When we read these words, there
can be no doubt that this psalm, as does the entirety of Scripture,
speak of, declare, and proclaim the Lord of glory, the Lord Jesus
Christ. He is the creator, sustainer,
and consummator of all that is. And He is the subject and substance
of history and time. The world and all that is would
not only not exist and continue apart from Him, but the world
would have no relevance. The world would have no purpose.
Nor would there be an explanation for the world for even existing
apart from Jesus Christ. Human history is but a display
of the value, the worth, and the excellency of this person
and his work and what has ever happened Whatever will happen,
whatever is recorded or unrecorded, is all for the purpose of bringing
glory and honor to that worthy name that is above every name,
the chiefest among 10,000, the lily of the valley, the rose
of Sharon, the Lord Jesus Christ. And David employed his poet's
pen here, the pen of a ready writer, And his heart, when he
was writing, was fixed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, a vision,
if you will, of Christ and his people, the people that he saved
from their sin, and that's why he was named what he was named.
This is a psalm of David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, but
it is inspired by God. For all scriptures given by inspiration
of God, it is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction,
and instruction. that the man of God might be
truly furnished in all good works. Who is David? David was God's
chosen king. God's king. Now God promised
back in early in Deuteronomy that He would give the people
a king. They decided not to wait on God and have their own king.
And so they raised up the tallest guy in Israel, the handsomest
guy in Israel, and they made him king Saul. It didn't turn
out very well. God chose a shepherd boy, the
last and the least of Jesse's son. And He chose him to be a
man after His own heart, the apple of His eye. Typically,
David inhabited a throne that looked forward to the throne
that would be rightfully inhabited by the King of Kings, the Lord
Jesus Christ. At His birth, it is said, He
shall be great. And shall be called the Son of
the Highest. The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His
father David. And He shall reign over the house
of Jacob. Remember that name, Jacob. Forever
and ever and of His kingdom there shall be no end. That was the
promise at His birth. This is the description of God,
the Lord Jesus Christ and His people. And this King is said
here to be a sovereign King. A sovereign King. His subjects
are under His absolute sway and He rules over them with such.
It simply says, the earth is the Lord's. The earth is the
Lord's, and the fullness thereof, the world, and they that dwell
therein. That pretty much covers it from
pole to pole, from Alpha to Omega. As sovereign Lord, His domain
knows no bounds, nor His reign is ever restricted or frustrated
in any way. The earth is His. What you walk
on and you call terra firma is his. He made it. Therefore, he
owns it and possesses it. He sets all things in order.
He put his laws of nature in order for it to be self-sustaining.
And the earth will last till it has served its purpose, and
then he will be done with it. And that's as simple as that.
Men may mark their borders, erect fences, put up no trespassing
signs. And in time, wars and famine,
greed and avarice will change the lines from generation to
generation, all according to his predestinated purpose. I
love to look at old maps, really old maps, back in the 1100s and
such, and see the lines that were drawn by men. I like to
look at the early maps of the United States and see the lines
that were drawn by men. North Carolina stretches all
the way over halfway across the United States on those early
maps. Men draw their borders, but they don't last very long,
but they're all according to God's predestinated purpose.
And all showing that though the earth was made for man, it is
actually the property of no man. The earth is the Lord's by sovereign
rights of creation. It simply says the earth is the
Lord's. Then it speaks of the world,
and that speaks of the universe. of which the Earth is a speck
of dust in the dust bunny called the Milky Way. That's what we
are, a speck of dust in another spray of dust. And that Milky
Way is in something called a supercluster, and it can hardly be found, like
a little shiny spot in the supercluster. And that supercluster remains,
ranks tiny among the other five known superclusters. All that
vastness, scripture says, was created in the span of God's
hand. Now we know God, the Spirit,
has no hand. That speaks of His greatness.
He moves and manipulates things with His fingers, Scripture says.
It's like stirring things up. Made in Spain. And it is His
world and His universe. And no telescope, no spaceship
can bridge the breadth of it. And it is the Lord's. The universe is the Lord's. We sing that, O Him, this is
my Father's Word. Most folks, even religious folks,
have no problem with the aspect of God's sovereignty over the
universe, especially in times when they are providentially
challenged to realize that they have no say-so in whatever happens
in this world. But this verse also declares
that something about all the people that inhabit the earth.
It says they that dwell therein are His also. Now you fall and
I fall among that group as does all the billions who inhabit
the earth today and ever have inhabited the earth. They belong
to the Lord. They're His. I like the way that's
worded. It doesn't say they belong to
the Lord. It says they're His. They're His. I remember a kid
Disney cartoon. I think it was the one about
the little fish trying to find his mother. And they had these
seagulls. And every time somebody would
drop a fridge fry or something on the ground, the seagulls would
say, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. Well, that's what
the Lord says about His earth. It's mine. Not yours. Not mine, or rather it is his. All that dwell therein, they
are his and they operate within the pale and structure of his
absolute rule. All humanity does. We fancy ourselves
independent, but we are property. That's what we are. Owned and
operated. and they are employed by their
proprietor as he deems fit. He doesn't ask. The other night
when I sat with Ethel after she had lost her husband, the next day I was talking with
Joy and I said, you know, God doesn't ask us about His providence.
We probably wouldn't agree. I'm sure if He'd ask Ethel, Ethel,
it's time to take your husband, Charles, she'd say, no, not now. Please, not now. God don't operate
like that. But He operates best and for
our good and for His glory. My brother, my young brother,
had no interest. Though he had been raised under
the true gospel, he had no real interest in it. When my father died, my mother
had nobody to take her to church. So my young brother said, I'll
take her to church. And so he began to go into church,
and the Lord saved him. And I was outside one evening
with my brother, and I said, if God had asked you, he said,
oh, take Daddy, what would you have said at the time? He said,
I probably wouldn't have liked the idea. I said, I didn't like
it either. But now daddy rejoices in heaven
over one sinner that repents. You're saved because daddy died. His death brought you under the
gospel. What a thing. God rules. You got a problem
with that? Not me. I like the way he rules. In Scripture they are called
many things. These inhabitants of the universe, they are His.
They are called sheep and they are called goats. Some are called
vessels of honor and others are called vessels of dishonor. Some
are called vessels of glory and some are called vessels made
to destroy. But they're His. They are the
Lord's and they are residing and moving and having their being
explicitly under His complete authority. And His authority
is there as the mediator to be used in the grand scheme of giving
eternal life to as many as the Father has given Him in the covenant
of grace. Everyone serves that purpose. Everyone. Whether you love Him
or hate Him. Whether you despise Him or cherish
Him. You serve the purpose. Because
Christ has been given authority over all flesh, that He might
give eternal life to as many as God has given Him. Says of
this earth, this world, He has founded it upon the seas and
established it among the floods. This not only talks about the
geography of the earth, for God has set it up. It is according
to His hand. But being founded upon the flood
and the seas suggests natural instability. We may think the
world is stable, but I was talking with David Bird not long ago
on Facebook and he said he was standing on the streets of Japan
and all of a sudden his feet almost went out from under him.
Now people carry around earthquake alarms that they wear. I don't
know whether they're bracelets or whatever they are, but his
earthquake alarm went off in his pocket or something. And
he knew it was not a very stable thing. Did you watch as the Tsunami
hit Indonesia and the tsunami hit Japan. Did you notice how
unstable the world is? How prepared man was? He had
raised a 40-foot wall to protect those towns in northern Japan. And had the wall stood where
it was supposed to, it would have protected them. But when
that great shift of continental shift happened down underneath
the ocean, miles away from Japan, that wall dropped two feet. And the water was 40 feet high,
and now the wall was only 38 feet high. He established this
upon the floods. And what that teaches us, that
for the world to consist, it requires the upholding hand of
the Almighty. It says of Christ in Colossians
1, He is before all things, and by Him all things consist or
are held together. This is the description of our
sovereign Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. And seeing who He is,
the description given of His person, the question is reasonably
asked, who can approach Him? He's the sovereign Lord. Who
can go into His presence? Who can mount up His hill? Who shall ascend to the hill
of the Lord, it says in verse 3. Who shall ascend into the
hill of the Lord and who shall stand in His holy place or His
holy presence. What is His hill? His hill is
Zion. His holy place is the city whose
builder and maker is God, the new Jerusalem, the bride of Christ,
the temple of God, the church. The key word to understand here
is the word ascend. Who shall ascend? that immediately
narrows the scope of qualification to just one person out of all
the earth's billions. You see, ascendancy is only applied
to our Lord in Scripture as the peculiar and particular result
of His finished work. Some men will enter glory, all
whom God has died for, all whom Christ has saved. Some men will
enter glory, but they will not enter by ascendancy. They will
not enter by ascendancy. They will be caught up or translated
or carried, but they will not ascend. Christ alone has the
rights of ascendancy because He alone earned that right as
the only true human being that ever had a real, actual, true
success story in all of the history of humanity. He has a right to
heaven because He earned that right as a human being. The one
who can and has ascended did so because he alone met the qualifications
for doing so. The qualifications he met are
described in verse 4. He that has clean hands, he can
ascend, and a pure heart who has not lifted up his soul to
vanity nor sworn deceitfully. Now it doesn't require us a stretch
of the imagination to realize that not one of these things
can be found on our resume. All these things should be followed
after our name with the word not. with the word not. I don't have clean hands. I don't
have a pure heart. I have lifted my soul up to vanity.
I have sworn deceitfully. All men are liars and God is
true. Even the Scriptures say, Lord, if thou should mark iniquity,
O Lord, who should stand? Who shall stand in His holy place?
Nobody can if iniquity is marked. This One who stands there now
and sits there now in His right hand must have no iniquity whatsoever.
And the words of verse 4 may apply only to Him who knew no
sin, to Him who is without sin, the spotless Lamb of God, the
Lord of hosts as He's described here. Then we have these two
interesting verses sort of popped in here in verses 5 and 6. It
says, He 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. And O Jacob is not the
one that's being sought, but the one that's being addressed,
that seek His face, O Jacob, O Jacob. Right here in the middle
of this description of our Savior are two verses that speak of
and to one called Jacob. Remember it said of him in that
promise of his birth, he shall reign over the house of Jacob.
Jacob. What is Jacob? Who is Jacob? Jacob is an all-inclusive term
that designs and describes the elect of God, but in a particular
way. The Old Testament is rife with
references of our Lord. excuse me, being Jacob's Redeemer.
And God is often referenced as the God of Jacob. Even our Lord
referenced Him as the God of Jacob. Now this assures us of
something. It assures us of the fact that
the Lord came into the world to save sinners. That's what
it assures us of. Jacob was a supplanter. His name means that, a thief
or a supplanter. And so bent to thievery, He stole
what was already his, his birthright. He couldn't wait on to get it,
so he stole it from Esau for a bowl of pottage. He was a liar. Lied about his father. Lied to
Esau. Lied to Esau many times. And he was chosen of God. Chosen
of God. for the children, not being yet
born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose
of God according to election might stand. He said, the elder
Esau shall serve the younger. Jacob have I loved, and Esau
have I hated. The elect, who are they? They're all Jacob's. What's going
to happen to them? They shall receive the blessing
from the Lord. That's what he said. They shall receive the
blessing from the Lord. Scripture said, Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in Christ, according as He has chosen us
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy
without blame, but for Him in love, having predestinated us
to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself, to
the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made us
accepted in the Beloved. They, these Jacob's all, shall
receive righteousness from God. They'll receive righteousness
from God. They'll have to receive it from Him if they're going
to get any because they have none of their own. Their righteousnesses
are as filthy rags. They are elect. They are as sheep.
The church and those whom God has made Christ to be under them,
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. God has imputed
perfect righteousness to them, has made them righteous in Jesus
Christ, and the Lord is their righteousness. Oh, Jacob, you
snake, you supplanter, you thief, you liar, you mama's boy. I'm going to give you righteousness.
I'm going to make you righteous. I'm going to give you peace. I'm going to bless you with the
blessing of God. It says they are the generation
that seek Him, that seek Him, that seek Thy face, O Jacob. Scripture says, For God who commanded
the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Scripture says, And ye shall
seek Me. God says this to His people,
His elect. Ye shall seek Me. And shall find me when ye search
for me with your whole heart. You will notice that this is
not as men say it today. They say, if you seek me. But
there's no if here. It's when he says, you shall
seek me. And when you seek me, they're
going to seek him. This is the generation. What
generation? They're called the elect of God. There are a whole
lot of ideas about the Word that ends this short passage here
in verse 6, Selah. There are too numerous, in fact,
to mention. If you have commentaries, you
can read all of them, and I guarantee you're going to have about, for
every commentary, you're going to have a view about what this
word Selah means. But a lot of times when a word
is placed in Scripture, I just look at it where it's placed,
and usually what it does to me is kind of what it means to me.
And generally, when the word Selah is placed in Scripture,
when I look back at what precedes it, it's kind of a wondrous statement. Kind of an amazing thing that
God has said, Selah, Selah. And I think, at least to me,
it means to ponder, to meditate, to masticate, to chew the cud,
to ponder in wonder. We will when we realize that
verses 4 through 6 are tied together. that five and six do not stand
alone but are tied to them that he hath clean hands and a pure
heart who hath not lifted up his soul into vanity nor sworn
deceitfully. All of a sudden these are tied
together. These are tied together. That to me is something to masticate.
That's something to chew on, to think about, to cough up and
chew some more. Selah. Because of the substitutionary,
successful, propitiatory work of the Lord Jesus Christ, these
blessed accolades pronounced upon Christ in verse 4, that fit Christ alone, are applied
to Jacob, to every son of Adam saved by
grace. where He was made to be sin for
us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in Him. And I know we don't want to talk about being fit
for heaven because naturally we are not so, but our Lord says
His people are. In Colossians chapter 1 and verse
12 it says, giving thanks unto God which has made us meet or
suitable to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in
life. With Christ's holy garments on, the old poet said, we're
as holy as God's own Son. So when we read the word Jacob,
we can say this of him because of the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He hath clean hands. He hath a pure heart. He hath
not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully, all because
God has justified him. And when he is justified, he
is considered to have never sinned ever in this world. And the assurance
of that wondrous truth is seen in the reception of our Lord,
who is our forerunner into that happy place, entered for us as
He ascends to the throne He so richly deserves, and us with
Him, us Jacobs, to sit in heavenly places in Jesus Christ. It says, lift up your heads,
O ye gates, and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors, and the
King of Glory shall come in. Who is? Don't you want to know? Who is this King of Glory? Who is He? Lift up your heads,
O ye gates, and lift up ye everlasting doors. Gates and doors address
entrances And if they are told to be lifted up, it means that
they were shut down. That entrance was not allowed
until this one came in. Until this one came in. Adam
was the crown of God's creation, but a mutable creature. And he
mutated the only way he could, because if he was the top of
the line, if he mutated, it has to be a downward mutation. Adam
could not be better than what he was, because he was the best
God made, as far as humanity is concerned. So he mutated downward
into fear and loss of seeing. And paradise was closed to him.
He was driven out of the garden. Thankfully he left with the gospel
because he taught Cain and Abel what the gospel was, though one
obeyed and one did not. But paradise was closed to him.
He was driven out. But at the door of the garden,
on the eastern place, was placed a flaming sword. that hovered
over an altar with winged cherubim facing each other. And they were
there. That altar was there. That place
was blocked there to keep the way of the tree of life. To keep
the way of the tree of life. Now neither Adam nor any that
proceeded from his loins could ever enter there. His hands were
unclean, his heart was not pure, he had lifted up his soul to
vanity and swore deceitfully. He could, however, hope. And God gave him that. For God
had said he could approach typically through the blood of a substitute,
the blood of a lamb. But for him, the door was closed,
the gate unlifted. But Christ, when He entered in
once into the holy place, had offered His own blood and had
paid eternal redemption for His people. But Christ, the God-Man,
the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Tree of Life, the Door, the
Substitute, and the Substantial, Effectual Substitute, He ascends
by rites of ascendancy. The clouds opened up and He just
lifted up and away He went. And they all stood there and
said, why are you standing here? He's going to come back the same
way he came, the same way he went. Let's start preaching this
gospel, man. We've seen something. We've seen
a man who walked among us for 33 to 35 years. A man who has
suffered all the pains and anguish of humanity. The man who was
tempted in all points like we are, yet without seeing the man.
There's a man in glory. And that man has split the clouds
and ascended. of royal ascension. The King,
the Prince of Peace is King of Kings and now he ascends to the
throne of glory. And the gates hear a shout. Open up, lift up the everlasting
doors Those that have held men from eternity now usher men into
eternity. Open up. The King of Glory is
coming in. The King of Glory. And with divine
redundancy. And with a blessed doubling up,
a question is asked and answered twice. Who is this King of Glory? It's a question you need to answer. Every one of us must answer.
For you see, eternal life is knowing the true and living God,
who He is, what He's done, where He is now, why He came. All these things are necessary.
But first of all, you must know who He is. Who is this King of
glory? The answer is He is the Lord
strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. By strength and might
He is conquered and still is to conquer. He has bruised the
serpent's head. He has bound the strong man and
taken his spoils. He has conquered sin and death.
Sin had reigned, you see, from Adam. Sin had reigned unto death,
but now grace reigns through righteousness by Jesus Christ.
This is the King of Glory. This is the king of glory. Back
when Isaiah was looking forward to seeing him, seeing this vision
that God gave him. The question came in Isaiah chapter
63 in verse 1 through 4. Who is he? Or who is this that
cometh from Edom? Red dirt man. That's what Edom
means. Who is this that cometh from
Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious
in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength.
And he says, I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save,
wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like
him that treadeth the wine vat? And he says, I have trodden the
winepress alone, and of the people there was none with me. For I
will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury,
and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments. And I will
stay in all my raiment, for the day of vengeance is in my heart,
and the year of my redeemed is come." Who is this King of Glory? When most men talk about Him
today, they don't talk about Him in those terms. Oh, they
may call Him Lord, but generally that's just as an idea of availability
of some spigot of blessings that they can turn on when they want
to and get what they need. Who is this King of Glory? He's
strong and mighty in battle, and He's already won the war.
He's already coming in victory. Lift up your heads. O ye gates,
even lift them up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory
shall come in, it says again. Who is this King of Glory? He's the Lord of hosts. King of kings, He's called, and
Lord of lords in Scripture. John saw Him and said, The Lord
God, omnipotent, reigneth. The saints cried out, We thank
Thee, O Lord, that Thou hast taken Thy power unto Thyself
and has reigned. He's called the blessed and only
potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Who is this
King of glory? Who is this King of glory? The
Lord of hosts. He's the King of glory. Selah. Ponder that. Father, bless us
to understand and pray in Christ's name.