📖 The Book of Psalms — Unit 3: Psalm 24, The King of Glory

1. David Brings the Ark to Jerusalem

The story behind this psalm is given to us in 2 Samuel chapter 6 — the story of King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant up to the city of Jerusalem. Ever since Moses, the ark had represented the presence of God in the midst of His people. During the wars with the Philistines it had been captured, then returned, and for some twenty years it had been kept in the house of a man named Abinadab. Now David had been made king over all Israel, had captured the Jebusite town we call Jerusalem, and wanted his new capital to be not only the political center of the kingdom but its worship center as well. So he set out to bring the ark home.

The story is one of trial and error. The first attempt failed. The ark was being hauled on an ox cart when the oxen stumbled, and a man named Uzzah reached out to steady it and died on the spot. David was both angry and afraid, and the mission stopped right there; the ark was taken to the house of Obed-Edom, where the LORD blessed him for three months. The second attempt succeeded. This time David and the whole house of Israel brought the ark up with shouts and trumpets, and David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might. For this occasion David wrote a hymn to be sung as the ark came up — Psalm 24.

2. The One Great Question

Within these short ten verses there are two important questions, and the most important of them is this one, asked twice: "Who is this King of glory?" The psalm answers it three ways — He is the Owner of the earth, He is the Judge who decides who may stand in His holy place, and He is "the LORD strong and mighty." David answers his own question by showing us the King's World, the King's Worship, and the King's Welcome. If we will follow him through all three, we will learn how to welcome our King.

3. The King's World

The first answer is that this King owns everything. "The earth is the LORD's, and all its fullness." God is not some good-luck charm we carry in our pocket to ward off trouble and guarantee success. He is the Owner of all things and all people. He created the earth, gathered the seas, formed the dry land, and as its Creator He knows what blessings He wants to give and how and when He wants to give them. Sometimes people get the idea that mankind has been handed the earth to do with as we please. But we are not the owners of the earth; we are only the tenant farmers, caring for the land for the Owner. Whatever we do, we are like servants who are accountable to the Master for how we treat His property. Joseph was a steward of Potiphar's house, and he was faithful in it.

Jesus told of an owner who planted a vineyard, built a wall and a watchtower to guard it, and dug a winepress, then rented it out to tenant farmers (Matthew 21:33). Bill Carlson wrote a whole book, The Sharecropper, on this idea. A sharecropper is a tenant who works land he does not own; the landowner buys the seed, the tools, the stock, and the worker gets a share of the crop. We are like that before God. He owns everything and cares for us. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:7, "we brought nothing into the world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." When we need anything, we simply turn to God, who was here long before we came and will be here long after we are gone.

4. Stealing What Belongs to God

Our number-one responsibility as His tenant farmers is to tell other people about the Lord. But there is a sober warning attached to forgetting whose world this is. Do you remember the story of Achan? When the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, Achan saw in the ruins a beautiful robe from Babylon, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold, and he coveted them, took them, and hid them in the ground under his tent (Joshua 7). Israel then lost the next battle, because someone had taken what belonged to God. The Lord told Joshua that Israel had sinned, and the guilty party was found out, tribe by tribe and family by family, until Achan was taken. He confessed, and he and his household were stoned to death.

Why such a harsh penalty? Because the things Achan took belonged to God. He had stolen from God Himself. If the world is the Lord's, then to grasp it for ourselves as though we were the owners is no small thing. And the lesson runs the other way too: if the world is the Lord's, then He is worthy of our worship. That brings us to the second answer.

5. The King's Worship

God is holy, and He expects us to approach Him in holiness. David had apparently prepared the Levites for the task of carrying the ark, but he had learned during that first, failed attempt that holiness could not be taken lightly — that was part of the explanation for Uzzah's death. Clean hands and a pure heart are the password at the door. When the wise men saw His star in the east, they came to worship Him. When a woman who had lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she came with an alabaster jar of perfume, stood behind Him weeping, wet His feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, and poured the perfume on Him. That woman came to worship Jesus. Worship is the response of a clean heart to a holy King.

6. The King's Worship: Revival in the Hebrides

In the Hebrides Islands of Scotland, two elderly sisters, one eighty-four and the other eighty-two, had sought the face of God for revival for many years. Faith had reached a low point in their country. They claimed God's promise, "I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground" (Isaiah 44:3), and convinced their pastor that the people should ask God to quicken their hearts. He and a handful of men gathered in a barn to pray, three nights a week, month after month, with no results. Then one night a young deacon rose from his knees and read Psalm 24: "Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? … He who has clean hands and a pure heart." He said, "Brethren, we have been praying for months for revival, but I would like to ask: are our hearts clean? Is the heart pure?" In response they fell on their faces in confession and rededication and began to pray even more earnestly. By five o'clock that morning revival had come; the barn was filled with the glory of God, and the power that was let loose shook the whole community. The Lord brought to them the very man He was going to use — the Rev. Duncan Campbell. Within weeks the whole island was filled with a God-consciousness; churches overflowed; people who could not sleep came to church in the middle of the night to get right with God. In that Scottish community, not a home was left without someone coming to Christ.

7. The King's Welcome

At the end of the psalm, God is described as the King of glory, "the LORD strong and mighty." Inside the Ark of the Covenant were kept the Ten Commandments — all of which God's people had broken. But over those tablets of stone God had placed a cover, called the Mercy Seat. Every year, on the Great Day of Atonement, the High Priest would sacrifice a goat and sprinkle its blood upon that Mercy Seat. By means of that blood, the people's sins were hidden from God's eyes; the Lord did not see the broken commandments. Imagine what it meant to have that same ark go ahead of them into every battle — the Lord of free and faithful grace, who did not count their sins against them, marching on their side. God's great glory was best seen in the way He used His might on behalf of sinners. As David led the ark into Jerusalem, he wanted the city's gates opened as high and wide as they could possibly go, to take in every bit of God's glory.

8. No Room for the King

The tragedy is that this glorious King is so often turned away. There was no room for Jesus at His birth. The Bethlehem innkeeper was not hostile and not opposed; his inn was simply crowded and his mind preoccupied. That is the answer millions give today. Their response to Christ is not atheism and not defiance; it is preoccupation — the feeling of being able to get on reasonably well without Him, every room in the heart already taken up by other crowding interests. There was no room for Jesus by His family or His nation either; He said, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head" (Matthew 8:20). One place always welcomed Him — the home in Bethany where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived.

So David's psalm urges all of us: welcome your King. Seek His blessing and see His glory. Lift up the gates of your heart as high and wide as they will go, and let the King of glory come in.

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