Sixth Sunday in Lent Palm
Sunday
April 1, 2012
Dear friends in Christ.
If
there is one part of worship that I love more than the others, that part would
be singing. I love singing. Ever since I was a little child I have loved
to sing. I love singing hymns of praise to
our Lord each and every week. I love
singing the Psalms between the readings.
I even love singing the familiar melodies of the Liturgy! I love singing in church because I know that
as I sing, my praises are going up to the Lord who is the King of Glory! I love to sing, and I know that you love to
sing too. For as I have often told you,
I have the best seat in the house when it comes to just sitting and listening
to you sing your praises to the Lord, the King of Glory! And today is no exception! For today, already, I have been overjoyed to
hear your voices melding together in thanks and praise of Jesus our Lord, our
Savior, our King of Glory!
Well,
today, as we study the lesson before us, we don’t even need to take a break
from singing our praises, because the lesson for our consideration this morning
comes to us from the song book of the Old Testament. Our lesson, this morning comes to us from the
book of the Psalms; Psalm 24. Now, I
invite you to open your bulletins to the first two pages of the insert and we
will read this Psalm responsively, just as we did at the beginning of the
service. We will read only the verse of
the Psalm omitting the hymn.
P: “The
earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
C: for he founded it upon the seas and
established it upon the waters.
P: Who may
ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place?
C: He
who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol
or swear by what is false.
P: He will
receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from God his Savior. Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, O God of Jacob. Lift
up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of
glory may come in.
C: Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong
and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.
P: Lift up
your heads, O you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of
glory may come in.
P: Who is he, this King of glory? The LORD
Almighty— he is the King of glory.
(Psalm 24:1–10, NIV84)
What
better song of praise could there be for us to study this morning than a song
of praise written by King David himself!
It was David whom the Lord chose to be King over Israel. It was David whom the Lord used to pen many
beautiful Psalms about the coming Savior.
It was David and his line through whom the Savior was promised to come,
and it was David whom the Lord inspired to write the beautiful words we have
before us this morning. Now, when King
David wrote these words, it is very likely that he wrote them for the day when
the Ark of the Covenant would be brought into Jerusalem for the first
time. Before this the Ark had been kept
in the Tabernacle at Shiloh. This was
where Hannah had brought her son Samuel, when he was three years old, as she
had promised the Lord when she prayed for a son. This was where the Lord had called Samuel at
night, and Samuel had run to Eli three different times before Eli had figured
out what was happening. This is where the
Lord gave Samuel a message of Judgment against Eli and his family because Eli
had allowed his sons to act in ways that were terribly disrespectful of the
Lord. And this is where the Ark of the
Covenant had been until the day Eli’s two sons had taken it into battle against
the Philistines.
I’m
sure you remember the story from your Sunday School days. Though Eli’s sons had brought the Ark into
the Israelite camp, on that day the Israelites were thoroughly defeated by the
Philistines and the Ark was taken into captivity for seven months. Though they moved it from city to city, the
Lord’s hand was so heavily against them that they finally sent the Ark back to
the Israelites in a cart pulled by two cows that had just calved. It came to the town of Kiriath Jearim where
it stayed for the next 70 years, until David was King, Jerusalem had been
taken, and all was ready to bring the Ark into Jerusalem. (see 1 Samuel 1-6)
Can’t
you just imagine the procession that day!
Can’t you just see the Levites carrying the Ark on their shoulders as
the Lord commanded, with King David and a procession of hundreds if not
thousands of people coming to Jerusalem with the Ark of the Covenant? Can’t you just hear the sounds of
tambourines, harps, lyres, and trumpets being played in celebration of the Ark
coming to Jerusalem? Can’t you just feel
the joy that radiated off all the people as the Ark of God, which is called by
the Name, the name of the LORD Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim
that are on the ark, (2 Samuel 6:2) was brought into the city? Can’t you just imagine the procession of
people singing the words of Psalm 24, singing to the Lord God, King of Glory,
as the Ark approached the city? Let’s
read those words together again:
P: “The
earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
C: for he founded it upon the seas and
established it upon the waters.
P: Who may
ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place?
C: He
who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol
or swear by what is false.
P: He will
receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from God his Savior. Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, O God of Jacob. Lift
up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of
glory may come in.
C: Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong
and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.
P: Lift up
your heads, O you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of
glory may come in.
P: Who is he, this King of glory? The LORD
Almighty— he is the King of glory.
(Psalm 24:1–10, NIV84)
Now,
fast forward to Palm Sunday! Can’t you
just see all the people gathered around Jesus as his disciples cover the donkey
with their cloaks? Can’t you just see
all the people as they spread their cloaks on the road and laid down palm
branches in his path? Can’t you just
hear the songs the people were singing along the road as they traveled the few
miles from Bethany to Jerusalem? Though
the Bible doesn’t say which songs they sang, other than the song of Hosanna to
the Son of David as they saw Jerusalem and approached the temple, I can just
imagine this crowd singing praise to their King of Glory with the words of
Psalm 24 at some point before they began their shouts of Hosanna! I can just imagine that because Psalm 24 was
regularly read in the temple on the first day of the week. Psalm 24 was a psalm that builds on the theme
of the Lord’s coming for his people. On
that Palm Sunday, as Jesus, the King of Glory was riding to Jerusalem on the
back of a donkey, I can just imagine someone in the crowd beginning to sing the
words of Psalm 24 which we read again together,
P: “The
earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
C: for he founded it upon the seas and
established it upon the waters.
P: Who may
ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place?
C: He
who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol
or swear by what is false.
P: He will
receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from God his Savior. Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, O God of Jacob. Lift
up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of
glory may come in.
C: Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong
and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.
P: Lift up
your heads, O you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of
glory may come in.
P: Who is he, this King of glory? The LORD
Almighty— he is the King of glory.
(Psalm 24:1–10, NIV84)
What
better song of praise could there be for us to sing and to meditate upon today,
especially as we Celebrate Palm Sunday!
For today, we are celebrating the fact that even though Jesus humbly
rode into Jerusalem on a colt, the foal of a donkey, he rode into Jerusalem as
the King of Glory! Even though Jesus
humbly road into Jerusalem following a path that would lead to utter
humiliation, kangaroo courts, illegal trials, mocking, whippings, beatings, and
finally crucifixion, he rode in as the King of Glory who came to free each and
every one of us from our sins. Just as
the Lord had come to Jerusalem centuries before when the people welcomed the
Ark of the Covenant, so also Jesus came to his people as the Savior who would
free them from their sins. Though we
know the sorrow and the humiliation that will face as he is arrested, tried,
convicted and crucified, we also know that he willingly did all this in our
place. Jesus willingly carried the
weight of our sins to the cross so that we could be forgiven and live with our
King in his glorious heavenly kingdom forever.
Thus,
today, as we sing praise to Jesus, our King of Glory, we not only remember how
he came to the earth to be our Savior, but we also look forward to the day of
his returning. We look forward to the
day when we will see the glory our King returning on the clouds of heaven. We look forward to the day when we will hear
the trumpet blast of the angle and see the procession of Jesus with his angels
and all those who have gone before us through faith in him. We look forward to the day when we will stand
before the Lord and as our lesson says, “receive blessing from the LORD and
vindication from God [our] Savior." (Psalm 24:5, NIV84) We look forward to that day when we will be
judged innocent of all our sins through faith in Jesus. We will be declared righteous in the sight of
our God. It will be proclaimed that we
have clean hands and a pure heart and we will be blessed to ascend the hill of
the Lord and stand in the presence of our King of glory forever more. This is the day we are waiting for, because
we have already received all these blessings through faith in Jesus sour King
of Glory!
Thus,
today we have gathered to join our hearts and voices in praise of Jesus, our
King of Glory. We have gathered meld our
voices together in praise and let them echo about our church in worship of the
Lord our God! So, as we close today, let
us raise our voices in praise of Jesus our King of Glory by speaking responsively
the words of Psalm 24 1 more time.
P: “The
earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
C: for he founded it upon the seas and
established it upon the waters.
P: Who may
ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place?
C: He
who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol
or swear by what is false.
P: He will
receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from God his Savior. Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, O God of Jacob. Lift
up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of
glory may come in.
C: Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong
and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.
P: Lift up
your heads, O you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of
glory may come in.
P: Who is he, this King of glory? The LORD
Almighty— he is the King of glory.
(Psalm 24:1–10, NIV84)
Amen.
Pastor
David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN
