To immerse ourselves in the 24^th Psalm is to immerse ourselves in waters of worship in which the people of God have been immersed for thousands of years.  It is a joyful acknowledgement of who God is at the beginning and end of the Psalm, and who we are in God.

You may or may not know I’m a big Elvis fan.  The King of Rock and Roll.  The story is told of a 1974 show in South Bend IN.  A fan held up a sign which announced Elvis as “The King.”  Elvis saw the sign and stopped for a few moments.  He told the audience, “I can’t accept this kingship thing because to me there’s only one King, and that’s Christ.”  Psalm 24 speaks of God’s kingship.  What does it mean to call God King?  What does this mean for those who call Jesus, Lord?  Who is this King of Glory and what is this King like? Let us look at this 24^th Psalm and see what God has to say to our hearts.

We’re coming to the end of our summertime look at the Psalms.  Seeing what they have to say to us, how they shape us, affect our prayer life and our worship together.  This morning’s psalm speaks to the foundation of our faith.  God is King.  Jesus is Lord. “Who is the King of Glory?”  we sang earlier.  “The King of Love My Shepherd Is” we’ll sing later.  Listen to the note of joy with which the song starts.  This is how the psalmist starts – “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.”  The original word order has God or YAHWEH first.  “The Lord’s is the earth, and all that fills it.”   Everything has been made by God. We share a kinship or relationship with everything animate and inanimate because of this truth – we are made by God.  Take a walk outside and every single thing you look at is God’s creation.  In the story of Francis of Assissi and the Wolf of Gubbio, Brother Francis calls the wolf “Brother Wolf.”  Francis extended this idea of fraternity and sorority to inanimate parts of creation in his “Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon”:

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord, All praise is Yours, all glory, all honour and all blessings.

Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures especially Sir Brother Sun, Who is the day through whom You give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars, In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, And fair and stormy, all weather’s moods, by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water, So useful, humble, precious and pure.

If we stopped to think about this meaningfully and often, do you think it would make a difference in how we saw things?  Do you think it would make a difference in how we viewed nature and natural resources?  Would we consider the primary owners of natural resources to be nation-states?  Corporations?  Individuals?  Would it make a difference in how we viewed our own role as believers that God made all things and called them good?  That in Christ, God maintains and sustains all things and that in Christ all things hold together? 

It’s a fundamental part of our worldview – of how we view the world.  Like any belief, it’s not meant to exist in a vacuum.  It’s not meant for us to believe something like “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it… and all who live in it” and it does not affect how we view things and the actions that we take. 

“For he has established it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.”  I’ve spoken before about this OT image of God as a subduer of chaos in creation.  The sea was thought to be a place of chaos and disorder to the ancient Israelites.  In naming God as creator we are asserting that it is in God that order is to be found.  That well-ordered existence is to be found.  That peace is to be found.

You might be saying “I’m with you so far, but what does this mean in terms of how we’re supposed to live our lives?”  Faith doesn’t indeed exist in a vacuum.  What does it mean to our lives?  What should our lives look like if we believe that God is King and that Jesus is Lord and it’s not simply something we put on our cars or our t-shirts or walls or wherever we proclaim this? 

Seek his presence.  Seek God’s presence. Seek his face.  Listen to your heart.  Remember “My heart says “Seek his face”.  Your face O Lord do I seek.  Make that your prayer.  Who we are is founded in who God is.  The question of who we are in God is now addressed.   “Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord?  And who shall stand in his holy place?”  The psalmist is singing of the Temple of Jerusalem.  The place where God was present.  The place where God was present was holy.   Who could stand in such a place?

“Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to another, and do not swear deceitfully.”  Easy right?  Who can say this?  Anyone meet this list of qualifications?  Of course, we don’t.  It’s a bit of a trick question because this is not a list of qualifications that you must fulfill before you seek and know God’s presence.  The only qualification you need to seek and know God’s presence is a knowledge of and acknowledgement of your need for Him.   We don’t come before God based on any righteousness of our own.  We don’t come before God based on any cleverness or intelligence of our own.  Calling on Jesus as Lord means recognizing our need to be made into someone new.  It means recognizing that this doesn’t happen without God.  It means seeking and knowing God’s presence in order that we might be made righteous – made right, made whole, made well.  One writer puts it like this – “The righteous one seeks the righteousness of God by seeking God’s own presence in the midst of the worshipping community.”

So what’s the answer to “Who could do this?” or “Who is sufficient for these things?” That was the question Paul put to the Corinthians.  The one who seeks God’s face and cries out “Have mercy on me, a sinner!”  That’s our only qualification.  It doesn’t mean that we wallow in our sin.  It doesn’t mean that God’s grace is simply an excuse to intentionally miss the mark or come up short.  This song reminds the worshipper that making us clean, purifying our hearts, keeping us from lifting up our souls to false gods or swearing deceitfully (making a show of worship as an outward sign and not meaning any of it – going to church each Sunday with a Bible tucked under our arm and bowing down to the gods of nationalism or consumerism or acquisition or greed or envy or self-sufficiency or any of the gods that we bow down to) – this is what God does.  God changes us when we seek His face.  This is the promise.  “They will receive blessing from the LORD, and vindication from the God of their salvation.”  To sing that Jesus is our King has connotations.  Cleans hands and a pure heart.  External actions which reflect a transformed heart – the centre of our thoughts, emotions, and will.  Our acknowledgement not of our own righteousness, but of our ongoing need of God’s grace and mercy.  Our acknowledgement of our dependence on God for an integrity of life in our hearts and hands (and our tongues).  Our acknowledgement that a well-ordered life of hope/peace/joy/love is found in God alone.  Someone has described this Psalm as the community singing itself toward faith; the song making it possible to imagine life differently.   God is shaping us/forming us/making us right when we seek his presence. We’re called to seek His face together, of course.  I want to take that seriously with you all.  They will receive blessings from the Lord – the blessing of being made right, of being made anew.  Don’t we need that? 

Do you want that?  What is our God like?  What is the God to whom I belong, like?  What does it mean to be God-like?  Important question.  There’s a wonderful description of what our God is like in Psalm 89 – “The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours… You have a mighty arm; strong is your hand, high is your right hand.  Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.”  Do you want to serve this God?  Do you want to follow this God?  Do you want to seek this God’s face?  Let us seek His face together, for such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.

The Psalm ends with worship.  “Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the king of glory may come in!”  It is thought that this psalm was sung when the Ark of the Covenant was brought to the temple.  This title for God “the king of glory” was associated with the Ark, which was the visible sign of God’s presence among his people.  You can imagine a group of people returning after a battle, coming to the city gate.  The watchers there have their heads bowed – hangdog expressions.  They wonder how things turned out.  Downcast faces signalling the lack of hope.  Bowed faces signalling despair.  The cry is heard “Lift up your heads, O gates!  Be lifted up O ancient doors that the King of glory may come in.”

Who is this King of Glory?  Good question.  The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.  What does he look like?  A little baby crying out in the night.  A man stretched out on a cross.  The Spirit who was sent and is sent to his followers to literally inspire us – to give us life.  This is the King of Glory!  Lift up your heads and welcome him.  This is the invitation.  Lift up your heads and welcome him so that we may be lifted up – that we may be transformed into his image.  That we may be made righteous, made right, made whole.  Lift up your heads O gates! 

There’s a great paradox in this of course.  The ancient Israelites were aware of one too.  How could the creator and sustainer of all things also live in a temple?  What temple could contain him?  It’s the same thing for us.  Of course, something has changed.  We’re now the temple.  We’re the dwelling place of this King.  Do we take that seriously?  We need to take that seriously if we’re going to profess Christ as King.  We need reminding of this - of course we do.  The church in Corinth did.  Paul wrote to them “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?  For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”  Therefore seek God’s face so that God’s ways - love, mercy, grace, justice – may be known in and through you.

God’s transcendence and God’s immanence.  The creator and sustainer of the universe living within us.  I can’t explain it.  I don’t think we have to.  There’s nothing wrong with a little paradox.  There’s nothing wrong with holding, at once, two seemingly opposite things that are both true.  We wouldn’t want to follow a god we could fit into some non-paradoxical box, would we?  This is not the King we serve.  The King we serve is the creator and sustainer of all who makes his home within us if we but lift up our heads and cry out “Have mercy on me, change me, make me like you to show your glory.”

Elvis was famous for transforming music.  Instrumental in the creation of something new – rock and roll.  He became known as its king.  He knew there was a greater King.  One who is all about creation and transformation.  One who is all about making something new.  He makes something new of us.  One day we’ll hear him say “Look, I am making all things new.”  

This is the King that we serve my friends.

Amen