"I Stand at the Door and Knock" Psalm 15 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Psalm 15, I'll read it, and then we'll begin our time in God's words together.

This is a Psalm of David.

Oh Yahweh, who shall sojourn in your tent?

Who shall dwell in your holy hill?

He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart, who does not slander with his tongue, and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friends, in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear Yahweh, who swears to his own hurt and does not change, who does not put out his money at interest, and does not take a bribe against the innocent, he who does these things shall never be moved.

This is the word of God.

I'll tell you this: there is perhaps no more common lie in our worlds than the idea that anybody who wants to can approach God.

That lie is ubiquitous.

It exists in every culture, it exists differently in every culture, but it exists nonetheless.

There is this latent tendency in mankind to believe that if you want to, you have access to God.

Anybody who desires to pray will have his prayers heard.

Anybody who desires to sing will have his songs heard and they will be pleasing to the Lord.

That falsehood permeates human thinking.

And it exists differently in different cultures.

For example, uh, when I was living in Mexico, I lived not too far away from the closest metro stop to the basilica that was there and the big Catholic cathedral that was there.

And it was not uncommon to see people take the metro towards the cathedral, get off, and they would uh then puncture their hands and their knees with cactus needles, and they would then crawl from the metro station to the basilica in order to pray to God.

They would make vows and they would crawl there, and the more extreme their vows, the more access they felt like they had towards God.

And so that is a lot of difficulty, a lot of self-harm in order to feel like you can approach God.

But nevertheless, notice that what is behind even that kind of extreme action is this idea that if you want to and you're willing to sacrifice enough, you can crawl up to God.

Now, in our American self-esteem culture, we don't have that.

You know, even in American Catholicism, you don't see people crawling into the Catholic churches.

Our American culture is much more materialistic and consumeristic and self-esteem driven.

So in our culture, what we embrace is the idea that if you're sincere by your own standards, if you're sincere by your own heart, if you really want to, God of course will hear you and answer you and give you access to him because after all, you are significant and important.

So why couldn't you have access to God whenever you want to?

That's the American version of that.

It's the same lie behind it, namely that anybody who wants to can approach God.

Listen, there's not been a time really in world history where people haven't wanted to approach God.

Even at Jerusalem's lowest point, under King Manasseh, the most vile, wicked, evil king Judah had, King Manasseh entirely godless, even under his reign, the temple was crowded.

It was crowded with idols, the Bible says, but it was crowded.

There were people gathering together for worship, even through their own idolatry, even at the lowest point in history.

Think of the life of Christ.

When Jesus shows up at the temple, the temple is filled with worshipers.

Filled with people.

So a better question isn't do people want to worship God?

Do people show up at the temple?

The better question is, is their worship heard by God?

Does God delight in their worship?

Do they have access to God even at the temple of Israel?

We just sang Christ the sure and steady anchor.

How's this for a question?

Not every voice in here was pleasing to the Lord.

Not every voice in that song, not everyone who declared Christ the sure and steady anchor has their song heard by the ears of God and is acceptable to God.

So what is the distinction between those whose songs rise to heaven and are pleasing to the Lord and those whose songs are blocked out?

That is the question of Psalm 15.

That is the question.

O Lord, it says in verse 1, O Yahweh, who shall sh who shall sojourn in your tent?

Who will spend time in your tent?

The tent is the tabernacle.

It's where the Ark of the Covenant dwelled, the center point of the Israelite religion.

They had brought it with them from the wilderness into Israel.

It had stayed in a tent.

David, if you recall, the one who wrote Psalm 15, I think Psalm 15 is early on in David's time as king, perhaps written even before he was king, I'm not sure.

But it's early in his life.

Psalm 15 is written about who has access to the tabernacle, even, who can spend time next to the Ark of the Covenant.

You remember what happened when David tried to move the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem?

God killed people because they didn't do it in a proper, God-honoring way.

David abandons it in a barn, if you remember.

He just sticks it in a barn and says, It's impossible.

Nobody can approach God.

He's returning to that question here in Psalm 15 and says, Who can sojourn in the tabernacle?

Who can approach Yahweh, the Lord of hosts?

Who can dwell on your holy hill?

The holy hill speaking of Jerusalem.

So this is obviously at a point in David's life where he had conquered Jerusalem.

The holy hill is the mountain in the middle of Jerusalem where the temple is built, across from the Mount of Olives.

That's the holy hill.

It's where David wanted to put the temple, but God told him no.

So David's question is: who can approach God?

Commentators say that Psalm 15 functioned as a sort of Israelite liturgy.

Liturgy is just a series of questions like a catechism or a routine or a ritual you go through on your way to worship.

And Psalm 15 functions as a sort of liturgical inquisition.

That you would ask yourself these questions before you approach God and His temple to see if you could worship.

And so I want to borrow that outline as we work ourselves through Psalm 15 this morning.

I'm calling this a worshipper's liturgy.

A worshipper's liturgy here.

So you want to go worship the Lord.

Here's questions you're going to ask yourself on your way to have your prayers lifted to heaven, to have your songs lifted to heaven, to have your hands lifted to heaven, to have your heart lifted to heaven.

On your way to do those kind of things, these are the questions you are going to go through.

That's Psalm 15, and it begins with what I'm going to call a searching question.

A searching question.

That's verse 1.

Believe me, there is no more pressing question than who can worship the Lord.

Is your worship acceptable to God?

Do you have access to God?

That is a more important question than what kind of job are you going to take?

That's a more important question than who are you going to marry?

That's a more important question than what city are you going to live in?

What kind of minivan are you going to buy?

This is more important than any of those questions.

Or to talk to the kids here, this is a more important question than what are you going to have for dessert tonight?

This is the most important question you can ask.

Who can approach the Lord?

Who has access to him?

That's the searching question.

And the rest of Psalm 15 answers that question.

But for now, we can just look at verse 2.

He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart.

That's a threefold answer.

It's all-encompassing.

He who walks blamelessly, walks, speaks of the pattern of your life.

Your feet, where do you go?

That's walks.

What do you spend your time doing?

That's walks.

Do you spend your time blamelessly?

He who does what is right speaks to your hands.

What do you do?

Not just where do you go, but what do you do when you get there?

Are you doing things that advance righteousness?

Or the word could even be translated justice in some of your translations.

Do what is just or right.

And then finally, the one who speaks truth in his heart.

So you've got your feet, you've got your hands, you've got your mouth, you've got your heart.

This is the full package deal here.

It's where you go, it's what you do, it's what you say, knowing that what Jesus says is true.

Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

That's coming from Psalm 15, verse 2, right here.

Psalms 15:2

You speak truth in your heart.

The truth is in your heart, and it comes out of your mouth.

So the one who can approach God is one who walks blamelessly, who acts for justice and righteousness, and who loves the truth in his heart so much that he speaks the truth.

It's feet, hands, heart.

It's what you love, it's what you do, it's where you go, and it's really sinless.

It's blameless, it's righteous, it's truthful.

There's no duplicit speech in this who loves the truth, who speaks the truth in his heart.

It's about your affections, it's in your heart.

It's what you love.

Do you love the truth?

It's about what comes out of your mouth, the truth, and it's about what the truth coming out of your mouth, matching a truth that's already in your heart.

You know, we understand that sometimes you can say the right thing, but not believe the right thing.

If you're a parent, you've had this encounter with children, I'm sure.

You know, the kid gets socks for Christmas and you say, say thank you to grandma, and the kid says, thanks.

That's the right thing to say, but it doesn't match their heart.

The problem isn't that the words are wrong, the problem is that their heart is obviously decoupled from those words.

As they get a little bit older, you can have more in-depth conversations with your children, and that reality becomes even more exposed.

You know, you can have a child who's memorized the catechism, knows the answers, knows the right religious answers to all the questions, but doesn't believe them.

Who cares if they have the right answers if it's not resident in the heart?

And that's not just true for children either, is it?

You know, you're at work and your boss asks you a question and you know the right answer to the question.

And you say the right answer to the question.

In fact, you even have your facial expressions and all that under control so that your entire body language communicates the right answer to the question.

Your words communicate the right answer to the question, but your heart is not there.

You don't believe it.

Psalm 15 verse 2 says that that kind of person does not have access to God.

Psalms 15:2

For you to have access to God, your feet have to walk blamelessly.

Your hands have to do what is right, and your heart has to love the truth so much that when you open your mouth, the truth is what comes out.

This is sincerity, justice, truth.

This is all-encompassing.

This covers every, verse two here covers every aspect of your life.

What you go, what, where you go, what you do, what you love, what you say, what you think, what you believe.

All of that is covered by verse 2.

And unless it is blameless, you do not have access to God.

One common commentary calls this an entrance liturgy.

Now, before you begin to pray, you go through these descriptions and see, does this match?

Now, the rest of the psalm, it's paired.

They're in couplets.

Two and two.

Two by two, they go through it.

Each one kind of fills out or matches the other one.

The Jews developed a mnemonic way to remember this psalm, to memorize these things.

They split them into a group of ten, five positive, five negative.

Let me put that on the screen.

So this is how you would memorize that.

The Jews would memorize these things again, five positive, five negative, so that as you're approaching worship, you can have this internalized and go through this.

So I want to look through this list real quickly from the Psalm.

To get five and five, by the way, they combine walks blamelessly and does what is right.

They merge those together because they're saying it's it's just it's the same expression of the same truth.

That's what I mean by their incouplet form here.

He who walks blamelessly does what is right, means that they walk blamelessly.

That word blamelessly is from Deuteronomy 18, verse 13.

Deuteronomy 18:13

There, God tells Israel, all right, let's make a covenant, let's make a deal here.

I will be your God, I will be a father to you, Deuteronomy 18, verse 13, and you will walk blamelessly before me.

Deuteronomy 18:13

Some translations render it in Deuteronomy 18, completely loyal.

God says, I will be a father to you, and in exchange, you will be completely loyal to me.

But it predates that.

This is Genesis chapter 17, where God addresses Abraham.

Genesis 17 · chapter mention

This is the Abrahamic covenant where Yahweh tells Abraham, I'm choosing you, I'm calling you, I'm making a covenant with you, Abraham.

I will be Yahweh to you.

I am Yahweh to you, Abraham, and in exchange, in return, you will walk blamelessly before me.

That's the covenant God makes.

God says, I'm a father to you.

Your part of this bargain is you walk blamelessly before me.

Now, if you're familiar with Genesis 17, here's a question for you.

Did Abraham walk blamelessly before Yahweh?

No.

So Abraham breaks the covenant.

He does not walk blamelessly before Yahweh.

He fails.

So did the Israelites that received Deuteronomy 18.

By judges, the end of Judges 1.

They're not walking faithfully.

David.

David asks if he can build God a temple.

That's what David wanted.

And I think that conversation likely happened after Psalm 15.

David asks God if he can build him a temple.

And God tells him, No.

Your hands have shed blood.

Borrowing for the phrase in the second part of verse 2.

Your hands haven't done what is right, David.

You murdered Uriah.

David hadn't walked blamelessly.

But that's the deal.

If you want to approach God in worship, you walk blamelessly.

Second, you speak truthfully, it says there.

That means you don't lie.

You don't manipulate reality for your own benefit.

Your mouth opens up and truth that's in your heart comes out.

You speak truthfully.

If you make a habit of lying, your worship's not heard by God.

And even makes a habit of is probably too generous of an understanding of that.

You just, you're, unless you speak truth, your worship's not heard by God.

You despise the dishonest person.

That's verse four.

In whose eyes a vile person is despised.

Remember, we're going through this in the order that the Jews had it memorized as their liturgy here in the next one in their memory system is verse 4.

In whose eyes a vile person is despised.

In other words, you despise wicked people for their wicked conduct.

I think we fail in this one often.

We make excuses for the wicked, especially when they're powerful.

We make excuses for the wicked.

We cover up all kinds of wicked things that wicked people do, especially in the world of politics.

We'll excuse evil deeds by saying, you know, that person's acting evilly and wickedly and immorally, but it's okay because they're, you know, part of the political party that I like.

And I've even heard people articulate it exactly like that.

Yeah, that person's bad and wicked, but man, the platform he's running on is really neat.

I mean, that's violating this sin right here.

Failing to despise the wicked, making all kinds of excuses, you know?

And you know this, you know this very, very well.

You see a news story about some congressman who's, you know, arrested in child trafficking and kidnapping all kinds of people and running cocaine out of his house and a million dollars and gold bullion buried under his bed.

And your first question is, yeah, but what party is he, huh?

I mean, that's the way our hearts think.

We cover up the sin of wicked people because we think it serves some other end that we value.

That's just rank idolatry.

And when that attitude is in your heart, your worship is not heard by the Lord.

And that's paired with honoring the righteous.

You despise the wicked and you honor the righteous.

It's another, I think, American political phenomena here that we are very quick to discount other Christians or be embarrassed by other Christians.

There's a whole genre of political columnists, especially inside of Christianity, that are like this, that are embarrassed of Christians and find them unsophisticated and unnuanced.

And yeah, but if you speak that clearly or plainly, it harms what we're trying to do culturally and politically, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You see people that tolerate unrighteousness at the highest level.

They'll excuse unrighteousness in all kinds of ways and then be offended at plain-spoken Christians.

And if that attitude is in your heart, your worship is not heard by the Lord.

The Psalm says, you not only despise the wicked, but you honor the righteous.

Your heart goes out to those who fear Yahweh.

You have an affinity with them.

You love them.

The word honor is just means to esteem, to lift up.

A vile person is despised, but the righteous person, the one who fears Yahweh, he's honored in your heart.

And the final positive here, he swears to his own harm.

The end of verse 4, to his own hurt, and he doesn't change.

This person makes a vow, and then circumstances change, and he'll be harmed by keeping his vow, but he keeps it anyway.

If your heart is anchored in the Lord, circumstances can change, but your heart doesn't change.

But if your heart is anchored in circumstances, circumstances change and you're a child.

You're tossed to and fro by the winds of this world and every wave of doctrine and wind of doubt.

It just is every changing circumstance, and you're reanalyzing everything.

You're like, yeah, I said I would do this, but if I stick to my word, that will hurt.

That'll be hard, and so I'm out.

That's a normal American attitude right there.

Yeah, I made a commitment, but I'm not really psyched about that commitment anymore.

Not so.

The righteous man.

The righteous man swears to his own harm and sticks to his word.

Because his heart isn't anchored in society, his heart isn't anchored in culture.

That guy's not gonna change.

And there's five negatives in this psalm.

First, the guy, you want your worship heard?

You have no slander.

That's verse three.

He does not slander with his tongue.

You're gonna see kind of concentric circles here.

You don't slander anybody.

Slander is the the tearing down, the tearing down of someone.

Slander is saying things that make a person go lower in the eyes of others.

Calvin, in his commentary on Psalm 15, has a really cool phrase I had never heard before.

Calvin calls the sin of slander the sin of detraction.

Detraction.

That you say things that detract from another person's reputation.

Use your words to rob somebody else of their reputation.

That's the sin of detraction.

If you commit that sin, your worship is not heard by the Lord.

You have no access to God's holy hill, which is to say no access to his temple, which is to say no access to his presence or his spirit.

The slanderer.

A person who commits evil towards his neighbor, verse 3 says.

No slander, but secondly, no evil to your neighbor.

Now that doesn't mean you can do evil to strangers because you understand that your neighbor is anyone with whom you interact.

So they're your neighbor by virtue of your interaction with them.

So if you're interacting with somebody, they become your neighbor for the duration of that interaction.

And if you are doing evil to them, you're doing evil to your neighbor.

A person who does evil to their neighbor does not have their worship heard by the Lord.

And the circles keep getting smaller here at the end of verse 3.

Who takes up a reproach against his friend?

Reproach just means you feel the charge.

You feel the charge against somebody.

You feel an accusation against somebody.

You speak of somebody in a way that brings them down.

And here it's talking about your friends.

So this isn't slander.

To say this positively, we don't usually use the word reproach, you know, in our normal vernacular here.

So to say the word positively, it's a sign of integrity that you show loyalty to your friends.

Our culture is so twisted and wicked that we have turned loyalty into a vice rather than a virtue.

Somebody brings an accusation against your friend, and we think it's a matter of virtue that you receive the accusation or amplify it to show how fair-minded you are.

That's a sin.

Loyalty is a virtue.

You don't take up a reproach against your friends.

That's destructive and corrosive to society.

Now, of course, we understand the rest of the Bible's teaching on this, that if you see your friend in sin, you confront him privately.

You deal with things privately.

That's not the way the world operates, though.

They don't have a category for confronting sin privately.

In their mind, you might cultivate a friendship with somebody, and once it's politically advantageous or culturally advantageous, you want to broadcast your friend's shortcomings to the world.

You bring reproach against him.

If you act like that, the Lord doesn't hear your worship.

Verse 5, he who doesn't put his money out at interest.

In other words, you don't charge interest to people, you don't lend to extort.

This is coming from Deuteronomy 23, which says you can only charge interest to foreigners.

The Israelites neglected Deuteronomy 23, brought all kinds of hurt and harm on their own world.

You see this in Haggai's day.

They were borrowing money from the Babylonians.

The Babylonians had an influx, and later the Persians had an influx of money into the Israelite economy.

The Jews would receive that money, lend it by leveraging it at an interest which kept their fellow countrymen in poverty.

And it just made the Persians and the Babylonians rich.

They're the ones that profited off of that.

Not the Jews.

That was a sin.

Haggai confronts it in Haggai chapter 1.

Haggai 1 · chapter mention

Nehemiah confronts it and pulls out the hair of the people that are doing it.

You want interest?

And finally, no bribes.

No bribes.

When the Bible talks about bribes, like in Exodus 23, it's talking in a way more profound way than simply you get pulled over and you give the cop a hundred bucks.

Which I think in our American cultural will just get you a longer time in jail, really.

The rich get away with things.

They can afford the right attorneys.

You know, they can circuit shop and find the right courthouse, find the right attorneys and make the right arguments, and they use their massive resources to get away with things that poor people have no capacity to get away with.

Deuteronomy 16 describes how the rich often manipulate the legal system.

That's just the reality.

And it's unjust.

The person who acts that way does not have his worship heard by God.

So what's interesting about this list, when you look at this full list, the 10 things that are on the screen, what stands out most to me is what's not on this list.

It's amazing that this list manages to be all-encompassing between what you walk and what you do and what you love and what you think and what you say.

In that sense, it's all-encompassing, and yet it's still missing some things.

Like what's on here is nothing about going to worship on here.

There's nothing about sacrifices, there's nothing about offerings, there's nothing about tithes, there's nothing about giving to the poor.

That kind of stuff is not on here.

And that's because if this is going to be an effective entrance liturgy, it's got to weed out the hypocrites here.

And hypocrites would pass those kind of tests with flying colors, wouldn't they?

I mean, again, to go back to the temple during Jesus' lifetime.

Jesus rolls in the temple, it is packed with people, none of whom are having their worship heard by the Lord.

And yet they would, if you made the test you have to give money to the poor, they would pass that.

If you made the test you gotta make three pilgrimages to Jerusalem, they would pass that.

In order to have your worship heard by the Lord, you've got to give to the poor.

Man, those guys blew trumpets.

They wanted everybody to know when they were going to the temple.

One of the requirements here is not even prayer.

Those guys would make the, those Pharisees would make the longest prayers and turn around for a pretense, devour a widow's house.

So this psalm effectively weeds out the hypocrites.

It doesn't give you something to do.

To use a more modern analogy, it doesn't say who can ascend God's holy hill.

Anyone who puts cactus needles in their hands and in their knees and crawls to church, they can ascend God's holy hill because if that's all it took, you would do it.

And it wouldn't affect your heart at all.

That kind of external conduct, that's a form of ID these Pharisees had.

But it doesn't get them through the door of God's tabernacle.

So I hope as we go through this searching question here, that you are convicted by this.

I hope that as you read this list, that just this is a surface cursory, 25 minutes that was.

Look at Psalm 15.

Just at that surface level, I hope you realize that you would fail this test.

Not that that's an excuse.

I mean, we would want to pass this test.

We want to walk blamelessly, we want to do what is right at all times, we want to only speak the truth.

We don't want to bring reproach against our friends.

We don't want to excuse the deeds of the evil.

We know that Christ has called us to live better than that.

We know that.

And I hope just at the surface level of this psalm you realize, man, I try to live this way, but I don't want to stake eternity on my effectiveness at this.

By the way, the end of the psalm, he who does these things will never be moved.

That's such a contrast with the person who sojourns in the holy tent.

The person who's able to pass this test, to pass this liturgy, he's never gonna leave the temple.

That doesn't mean he's not gonna have trials.

The psalmist back in Psalm 13, verse 4, is shaken.

Psalms 13:4

It's the same word used in Psalm 15, verse 5.

Psalms 15:5

A godly person is shaken in this world, of course.

But man, the person who passes this test will never be moved one inch out of God's presence.

So the searching question leads to the suspenseful answer.

I want you to turn over to see the suspenseful answer to Psalm 24.

Just turn a few pages to the right.

Psalm 24.

Psalm 24 is functioning in the same way as Psalm 15.

Psalm 24, written, I think, at the end of David's life.

Psalm 15 written towards the beginning of his reign.

Psalm 15, he's talking about the tabernacle.

Psalm 24, he's looking now at the hill, the holy place, verse 3.

Who shall ascend the hill of Yahweh, who will stand in his holy place?

Psalm 24, verse 3.

Psalms 24:3

So it's the same question.

This is probably after the tabernacle has been moved into Jerusalem because the two have become one here.

David has already asked, can he build God a temple?

God has already told him no because his hands aren't clean.

So that's already taken place, I think, by Psalm 24.

And David is back to the same question.

How can my worship be heard by the Lord?

Who does the Lord listen to?

Again, David was a man after God's own heart.

And yet the Lord told him he couldn't approach the temple because he had unclean hands.

So Psalm 24, it doesn't give you 10.

Boils it down, though.

So succinctly, verse 4, he who has clean hands and a pure heart and doesn't lift his soul up to what is false.

So someone who doesn't lie, his heart is pure, and his conduct is clean.

That's the person.

Again, the phrase is one that David had already been bounced out of line for.

His hands were not pure.

It basically is a demand for perfection.

David doesn't have it.

And so if the psalm ended there, it would end on a very sorrowful and bad note, but the psalm doesn't end there, of course.

Verse 7 gives you your answer that we've been looking for.

Lift up your heads, O gates.

Be lifted up, O ancient oars.

One of my favorite genres in scripture, like one of my favorite literary devices in scripture, is when the authors or the prophets or the writers address inanimate objects.

Like when Ezekiel yells at the mountains.

I love that.

They yell at the creek, they yell at the rocks.

It's kind of a biblical motif.

It's so fun, I think, to read.

This is one of those places here.

David is yelling at the gates.

Wake up, O gates.

Lift up your heads.

The gates are covered in vines.

You know, nobody has approached the temple.

Nobody has gotten through verse 4 ever.

But now David sees the person with the right boarding pass coming.

And he's yelling at the gates, wake up, gates, get the vines off you.

You know, these gates are like the secret garden gates.

You know, you can't even find the gates.

They're so overgrown.

And David says, Get the vines off.

Get ready, gates.

Because the king of glory is going to come in.

It's one thing to be glorious, but it's another thing to be the king of glory.

You know what I'm saying?

That's a whole new category.

Wake up, gates.

The king is coming to enter in.

Lift your heads, verse 9.

Lift your heads.

Lift them up, O ancient doors, so the king of glory can come in.

Who is this king of glory?

Verse 10.

Who is he?

Yahweh is the king of glory.

Yahweh of hosts, he is the king of glory.

So this is a very strange answer to the question: who can ascend God's holy hill?

The answer: one person.

He's got a title, he's the king, he's got a name, and it's Yahweh.

Yahweh can ascend Yahweh's hill.

Yahweh can dwell in Yahweh's tent.

Yahweh has access to Yahweh's courts.

The Lord Almighty has access to the heavenly courts of the Lord Almighty.

He can ascend.

Well, how does that make any sense?

Why do the gates need to open up for the one who made the earth that the gates are on?

Why does God need to go through the gates to get into the temple?

Isn't he already on the inside?

You know?

That's the point of the temple.

He's on the inside, and yet here the gates have got to open up to let him in.

That's the image, though.

Yahweh is the warrior.

It's the phrase borrowed from Exodus 15.

He's the warrior, he's the king, he's the king of glory, he's Yahweh of hosts, he's the mighty one of battle, and he is going to enter in the temple.

He's going to enter in his own courts.

He is worthy enough to come before the throne.

I call it a suspenseful answer because, like I said, how does it make any sense?

But David writes it.

David believed it, even if David did not have full understanding of it.

Thirdly, a surprising arrival.

I want you to turn now to Matthew 21.

A surprising arrival.

This is what Ryan read earlier in scripture reading.

I want you to read it again with new eyes, filled in from Psalm 24 and Psalm 15.

When they drew near to Jerusalem, they came to Beth Page, to the Mount of Olives.

Beth Page is just behind the Mount of Olives, then the Mount of Olives.

The Mount of Olives is just across from the temple.

It's across from the Temple Mount.

So the holy hill is across from the Mount of Olives.

So you would go down the Mount of Olives.

You don't even need to go up the backside of the Mount of Olives, really, from Beth Page.

You just walk across.

Then you go down the Mount of Olives in order to go up to the temple.

So that's the image here.

You descend in order to ascend.

That's what's happening with Jesus right here.

He's coming down the Mount of Olives.

He sends two disciples into Jerusalem in front of them.

The Mount of Olives opens up into Jerusalem.

Go into the village in front of you.

Immediately you'll find a donkey tied.

The colt, untie him, bring into me.

If anyone asks you anything, says the Lord needs them.

This is fulfilling what Zephaniah, or Zechariah had said in Zechariah 9 and Zechariah 11.

That the king, notice the king in verse 5.

Behold, your king is coming to you.

That's the language from Psalm 24.

The king is coming into Jerusalem.

Open up, O gates.

Because the king is coming in.

Disciples did what they were told.

They brought the donkey, the colt, they put him on their cloaks, they sat on them.

Most of the crowds spread their cloaks in the road.

Others put branches and trees.

They're treating him like he's an arriving king.

They're fulfilling Psalm 24.

They are the gates that are opening up.

The crowds, verse 9, that went before him, followed him, were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of God, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in an uproar.

And the crowd said, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.

So that is the answer to Psalm 24.

Who is the King of glory?

His name is Yahweh, and his name is Jesus.

He is the one who can open up the gates.

He is the one that can approach God's holy hill.

He's the one that can enter the temple.

He's the one that can dwell in the tent of the Lord.

He's the one with access to God because he is the one with clean hands and a pure heart.

He is the one who has sworn to his own harm.

He doesn't abandon his mission to save us when it's going to harm him.

He sticks to it to the end.

He doesn't slander.

He doesn't receive reproach against his friends, not even from the devil.

He doesn't receive a bribe.

He doesn't overlook the sins of the powerful because they're powerful.

He condemns the Pharisees repeatedly.

He doesn't discredit the righteous because they're poor or they're blind or they're lame.

No, he esteems them and he honors them.

Jesus does all of Psalm 15 perfectly.

He is the one who can ascend the Lord's holy hill.

He is the king of righteousness, and the crowds recognize it, and they throw open the gates, gates that had never been opened before.

They throw them open and they say, Come on in here, Jesus.

This is where you belong.

And Jesus rides into the temple.

What's the first thing he does?

Throws everybody out.

That's the next verse, verse 12.

Throws them all out.

They don't belong.

They didn't pass the worshipper's liturgy.

They don't have clean hands and a pure heart.

They're lending at interest right now.

In the temple courts.

And Jesus throws them all out and takes the place over.

Who can ascend the Lord's holy hill?

Not you.

Please don't come away with this and think I can do that too.

I can ride into Jerusalem.

I can have the gates swing open for me.

I can walk into the temple of the Lord like I belong there.

No, you cannot.

You cannot.

The only person who can is Jesus.

You know, the most common description of Christians in the New Testament is people that are in Christ.

So you have access to God, but your worship is acceptable to God, but not because of you.

Your worship is acceptable to God because it's in Jesus.

He is acceptable.

He was righteous.

He was sinless.

He dies on the cross to pay the penalty for your sin.

He takes your sin in himself so that you will not be punished for your sin.

He forgives you for your sin.

He transforms you in righteousness.

He gives you his righteousness so that when you sing or you pray or you worship, God hears your prayers and receives your songs and your worship because they're coming through Jesus.

Who is the King of glory?

Your worship is acceptable to God not because of who you are, but because of Jesus.

And this is why Jesus says, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone wants fellowship with me, open up the door.

And I will eat with him and he will eat with me.

And you'll be in Christ.

Hidden in Christ.

And you can approach the throne room of grace.

You can pray to God and He will hear your prayers because you're praying to Him through Jesus Christ.

Lord, we're grateful that you are the King of glory.

The angels, the shepherds, the prophets, John the Baptist, even the disciples to one degree or another, all shouted for the gates to open.

They all recognized who you were at your coming.

Lord, I pray for anyone here today who has never approached you through Christ.

I pray that today they would place their faith in you, the King of Glory.

That they would find their righteousness in your righteousness.

They would not hold to their own works or their own self-identity, but they would cling to you.

Lord, we know there's no way to heaven except through you.

You're the door.

You're the shepherd that walks through the door, and we're the sheep that just follow the shepherd.

You're not only the shepherd, you are the door.

You're not only the way, you are the truth.

You're not only eternal life, but you are the love of God from before the foundation of time.

So Lord, we look to you as our access to heaven.

We don't want to bet eternity on our own righteousness, but we will bet it on your righteousness.

We want to be hidden in you.

It's the name of Christ we pray.

And now, for parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.