King of Glory

DEVOTION

PSALMS

KING OF GLORY

 Ps 24

The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; 2 for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.

3 Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.   5 He will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from God his Savior. 6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob. Selah 

7 Lift up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. 8 Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle. 9 Lift up your heads, O you gates ;lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. 10 Who is he, this King of glory? The LORD Almighty — he is the King of glory.

NIV

Once again we are assured that God established everything on this earth and it all is his. We do not own it but are but tenents who have been given authority to take care of it for him. Now, we do not pay rent as such, but nevertheless we are but renters. In fact because we live on this world we belong to him. That includes everyone, even those who refuse to acknowledge him at this time, and they still belong to him. This implies some very explicit truth. God can do with his creation anything he desires to do. He is the supreme owner of all that is. He can decide to do whatever he wants and we have absolutely no say in the matter unless he gives us that say. This was shown to us in the example of his decision to destroy all the people and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He first revealed his plan to Abraham who moved God to save Lot and his family. Had God not revealed his plan to Abraham no one would have had any say in the matter, God would have just done it. All too often we think the purpose of our prayers is to move God. Although he has given us that option, he has revealed to us that if we ask him, in the name of Jesus, he will answer us. Jesus said that whatever we ask of him, he would give it to us. But if we think about this, we can see that our prayers should be more about moving us into the will of God rather than moving God into our will. God does not come to stand on our unholy hill, but the question is who is qualified to ascend up to his holy hill? The question is who can stand in his holy place? He gives us the answer to those questions. It has nothing to do with him moving, but has everything to do with us moving up to his holy hill and standing in his holy place. We must have clean hands and a pure heart if we are going to move and live in his holy place. He also makes one more qualification for us. We cannot lift up our soul to idols. This has so much ramifications about making things of this world an idol, even the world itself. We are not to worship the things God made, but the maker of the things. There are so many who worship the world, who make it their idol, or the things in the world. The lovers of nature, who protest over whose use it for their purpose or the purpose of mankind. There are those who protest the use of energy, although God has provided it for our use. Other protest about the heat we cause by living, because we will destroy the planet. Some worship personal things, such as education, success or wealth and power. But they do not worship God, they cannot move into his holy place. But if we have clean hands and a pure heart, that is not a divided heart, but a pure heart for God, for only him, we will receive blessings from him. We will receive vindication, or as the Hebrew word means, righteousness from our God and Savior. This bears out in the fact that Jesus is our righteousness. In order for all this to be true in our lives we need to seek the Lord, seek the face of God, declaring his authority in our lives. We must open the gate of our heart and allow the King of Glory to come in. We need to lift up those ancient doors, all the things of our heart that we have held onto for so long and let the King of Glory enter and take possession of our ancient heart, allowing him to make everything new. We must allow him to clean our hands, purify our hearts as fine gold. We must let go and let God, the King of Glory.