The King of Glory

The Sunday night message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on January 28, 2024.  The Bible verses used are Psalm 24.

            There are a lot of names by which we refer to God.  Jehovah.  Lord.  King of kings.  The Almighty.  The Holy One.  I’m sure you can think of many others.

            But our psalm for today, Psalm Twenty-four, uses a name for God which we rarely use.  In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone use it other than in this psalm.  In Psalm Twenty-four, God is referred to as “The King of Glory”.

            The psalm uses that phrase over and over.  Five times, in this psalm, God is referred to as “The King of Glory”.  But what does that mean?  What does it mean to call God ‘The King of Glory”?  And what does that phrase tell us about God?

            Well, let’s look at the word “glory”.  The first definition of “glory” is “high renown or honor won by notable achievements”.  And in fact, one of the things our psalm does is go through some of God’s “notable achievements”.  Not all of them, of course–that would not be possible.  But let’s look at what the psalm says about God’s achievements.

            It begins with this:  “The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.”

            That’s quite an achievement.  The creation of the world.  The seas.  The waters.  The dry land, too, of course.  And the rocks and the plants and the animals and the birds and the fish and everything else.  I think we’d have to admit that the creation of all that is a pretty notable achievement.

            It goes on to say that the King of Glory is “The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.”  God is so strong, so mighty, that God is undefeated.  God wins every battle.  God may allow it to look like He’s losing, for a while, but He’s never really losing.  It’s like those old melodramas where there’d be a cliffhanger where it looked like the hero was really in big trouble and the villain might be going to win.  It might have looked that way, but you knew better.  You knew that, somehow, the hero would have to do something where he’d defeat the villain and win in the end.  That’s how it is with God.  It may look like God could be defeated, but we know better.  We know that, somehow, God is going to win in the end.  God is too strong and too mighty to ever be defeated.  Being undefeated is a pretty notable achievement, too.

            But God’s glory goes beyond notable achievements.  Because the other definition of glory applies to God, too.  Glory is “magnificence or great beauty”.

            God is magnificent.  God is magnificent beyond our ability to understand magnificence.  Just look around at God’s creation.  Look at the beauty of it.  Look at the colors.  Look at the shapes.  Look at the incredible variety of it.  There are so many different kinds of animals.  There are so many different kinds of plants.  There are so many different kinds of birds and fish.  There are even so many different kinds of rocks and dirt.  I mean, think about that.  God is so magnificent that He created all kinds of different rocks and all kinds of dirt.  I mean, to me, a rock is just a rock.  But not to God.  God even made the rocks different and special.  That’s pretty magnificent.

            But that’s not the only way God is magnificent, or even the most important way.  God is truly magnificent because of the way God cares about us.  About you, and about me.  

            It’s been estimated that there have been around a hundred seventeen billion people who have lived on earth since God created it.  And God has known everything about each one of those one hundred seventeen billion people.  God has known their names.  God has known their addresses.  God has known their height and their weight.  God has known the color of their hair and the color of their eyes.  God has known the number of hairs on their heads.  For every single one of those hundred seventeen billion people.  Including you.  And including me.

            But that’s not all God has known.  God has known the talents and abilities of each of those hundred seventeen billion people.  God has known the likes and dislikes of each of them.  God has known the personality of each one of them.  God has known what makes each of them laugh and what makes each of them cry.  God has known the goals and desires of each of them.  God has known the hopes and fears of each of them.  God has known the loves and the hates of each of them.  And God has known the faith–or lack of faith–of each of them.

            But here’s the most important thing.  God has loved each one of those one hundred seventeen billion people.  And God continues to love each one of those one hundred seventeen billion people.  And if the world lasts long enough for there to be a hundred seventeen billion more people, or two hundred billion more people, or a trillion more people, God will love each and every one of them, too.  In fact, God already does love them, because God already knows them before they are even born.

            Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am not saying that God approves of what each one those one hundred seventeen billion people do or did.  I am also not saying that all of those one hundred seventeen billion people are going to heaven.  But even if people choose not to believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior, and so choose not to go to heaven, God still loves them.  There has never been and there never will be a person whom God does not love.  That’s magnificent.  That’s incredibly magnificent.

            God is glory.  God has more glory than anyone else ever will have or ever could have.  God is the king of glory, just as the author of Psalm Twenty-four says.

            But why does the author say it?  Why does the author make such a big deal out of it? I mean, it’s true.  But why is it important? Why does the author of psalm twenty-four go to such lengths to make sure we know God is the king of glory?

            Well, life, quite often, is not an easy thing.  As you know, I’ve prepared a lot of funerals lately.  And I’ve learned about the lives of a lot of people.  And one of the things that strikes me about that is all the things people have to go through and have to overcome in their lives.  Lack of money.  Health problems.  Family strife.  Losing loved ones, sometimes at a young age.  Going to war.  Isolation.  Most of us go through an awful lot of things in our lives.

            And if we try to get through them by ourselves, on our own power, by our own wisdom and strength, we won’t make it.  Sometimes we might, but a lot of times we won’t.  We need someone we can rely on.  Someone who’s powerful.  Someone who’s strong.  Someone who cares about us.  Someone who will always be there for us.  Someone who will always love us, no matter what may happen.

            That’s who the King of Glory is.  He is that strong, powerful one we can rely on.  He is that one who always cares about us and will always be there for us and will always love us.  And if we put our faith and trust in Him, the King of Glory will see us through all of the hard things life can throw at us.  He may not just make all the hard things magically disappear.  But He will be with us as we go through them, and He will lead us through to the other side of them.

            Listen to what the psalm says:  “The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god.  They will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God their Savior.”

            When it refers to “clean hands and a pure heart”, that does not mean we need to be perfect.  It means that we put our faith and trust in God and nowhere else.  It means we do our best to serve God and be faithful to God.  If we do that, the psalm says, we will receive blessings and vindication from the Lord.  Again, that does not mean we get everything we want and our troubles all disappear.  It means that God will see us through whatever we’re going through, and God will help us triumph over them in the end.

            “Who is he, this King of Glory?  The Lord Almighty–he is the King of Glory.”  If we trust in God and put our faith in God, God will always be there for us.  God is strong and mighty.  God is magnificent.  And God is the King of Glory.