Psalm 24 // The Stories Behind The Psalms

Welcome to the Movement Church Podcast. We want you to know that God is

for you and so are we. You're about to hear a sermon from one

of our weekend services in Palmer Lake, Colorado. We pray that your faith

is provoked, your mind is renewed, and your heart is awakened as you

engage the Word of God. Stay tuned. That's the message for ways to

get connected with us. God bless you. Thanks for tuning in. We

are starting a new series called The Stories behind the Psalms, and so to

start, let's read Psalm twenty four. I'll be reading in the NLT.

If you want to follow along, it'll be on the screen as well.

David, this, he says, 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 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 swear deceitfully, he will receive blessing from

the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation

of those who seek him, who seek the face of the 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 invincible 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 the Glory.

This is the word of the Lord. And so we're starting this series called

the Stories behind the Songs. You may know this about me. Maybe you

don't know this, but I've been a songwriter for now most of my life.

I started writing songs somewhere around fifth grade. Really, what I would

do is I would rewrite songs. So the first song I ever rewrote was

from this guy, Vanilla Ice. Come on, stop collaborate and listen.

Ice is back with a brand new mission. You know like this. This

was like the way I grew up, and I would So my thing is

I would make the songs about me. I mean, I was a fifth

grader, so I would I would change it Ti I made this song into

Fike fight Baby, and this is this is the way that I would roll.

So I would show up on the playground and I had changed all the

lyrics to make them about me. And I know that's a funny picture.

But when Justice came home from school, I thought, are you trying to

be even a lot? Is this what's happening? And so here's another picture

of Justice as Fike fake baby. But then when I got to high school,

I started hanging out with some friends at Lee High School and we listened

to nothing but hip hop. Our favorite group was a tribe called Quest,

and we would hang out at the playground and we would, you know,

wrap back and forth to one another. And there's a guy in the group,

the guy on the far left over here. His name is Fife Dog.

That was his that's his name, Fife Dog. And so of course

all of my friends called me, what do you think, Fike Dog?

Here I am. And so this is the scene that you would find at

most lunch rooms in Baton Rouge. When I was in high school. We

would just be rapping all day long. And then later in life, I

became a kind of a fan of Christian music and I remember when I was

turning twenty one, I had decided that I was going to move to Nashville

to be the next Stephen Curtis Chapman. I thought, how hard can it

be. You learned playing guitar, you get a mullet, Like, what's

the difference? I mean, So I just thought, this is going to

be my future. And then I met a beautiful young woman named Dana Joy

Cotton, and she changed everything for me because I really never understood what worship

was until I met her. Now I had to learn not to worship her.

But she just sort of brings the presence of the Lord wherever she goes.

She's anointed, she's powerful, and I remember the first time I met

her, I was like, I can't leave this place tonight without her phone

number, Like I have to know that person. And so anyway, we

started a band once we got together called Face Down, And this was in

nineteen ninety nine, nineteen ninety eight, somewhere around there, okay, two

thousand, sorry, and we put this album out, this is the first

album we ever put out, called Climb to the Rooftops. And I want

you to hear nobody anybody have this record, does anybody have this CD my

friend in the back Good Job. That's one I looked on eBay. You

can buy it. It's available on eBay. I thought about purchasing it because

I don't have any copies of this thing. But here here is the first

song that Dana and I ever recorded. It's called Mount everest Uh, and

it's a song that talks about uh, the concept of you know, if

I were always this committed, if I were always this connected to you Lord,

And then the chorus answers the question. So here it is nine time

stream out of name, Can I can I? Can? I? Can

I rest? So that was like the first song that we ever wrote that

we put out and it allowed us to go tour. We traveled the country

and it really enjoyed music. And then we got to Colorado and put out

these albums in and out of season. The morning has Calm and make a

sound? Who has these albums? Anybody here in the house? Okay?

Right on? Cool? And we put those songs out somewhere around make a

sound. We signed with Integrity Records, and that allowed us to put our

music really, really in a broad sense, all over the world. It

was really cool. I got to write with artists and producers and other writers

in Nashville and write a bunch of songs. I mean, I think in

my career I've written like like fifteen hundred songs or something that most of the

people will never hear. But then you know, in that time we put

out these albums, the moment we've been waiting for more than anthems and our

newest one, you say Speak, we say Move. I'm telling you all

of this just to say that, like for all of the songs that we've

put out, all of the songs that I've written, There's really only been

one song that I think I'll probably always be known for. And we sang

it this morning, and probably churches across the world sang it this morning,

a song called We Believe. It's been recorded now over two hundred times by

different artists, and it's been translated into over sixty languages across the world.

And that was always my dream that my songs would grow legs and find their

way into the hearts of people God's people and equip them to build up their

faith. And so that was amazing. But what's funny is probably ninety nine

point nine percent of the people who know and love the song. We Believe.

Don't know who Richie Fike is. They've never heard of me, they

don't know my name. They think that we Believe as a Newsboys song.

And that's totally fine with me because I wanted the song out there. But

there's always a song behind every story or sorry, there's always a story behind

every song. Sorry about that. There's always a story behind every song,

and sometimes I think the story is almost more meaningful than the song. And

so we were looking at doing a series this summer in the Psalms, and

we were like, Okay, well, what's a way that we can do.

It would just pick a psalm and preach on it, but I thought,

you know, this would be an interesting way for us to connect to

the Psalms this summer is to look at not just the palm itself, but

the story that led to the song being written, what was happening in the

life of the writer while he was writing this particular song. And so that's

what we're doing today. We're looking at Psalm twenty four and we're going to

look at the life of David while he was writing this song. You might

remember that we started this year and ended last year in Psalm twenty four.

I put out a little video around New Year's and the question was what's in

store for twenty four? And you might remember some of that, some of

those questions and thoughts. I got to tell you I had no idea what

was in store for twenty four. I mean, here we are in June

of twenty twenty four. And if you had told me that sometime in February,

just a couple of months after filming, that that on a Thursday night,

our leadership team would be gathering in a room praying about the church,

and that we would get a phone call that told us that we were officially

homeless as a church. That if you had told me, here's what's in

store for twenty four, you're going to find out that the place that you're

having church is shut down and you're going to have to find a new place

to have church. If you would have told me that, we would have

had church at the Ponderosa and had a sledding adventure that day. And also

if you would have told me that the Ponderosa was only available that particular weekend

and only because someone the day before had canceled their reservation. If you told

me all that. I mean, I just would have been like, Okay,

well, God's awesome. God's amazing. Also, if you had told

me that the next week, and some of you know what happened the next

week, that we would have church in Chick fil A, I don't know

that I would have believed you. I think I would have been like,

I don't think I'm ready for twenty four. Like it was a wild scene.

I love this moment where Melissa Janish got surprised by the cow coming up.

If you were there, you might remember this. Melissa had no idea

what was happening. She was doing announcements and we surprised her with the cow.

She was a good sport about it. That guy that wore the cow

outfit, his name is Danny. I've gotten to know him this year.

He wants to be a youth pastor, so we've been connecting and talking.

It's been really cool to get to know him. But anyway, this year,

man, I had no idea what was in store for us in twenty

twenty four, and so I thought it would be a good idea, since

we started the year in twenty four, that we start this series in Psalm

twenty four And here's what historians say about Psalms twenty two, twenty three,

and twenty four. They say that these are actually the last three psalms that

David wrote, that as he was approaching his death, coming towards the end

of his life, that he wrote twenty two, twenty three, and twenty

four back to back to back. David lived relatively kind of a short life

at the age of seventy. Kelly Rice assures me that seventy is the new

fifty, but he died a young man really at seventy. He became king

at the age of thirty, so he lived kind of thirty years in total

obscurity, you know, picking fleas off a sheep as a little shepherd boy.

And then for the next forty years he lived in a palace with everybody's

eyes on him all the time. And so as we get to First Chronicles

twenty eight and First King two, we see the last moments of David's life.

We see the last things that he had to say, the last things

that he did, and some of it is really fascinating. So let's look

at some of this because even though David was filled with incredible honor, he

experienced and accomplished so much. He lived a great, outsized, big,

out loud life. At the end of his life, I think he was

very concerned with one thing. In fact, I think he was consumed with

one thing, and that one thing is this legacy. David was deeply concerned

at the end of his life with what people would think of him, what

people would say of him, and that he had done would last beyond himself.

And I imagine that most of us, towards the end of our life

will be thinking about something like that. Hopefully you're thinking about it now,

so that you're leaving a legacy, not when you become an old man,

but even right now, that you're building a legacy. But he was thinking

about these questions, what would he leave behind, what would live on past

him, What would be David's legacy? So in First Chronicles twenty seven there's

this really meticulous you could read it. I didn't want us to have to

go through all of it today. But he goes through and he assigns military

captains and generals for all of the different armies. He makes sure that each

of the twelve tribes have a leader that he believes in. He assigns priests

and levites. He has built a system and a culture that he believe will

live on without him. He believes that he's created beautiful and important infrastructure that

is supposed to live on beyond him. And of course he's appointed his son

Solomon to be the next king. This is a young man who he believes

in, He trusts, He's poured his life into this man, and he

believes that Solomon is going to live out his legacy. And there's one thing

that David didn't get to do in his lifetime because God wouldn't let him do

it, and it's the temple. David never got to build his temple,

and so he's deeply concerned with making sure that Solomon is going to build the

temple. He wants for God to have an ornate, beautiful, extremely amazing

place to live in because he thinks it's wrong that human beings would live in

these palaces and that God would live in a tent. You might remember that

that idea, that story is how our church got its name. Somewhere around

Second Samuel, David says to the prophet Nathan, I'm going to build a

house for God. And God tells Nathan to tell David I didn't ask you

to build a house for me. Don't do that. I'm on the move.

I'm on the move. And of course we say that even though we

live in a town called Monument, our God is not a monument. He's

a movement and we get to be a part of it. So that's where

our name came from. This last thing that he wanted to build is kind

of the legacy of the Movement Church. And so what we're going to look

at is First Chronicles twenty eight. This is David's last public address. These

are the last words that anyone besides his family are going to hear him speak.

This his First Chronicles twenty eight. I'm reading in the NLT. David

rose to his feet and he said, my brothers and my people, it

was my desire to build a temple where the ark of the Lord's Covenant,

God's footstool could rest permanently. I made the necessary preparations for building it.

But God said to me, you must not build a temple to honor my

name, for you are a warrior and have shed much blood. Yet the

Lord, the God of Israel, has chosen me from among all my father's

family to be king over Israel, look at this word forever and from among

my sons. For the Lord has given me many. He chose Solomon to

succeed me on the throne of Israel and to rule over the Lord's kingdom.

He said to me, your son, Solomon, will build my temple and

its courtyards. For I have chosen him as my son, and I will

be his father. And if he continues to obey my commands and regulations as

he does now, I will make his kingdom last forever. So he's saying

all this to all of his people, and now in front of all these

folks, he's going to look directly at Solomon. He's going to say this,

and Solomon, my son, learn to know the God of your ancestors,

intimately, worship and serve him with the whole heart and a willing mind.

I love that that phrase is in there, especially after we just went

through your brain and your Bible. Even David understood that a willing mind was

a crucial part of the Christian experience. For the Lord sees every heart and

knows every plan and every thought. If you seek him, you'll find him.

But if you've forsake him, he'll reject you. Forever. So take

this seriously. The Lord has chosen you to build a temple as his sanctuary.

Be strong and do the work. So you can hear in this that

David is fixated on one thing. Legacy, Legacy, Legacy. That's the

last time anybody's ever going to hear David speak publicly. But it's not the

last thing that we get to hear from David. So we go to First

Kings, chapter two, and there's this moment where David is looking lovingly longingly

at his son. He's about to die. He's on his deathbed, and

any moment he's going to breathe his last breath. Have you ever thought about

that moment in your life? You ever thought about what it's going to be

like for you when you're laying in your deathbed and there's people surrounding you.

You ever thought about what you might say to the people that are surrounding you.

You've thought about kind of the words of wisdom, the moment of impact,

this last chance I have to impart anything into these people that I love.

I've thought about it a lot. I've thought about a lot about what

I want to say in that moment. And it's because during COVID Justice and

Dana, my wife, and I played Rummy every night of the week during

COVID. This is a true story. We played Rummy every night. And

I know earlier that I said that Dana Phyke is anointed and beautiful and she

carries the presence of the Lord. I know I said that. But there's

something else you need to know about Dana Phyke. She's a killer. She's

heartless, doesn't care about your feelings in any way. She's murderous. She

wants you dead. Okay, this is who my beautiful wife is. I've

often said, if I turn up dead, she did it. That's that's

the truth. And so what we've found out during COVID is that Dana Pike

is maybe the best Rummy player on the planet. Either that or we're the

worst. I don't know. She won every night every time we played.

We never won ever, ever until this one night. I'll never forget it.

This one night I had the lead. We played to four hundred and

I've got three hundred and ninety points. We got one more hand. I'm

about to win this thing. It's gonna be a miracle. God. Look

what God's about to do. I've got I've got three cards left in my

hand, and Dana's got, like, I don't know, eight nine cards

in her hand. Because Dana likes to wait till the last moment and play

all of her cards and then smile at you. That's what she likes to

do. So anyway, so it's so Justice is here, Dana's here.

I play my card. It's Justice turn now. Based on everything that's on

the table, what we know about this moment is that what Dana needs more

than anything else is the King of Diamonds. That's the card she needs.

Now. I happen to know because I don't have the King of Diamonds,

that Justice has the King of Diamonds. And I'm trying to telepathically communicate to

him, do not play the King of Diamonds. Don't do it. What

does this fool do? He plays the King of Diamonds, And what does

Dana do? She picks up the King of Diamonds and then lays all of

her cards down and says, rummy, and she beat me. And I

told Justice right then and there, I said, son, there's gonna be

a day when I'm laying on my deathbed and you're gonna be surrounding me.

You'll be right there, and I'm gonna call you close to me. Son,

Son, come here, and you're gonna come. You're gonna lean in,

and I'm gonna say to you, I'll never forgive you for playing that

King of Diamonds. And then I'm on a flat line and I'm gonna get

up in heaven and I'm gonna celebrate, and you'll have to live with that

the rest of your life. That's what. If the Lord loves me,

he will allow me to have that moment with my son. This is a

very similar moment which you're gonna hear in First Kings. This guy, this

man after God's own heart, is gonna pull his son close to him.

These are the last words that David's ever gonna speak, and I want you

to hear what he says. Look at this First Kings two. He says,

at the time of King David's death, or at the time King David's

death approached, he gave this charge to his son, Solomon, Son,

come close to me, he says, I'm gonna go where everyone on earth

must go someday. Take courage and be a man, observe the requirements of

the Lord. Your God and follow all his ways. Keep the decrees,

commands, regulations and laws written in the Law of Moses, so that you

will be successful in all you do and wherever you go. If you do

this, then the Lord will keep the promise he made to me. He

told me that if your descendants live as they should and follow me faithfully with

all their heart and soul, one of them will always sit on the throne

of Israel. He says. Listen, there's someone I want to tell you

about, a guy from Gilead. Be kind to the sons of Barzilai of

Gilead. Make them permanent guests at your table, for they took care of

me when I fled from your brother Absalom. Okay, you're ready for the

King of Diamonds. Here it is ready. And you remember that guy Shemeya,

the son of Gera, the man from Behurim and Benjamin. He cursed

me with a terrible curse as I was fleeing to Mahanaim. When he came

down to meet me at the Jordan River, I swore by the Lord that

I would not kill him, But that oath does not make him innocent.

You are a wise man, and you will know how to arrange a bloody

death for him. Be These are the last words of the man after God's

own heart. This is the legacy that our guy left. And I'm telling

you, I've never felt more seen in my life. I've never felt like

more like, Oh, me and David, we're gonna be homies in heaven.

Like I can't wait to talk to him about this. He died.

He died kind of wanting his son to live out his legacy and to fight

his battles and to stand for what he stood for. And he remembered everybody

that helped him and everybody that hurt him. He remembered everybody that shaped him

and everybody that shanked him. Okay, and he was like, look,

I'm not ever gonna forget this. Beep. That's how it happened. So

the man after God's own heart wants his son to be a man after his

dad's own legacy. So what do you think you'll be thinking about when you

die? What do you think you'll be thinking about right before you pass?

What will concern you, what will consume you. It's interesting to see that

this is what David was thinking about. This is what was on his mind

in his heart as he's sitting down to write Psalm twenty two, twenty three,

and twenty four. That's the backstory, and Psalm twenty four, We're

going to find three timeless truths about the legacy David's hoping to leave behind.

And I'm framing it this way, three timeless truths that left a legacy.

So the first one we already read Psalm twenty four, so let's dig into

it. The first one is this that everything everywhere belongs to God. And

I know you read that and you go, right, sure, I know

that already. That's not new information. But do we live like we believe

this? Do we live like we really believe this? Listen to what he

said? He said, the earth is the Lord's. How much is the

earth? All of it? Right? The earth is the Lord's and the

fullness thereof the world and those who dwell therein. For he founded it upon

the seas, and establish sit upon the rivers. So at the end of

his life, what David is saying in this moment, he's saying, I've

experienced the anonymity of the Shepherd Field. I know what it's like for no

one to know my name. And I've experienced the exploits of popularity and fame

and power and impact. And what I've learned is that in either of those

occasions, God is in charge of everything. The Lord owns everything. I

don't want to fool myself and Solomon, I don't want you to be fooled,

and friends, my people, I don't want you to be fooled in

thinking that what you have is yours. What you have, all of it

belongs to God. I heard this quote a few years ago and it's stuck

in my crawl. Have a quote like that that irritates you but inspires you

at the same time. Listen to this. If you own something that you

cannot give away, then you don't own it, it owns you. So

what is the first thing that came to mind when you heard that quote?

What is the first item in your life that you own that you couldn't give

away? And you would say, I guess maybe I don't own it,

but it owns me. David's saying, don't live like that. The earth

and everything in it belongs to the Lord. At the end of his life,

David was not enamored by the trappings of the world. He was only

enamored by the great wealth of our great God. This is not a sermon

about tithing. So I don't want to I don't want you to freak out.

He tricked me into, you know, making me listen to him talk

about money. That's not what this is. Okay, this is not a

sermon about tithing. But I want to say the concept of tithing is not

the concept of giving to God. That's not what it is. The concept

of tithing is giving back to God. It's giving back to God. Because

everything that we have we were given by God. You say, right,

but I worked at it, sweat equity. I did all this work.

God didn't work those fifty two hours last week. I did that, right.

But He gave you the breath and your lungs, and he gave you

the opportunity. So everything that you have belongs to him. So when we

give to the Lord, we don't give to the Lord. We give back

to the Lord. That's the concept. So three timeless truths that left the

legacy. The first one is that everything everywhere belongs to God. And the

second one is this that there is a precious pathway to God's presence, a

very precious You might even say precarious pathway to God's presence. Look at this,

he says, Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, who shall

stand in his holy place? There's only a few. He who has clean

hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what

is false, and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the

Lord and righteousness from the God of his self, such as the generation of

those who seek Him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.

Lots of people achieve power, lots of people achieve wealth, lots of people

achieve their fifteen minutes of fame. But who's going to ascend into the presence

of God. It's rarefied air when you're in the presence of God. Now,

David didn't have the benefit of the New Testament, right. David didn't

understand yet that the Holy Spirit would take residence within each and every one of

us. He didn't understand that we would have instant access to the presence of

the Lord. He didn't get that because it wasn't real for them yet.

It's real for us now. But even still, this concept of who are

the people that can actually experience the presence of God. I think it holds

true people that have clean hands and pure hearts. That's the idea. So

I would ask you, if you were to assess life, how you doing?

How you doing with your hands? Are your hands dirty? Are they

bloody? Are they filthy? Are you up to things that you shouldn't be?

Are you involved in things that you shouldn't be? What are you doing

with your time? With your life? Could you investigate your own hands and

say, man, I don't know if I have clean hands before the Lord?

How about your heart? Do you have pure motives? Do you have

pure aspirations, pure agendas? Or is there something going on inside of you?

Or are you duplicitous? Are there two years? You know? These

are the questions that David would ask us to think about today. And this

is a guy, by the way, that fully understands what it means to

have bloody hands, what it means to have dirty hands. We'll get into

Bathsheba in this series and we'll see the psalms that he wrote around that period,

and we'll get to look at David's heart in those moments. But David

understood what it was like to have dirty hands, and he said, the

only people that are going to experience the presence of God, or those with

clean hands and a pure heart. In fact, I love that he says,

such is the generation of those who seek him. David's thinking about legacy.

He's thinking about all of the other people that God wants to have an

intimate relationship with. See, in his life, he had a very unique

relationship with God. You don't hear a lot of conversation about other people in

Israel that were experiencing God the way David was. He had a unique relationship

with God in that time. But David uses the word generation. He wants

for his legacy to be beyond just one person. I think that's beautiful and

I love that he says those who seek the face of the God. Of

Jacob. I've been reading Psalm twenty four once a week every week this year

because I'm corny that way, Like whatever the year is, twenty twenty four,

I read that Psalm, and so that's kind of how I do.

But as the year has unfolded, and especially as we just went through this

mental health series where we talked about the face of God and how that narrative

runs all throughout the Bible, this becomes even more vivid and even more real

to me to think about the idea that David understood on some level that we're

supposed to be formed by the face of God, that we're supposed to be

shaped by the way that he feels about us. Not the way that we

feel about ourselves, the way that anybody else feels about us, but the

way that the Lord feels about us. And David knows that not everyone experiences

God's presence, and he's desperate for us to do so. He's desperate that

all of us would experience that intimate relationship with God, and he tells us

to seek God's face and not his hand. Let me tell you what I

mean by that. I think very often we go to God when we need

something. We think of God like Holy syene Claus, right, like I've

got this wish list, here's all the things I need you to do for

me. But what God wants is he wants for us to just spend time

with him. He just wants us to interact with him, not because we

need any or want anything from him, We just want him. I think

one of the bumper sticker verses that have been twisted in Christianity in the twenty

twenty four world that we live in is this one. Delight yourself in the

Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. So here's

what we have turned that into in our minds. If I worship God,

he will give me my tesla. If I worship God, I will get

that trip to fill in the blank. If I worship God, he will

give me the promotion that I'm after. That's not what this verse is saying.

What the verse is saying is the best thing that God can give us

is himself, and if we delight ourself in Him, then he will give

us the desire of our heart. If you delight in the Lord, what's

the desire of your heart? The Lord? So God is saying, if

you will delight in me, I'm going to give you all I got.

That's beautiful. That is what that relationship is supposed to be about. David

is teaching us to pursue God for who he is, not for what he

can do for us. And so we need clean hands and a pure heart,

pure motives, pure pursuits, pure aspirations. He's telling us to cherish

the presence of God. We started this year in a series I don't know

if everybody caught up with this, But we started this year in a series

called Let's Get Moving, where we talked about kind of the core tenets of

what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. We talked about basically

what it looks like to be a disciple, and we said that it's a

person who grows in groups, a person who serves in sincerity, a person

who lives on mission, a person who gives in generosity. And then we

introduced a new one that was so important. You might remember I preached a

sermon called the Divine Preposition, and I said that God's favorite preposition of all

the prepositions is the word with God wants to be with you, and he

wants you to be with him. And so the fifth tenet of a disciple

is to sing his presence, who will ascend the hill of the Lord,

who will make effort and space and time to spend time with the King of

kings. See these five tenants that we've talked about this year. I think

David would say, Amen, right on, that's it, that's what it's

about, that's what we're supposed to be doing. And I think he would

ask us these questions I think he would want to ask you, do you

seek the face of God in your life? Or are you just seeking his

hand just what you can get from him? Do you practice God's presence?

Do you make space for him? Do you worship him? Do you pray?

Do you get quiet before him? Do you get still before him?

Do you ever just listen for the voice of the Lord. Do you read

the Bible and allow him to speak to you? Do you make space for

God? Do you pursue him? David is telling us that it's rarefied air,

and only a rare few people will ever really experience it. And guess

what Jesus said the same thing. He said the same thing He said this

in Matthew. Jesus says, enter through the narrow gate. For wide is

the gate, and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many

will enter through it. But small is the gate, and narrow the road

that leads to life, and only a few will find it. Three timeless

truths that left the legacy. First, everything everywhere belongs to God. Second,

there's a precious pathway to God's presence. And the third is my favorite

part of this whole chapter. I don't know if you noticed it, but

there's a moment where David says kind of two very similar things back to back.

Did you notice that he says almost the same thing, almost identically twice.

And I'm going to tell you what he means by it. The third

point is that two sets of gates must be opened, two sets of gates

must be open. I think that this imagery that day it is using in

Psalm twenty four is powerful. Look at what he says in verse seven,

Lift up your heads, o gates, and be lifted up, oh ancient

doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King

of Glory, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord invincible in battle?

And by the way in your Bible you should circle highlight, put arrows and

stars around the word invincible in battle. We need to stop trying to fight

our own fights and just trust that he is the one that wins every fight.

He suits up for invincible in battle. Verse nine, Lift up your

heads, o gates, and lift them up, oh 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, So he says

this thing twice. Okay, So I'm trying to make sense of why he

said this, and I was thinking about this movie I saw years ago called

The Purge. You don't have to lift your hand if you saw The Purge.

That's not something we should admit in church. But your pastor saw it.

I saw it. I saw it on cable, so I didn't see

the worst parts of it, Okay, But anyway, it's a movie about

this moment in American history, fictional history, where all crime has become legal

for one day. And so what they do is they sound an alarm and

then everybody is allowed to do anything that they want to do, including murder

and violence and theft. It's all legal for one day. Okay. So

what happens is a huge, a huge market increase happens in home security,

wouldn't you think so? Right, So people turn their homes into these fortresses.

They're like steel girded and they're protected and nobody can get in. Well.

In the first Purge movie, what happens is Ethan Hawk's family. This

is four or five years into the Purge. They've got a beautiful security system,

but right before they put up the walls, a guy that knows he's

going to get hunted that night sneaks into their house and so now he's in

their home with the walls up. Well, a group of perjurers come and

they know that he's in there, and so most of the movie is them

trying to penetrate these walls and trying to get in, and then at a

certain point they get in. They penetrate the walls, and now they're inside,

and then the walls go back up a second set of walls. And

so what's happening is inside of this home you have both our heroes, the

people who were trying to keep danger out, and now all the danger is

stuck inside. Does that make sense or you're hearing me? And so what

I think that David is saying is that the same walls that are keeping danger

out are also keeping safety out. They're keeping rescue out, and they're keeping

danger in. So he says, open up you gates. He speaks to

the gates of Jerusalem, open up you ancient gates. Open up. Let

the King of Glory come in. Why because he's invincible in battle? And

he says to the gates of Heaven, he says, open up you ancient

gates and let the King of Glory come in. The Lord of Hosts,

let him come. Two sets of gates have to be open. And I

think this is a beautiful metaphor because very often the very walls that keep danger

out also keep healing out. Each of us find ways to put walls up

around our hearts, around our souls, around our stories. We figure out

what hurts and we put a wall around it. We won't let anybody in.

But in the process of putting a wall up around the things that hurt

us, we also put a wall that won't allow the Lord to get in.

It won't allow him to penetrate, to heal. And so David says,

look to both sets of gates open up. They've both got to open.

But we have to get over at a certain point in our humanity,

the natural evolution that happens with us. See, once somebody hurts us,

we go never again. Once somebody penetrates our heart and wounds us, we

go never again. We learn this, of course from George Bush, who

said this. There's an old saying in Tennessee. I know it's in Texas's

probably in Tennessee that says, fool me once. Shame on, shame on

you. It fooled me. We can't get fooled again. We're not gonna

get fooled again. That's how we live, that's how we operate. This

is who we are. We will not let anybody hurt us again. But

he's saying, look, at a certain point, you're gonna have to open

your heart because the King of Lord wants to come in. At a certain

point, you're gonna have to trust him. He's not here to hurt you.

He's not here to damage you. He's not here to force his way

in. He's here to heal. That's who he is. And by the

way, Jesus said the same thing, Jesus later would say to us that

he's not gonna just break down our fortresses. He said, behold, I

stand at the door, and I knock, and if it anyone hears my

voice and opens the door, I'll come in and I'll eat with them,

and he with me. Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit. They are

not the big bad wolf, right, little pig, little pig, let

me in. Not by the hair is much chili gingin? Okay, Well,

then I'm gonna huff and puff and I'm gonna blow your house down.

That's not who God is. God's a gentleman. The Holy Spirit is a

gentleman. And he stands at the door and he knocks, and he says,

hey, open up, Open up you ancient doors. Open up those

gates that you've put around your heart to keep me out. Let me in.

Open up. Let the King of glory, invincible in battle. Let

me heal what's hurt you. Open up. Both sets of gates need to

be opened, both sets of doors. God, by the way, has

already fully opened the doors of heaven to us. That's what Jesus did for

us. Jesus unlocked the divide that existed between our humanity and his holiness.

He already did it. He's already opened up the gates of heaven. So,

if you're here today, if you're watching this online or listening on the

podcast, and you've never opened your heart to the Lord man, will you

just take this challenge and hear from King David as he's in his deathbed,

saying, open up your heart to the King of Kings, Open up those

ancient gates, Let him in, Let him in. We're going to look

at some amazing stories this summer as we get into the stories behind the psalms,

it's going to be a fun ride as we do this. I love

this quote. This is a bono quote. He said this about songwriting.

He said, a songwriter's job is to tell the truth as he sees it.

All of the conversation's experiences and revelations that lead to the writing of a

song are contained within the context of that songwriter's life. When he pins the

phrases, he settles on the melodies, establishes the structure, it's all about

him. But the moment that that song is released to the world, it's

no longer his. It's ours. And that's what these psalms are. These

psalms are David saying, this is the story behind the story, this is

what's going on in my life. And then once he releases them, the

psalms become ours. And so this summer, we're going to collect the dots

and we're going to connect the dots. We're going to see how it worked

with his life, and then we're going to connect it to his life.

But we're also going to connect it to our life because Psalm twenty four now

belongs to us. And I think that there's three questions that David would want

for us to wrestle with today. And so if you're a note taker,

this is a moment to take some notes, because I want you to think

about these questions the rest of this summer. In fact, what I would

challenge you to do is do what I'm doing on Monday morning for the rest

of this summer, which you just crack open Psalm twenty four and just read

it. Just read it through one time, find different translations to read it

in, read it, and then dialogue with the Lord about these three questions

here. They are Number one, what do you have that you can't give

away? What owns you? Wrestle with that question? Pray about that question.

Second one, are you seeking God's face or are you seeking God's hand?

And listen to me. I want to make it clear. Sometimes we

need God's hand because he's the one that's invincible in battle. But if the

only thing we ever do with God is ask him to do stuff for us

or give stuff to us, We're missing out on the best part of Christianity

just to be with Him, just to be connected to the King of kings.

So are you seeking his face or are you seeking his hand? And

the third one, which gates need to be opened in your life? What

wounds have you wardened off? What pain? What loss have you said I'm

never ever going to get fooled again? And what gates need to be opened

so that the King of Glory can come in and heal and restore and deem

that part of your story. Which gates need to be opened in your life?

And I'm going to give you a challenge. Okay, I think this

is going to be fun summer challenge twenty four because all of us are going

to be traveling, We're going to be going around the country seeing different things

this summer. I want to challenge you to write your own psalm. Okay,

I will grade them. No, I'm just kidding. Write your own

psalm in your own words, just express on paper or on your computer,

express whatever it is you need to say about this moment in your life.

I want this to be more than just a journal, more than just a

journal entry. Like, really, think about what would you say if you

were writing your own psalms? And if you've ever read the Psalms, there

are no rules to writing a psalm. One of my favorite thing about the

Psalms is when you read it. Sometimes David is just writing these poetic,

beautiful things about how awesome God is. You're my rock and my refuge,

and I'd love you, and you saved me and you healed me and you're

amazing, and then all of a sudden he'll just break into and kill my

enemies. Lord make it bloody, you know, like, David, are

you need counseling? Son? Right, that's okay, whatever it is,

just write it out on paper, Write out your own psalm. They don't

have to be poetic, they don't have to be super powerful. They just

need to be you and I. You have If you are going, like

on a trip somewhere this summer, Dane and I are celebrating twenty five years

of marriage, and so we're going to Hawaii. We're going to see things

in Hawaii that we don't see in Colorado every day, Right, and so

what does it feel like to experience God in Hawaii? Maybe you're going somewhere

else, what does it feel like to experience God in that place? Write

a psalm about it? King David did this for us. He was so

willing just to share his insights about God. He would even at the top

of a psalm. He would say, this is for the choir master to

teach the people to sing. That's how much he believed in what he was

writing. I'm not saying that you need to write a psalm that we're going

to sing on a Sunday morning, Okay, but write a psalm because his

life story shaped his writings, and his writings have influenced generations of God seekers.

So write your own psalm this summer. Write your questions, write his

answers, write your lessons, write your yearnings, write the way that the

Lord has shown you who he is. Write about it this summer, and

then if you're brave enough, you can turn him in and we might share

a few of them at the end of the summer. Okay. So those

of you that love to write, you're like, say less I'm in.

Those of you that don't like to write, you're like, I'm never coming

to this church again. I get it. But this summer we're going to

be digging into the stories behind the psalms. And it's not just David's story,

it's our story, and so I want you to interact with it.

I want you to sense and feel that the Lord wants for you to share

what's in your heart. So what's God leading you to do next and how

can we help? Would you send us an email to info at Movementchurch dot

co and tell us how we can pray for you and help you take the

next step in your spiritual journey. If you'd like to contribute financially to our

ministry, text the amount you like to give to the number eight four three

two one, or look us up online at Movementchurch dot c. You can

find the Movement Church on all social media platforms, and we hope that you'll

give us a follow God bless you, and remember God is for you,

and so are we.