Would you take your Bibles, please, in turn, to the Psalter, to the book of Psalms at the Psalm 24? As we begin a new little series before our mission's conference called Our Daily Bread, and it's a series about the songs of the day as they're called by the old Hebrews of the Old Testament. This Psalter has shaped the lives of Christians more than probably any other book in the Bible, and I say that without exaggeration in fact one author named William Holiday has written a book called The Prayer Book of a Great Cloud of Witnesses, and he says for two thousand years this collection of 150 individual Psalms has helped to shape the public and private worship of Jews and Christians. I am not aware of any book and anybody of religious poetry that has been so influential for so long a period of time and for such a variety of religious communities as the Psalm Book of God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it The Prayer Book of the Bible. In fact, Saint Augustine called it The Prayer Book of Jesus Christ, for he said Christ himself is the chief singer of every Psalm. The Psalm Book, this Psalter as we call it, was arranged by Levites. These Psalms are written over perhaps a thousand year history of the people of God, maybe longer. If you include Psalm 90, it's almost 1400 years. And after the Jews returned from their 70 years in Babylon and exile, the second temple Levites, the Levites who were worshiping and working in the new temple that they rebuilt as they came back, kind of arranged these Psalms over the period we think of about 100 years from 400 to 300 BC. They arranged it in the five books. These five books have themes. Book one is called The Prayers of David because that's how it ends. The prayers of David have ended is how the first 41 Psalms read. Psalm two or book two is The Book of Elohim, The Book of God. A book three are hymns of hope. Book four, The Songs of the King. And book five, a short one is called The Book of Praise. And within these five books, there are collections of Psalms that follow themes like the songs of Zion that we'll talk about next week. Songs about the church and the people who are favored to live in the kingdom of God, in the Holy City Jerusalem, or the enthronement songs. Songs that talk about God being a great king, the penitential Psalms, the songs of repentance and requests for forgiveness. The Hebrew time of Passover, they used the great halal, the great praise, which is a collection of Psalms from 113 to 118. There are pilgrim songs that we're going to be looking at in March and April and May. These songs of a sense. And one of the collection, rather late in the Psalter, are called The Daily Psalms. And if we had a Septuagint, a Greek version of the Old Testament, we'd find it certain Psalms, titles like this, a Psalm for the first day of the week, a Psalm for the second day of the week, and so forth. William Holiday says, the Mishnah recalls that the Levites recited Psalm 24 on Sunday, Psalm 48 on Monday, Psalm 82 on Tuesday, Psalm 94 on Wednesday, Psalm 81 on Thursday, Psalm 93 on Friday, and Psalm 92 on Saturday. They recited the song for the Sabbath, and these traditions are likely correct. Now we're instructed about that in the Mishnah. The Mishnah is a large tomb of the writings of Hebrew rabbis over centuries, comes in six sections, and each section is broken down into what they call tractates. And one of them is called The Daily Offerings. And in there, there are instructions for the temple and for the synagogue and for the Jewish home to recite these seven songs one after another sequentially on different days. In fact, these songs of the day would be one of the first things that you and your children would have memorized had you been born in the Old Testament church as a Hebrew. In his book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Alfred Ederson says that very early, the child must have been taught that which might be called his birthday text. It was some verse of Scripture beginning or ending with, or at least including all the letters of his Hebrew name. This guardian promised the child would insert into his daily prayers. The earliest hymns taught would be the Psalms of the day. So every day a Hebrew mother, father would get up and they would start their day by reading the Psalm of the day. If they went to synagogue, that Psalm would have been read in the morning prayer and in the evening prayer. In the temple it would be read in sung in the morning offering and in the evening offering. The Babylonian townman, another collection of famous rabbinical statements, tells us a rather fanciful reason for why these seven were collected. It has been taught by their advice that on the first day of the week they did say this, the earth is the Lord and all it contains the world and those who dwell therein because he took possession, he gave possession and was the sole ruler of his universe as he created it. On the second day what did they say? Great is the Lord and highly to be praised because he divided his works and rained over them like a king. Then on the third day they said God stands in the congregation because he revealed the earth in his wisdom and established the world for his community. On the fourth day they said, O Lord God, you are God to whom vengeance belongs because he created the sun in the moon and will one day punish those who worship them. On the fifth day they said, sing aloud to God all of our strength because he created fish and bird just to praise his name. On the sixth day they said, the Lord Rainiff, he is clothed in majesty on high because he completed his work and rained over all his creatures especially angels and men. On the seventh day they said they sang a song for the Sabbath day because on that day God made it a Sabbath for all. Well, I'm not so sure those are the real reasons for it but somewhere along the line, the Levites put their minds together and they decided that they would give us a daily song, a song for Sunday and one for Monday and one for Tuesday and out through the week, things that we would need to repeat again and again why because there are seven things that we tend to forget about God. What is unique about these songs is that they are all about God. They say very little about us. They say a great deal about God and there are seven things for which we need a weekly reminder. Now you don't have to write these down, I'll give you an overview because we're going to go over these the next seven weeks but Psalm 24, the one we're looking at this morning, reminds us that God is the creator and the owner of everything and we are not. Psalm 48, reminds us of the city of God, the center of the universe and not ourselves. Psalm 82, the God is a God of justice and a faithful judge. Psalm 94 that God is an Avenger of evil who sets things right. Psalm 81 that God is forgiving to whom all can go for mercy and grace. Psalm 93 that God is a great and holy king ruling his universe and Psalm 92 that God is the God of the covenant to be celebrated and enjoyed on the Sabbath day. I think that these songs call us to different things and what Psalm 24 calls us to is to recalibrate our lives. The world, the world has an ability, listen to me loved ones, the world has an ability to rub up against us until all the refinements that Christ has done in our life are erased. The world has a way of speaking into us until quite frankly the things of God seem odd and the things of the world seem normal. The world has a way of permeating us in such a way that we become a worldling rather than someone who belongs to the kingdom of God. And Psalm 24 tells us how that happens and how we can reorient or recalibrate as I say our life every Sunday. Psalm for the first day of the week Sunday and get ourselves oriented in the right day. I'm calling these Psalms our daily bread because Jesus says man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and he taught us to pray give us this day our daily bread which may mean food but could also mean a daily feeding from God's word like mana from heaven. In the Church of England Psalm 24 is sung on the first Psalm of the day on day five of the month as they sing and pray through the Psalter. It's also one that historically has been used on ascension day but really talks more about creation than it does redemption. And it's purpose is to remind us of three fundamental truths of life. These are the three things that make a Christian different from a person in the world. So read it with me 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 to 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 square deceitfully. He will receive a blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation such as the generation of those who seek him who seek the face of 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. Here are three things that we need to be reminded of every Sunday. Three reasons why we go to church. Here's the first one, a reminder about creation. 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. Now, it's always good to know what the background of a psalm was. Why the the sons of Korah or Asaph or Solomon or Moses or David wrote a certain psalm. And honestly, we're not 100% sure why David wrote this psalm. But the general consensus among scholars is that David probably wrote this psalm when he was bringing the ark of the covenant up from the house of Obed Edom into Jerusalem to make it the religious and political center of Israel. His intentions were that after he built himself a palace and made Jerusalem the city of David, he would build God a huge palace, a temple, and make it the city of God. Now, God had other plans and said, David, your man to bloodshed, your man of war, and I can only have a man of peace build me house. So you collect all materials and your son, Solomon, will build the house. But David moved the ark of the covenant upon which was the chicana glory, the preincarnate presence of Christ, a pillar of smoke by day and of pulsating fire by night. And he moved that up to the city of Jerusalem with great fanfare. And so he said, lift up your heads, oh gates, and be lifted up, oh ancient doors of Jerusalem, that the king of glory may come in. So David is asking the city to prepare to receive God and to dwell with him in this magnificent place called Zion. You know why he's doing that? Because there's a tendency in people to think that once God comes into their life, that they have God in a box. It was especially for Israel because he dwelt on the top of a box, a golden box called the ark of the covenant. You know, they take the lid off and they tell God to go do things for him, and when he done what they wanted to do in a battle or in a blessing, they cannot get back in the box and don't bother us, we'll call you when we need you. That's how they thought about God. The truth of that is you can find out that by reading the book of Ezekiel, especially chapter 10 and 11, when God leaves that box he leaves that ark of the covenant. He leaves the holy place, he leaves the temple, they didn't even notice. So David is saying, you know, you need to be reminded that you don't own God, God owns you. The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, the world, and all those who dwell therein. The earth, the physical creation, and all of the things that live in it, floor and fauna, and the world, the realm of mankind and every being who dwells therein, angels and human beings. They all belong to God, everything and everyone belongs to God. He founded it upon the seas. He's obviously referring to Genesis 1 where God's first creation was to separate the light from the darkness and establish time, and then to separate the earth from the sea and establish no mains. And he established it upon the rivers. He's referring to chapter 2 where we're told that there were four rivers that shaped the garden of Eden into which God placed the human race in the persons of Adam and Eve. So creation and culture, God made them both, and therefore he owns them both. And Sunday, the first day of the week, God created so that we could remember that. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all of his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor into all your work but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or female servant, or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord God blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Is the Sabbath day Saturday or Sunday? Well you know the truth we don't know. We don't know what day of the week God began to create. Monday, Tuesday, Friday. But we do know that the seventh day of the Old Testament Sabbath Saturday was changed to be the Lord's day for Christians Sunday the first day of the week. So this song for the first day of the week in God's sovereign providence was made for us in the Christian era the Christian Church to remind us that according to God's own plan and appointment we own nothing and God owns everything and everyone. The earth and the environment are gods. We are tenants here not owners. Mankind is gods not ours. We do not even own ourselves. Solomon says that once we die the soul returns to God who gave it. Paul says you were bought with the price and you were not your own. Therefore glorify God in your body. Even my body and my soul are loaned to me from God. Isaac Watts, one of the great hymn riders of the church, took this little solemn and from it he wrote one of the great hymns of the faith that we're going to close the service with. I sing the mighty power of God that made the mountains rise, that spread the flowing seas abroad and built the lofty skies. I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day, the moon shines full at his command and all the stars obey. There is God making the earth and all that dwells therein. I sing the goodness of the Lord that fills the earth with food. He formed the creatures with His Word and then pronounced them good. Lord how thy wonders are displayed where I turn my eye if I see the ground I tread or gaze upon the sea. If I look in the ground I see human beings in this world. If I look in the sky they are the angels. God made the earth and all the things in it. He made the earth and all the beings in it. There's not a plant or flower below but makes thy glory's known and clouds arise and tempest blow by order from thy throne. Listen to this line. There is not a more profound line in all of himnity. While all that borrows life from thee is ever in thy care and every man that man can be, God, thou art present there. My life is borrowed from God. I don't even own the breath in my lungs or the soul within my body. Life is measured by units of time. That's why the first thing God created was time. He separated the light from the darkness, the light he called the day and the darkness night and there was morning and there was evening one day.
You know what the Bible says? My times O Lord are in your hand. Nothing that you possess loved ones is really yours. Your soul is God's. Your body is God's. Your world, this earth, they are God's. Even your job, even your breath, even your loved ones, they are not your children or not yours. This font reminds you that they belong to God. They've been loaned to you. Your wife is not yours. She is God's little girl given as a gift so that man should not belong. Your husband is not yours. He is the vice-regent of God to give you spiritual lead and protection and love and affection in this life. Nothing you have, the gifts that you have that enable you to do your work so well, your mental capacities, your health, they all belong to God. And ultimately, they were made not for you, Colossians says, but for God's Son, Jesus Christ. For he is the image of the invisible God, the first board of all creation, for by him all things were created in heaven on earth, visible and invisible with the thrones and dominions, or rulers or authorities, all things were created by him and through him and for him. It was all made for God's boy, God's son, God's most beloved Jesus Christ. And the Sabbath day demands that I remember that, that I have been created and redeemed and given a life so I can work and witness and worship God on borrowed time with a borrowed soul and a borrowed body among other people who are not mine. This may be one of the hardest lessons we have to learn. And I think that is why. You know, Americans are materialistic people. We judge our success and our life and our happiness in units of things we possess. I'm supposed other people in the world, everybody does that. We seem to make a culture of it. But the first thing we learn when we are children is who made what and for whom. That's the first little questions of the Catechism for little children. Who made you answer? God. What else did God make? God made all things. Why did God make you in all things for his own glory? How can you glorify God by loving him and doing what he commands? You know, as a little Catholic boy, I learned the same things in the first grade when I was six in what's called the Baltimore Catechism. Who made the world? God made the world. Who is God? God is the creator of heaven and earth and all things. Why did God make you? God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next world called heaven. The Anglican Church called an outline of the faith taught to children. What are we by nature? First question. What are we by nature? We are part of God's creation made in the image of God and for him. Luther's small Catechism takes time to teach children about the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed. The opening part of the Apostles' Creed, Luther explains this way. This is beautiful. I believe in God the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth. What does this mean? Answer. I believe that God has created me and all that exists and that has given me and still sustains my body and soul, all my limbs and senses, my reason and all the facilities of my mind together with food and clothing, house and home, family and property. That he provides me daily and abundantly with all the necessities of life, protects me from all danger and preserves me from evil, and this he does out of his pure, fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit of worthiness on my part. And for all of this, I am bound to thank, to praise, to serve, to obey him. This is most certainly true. That is the first thing that the fathers of the church have said that children need to learn that God made them for himself and that they own nothing. This is one of the many reasons folks I think Sunday the Lord's Day is so vitally important because the more we shop, the more we engage in work, the more we catch up on laundry, the more we engage in recreation, the more we think that my body, my life, my time or mine, that's why Sabbath is essential to our nature. It's as essential as gender, as marriage and family, as friends and community, of work and rest and fun and worship. It is essential for you and I to remember, we are the creatures, not the creators, we are the borrowers from God, not the owners of anything. Birds fly, fish swim, animals grace, only angels and men can work and rest and worship and remind themselves that the earth is the Lord and the fullness there is and the world and those who dwell therein. Sunday reminds me to recalibrate my life to this truth. Listen to me, our religion, our faith does not begin with John 316. It begins with Genesis 1-1 in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That is the number one truth and that is the thing that we get wrong. You know what? That's where Adam and Eve went wrong. Everything belonged to God and yet he let Adam and Eve have it all. He said, there's one thing that you cannot have. It's that tree over there called the knowledge of good and evil and that's the one thing they wanted. The one thing that was not their own and here's the irony of it all in going after that which belonged to God alone, they lost everything. God had given to them. They were not content to receive God's gifts on loan. They wanted things to be mine. Isn't that the mark of a disgusting little child? He's in the nursery with all the other kids and he's got toys like this and he's saying, mine, mine, mine. And you say, oh God, please don't have his parents bring him to the baptism font. That's how we are. That's what the world will do to us unless we take one day to remind ourselves to recalibrate our life and say, no, that's not true. This is no pun intended. The genesis of our faith, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness therein, the world and all those who dwell within. For he, he made it and he owns it and it belongs to his son. Here's the second truth, second stanza, that we not only reorient our life around creation but we reorganize our life around the church. Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord or 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 square deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation, such as the generation of those who seek him who seek the face of God of Jacob. Not everyone you see is welcomed into the presence of the Lord. Only the redeemed, this is the great enigma of creation. All men are expected to worship God because they're creatures, commandment number four,
but only people who are redeemed can actually do that in a way that's pleasing to God. So David reminds people that there are three qualifications for entering into God's presence to worship him in the creation and on the Lord's day. A cleansing of the soul, what we and I would call forgiveness. Who shall ascend to 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 does not square deceitfully. He has clean hands and a pure heart, God has done something for him. He also is a person who is justified. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. He has trusted in God the God of salvation Jesus Christ and the righteousness of Christ has been imputed or credited to him. So now he comes in, cleans from his sins, standing there and robed in the righteousness and beauty of Christ. And thirdly, he has the indwelling Holy Spirit so that he genuinely seeks for God, such as the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. He's seeking intimate encounter with God. He wants to see the face of God who Paul says we see in the glorious face of Jesus Christ. Notice at the end of this little verse six, there's a strange word on the side called Selah. You know what that means in Hebrew? It simply means stop or pause. It's as if the writer of the Psalms are saying, stop and think about this. Here is life in a new dimension, a new creature in the new community who's entering into a new world. The hill of the Lord, it's called Mount Zion, the holy place, the temple, which is a prefiguring we find of the Church of Jesus Christ. Do you not know, Paul says, that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells within you. If anyone destroyed God's temple, God will destroy him for God's temple as holy and you are that temple. When you were redeemed and brought into the Church of Jesus Christ, you were qualified to enter into his presence, his courts with prayer, and to receive a blessing from the Lord and Saul instructs us that all we need to do is to be reminded that we are creatures and be redeemed as fallen creatures. And that leads us to the third point he makes. First, that we reorient our life around creation. Who owns what? Second, that we reorganize our time and life around the Church, that going into the community of the redeemed on Sabbath is number one priority. For the third reason, that we reaffirm our salvation. Lift up your heads, O Gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may commit. Who is this king of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle. He repeats it the second time. Lift up your heads, O Gates, and lift them up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in a second time. The people respond, who is the king of glory and the priest says the Lord of hosts? He is the king of glory. Lift up your heads. As David marched into that city, dancing before the arc of the covenant with an effod of a priest, abasing himself to the embarrassment of his wife, he made people focus not on himself, but on the king of glory, that we can imagine this picture, that behind him came these Levites with poles and in a golden box on those poles with two cherub and whose wings touched, and on the top of that thing, like a small cyclone or tornado, was this pillar of a smoke and fire pulsating and breathing. That's what their eyes saw. Not David. That was David's rebuke of his wife, Michael. You noticed me? You were concerned about it. Fool I was making myself. When the king's glory was going by, you didn't notice the presence of God coming into our city. You didn't lift up your heads in abasement and you did not open up the gates of your own heart and life to let King Jesus come in. Spurgeon says, these last verses revealed to us the great representative man who answers to the full character laid down in this song, and therefore by his own right ascends to the hill of Zion. Our Lord Jesus Christ could ascend into the hill of the Lord because his hands were clean, his heart was pure, and he was righteous. And if we by faith are in him, then we are conformed as image, and we shall enter too into the presence of the glory of the king. This song reminds us that Jesus Christ has come to us three times in his glory. First in the Old Testament, in that Shakyana glory, he marched into that city with David. A second time on Palm Sunday in the glory of our humanity, he entered into Jerusalem to make it the city of redemption. And thirdly, some day he will come again to the earth and a glory, the book of Revelation said, that is blazing like the sun, and all will worship him, and all creation will once again be willingly his. And Sunday reminds us of these appearances of God's glory. But there's a fourth one that we would tend to overlook, where Jesus is pictured in one of the churches of Revelation saying, behold, I stand at the door in knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will commend to him and eat with him, and he, with me. This is the essence, this is the reaffirmation of salvation, that we have entered the kingdom of God, that we have come into the presence of God through Jesus Christ, that we have opened our hearts and our homes, our church, our community, our nation. And we have said, let the king of glory come in. Who is this kingdom, glory? Well, the book of Revelation tells us who it is. It is Jesus Christ, the king of kings, and the Lord of lords. Old Bishop Horn, Anglican Bishop who lived back in the 1700s said of this song, the God of Israel was the Lord of the whole earth by right of creation. The same divine person who created the world has since in his son Christ redeemed it, and it is his again by a second right as if. But the Christian church is his in a more peculiar sense as the church of Israel formerly was. We are doubly bound to adore and obey him, first as creatures, and then as the redeemed. It is he that has made us, and not we ourselves, we are not our own being bought with a price. This inference of the Psalm then is, let us glorify God in our bodies and in our spirits, which are in every way, gods, and not. That's the way to recalibrate your life. The creation of God, the church of Christ, the salvation of the Holy Spirit, three truths to live by, three things we grab whole of every Sunday. I don't care what the sermon is, they basically tell us these things. One, truth number one, not of all of this around you is yours. All belongs to God. And I must never think of my own or myself or my stuff as mine for as soon as I take it. As mine, I lose it all together. Truth number true. I belong to the church. I belong to the city of God in the new creation which God has a place for me. The church is the center of my life, not my work, not my school, not my marriage, my kids, my friends. It's the city of God that shapes the city of man. It is my privilege to be invited into this city by forgiveness, by righteousness, by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Thirdly, I must surrender daily to Jesus Christ, the King of glory, morning and evening. I say the Psalm and I open up the doors, the gates of my life meant to protect me from God and preserve me over others. And I say let the King of glory come in because what's inside me is all yours anyway. I am not my own. I am not the center of the universe and I am not the Lord of my life. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. The world and those who dwell therein and that includes me and you seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And all these things will be added to you but they still belong to God. And that is why we come to church on Sunday to have our life recalibrated to that reality. That's pray. Father, there are three kinds of people in this room this morning. There are some who know of these truths, who willingly embrace them but because we've rubbed up against the world and been polluted by it for another week we've forgotten that you are the owner of everything including us and that it is your divine right and our divine blessing that you do with us but you see fit because you are good and greatly to be praised. And you always do things for your own glory, for the purposes of Christ and for the good of those men you have made for yourself. Please forgive us for losing perspective and bring us back to the truth that we belong to you. We have been doubly purchased by creation and by redemption to be yours. There are other people who have never really taken seriously the church of Jesus Christ and it is not the center of their lives. Therefore, it's some other thing that is their spiritual center, their work or their or their sports or their girlfriend or their money could be some habit or some hobby and they need to repent of that and come by right of Jesus Christ into the membership of the church where they might be acclimated again and again recalibrated every week to live as if there is something larger than life and greater than self and the lasting forever this thing called the church which is the kingdom of God. And finally Father there are people here who have never surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ. They have never opened the gates of their kingdom and let the Lord of glory come in and save them, possess them, own them for his purposes. And I pray today that you would break down those walls and open those gates and give them repentance and faith that they might turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and enter the kingdom of heaven. And I ask all your favor of these things for us on this the Lord's day and this the Lord's place because we are yours and this world is yours and we are happy that that is true. And so we pray these things in Jesus name.