and hearing Philip read it.
It teaches that understanding God's
sovereignty over all things is a
key to trusting him, even
when life hurts, as the subtitle of the book is.
That the sovereignty of God, this understanding
that God is over everything is the foundation for
trusting him in all things, including the difficult battles,
just like the Jews, the Hebrews, had to do.
Bridges wrote in that book, he says in the arena of
adversity, the scriptures teaches 3 essential truths
about God.
Truths we must believe if we are to trust him in adversity.
They are a goddess completely sovereign.
God is infinite in wisdom, and God is perfect in love.
And someone has expressed these 3 truths,
as they relate to us in this way, God and his love
always wills what is best for us.
In his wisdom.
He always knows what is best, and in his sovereignty,
he has the power to bring it about.
Imagine yourself being a soldier
in Israel and you're coming back from
the battle victorious.
And as you approach the gate of the city,
There's these certain priests who are given the task of carrying the ark
of the covenant back to the temple.
And those priests would stop and
they would sing with the gatekeepers of
the city, this psalm.
And the very 1st thing that they sing, these 1st 2 verses that we've
read, is a reminder to everyone that
could hear, that God is the creator of everything.
And because of that, God has ownership of everything.
And because of that, he is sovereign,
over everything and all that dwell
on the earth, every single time that this
psalm would be sung, you be reminded to
trust God the next time, you would be reminded
of his place as the sovereign Lord over all
things, and you would remember that everything that
you know, everything you can touch, everything you can see and
sense, that you can think about, is the Lord,
and the Lord's alone, the whole earth, everything
it contains, and every single person.
Now, those of us who have been here
for a while, this is something that brings joy and praise to us.
We have understood this truth from scripture and
applied it in our lives.
But I just want you to know that remember before
you understood these things the way that you thought.
Before you learn what the scripture teaches about
sovereignty and how it grates against the natural
sensibility that we're born with as fallen man.
And this isn't just a new thing in our modern
age, this is always been the case.
Verse 2 gives the
basis, the foundation for why God
has that sovereignty over all things, when
it says he has four, he has founded
it upon the seas, this is the whole earth and
established it upon the rivers.
God is the creator of
the earth and everything in it.
Therefore, the earth, and everything in
it, is his to rule over as he sees fit.
It's that simple.
Now, this is why there's been such a push throughout
all of history, to replace God as
creator, with either other, lesser gods
that look more like us, or
in modern times, with some scientific
sounding excuse.
If we can make something else, the creator
of all things, then we don't have to admit that we are not our own.
And we don't have to admit that we can't
do whatever we just want to do with our lives.
And this isn't exactly what Paul taught in Romans chapter
one, that it's obvious to everyone who
looks, who sees this world, that
God is the creator, but man in his rebellion,
looks at that with eyes covered by their hands, eyes
closed, and ears plugged with their fingers.
They say, God did not create this.
It was the act of an impossible, unobserved
natural process.
And this is so important for
us to understand this, that God created all things,
that this is in the end, when
we're all in heaven, praising God, in glory,
this fact that he is the creator and sovereign
over everything, will be what we're praising him for.
And Revelation 6, or excuse me, 411, we
will sing to him, worthy are you, our Lord and our
God, to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things.
And because of your will, they existed and were created.
If you can ignore the blaring reality of
God's creating power, you
can ignore his sovereignty as well.
But we do not do this.
We bow the knee to his sovereignty here and
now, and recognize that in the future, just
like the Hebrew soldiers coming back praising
him for his power in victory in battle, we
will praise him forever for his eternal
power, for his divine nature, for his creation,
and his sovereignty over all things.
And when we do that, I just want you
to understand that we understand, we praise
him for that, we bow the need of that.
We also recognize that he
is the one in control of our battles.
He is the one who is in control of
the adversity in our lives, and that gives us the power as
he sees fit to go through those things to handle those things,
and he rescues us from those adversities in
our lives.
And that's how we recognize his sovereignty over those things.
And that's how we look to him as the sovereign
king and worthy of praise for rescuing us.
So that's the 1st thing because he is sovereign.
But also, we look to God because he
alone is the one who grants access to
his blessed presence, verses 3 through 6.
Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord,
and who may stand in his holy place, he
who has clean hands, and a pure heart, who
has not lifted up his soul to falsehood, and has
not sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive a blessing from the Lord and
righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of those who seek him, who
seek your face, even Jacob, Selah.
Again, we are placing ourselves in
the sandals of these soldiers coming back from victorious
battle.
We're approaching the gates of Jerusalem, being led by
the priests who carry this ark, and they've led
us into the gates, and now we're approaching the gates of the temple.
The priests have entered the city and
come to these gates, and there's other priests in
the temple that have the duty of protecting
the temple from violation, from blemish, from dirtiness.
The priest carrying the ark.
They call out to these priests in the temple and say,
in verse 3, who may ascend into the hill of the Lord,
who may stand in his holy place?
And then in response, those responsible for the temple,
for protecting it from violation, say, he who has
clean hands, and a pure heart.
They say clean hands and a pure heart.
I want you to recognize why it's those two things.
There's outside of man, the clean hands,
and there's the inside of man, the pure heart.
And we've talked about this several times.
Philip has said it a bunch, that the difference.
The real difference between biblical Christianity,
the biblical gospel, and every other religion,
is that there's so many other religions that
just have to, you do things, they rely on your works.
Now, the lists change, there's seven pillars
in Islam, and there's seven pillars in Buddhism,
and all the lists change, but the reality
is they all have some, for you, something that you have to do.
They're all concerned with your clean hands and whatever
they say makes them clean.
If I do this, if I pray this way,
if I pray this many times a day, and if I
worship in this way, I'm going to be okay in
whatever that means to me.
But God is not looking for this in his worshipers.
He's looking for clean hands and a
pure heart, the outside and the inside,
the combination of purity inside and out.
Now, this is mentioned several times in scriptures.
You remember as we went through James,
we got through this in chapter 4.
And James is teaching us how to draw near to God.
I want you to...
So James has this passage in mind.
We've got the ark, and we want to go ascend the hill of the Lord.
Why, to draw near to his presence.
And James says in chapter 4, verse 8, draw
near to God, and he will draw near to you, cleanse
your hands, you sinners, and purify your heart, you double minded.
Same principles, the inside and
the outside, clean.
And then there's another criteria for ascending
the hill of the Lord and gaining entrance, that we're not liars.
The last part of Psalm 244, who
has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and
has not sworn deceitfully.
Now, here, with these two things,
clean hearts, or clean hands, pure hearts, and
not liars.
We run into a little bit of trouble, as
we talked about in Sunday school.
This describes all of us.
Now, let's say that you were these priests carrying this ark.
And these were the given, the requirements
for you to be able to enter, to ascend to the temple, clean
hands, righteous actions, a pure heart, innocent
inner person, an honest soul who has never broken his word.
The ark would never make it home.
There would be no entrance into
the temple allowed, no violation, because
all of us fail at all of these points.
We all fall short of these requirements.
The ability to stand before
God and holiness is an
impossibility for us, every single man, except
for one man.
And that is what this psalm is pointing to, that
one man whose work, it was on Earth, was
to have clean hands, because we don't.
He had a pure heart where ours
is dirty and contaminated, and he always,
every single thing he said, he kept until the
end, and we'll keep forever.
And to illustrate his coming.
The whole reason the temple was set up.
All these priests had performed all these ceremonies with
sacrifices of these unblemished animals to
picture what the unblemished lamb of God,
the Son of God, would do in the future, for them,
and in the past, for us.
So these priests, when they said
that you need a clean hands, pure heart, and not be a liar.
Those other priests would come in, not declaring
that they were self righteous in themselves, but
that a mission that they made, that the righteousness
that they needed to enter into the presence of God, came
from somewhere else, outside of them.
And we know that that is the righteousness of
Christ that he gives us in
our place of our filthy sin.
All of his righteousness was given to
us on the cross so that we can ascend the
hill of the Lord into his presence.
The next part of this passage in verses
5 and 6 says, he shall receive a blessing from the Lord,
and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of those who seek him, who seek
your face, even Jacob, Selah, though the one who
qualifies to ascend the hill of the Lord, by the
grace of God, given to us through Jesus Christ,
receives his blessing and his righteousness.
And verse 6, in my opinion, is clearer in the ESV,
it says such is the generation of those who seek him, who
seek the face of the God of Jacob, Selah.
Seeking the face of God.
And in the benediction, we hear, may the God's face shine
upon you, is a way of saying of seeking the
pleasurable, the joyful presence of
God, which is the reason you would be
going to the temple anyway, because that's where God represented,
manifested his presence.
This is the result of the clean hands, a result
of the pure heart is the ability to enter the
presence of a holy God.
Now, I want you to remember that there's several
things mentioned in the Bible about the presence of God,
and it's not always something that people sought after.
If you remember back in Genesis, after Ab and
Eve sinned in the garden, in verse number eight,
he said, the Bible says they hid themselves from the presence of
the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
And remember Jonah, Jonah was commanded to go to Nineveh and
tell them that they were going to be destroyed, but Jonah
didn't want to.
So what did he do?
Jonah won three.
He rose up to flee to Tarshish from the
presence of the Lord.
And then it says, he found a ship which was going to
Tarshish, paid the fair, and went down into it, to
go with them to Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord.
He was trying to escape the presence of the Lord.
But also in the end as well.
Those the sinners with the dirty hands and the
impure heart will try to escape the presence of the Lord in his judgment.
Revelation 615, and the kings of the earth, and
the great men, and the commanders, and the rich, and
the strong, and every slave, and free men,
hid themselves in the caves, and among the rocks of the mountains,
and they said to the mountains, and to the rocks, fall on
us, and hide us from the presence of him who
sits on the throne, and from the wrath of
the lamb, and all of these cases, and all
of the other cases, when you don't have the righteousness of Christ,
There is no escape from the wrathful presence
of God.
He will always be there.
You cannot escape from his presence.
Whether you deny him, it will make no difference.
If you ignore the reality that he is put in
front of you that hits you like a freight train, it won't
change a thing, but turning to Christ is
what changes what the presence of the Lord means from
a presence of wrath and judgment to a presence
of joy in him in God's glory.
Bending the knee and saving faith and
biblical repentance will mean his presence becomes
sweet reward to us instead of terrifying judgment.
Psalm 16 9.
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,
and your presence is fullness of joy, and
your right hand there are pleasures forever.
So look to God through Christ.
And he will give you access to his sweet presence.
He will allow you to ascend the hill of
the Lord, even though none of us are worthy in ourselves to do this.
We need Christ's righteousness to be able to do
this by God's blessing and his grace.
And then thirdly, we look to God.
We remember to look to God because he alone
is the king of glory, verses 7 through 10.
Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted
up, O ancient doors that the king of glory may come in.
Who is the 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.
So now as we approach the temple, there's more back
and forth between the gatekeepers and those carrying the
ark, the ones who are coming back victorious
because God has won the battle.
He's won the day, in this very poetic
way that David writes, they tell the doors
to open up, because the king of glory is coming in.
But what's interesting is that ancient
doors and most modern doors don't lift up to open.
They hinge on the sides and open this way.
But in this poem, in this song, these
gates are made to be like persons or like men.
It's called personification.
And the gates are having
the emotions that men would have on seeing the victorious
Lord come back from battle.
And so the gates should be excited to perform
their duty, to open up.
So the king of glory can come in and take his place on
his throne.
The gates are to lift up their heads and sing.
They're to be lifted up in exaltation for
the king of glory, who is he's returned as a victor
over all of his enemies.
The gatekeepers call out, who goes there?
Who is this king of glory?
And then in praise, the answer comes back, Yahweh,
strong and mighty.
Yahweh, mighty in battle.
No one else has the authority, to
open these gates, to command the gates to open to
the throne of God.
The gate will only open for the one who is worthy,
and there is none worthy, but the king of glory.
Once the battle is all over, the
victor who comes back in this triumphal parade.
He is the one who is strong and mighty, and
the gate, listen to his command, and open up
gladly with praise and glory for
him.
And then this is repeated.
He commands again, lift up your heads, O gates, and
lift them up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in.
In verse 10.
He says, who is this, king of glory?
He says, the Lord of hosts, he is the king of glory.
The Lord of hosts here is Yahweh
Sabbath, if you may remember that from a
mighty fortress is our God.
That means that the Lord of hosts, or the Lord of armies.
He is the ruler, the general, the great ruler
of all of the armies.
He's the king of kings, and he is the king of glory.
The king demands by right to
enter in to the temple.
He is the victor and the leader of the armies into
battle, and he is the winner of wars.
It is by his strength that all of his
enemies are conquered, and all the enemies of his
people are conquered.
And we all know who this king is.
We all know who the king of glory is.
It's Jesus Christ himself.
David prophesied about Jesus Christ coming
in the future in Psalm 110.
He says, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right
hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.
The Lord will stretch forth your strong scepter
from Zion, saying, rule in the midst of your enemies.
Your people will volunteer freely in the day of your power,
in holy array from the womb of the dawn, for your youth
are to you as the dew.
The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.
You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
The Lord is at your right hand.
He will shatter kings in the day of his wrath.
And this is quoted several times in
the New Testament, and several times in the book of Hebrews,
but in Hebrews 10, verse 12, he quotes this,
and he says, but he, this is Jesus, having offered
one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat
down at the right hand of God, waiting from
the time onward until his enemies be made
a footstool for his feet.
Don't you see that the king of glory isn't
just a victor over the physical national enemies
of Israel?
He is the victor over all of enemies of God.
Every single one.
1st Peter 322, who is at the right hand of God,
having gone into heaven, after angels and
authorities and powers had been subjected to him.
So even though we are not members of
the nation of Israel, the ancient
nation of Israel, we can lift up our voices just
like they did as they sang Psalm 24,
to praise our king, who is the king of glory.
He wins all of our battles for us.
And in fact, he's already won all of our battles
on the cross, in his resurrection,
in his ascension, as he's seated in victory at
the right hand of the Father.
He is the king of glory, look to him.
Now this short psalm is
packed with praise.
And it's amazing to me.
How clear.
This is a picture of Christ that David is talking
about Jesus Christ.
And there's so many passages in the New
Testament that point directly to this psalm in reference to Christ.
And this is a psalm that is sung about
victory in warfare.
And now, we don't fight that type of war anymore
like they did.
The church is not a nation.
We don't go out with M16s and
our Bible, on the other hand, to conquer the world.
But every single one of us, are
constantly at battle.
As Philip preached not too long ago.
Ephesians 6.12.
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but
against the rulers, against the powers, against the world
forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces
of wickedness in the heavenly places.
And the reality is that God provided
for the victory of Israel, and God has
provided for our victory as well
as we've been going through in Ephesians, as we see here
in this psalm.
So we need to get out there and fight.
God provided for them.
God fought their battles for them, but the soldiers
still got out there on the field.
They still put on their sword or their spear or
their bow and arrow, God in the chariot, God on the horse, whatever was
necessary to do.
But the reminder is that we
all need to look to God through Christ,
because he is the king of glory.
He is strong and mighty, he is mighty in battle.
And there's one more thing before we finish.
Those gates lifted up their heads and opened
gladly for their king to enter in.
And all those who were with them entered in as well.
Every soldier went in through those gates,
in that triumphal procession, to worship as well.
The question is, are you with him?
Have you bent the knee?
Have you been given his clean hands and his pure heart?
That is the only way to ascend
the hill of the Lord, and come into his joyful, sweet presence.
And if you're not sure that you have done that?
Please come see me or Philip after
the service, and we'll be glad to point you in the direction of
God's holy hill and his promised victory
over every battle in our lives.
Let's pray.
Heavy Father, we worship you this morning for
your grace and your glory.
We thank you for your son who came as a substitute.
Lord, we don't have clean hands.
We don't have a pure heart.
We are all liars and fall short outside
of Jesus Christ, who lived that life that we couldn't
live and died in our place, took the wrath that we so much deserved.
And we praise you for that.
I pray, but as we go, fight the battles of our lives in
our lives this week, that you would be with us and that you
would give us the victory, and that in turn, we would bring you glory for that.
In Christ's name, amen.