Psalm 24

Speaker 1: I never mess up what I'm supposed to say. Hmm. I was about to marry Miss Clara off to somebody this morning. I don't know who, but. Now somebody I think was really Ryan told me that. She said, I do. And that's what threw me off. So it really wasn't my fault. I asked her if she was trusting in Jesus, and she said, I do. And I said, Are you relying on him alone to get you to heaven? She said, I do. I had I now pronounce you a member of this church. Oh, man, that was really something else. Take your calls off. You have to to song 24. You'll understand yet. Song 24 is where we're going to be this evening. I had a great time with our our young people this afternoon, and I really appreciate just their honesty. And I think they're being honest with me doesn't that it doesn't take long. I've been out of youth ministry now for four years and I already feel like I'm very disconnected from the world in which they live. And so it was just very helpful for me, for them to kind of give me a glimpse of what their their lives are like, what it's like for them to be in the different types of school that they are in. We had Christian school kids, we had homeschool kids, we had public school kids. And so I really enjoyed getting to talk to them. And we talked about a lot of different things in times music, cultural issues, social media. I was a very wide ranging conversation and looking forward to digging deeper into some of those different issues. In subsequent meetings, we'll meet with We'll meet together, Lord Willing, the fourth Sunday of every month I meet with the deacons, first Sunday mission committee, second Sunday, the trustees third Sunday and our teenagers on the fourth Sunday. And looking forward to that. And just so you know, all of the pickle candy candy was it cotton candy is gone. They ate the whole thing. There was one girl in particular who a more of it than anybody else. Avery. Yeah, so. And. And then somebody ran off with my monster energy drink. So if you see a teenager bouncing off the roof, you'll know which one it was. So I'm 24. If you've found your place, why don't you join me in standing in honor of reading God's Word Song 24 I'm so thrilled about last night and the way things went. That's all somebody's got to tell Brother Clarence this. I feel like I'm pretty well connected with, like, teen activities and. And what you could do. I never thought about doing real life clue, and so that was a great idea and glad that he was able to do that and thankful for all those of you that helped him. And some of you really went all out getting ready for your your characters. I did notice, though. I think it was Bo with Tracy singing on top of this. He turned my Longhorn sign upside down, which I can understand. But then he also turned my OSU sign upside down too. That is vindictive. I can accept one, but not the other. So at the end of the service will have a church disciplinary meeting and will take care of that. All right. So I'm 24. Bible says the Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world. And they that dwell there and you have founded it upon the seas, established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart. Who have not lifted up his soul in unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully. You shall receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of His salvation. This is the generation of them that seek him. That seek thy face. Oh, Jacob Selah. Lift up your eyes, your heads or your gates and be lift up your everlasting doors. The King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord. Strong and mighty. The Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads. Oh, ye gates. Even lift them up your everlasting doors. And the king of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts. He is the King of glory, Selah. Let's pray. God, I ask you to help us. Now, as we're looking to your word, I pray that you would speak to our hearts, that you would use me to convey your message, Lord, and that we would leave here encouraged by who you are, what you are offering to do for us. It's in Jesus name that I ask these things. Amen. It can be seen in. So one of the things we talked about with the teen agers was social media this this afternoon. And one of them asked, well, does YouTube count as social media? I said, Yeah, sure. So YouTube counts as social media. And I don't know what kind of YouTube videos you watch, but every once in a while I find myself going down a rabbit hole on YouTube. You know, I've been on one of those. These go from one video to the next video to the next video. Before you know it, 3 hours have gone by. And you don't even know what you've been doing. But have you ever watched Crashing Crash videos on YouTube? Like when a semi gets stuck on the train tracks and the train considering just plows right through that thing. I mean, it just looks like it's made of straw. You know, it just absolutely obliterates that that semi. Which is crazy because you can also watch videos of cars that get smashed by a semi truck, you know, and the semi truck plows into that little Hyundai or a Honda Civic or who knows some other little tiny car, maybe a Ford Focus. And it just absolutely demolishes it. And pieces are flying everywhere. Well, I hope there was a DUI in that when it crashed. That's a really crazy looking crash. You know, it's it causes destruction when a larger, almost unstoppable force meets a lesser, weaker item. And you can watch those videos and just be reminded of the force of those things. You can watch weather videos, you know, of storms like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and the destruction that is caused when a mighty force comes up against something that's weaker. Anybody see that video of the teenager driving the Chevy truck down near Fort Worth? Who drove into that tornado and that thing tossed that car around like a rag doll and then somehow it ended up back on its wheels and the kid just drove off. It's crazy. Did you hear that? There's a dealership that is going to be giving him a brand new 2022 Chevy Silverado. I mean, like a rock, right? That's one way you might get your truck replaced. It's Oklahoma. Just fine. Tornado and. Well, as I was studying this, I kept getting images of those videos in what I was reading, because in this psalm we see a a small, frail, incapable thing being that is coming up against a overwhelming source of power. And there just doesn't seem to be any way that this lesser being has any hope of surviving or or making it through or being successful when it comes to this greater force, this greater power that is coming up against it. And as I read it, in my opinion, we are that lesser, weaker being that has to do something, has to respond in some way to the fact that there is a god. We're not him. And he is way more powerful than you and I are infinitely more powerful than us. You know, you talk to kids about God, my God is so big, so strong and so mighty. I know this is in VBS, but you know the song and we think about God as being physically big. But it's not just that. Yes, God is everywhere, but God is also infinitely powerful. Beyond being infinitely powerful. He is also infinitely. Holy. Holy. Means he is other. Then he is different than us. His ways are what? Higher than ours. You and I try. But we cannot fathom beyond what God has revealed to us. He thinks the way he operates. If it wasn't for the Bible, we would be completely clueless about who God is and what He is capable of. And so just to give us kind of a glimpse, a taste of how great God is. David is some of David's starts in the first 3/1 two verses in detailing one of the works that God has accomplished. And it's a little thing. It only took him about a week. I mean, I've spent more time than that. On trying to build a Pine Derby race car. I mean, what is it now? It's been three weeks of me working on this thing. Not 24 hours a day, mind you, but. It's it's going on. I don't even know if I'm going to have anything to show for it. Is the thing even going to make it down the track, even though. But in one week, six days. David tells us about how God created everything we see. They may have been lying to me because I'm the preacher, the last two teenagers. Do you believe that God created the world? Yes. All right. Good. We'll talk more about it, get a little bit more in-depth. But he did everything we see was spoken into existence by God. It didn't evolve. He didn't he didn't even just take like a like a top and give it a good spin and take his hands off of it and say, good luck. I'm out of here. I've done my part. Oh, God. Not only created the world, he preserves the world. I talked about this morning how many of the basic functions of our body continue on without our knowledge and without our direct consent or our direct prompting? You know, even our bodies operate without our control, by and large. And so David says this. He says, The Earth is the Lord's. He owns it. Not only does he own the Earth, but he says also the fullness thereof, everything in it. Why does he own it? Because he he made it. There are a couple of ways you can come to own something. You can purchase something which, by the way, Jesus has done, but you can also own something because you made it. You built it. You raised it up out of nothing there. There was no there was nothing there. And because of your involvement, you caused it to come into being. And so now you own it. Some of you have done that with businesses. You had an idea for a business. There was nothing there before. And so you said, we're going to start this. You filed the paperwork and you created that business and you said, Well, what right do you have to own it? I own it because I made it. David says the earth is the Lord's the fullness thereof, because he made it. He has founded it, verse number two upon the seas and established it upon the floods. This is a very earth centric song. A lot of people think that the Bible is just some ephemeral thing that just floating around out here. And it's all like sparkles and clouds and harp noises and maybe some synthesizers. What? You know, it's just this thing that you can't touch. You can't do anything with it. But David's saying, no, no, no, no, let's just deal with this right here. This terra firma, this earth, this terrestrial life that we live. Everything we see made by God. The opposite. Everything that's there. In everything that dwells there in. Because he was the one who made it. How many species of plants and animals do you think live here on this earth? A lot. Yeah, that's a good answer. A thousand. Thousands. Well, yes, that that is technically true. Thousands. An exact number. You're right. Okay. So National Geographic says that the latest estimates is that there are over 8.7 million species of plants and animals. 8.7 million. Now, get this, because this is really blow your mind. Only 1.2 million have been identified. That's crazy. Out of 8.7, almost 9 million different species, we have only identified 1.2 million of these plants and animals. That means there is a whole lot of this earth we don't know anything about. But God does. He made it. He's the one who founded it. He made everything that exists, and he preserves it to this day. Anybody heard any stories about rising sea levels? Anybody. Okay. Yeah, me too. You know, the pre land earth was a watery, inhospitable place. Talks about the spirit of God moving over the face of the deep. And if you can just imagine the chaos and the violence of a of a sea that would cover the earth and would just be uncontrolled and just, you know, giant waves, nothing to break it up. And it is out of this chaos that God spoke land into existence. God spoke stability out of chaos. We're talking in our Sunday school class this morning. We started a new study. It's a it's a biographical study about a young lady who was who did not believe in God. She was a homosexual. And somehow, with no church background, God drew her to himself. And she talks about how she stole the book near Christianity from her classmate because she was interested in reading it. And she talks about the overwhelming change that took place in her life as the gospel began to take root into her soul and changed her from a personality steeped in chaos to a personality that found peace and stability in Jesus Christ. God is doing that has been doing that since day one. He's been taking chaos and bringing order. God wants to do that in every single one of our lives. God is so magnificent. He's so loving. He is so mighty. You and I can't even begin to imagine or fathom just how much he is. Because of the power God has displayed in the creation and then the preservation of the world. No man should approach the Lord lightly. He's not our homeboy. It's not, as somebody else said recently. The big man upstairs. He is Almighty God, the creator of the world, the judge of every man. He is not just pictured as the lamb that we will see a lot of come Easter. He is also the lion. Okay. I don't know about you, but I'll go up and I'll peddle. I'm not sticking my hand in the lion cage. Are you? No. You ever been to the Tulsa Zoo when those lions are roaring? That's a pretty scary sound. And I'm glad there's a big old moat between me and them. We're going to get close to the Lord. It has to be under his terms. It has to be with the utmost respect. And we have to realize and David talks about in verse number three, that there are requirements for those that which that wish to approach God. Now. It's interesting, he says, who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord or who shall stand in his holy place? This is a Jewish psalm. So when we talk about the hill of the Lord, the Holy Place, you should be thinking of Jerusalem and the temple. But if talking about Jerusalem and the temple, like we talked about this morning, who owns those things? God does. Okay. And so, yes, we are already on his property. Right. This is his property. No, it's not. The deed is in the name of the tabernacle. Or that Eddie James owned it. No, it's God's. It's always been God's and always will be God's. If we want to get to know, we want to grow closer to our landlord. There are some prerequisites. Is he only the righteous. Can come before the Lord can grow closer to God. The Bible says here in verse number four, who shall stand in his holy place? Well, it's it's he that hath clean hands and a pure heart who have not lifted up his soul under vanity nor sworn deceitfully. Well, it's been a whole lot of time on this, but you're going to grow closer to God. You can have a more intimate relationship with him. It's going to require clean hands. Clean hands refers to the things that we do. We've been talking about this on Sunday morning with the Sermon on the Mount. There are some things that we do that are displeasing to God, but it's not just clean hands. He also says you are also to have a what? Pure heart. So. So those are the things that the thoughts of our inner man we tell our kids in Sunday school junior church. One is that sin is anything we think, say or do that displeases God. So what David is saying is if you want to come before the Lord, your hands have to be clean. And your heart has to be clean. But not only that, because God is a Holy God, he also demands absolute not only purity but also absolute loyalty for those that will enter into his presence says that he cannot fellowship with those who have lifted up their hearts or offered their hearts to vanity. Um. We get wrapped up, we get consumed by a lot of vain activities. The only. Let's pick on the teenagers. And I don't think our teenagers, but there's probably a lot of teenagers who spend multiplied hours a day investing in the vanity of video games. All right. You guys probably know someone there addicted to their video games. Video games control their heart, and they're at school. That's what they're thinking about. That's what they're talking about. When they get home. They don't even care if they get to eat. They run straight in there to their video game system. They kick it on and that's what they're going to do for the night. You say, what about their homework? They don't care. Their grades are suffering. Their relationships are suffering. Because they're invested. They've offered their heart up to their video games. Lest we look down upon the teen agers for their youthful vanities. Let's not forget we have adult vanities as well. How many times do we as as men come home from work and, you know, we see our family for the first time and the whole day probably we do a quick hi. Maybe we sit down and we eat something or we go into the kitchen, we scoop out dinner under our plate, and then we go and we plop down on the couch and we're so, you know, fat. We just set the plate on our bellies. And we watched TV all night. And we're not investing in the relationships. We're not building anything spiritually worthwhile with our children or with our our spouses. We're just offering our hearts up to vanity. That says, look, I. This can't. This can't be. If you're any closer to me, you cannot be offering your heart up to vain things. He also says you cannot swear deceitfully. Hey, we heard about swearing recently. No. Well, we talked about it on Sunday morning that you were in junior church. So yeah, I mean, we just talked about it this morning, false promises saying to God, hey, Lord, I'm going to love you, I'm going to serve you. And then, like turning our back on it right away. How many times? Maybe if you didn't grow up, go to church camp. Maybe you can't relate to this. But I know I can't. How many times did I go to church camp and I'd go down to the front to pray after a message. I'd make all kinds of crazy promises to God. God, I promise you that I will not do this again when I go home. I'm going to change this. I'm never going to do it again. I get home and go right back to it. You know, sometimes I make those promises and I knew in my heart that I had no intention of keeping it. May I ask you this? Is there anyone in here that's capable of keeping their hands clean? Are you? Are you capable of maintaining a pure heart? The heart is sinful. It's desperately wicked. I can't. I can't keep my hands clean, much less my heart. Do I offer my heart up to manatees? Yeah, you betcha. Do I make promises? DECEITFULLY knowing full well I'm probably not going to keep it. Yes. How in the world am I supposed to draw close to the Lord? I want to get close to God and have a better relationship with him. But this says that I can't do it. This this says. My efforts are going to fail. You see, I feel like that that little compact car sputtering down the road, trying to get from point A to point B without getting crushed. Doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of hope. See. If a person could possess clean hands and a clean heart. They would find multiplied blessings that come from being in God's presence. God's presence is a wonderful place. I mean, worship is coming and enjoying the presence of God, recognizing that He is worthy of our honor and of our obedience and of our love. It is important for us to spend time in worship. We would find the blessings of God. June else we find in the presence of the Lord. Bible says that we find righteousness from the God of his speaking of the the human of my salvation. I want to come back to that in a little bit, but I want to point out to you that he he gives the this is the the center of the song. Okay. This part right here. Righteousness from the god of his salvation. And David goes on, he says, This is the generation of them that seek him and seek thy face. Oh, Jacob. Now look at verse number seven. We've talked about. The compact car, the sputtering little thing that doesn't even seem like it's going to make it. But in version number seven, we're introduced introduced to the Mack truck were introduced to the steam engine that is barreling through town. You see, the Bible says, lift your heads or ye gates and B Lift up the everlasting doors and the king of glory shall come in. Is the truck. Whose? The train. It's God. God is coming. There is nothing that anybody can do to stop him. The gates and doors better take notice of his coming or they will face some serious consequences. They're going to be blown apart. That train plows through. See, the only part of creation that doesn't respond with acceptance to the approach of the king is humanity. The only part of creation that God has has put on this earth that doesn't respond to the king's approach is humanity. Everything else, battles before everything else succumbs to his will. Jesus spent most of his public ministry proving his power and authority over all of creation. Sickness. Sickness does what Jesus says the weather does what Jesus says. Demons. They do what Jesus says. Humanity. That's where the stubbornness comes in. That's where the rebellion exists. David says that this King of Glory, verse number eight, is the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. The the picture that we're supposed to see here is the children of Israel coming back with the Ark of the Covenant, leading the procession. They've just been in battle and they've won a great victory. They were completely outnumbered. I was reading Leviticus or note numbers I don't remember. This past week it talked about when they went in, if they would serve God, one would be 25 would be the 100. That's pretty good odds, you know. I mean, if it's 20 to 1, you can be really outnumbered and still expect to win when God's on your side. And so they're supposed to be coming in. You can imagine the celebration, the victory celebration, how like when a team wins, wins the championship and they come home, they have the parade and everyone's shouting and throwing paper in the air and there's celebrations and dancing and music. And that's the image that we're supposed to see of God entering into the city. Open up all the gates. Get everything out of the way. Don't let anyone stand in the way or oppose the king returning. He is strong. He is mighty. He is unbeaten in battle. He always wins. Who is it? I can receive such claim. It is the Lord of hosts. Who is this king of glory? The Lord of hosts. He is the King of glory. See the thing about this? Okay. So. There's a picture. US. Small, weak, frail, imperfect God. Strong, mighty, always victorious. We're over here saying, I want to be with him. I'll be on his team. Well as a youth pastor who saw his get frustrated for this reason with teenagers. The only thing that is not. Super Bowl time. Of course, as a youth pastor, patriots were winning. Every year it seemed like. And every year there be more and more Patriots fans. But you're not a Patriots fan. Yes, I am. I've always like Tom Brady. No, you haven't. Last year you were wearing a Seahawks jersey. Though I've always been a Patriots fan. You know what they're doing. They're saying, hey, I want to be on his team. I want to root for him because he's a winner. Only weirdos. We root for the losers. Like a cowboy fan, right? Is he talking about Dallas or Oklahoma State? Sure. Whatever. It is natural for us to be on the winning side. And so here we are, small and then little, and we see God and He's coming and he's going to win. So we said, I want to be on his team. Right. That's a right thing for us to say. I want to be on his side. I want to go grow closer to him. If he's going to win every battle, let me be with him. We've got to have clean hands. We got to have a pure heart. And we can't give our heart over to vanity. We can't make these false swearing. So what hope do we have? If I have to meet these expectations in order to be on his team. It doesn't seem like I have any hope. His approach is unstoppable. He will come. And anyone that stands in his way will be judged. Go back to first number five. You see, there is a blessing that comes from the Lord and there is righteousness that is available from who? God. This is what we've been really focusing on, not because I'm looking for it. It's just it's there. Our righteousness is not our own. I clean hands are not because of me. My pure heart doesn't come because of me. I can't clean myself up enough to be worthy of being on his team. Can you? Oh. But can we receive his righteousness? Can he make us clean? Yes, he can. Jesus hasn't even come yet. And this was written. And yet we see David talking about the righteousness from the God of my salvation. Salvation is available to all of us. You know what's great is when we realized that, you know, maybe as a kid you got saved. Maybe it was as a child, you accepted Jesus Christ as your savior. Then His blood washed away all of your sins, every sin you'd ever committed, and everything you ever would commit. When Jesus died on the cross, how many of your sins were still in the future? All of them. None of you are old enough to have been there. All of your sins. We're still in the future. And so Jesus says, just as capable of forgiving sins in the past as he is sins in the future. And so all of your sins are wiped clean. And then not only is there the negative aspect of taking your sin away. It's not that over. But then there's the positive aspect of him giving you his righteousness. So now you can say I have the righteousness of God who is my salvation. I get to come over here on his team. Whose team is he? Well, he's the Lord, strong and mighty. I'm with him. He's he's the God who always wins. He is mighty in that. I'm with him. Have you ever been somewhere? And you were glad you were with somebody else? We were in a in a store or something, you felt kind of exposed. Maybe you felt a little out of place, but you had some friends with you who are a lot more intimidating than you. And you're like, I'm with them. I'm with him. He's the king of glory. He is the God who. Brings stability from chaos. My life's a mess. My life is just absolute chaos. Well, are you with him? Because he's already proved he can bring stability out of chaos if he can do it for the world. I just think you can do it in your life. You know, we've talked about. The orientation, disorientation, reorientation. I think what David is writing from here, he's writing from an experience of I've been at battle and I have found that God gives the victory. Now I'm going to move forward in the confidence that comes from knowing I'm on God's team. It's almost like you take that semi truck or that train in Lorton, Virginia, where we used to live. Jerry, I don't know if you ever watched the the auto train that was there. And I took our pastor down there one time. He was going to he was going to get on this train and he was going to ride it all the way down to Florida. And so what you do is you drive your car up onto the train, and then you get to just ride to wherever you're going. And when you get there, you have your car. You don't have to rent a car or anything like that. And so, you know, you think about if that car was to be hit by that train, it would be destroyed. I mean, it's just a little Ford Taurus. It's not going to hold up. That car riding on that train. What happens if a car gets in the way then? Does the Ford Taurus contain any damage? No. That train is going to plow right through. Why? Because that car has attached itself to a more powerful form of transportation. When you get saved, it's like riding the auto train. We take our little podunk life. We loaded up onto the train. His God as he is barreling through winning victory after victory after victory as as obstacle after obstacle is getting out of the way for him. That's what he's talking about. In verse number seven, lift up your head. So you gates b, lift up your everlasting doors. Get out of the way. God's coming. I'm on his team. I get to ride with him. That's pretty cool. I don't know what you're going to face this week. Maybe some gates. In your way. There might be some doors that seem to be everlasting. They're not going to change. It's just always going to be this way. We're always going to have this obstacle to face. But when you're writing with God. Is greater than all those obstacles. They have to move out of his way. Last Wednesday, we talked about being a fearless church. We're with God and we're serving him. What do we have to be afraid of? What can separate us from his love. Nothing. What is greater than our God? Nothing. Are you on the Lord's side? Tonight. Have you received his righteousness in your life? Exchanged your sin for his righteousness. Jesus can do that for you. Everything about Jesus and what He offers is better than what the world offers. It's better than what you can do for yourself. Get on the Lord's side. See how he helps you get the victory in your life. Let's pray there. Really, Father? Thank you for this day. Thank you for the time that we've been able to spend here in the Book of Psalms. Thank you for Song 24 and the encouragement it provides us. Thank you that you are the King of glory. She's strong and mighty. God, you have made a way for us to be on your team, to be on your side. You've offered to clean our hands and our heart, to give us forgiveness and righteousness. Lord, I pray that we would realize the. The benefits of. Walking and being with you. Or pray for those who have obstacles in their way this week, challenges that they will face in their family were at work, at school, their personal lives, whatever the case may be. God, I pray that you would help them to. Experience the victory that you have already won for them. Not that they would reckon it to be true in their lives. We're afraid that we'll be encouraged tonight because of who you are in Jesus name. I ask these things. Amen.

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