This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) Welcome to our look at Psalm 24. This is day four of week five of
our look through the book of Psalms. And in Psalm 24, we find three major
questions that your life will turn on.

Who owns it all? Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? And who is the king of
glory?

Those three questions, who owns it all? Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who
is the king of glory?

More than you realize, your life every day turns on those questions. So let's
look at them in this Psalm. First, who owns it all?

Psalm 24, verses one and two. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the
world and all who live in it, for he founded it upon the seas and established it
upon the waters. God made everything.

God is your creator. The earth is the Lord's, everything in it. He made it all
and because he made it all, he's your creator, that means he's also your owner.

Once you accept God as creator, it follows that he is the owner. He made it,
everything, including you and I. He's not an uncaring creator, one who would
make us and then walk away.

No, he cares for whatever he creates. He's not a creator who would sell us to
someone else. Whatever he's created, he continues to own.

So who owns it all? God does. And once you settle that question of ownership,
we're going to look at this a little bit deeper in just a moment, then you've begun
to settle one of the deepest questions of our lives.

Second question is, who may ascend the hill of the Lord? This is the question
that's asked in verses three to six. Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?

Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who
does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false, he will receive
blessing from the Lord and vindication from God his savior, such as the
generation of those who seek him, who seek his face, O God of Jacob. You might
remember from our look at Psalm 15 that the hill of the Lord is the place of the
temple, of the tabernacle, the place of the presence of the Lord.

Who may come into God's presence? And we know now from what Jesus did for us on
the cross that the only way to ascend that hill is by looking at what Jesus
Christ did for us on a hill, on the hill of Calvary. We can't make our hands
clean enough.

We can't make our hearts pure enough. As clean as you could make your hands,
they would not be perfectly clean. As pure as you could make your heart, it
would not be perfectly pure.

And God is perfect. So that's why in the middle of these words about ascending
the hill of the Lord, I love this phrase, we get vindication from God our
savior. We need a savior.

Here's an amazing truth. God is your owner because he created you. But then we
rejected his ownership as his creation.

And so we chose, we allowed ourselves, because of our choice, to be owned by the
evil one. We put ourselves in Satan's empire rather than in God's rule. And then
the owner that we rejected, this is the most amazing truth in all of human
history, the owner that we rejected, he bought us back.

He made us in the first place. We walked away from him and he bought us back.
You're not your own.

You've been bought with a price. And the price that you've been bought with is
Jesus Christ dying on the cross. He bought us back by giving his own life for
us.

God is your savior. And because God is your savior, there's a question that you
and I have to face. The question behind God being our savior in these verses is
who or what do you seek?

Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek his face in verse six.
Who or what are you seeking in your life? When God is your savior, Jesus is your
savior, then you can live out the truth that he taught us in the Sermon on the
Mount.

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added
to you. Once you know that he's your savior, it changes what you seek in your
life. That's why this question is so important.

Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Only those who have found Jesus as their
savior. And those who found Jesus as their savior, they tend to start to seek a
different thing in life.

And then there's a third question in this Psalm, verses seven to 10. Who is the
king of glory? Listen to the answer.

It comes twice here. God wants us to get this answer. Beginning in verse seven.

Lift up your heads, O you gates. Be lifted up, you 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
you gates.

Lift them up, you ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in. Who is this
king of glory? The Lord, almighty.

He is the king of glory. Obviously, God wants us to get this one. He repeats it
again and again.

God is the king of glory. The phrase king of glory is used five times in these
few verses. And there's a deep history behind this passage in Psalm 24.

Most Bible teachers, Bible scholars think that Psalm 24 was probably first sung
as David brought the Ark of the Covenant back into Jerusalem. Open up the gates.
King David is bringing the presence of God.

The presence of God resided in that Ark. King David is bringing the presence of
God into the city. There's more to this history.

This Psalm, Psalm 24, was sung each day in Herod's temple. The temple that was
in Jerusalem in the days that Jesus lived. So if you'd been there on a Sabbath
day, you would have heard the singing of this Psalm.

Lift up your heads, O you gates, that the king of glory may come in. Each
Sunday, including Palm Sunday, the day when Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem as
king. Open up the gates.

The king of kings is riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. But there's more history
to this Psalm. This Psalm is read by the church on Ascension Day.

Down through the centuries, this Psalm has been read again and again on the day
that we celebrate the fact that Jesus returned to heaven. That's the day, the
Ascension Day, that Jesus spoke with His disciples, gave them the commission to
go Jerusalem, Judea, remotest parts of the earth, and then He ascended into
heaven, returning back to heaven, the place of His throne. Open up the gates of
heaven.

The king of glory is entering to take his seat on the throne. Now, there's
history to this Psalm about the king of glory entering into Jerusalem, the king
of glory entering into heaven. There's also a personal challenge in these
verses.

There's a question. Who's the door of your life open to you? Who are you opening
the direction, the guidance, the hope, the strength that you need?

Lift up your heads, oh, you gates, doors of your life. Are you letting the king
of glory in today? Or is it, wait, Jesus, wait till tomorrow?

Or, no, Jesus, I gotta get some things settled first. Open up the door today.
There's no better decision that you could make.

Now, as we end our look at this wonderful Psalm, I want to spend a few moments
together praying these words back to Jesus. Would you pray them with me? And
Jesus, as we pray these words back to you, we recognize that it's all yours.

There is not a thing I'm going to see today that's not yours. You founded it all.
And because you are the Lord, I want to serve you.

Because you own it all, including me, I'm going to give my life back to you. I
want to be like the person in this Psalm who ascended your hill, who stands in
your holy place. But I know, I can't attain this on my own.

And so I ask you for the gift of your presence, the gift of your spirit. I ask
you to give me those clean hands, to give me that clear heart. I don't want to
lift up my soul to an idol, something I want to serve.

I want to lift up my soul to you because of all you've done for me. And so right
now, I receive your blessing. I want to be part of this generation who seeks you.

And as I live this day, I lift up my head. I want to see the King of glory coming
in. I want to see you walking into the circumstances of my life in glory and
power.

I want to see you as strong and mighty, as mighty in battle. And so I lift up my
head beyond the circumstances of my life. I lift my eyes to look, to see you
walking through the door into my life, my circumstances, my mess, my problems,
my happiness, my joy, all of it.

You are the King of glory over it all. And I pray that I would see your glory in
my life today. I pray it in Jesus' name, amen.