Our scripture reading this morning is Psalm 24. Psalm 24, we'll read the whole psalm together. Let us give careful attention to the reading of God's Word. Psalm 24. 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. 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. So far the reading of God's Word. As I watched too much television in the last few days, I pondered what have Americans been thinking about in this time period that we call a Thanksgiving weekend. And at least according to what the television would claim, we have been thinking about eating and thinking about shopping and thinking about sports and maybe thinking a little bit about politics. But the one thing that at least the television would inform us we have not been thinking about at all, is the one who ought to be thanked at Thanksgiving. And so I thought, that's what we ought to think about this morning. The one who ought to be thanked. The whole idea of a weekend is sort of a curious notion. Some of you may have watched that popular television series, Downton Abbey. And I remember vividly the Dowager Duchess at dinner hearing the word weekend and observing in her dry tone, whatever is a weekend. Weekend is a thoroughly modern development and invention which has a number of benefits to it, one of which, of course, is that many people don't have to work Saturdays anymore. It's not a six-day work week so much as a five-day work week. for many people, but the concept of weekend tends to blur the notion that the week given us by God begins with the Christian Sabbath. I've even seen calendars now where the week begins with Monday and then concludes with the weekend of Saturday and Sunday. And the great danger then of that concept and the great danger of the way much of the world lives now is that we forget that in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are called to begin every week resting and worshiping and remembering that our God has wrought salvation in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son for us. And so I think it's important that we begin every Sabbath, we begin every week redirecting our minds, redirecting our hearts, redirecting our lives to think in the first place about God and what he has done for us. And while it may be lovely to eat well, it may be pleasant to be able to shop some, it may be occasionally appropriate to talk about sports. The less said about politics, the better in my judgment. But putting that aside, we want to focus on what our God has done for us. We need to be redirected. We need to be, if you will, re-educated regularly as we live in a world that ignores God, to think about God, to put God first. And I think Psalm 24 can help us do that. It's a beautiful psalm. The poetry is exquisite in this psalm. It's a familiar psalm as we read it. Didn't you feel like you knew most of the bits of this? But it's also a psalm that appeals to a preacher because it has three very distinct parts, which is, of course, crucial that there be three points. But as I have pondered this psalm and studied this psalm, one of the things that strikes you as you meditate on this psalm is that at first glance, it doesn't seem to hold together very well. Now, I don't want to disillusion you. I'm not going to end up criticizing the psalm. But if we just step back a minute and look at it, it starts talking about creation. And then it moves on to talk about climbing God's holy hill. And then it concludes with gates being opened and the king of glory being welcomed. How do these things fit together? What's the coherence of this? And I think the coherence of this is that the psalm moves along, helping us to see the character and the significance of the God who is for us. The God who is for us. There is not just a God. There is not just a supreme being. There is not just an all-powerful being. But the God, the scriptures tell us in a variety of ways, is for us. And that's what this psalm wants to say in a variety of ways and a message, I think, that is so critical to help us to live and to believe and to grow in grace. And so the first thing we see in this psalm is that the God who is for us is the creator God, the ruling God, the all-powerful God. The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. And this is the kind of statement in the Psalter and throughout the Bible that we could easily rush past. The world is the Lord's. Yeah, yeah, we know that. Well, we do know that. But it still should not be rushed past. It's still critical. It's still foundational to who we are as well as who God is. He is the creator. Literally in Hebrew, this psalm begins saying, to the Lord, the earth and its fullness. To the Lord. belong the earth. And not just the earth in general, not just the earth as a kind of abstraction, not just the earth in its totality, but every particular in it, the fullness of the earth, the things with which he has filled it, belong to him. He's not a distant God who creates and sets the world in motion. He's the God who remains in touch with all of its particulars. The world, that could almost be translated the dry land. The vision here is Genesis chapter 1, how God separated the seas and the dry land, and here he's thinking about the dry land and us. He made the dry land for us to live on it. We may be able to live on boats for a time, but we feel our native soil is where we belong, where we ought to put our feet. And so this opening verse draws us to the glory and fullness of our God, to his great creation, but to his creative act for us, to make a place for us. And it's a good place. The fullness of the earth means it's full of beauty. It's full of diversity to enjoy. It's full of a blessedness for us as people for whom he cares. Paul quotes Psalm 24 verse 1 in 1 Corinthians 10 when Paul is talking about the dangers of idolatry and of eating food offered to idols. And then it's as if he pauses there in 1 Corinthians 10 to say, But don't let that make you afraid of eating food, generally, because the earth is the Lord and the fullness thereof. He's saying Psalm 24 proves that the world is good and that God gave us the whole world and we should enjoy it within the limits that he has laid down. And this God has created a world that is ordered, for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters. I suspect that ancient Israelites, by and large, did not like to go to the beach. This may be hard for us to identify with. There are lots of people here who like to go to the beach. There are apparently some people here who actually like to get in the water. That's sort of mystifying to me. And that water is cold here, and it's nice, I find, to look at from a distance. But anyway, but the image in the ancient world was that the seas are disturbing. The seas are chaotic. Those waves, they never stop. They keep coming, and sometimes they keep coming bigger and bigger. And it was frightening to ancient Israelites who were largely landlocked people. And so the seas seem more a demonstration of chaos than of beauty to them. And so the dry land was the place that was safe. And so they ascribe particularly to God this dry land that's a safe place for us to live. And they rejoice in Him, a God for us, a God of power, a God who sustains a world that's beautiful and good for us, and how we do rejoice in Him. And that God, then, is portrayed here at the opening of this psalm in all of his greatness. His goodness, to be sure, but his greatness. He's the creator God. He's the sustainer God. And in the next psalm, Psalm 25, the psalmist says, My soul shall abide in well-being, and my offspring shall inherit the land. Interesting, that word translated land there is the same word translated earth in Psalm 24. I think sometimes the translators have too limited a focus as if the only promise is the inheritance of the land of Israel. I think at times the psalmist looks beyond that to the great day when Jesus will return in glory to create a new heaven and a new earth and will inherit the earth, not just the land. I think maybe that's what's in mind here in Psalm 25. This is the promise to us of the God who is for us, a great day coming. I think Jesus picked up on that in the Beatitude that says, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. The earth, that's the promise of the God for us, the greatness of that God, the glory of that God. And then I think we begin to see, if that is our God, if he is that great, if the whole earth belongs to him, then what will it take to enter his presence? If the whole earth is the Lord's, how awesome is it to contemplate meeting with him on his holy hill? Who shall ascend the hill of this Lord? Or who shall stand in this God's holy place? That's the question posed here. And here the psalmist moves, I think, from thinking of God as the creator God to thinking of God as the covenant-keeping God. These next verses, verses 3 through 6, are very much about the covenant God has made with his people. And God in making covenant with his old covenant people had said at least three times a year they are to appear in Jerusalem on my holy hill to meet with me. And the psalmist with that command in mind is thinking, what is required for such a meeting? Who will dare to come into his presence? What is the nature of the preparation that we need to undertake? And here, beautifully expressed, is a kind of summary of that covenant. The human commitment of the covenant and the divine commitment of the covenant. Remember in the old baptismal form, there's the beautiful declaration, all covenants have two parts. There's the part of God's promise and there's the part of our response. And here we see that, beginning with our response and then coming to God's promises and blessings. But what is our responsibility in coming into the presence of God? Well, there's, first of all, we might call an external responsibility, what we do with our lives. He who has clean hands, it's a kind of summary of the whole of our lives before God. Clean hands. And it's interesting as we look at the call to the human commitment in the covenant, it seems that all of these elements can apply both to our relationship with God and to our relationship with our neighbor. Clean hands means approaching the altar, the temple of God, ritually clean. Psalm 26 says, I wash my hands in innocence and go around your altar, O Lord. And Psalm 28 says, hear the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary. So, our hands need to be clean in relation to God. But our hands also need to be clean in relation to our neighbor. We have to do honorably, live honorably in relation to our neighbor. There's the whole external quality of life that we're called upon to examine here. How are you living? What are you doing with your hands? What are you doing with your life? Both in relationship to God and in relationship to your fellow man. And then the psalmist encourages us to look internally, to look at our hearts. We're to have clean hands and a pure heart. We can put our lives externally, perfectly in order, but that does not guarantee that our hearts are pure. Our hearts are right. And there again, the heart has to be right both in relation to God and in relation to our fellow man. The phrase pure hearts is actually used very infrequently in the Scripture. It's used here, and it's used in Psalm 73, and it's used again by our Lord in one of his beatitudes. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. You see that covenant connection. These people are coming to the temple, and as they come in covenant faithfulness, they're going to meet with their God. And Jesus commends that. And so this whole vision of coming to God is a vision of covenantal commitment. We're not preparing ourselves by our own goodness to meet with God, but we're responding to His grace, to His revelation, to His mercy, to the giving of His Holy Spirit, so that what God has done with us bears fruit in us, so that we come to meet Him with clean hands and a pure heart. we come in loyalty to him. And we express that loyalty as those who do not lift up their souls to what is false. That means broadly not to live for the lie in any part of our lives, to be concerned about the truth, to pursue the truth, to learn the truth. But even more than that, it means particularly not to worship idols. That word false there is often used in reference to idols in the Old Testament. Not to lift up. That's an act of worship very often. Not to lift up our souls to worthless idols. And not to swear deceitfully. There again, it means tell the truth all the time. But to tell the truth particularly in our service of God, in our worship of God. Nothing is worse than to take God's name on our lips if we're not serving him. Allowing God's name to be blasphemed amongst the Gentiles because of our faithlessness. So there's a strong call on the people of God to self-examination, to reflection. When we ask, what does this mean for us? What hill are we to climb? What holy place are we to stand in? Well, this is the place. It's not much of a hill. But this is the place. We are no longer called to go to the earthly Jerusalem. We're called to go to the heavenly Jerusalem. The heavenly Jerusalem that we enter by faith. The heavenly Jerusalem where we're being invited to join with all the angels and all the triumphant, glorified saints whenever we gather for worship. The book of Hebrews teaches us that coming here, we enter into the most holy place. Not that this is the most holy place, but that this is the place where we gather so that by faith we may enter the most holy place in heaven. And so, worship must be central in our lives. Because in worship, particularly in corporate worship, we enter into the very presence of God with His people, and we express our corporate loyalty. And that worship, that loyalty, must be sincere. Prophet Isaiah wrote, Isaiah 29, 13, And the Lord said, because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men. The prophet warns against insincere worship, heartless worship, worship that pleases us rather than pleases God. Jesus himself quoted those words in Matthew 15 to underscore the warning of the prophet. And we need to take that seriously, don't we? Sometimes we get so caught up that we don't prepare our hearts for worship. There was a time amongst our Reformed people where people did not do very much on Saturday night, so that they could spend Saturday night preparing for worship. And we can't reconstruct all the good old days. By and large, the good old days weren't as good as our grandparents told us. But there were maybe things that were better. And at the very least, we should pause and think, how is my heart, how is my mind, how is my life prepared to come and worship God? Because something extraordinary happens here. When we come as the Lord calls us to come, when we come with clean hands and pure hearts and a soul that has not been lifted up to vanity, what happens? God meets with us. That's what this psalm marvelously declares. The one who comes to that holy hill, the one who comes to worship, he will receive blessing, verse 5, from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Now, there's a promise to draw us to worship, isn't there? What happens when you come here, when you come here prepared to be here? This psalm says you receive a blessing. You don't just check off a box. How many Sundays were you in church? You receive a blessing from the Lord. And the blessing you receive from the Lord is righteousness and salvation. That's amazing, isn't it? We might be tempted to say, well, I already have salvation. Well, if you say, I already have salvation, maybe you better worry that you don't have salvation. Righteousness as something to be pursued as a gift of the Lord. Salvation as the great blessing of the Lord. That's what we're called to here. That's what we're called to when we seek our God. Verse 6, such as the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. When we come to his worship, he's here with us. He's here with us. He comes to us through his word. And the face we see in our privileged status as a new covenant people, the face we see is the face of Jesus. The one who has come to bless us, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall seek God, said Jesus. He comes to bless us with his righteousness. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. He comes to give us salvation through all the work that he did in his life, death, and resurrection. What a glorious thing this is. What a glorious privilege this is. To meet with our God and to grow in grace and to receive blessing. He's the creator God for us. He's the covenant-keeping God for us. And he's the coming, conquering king for us. That's how this psalm closes. Lift up your heads, O gate, 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. Now the picture here is sort of intriguing. In Psalm 118, the picture is of worshipers going up through the gates of the temple to meet with God. But here the picture is of worshipers in the temple looking back toward the gates and waiting for God to come to the temple. And so what does this really mean? Looking forward to the coming of God into His holy place. Well, there are any number of ways in which this has been talked about. Some scholars have argued there were annual or more frequent ceremonies in Israel celebrating God coming to the temple. I'm not persuaded by those arguments. It doesn't matter anyway. What really matters is what does this mean for us? And what it means for us is the promise of God coming in power, coming victorious, coming triumphant. We saw that somewhat in Christ's first coming, didn't we, when he came with miracles to heal lepers, for example. We will see it in Christ's second coming. We sing this psalm sometimes on Ascension Day, to think of his glorification in heaven at the right hand of his Father. What's really important here is that this psalm reminds us that in the struggles of life, in the weakness of life, in the suffering of life, it will not always be so. One day it will be different. One day we'll see displayed the power of our God when he conquers every enemy. That's the theme here. He comes to his people in triumph. He comes to his people in strength. He comes as the Lord of armies, successful over all who oppose him. And when we live in a world that so often ignores him, when we live in a world that, if it refers to God at all, speaks in a demeaning or a completely inaccurate way, we can begin to wonder, we can begin to question, is God in charge? Does God know what he's doing? Is God accomplishing his purpose? And you see, the end of Psalm 24 is looking forward. It's anticipating. not what we presently have, we presently have blessing and salvation, but one day we'll see the king revealed in his glory, the king revealed in his splendor. We'll see the full success of his kingdom. We'll see a day when all things are made new. And that promise is given to us to encourage us, To strengthen us in the miseries and distresses and weaknesses that we have to face. Because it's not the final word. The final word is, who is the King of glory? The Lord of hosts. He is the King of glory. May God direct us and comfort us and strengthen us in that great truth. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we are thankful for your word. We are thankful for its wisdom where we so often remain foolish. And we pray, O Lord, that you will day by day and Sabbath by Sabbath strengthen and help us to know you and to serve you and to be sustained by the wonderful promises of your word. Hear us, for we pray in Jesus' name, amen.