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Join me in prayer. Almighty and gracious God, creator of the changes of day and night, you are indeed the one who gives rest to the weary, renewing the strength of those who are spent. As you have protected us to this day, we ask you to be with us in the days that are to come. Bring us safely through the dark hours of our souls and into the brightness of your morning.
Wash us clean from the stains of our erring ways. Forgive us for failing to recognize you in the lives of others around us. Keep us now from every sin, every evil, and every fear. Keep watch over us. Be our companion and awaken in us so great a hope that the regret and despair and fear that our failures have left behind will flee in the presence of your healing and transforming love. Our Father, we give you thanks
this morning for surrounding us with the brightness of your truth. And in your mercy, we ask you to enfold us with the radiance of this light. Shine into our hearts and minds the brightness of your Holy Spirit. Grant us the lamp of grace, which never fails. Stir up in us the flame of love which burned in the heart of your Son. Let it burn in us. Dispel the darkness of our hearts that we may know you
to indeed be the one true God living and reigning over our human stories. Our God, we have come in search of you this morning. Enable us to find and embrace you as the God who is eager to embrace. Yours is the day and yours is also the night. You established the moon and the sun. You fixed all the boundaries of the earth. You made both summer and winter. Teach us this morning your gospel. This morning the
brightness of your truth searches our lives. And as those who are recipients of your grace and mercy, teach us to show mercy. Clear our clouded vision of your kingdom. Lead us to your holy city where the true and never failing light dwells. Give to us your servants that peace which the world cannot give, so that our minds may be set on doing your will. We pray these things in the name of the light of the world,
our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Hear the words of David from Psalm 32. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Be glad and rejoice in the Lord, O righteous, and shout for joy all you upright in heart. Sisters and brothers in Christ, we are forgiven in Jesus Christ. Amen. Have you not gone,
have you not heard, as it not been told you, that the everlasting God of our Lord in sorry splendor? His glory is unspeakable, His power shall never fail. They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and never fade. To whom will the love of the Lord compare? Who can stand His equal? Hide His word before the hand. Hide His
power in the airs of Satan. They grew as bearish, hopelessly. Strong nations come to knock. But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and never fade. And why complain, O Israel? Why not ask O Jacob? Do you think he does not see? Is your way not this regarded? His knowledge is unsearchable. His wisdom strong and sure. They that
wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and never fade. Have you not, Lord, have you not heard, as it's not been told you, that the everlasting love and the tireless moments weary? The future shall stumble helplessly. The young grow weak and faint. But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up as eagles. They shall
run and not grow weary. They shall walk and never fade. They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and never fade. As you know, the whole country and the world is at a very, at a nervous time in our history. And we are so concerned about world peace right now. Let me tell you about some ways you can pray
in these next few days. And you might be able to be free for some of these. So I'll just tell you what's happening in Opportunities for Prayer. Monday from 6 o'clock until 12 midnight, right across the street here in the First Congregational Church in the chapel, there will be a Sathergate Community Prayer Vigil of churches in our area. And that will be from 6 PM until midnight. For those who would want to come in
just for a few moments or any time you would like, just to pray for peace. And then our Presbyterian Church, all of us, you know, we're members of the Presbytery of San Francisco. And all the 60 churches in our Presbytery, we're having a prayer vigil too, from 8 PM January 14th until 8 a .m. the next day. And that will be at St. John's Presbyterian Church, our sister church, right on College Avenue, very near us
here. And that will be a prayer vigil that the Presbytery of San Francisco, our church, is putting on. 8 PM to 8 AM. And then right here in our own church, of course, we have a Gape Prayer Fellowship tomorrow morning. They'll be praying. And also at 12:30 noon on Tuesday, we'll have a special prayer time in College Lounge, here in our church, for those that want to pray. And I'm so grateful for, in
all three services, the prayer of the people we have prayed for peace. And as we start this morning's sermon, I want to pray one more time for us. Shall we pray? Lord, we lift up the world. And it's on our hearts right now. And we pray that there will be not only justice but also peace. We pray there will be no loss of life. We just yearn for that. And, Father, do we now pray for Arab
friends that are seeking to develop an Arab solution? We pray for other people of goodwill that are trying to play the peacemaker role, the Secretary General of the United Nations, for his mission right now. We ask for wisdom for him. We pray for unusual wisdom for our President, and that you will give to our President and his advisors great skill and wisdom at this time. And, Lord, we pray for restraint. Thou art the great peacemaker, and
we pray for restraint in the world today, that there will not be the loss of life in the Persian Gulf. And, Lord, we ask for your special protection for all people that are on that line in the desert. We think of our own servicemen that are there and young people from this church that are there, too. We ask for your protection and protection for people on both sides of that line. And now, Lord, give to us
in our own hearts the right attitude and make us peacemakers. And may we be those who contribute toward goodwill and the building of human relationships. And so, Father, bless us. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. This is now the second sermon in a series of sermons that I'm preaching this Christmastide till Eastertide. As you know, I try to do every year a major expositional series during these 10 or so weeks between Christmas and Easter. And last
year, two years ago, we did a series called Understanding the Old Testament. We tried to give an overview of the Old Testament, the background of the Old Testament for our New Testament faith. And then last year, we zeroed in on the Ten Commandments and tried to understand the Torah, the Ten Commandments and its setting with regard to New Testament faith. And now this year, we are examining a person and the journey of the light of a
person in Old Testament history, King David. When we try to understand the meaning of the light of a man like King David, we are really understanding not only a man's life, but also the life, the history of a people. Because David is a vital part of that history. You'll also see he's a part of our history too. In fact, now I want you to open the book of Hebrews, Chapter 11. I'm going to read you an
interesting text in the Letter to the Hebrews. This book is written in the midpoint of the first century by a Christian writer. It's one of the only books in the New Testament that is anonymously written. There is no autograph as to the writer. And we don't know whether it's a man or woman who writes this book. Some have even hypothesized that perhaps Priscilla is the writer of this book, the great friend of the Apostle Paul. We
know the writer writes from a Jewish point of view, and yet the writer has this rich Pauline tapestry of Pauline theology that's in this book as well. So here it is. In the 11th chapter, the writer of the Hebrews does a kind of litany, a story of the history of God's holy people, the Old Testament people. And I'll read you the last paragraph of that litany. What more shall I say? This is verse 32, Chapter 11,
book of Hebrews. What more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah of David, and Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched raging fires, escaped from the edge of the sword. One strength out of weakness became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they
might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and scourging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were killed by the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering over deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. What an incredible narrative. You saw many little one-line references to the life of David
there, too, didn't you? And incidents from his life as well as the life of other people. And then the last two sentences are theologically very rich and profound. And all of these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised. Interesting. They are a people of promise. They were a people of covenant. And yet they did not receive the covenant, the writer of the Hebrew says. Because now, listen to the last line. Since
God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us, they should not be made perfect. I like the way Ronald Knox translates that last line. He's a great translator of the New Testament. And Ronald Knox really understands the meaning of that word perfect, teleos, which means complete. And here's how he translates the last line. He says, all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive the promise, since we were needed to complete the
story of their lives. That's the way Ronald Knox translates that line. We were needed to complete the story of their lives. See, without us, the story of their lives cannot be made complete. It's interesting. We then are needed to complete David's story. We're needed to complete the story of all of these great heroes, these men and women, of the Old Testament journey. Well, how could that be so? How are they needed to complete our lives? How
are we needed to complete their lives? During these next weeks, we're going to try to understand it with regard to the story of the life of David. Now, two years ago, when we did our Old Testament series, we tried to do a sweeping kind of overview of Old Testament thought and the Old Testament journey of God's people. And remember at that time, I alerted you to three great threads or strands that will help you to make
some sense of the Old Testament story. In fact, I suggested to you then that you really cannot understand the Old Testament apart from these great threads that go through Old Testament experience of the people. The first thread is the thread we celebrated in baptism this morning. It's the fundamental thread of the Jewish nation. It's what might be called the Abrahamic thread. It's the way the Jews saw themselves as a chosen people. In fact, they described themselves
as the chosen people. And that is a fundamental thread in Jewish history. You cannot understand the Old Testament apart from it. Abraham, 1800 BC, was chosen by God to be the father, he and Sarah, the father and mother of a new nation. And the Jews saw themselves in the light of that chosenness. You cannot understand them apart from that. And that is what might be called all throughout the Jewish history, the Abrahamic thread. It's the priesthood,
the Jewish tradition of the priesthood, that kept alive that thread in the memory of the people. Almost all of the Jewish ceremonies in a given year, in the feast year, celebrate one way or another that chosenness. Of course, circumcision was the main one, which is the mark of the covenant of chosenness. The mark of the covenant that God had chosen his people. That is fulfilled in the New Testament in baptism. When we baptize, we lay hold
of the covenant God first made to Abraham, fulfilled in Christ. The Passover, the most important of the Jewish feasts, celebrates the chosenness of the Jews, that God chose them. And so there is that identity thread. If you were a psychologist and were trying to understand that thread philosophically, you would describe it as the identity thread that goes through the Old Testament history. And you simply see it throughout all of the journey of the Old Testament. It's
always on their mind. The second thread could be called the Mosaic thread. Moses, 1250 BC, is the second great figure in Jewish history. And with Moses comes another tremendous strand in Jewish history. What I'm going to call the Mosaic thread. This is the deliverance thread. It's more subtle, more complicated than the first thread. The first one is really quite simple, the fact that we are chosen. The second is more complicated. It's the redemption thread, the salvation
thread in Jewish history. Because it's more complicated in that it's not only salvation from oppression, the oppression of those outside of Israel, like the Egyptians, that's the Exodus, but it's also redemption from within us, and that's the law. The law that's given on Mount Sinai, the interruption of God in the journey of his people that shows to them his will for their life, that's the Torah. And that comes into the life of Israel and becomes a
permanent thread in the life of the people. It's what might be called the redemption or the Mosaic thread. Now it's interesting, in the life of Israel, it's the prophets who keep this thread alive. And that's one of the reasons that all through Jewish history, the prophets are always in tension with the priests, the first thread, and they're in tension with the kings, the third thread, the Davidic thread. The prophets stand right in the middle. And they're
the ones that are always calling Israel to be faithful to the law, faithful to God's will. And they challenge the priests, the priests never particularly like the prophets, and they challenge the kings. Believe me, the kings don't like the prophets. Because the prophets are calling into question the first and the third thread. But there's those two threads, now the third thread, the one we're going to spend these 10 weeks trying to understand. 1000 BC, a man
came onto the scene of Israel. He took a ragtag group of tribal people and welded them together and made them into a nation. And the Jews never forgot that man, and his name was David. And for 40 years he was king. And during those 40 years the Jews had a moment of glory in their history. Now you think of American history and some of our ups and downs, but we've had a fairly prosperous history, all things
considered. But think of it, in Jewish history, for that whole period from Abraham all the way to the time of the Romans, first century, there was only 40 years in that whole 1800 year span that could be called years of glory. And they were the 40 years of David. Because after David, the Jews are completely under the control of other powers around them. Solomon, his own son, who built the great temple, during Solomon's own life the
temple is stripped by the Romans of all the gold, not the Romans, the Egyptians, came up and stripped it of all the gold that was in that temple. And they were just the political football of great powers around them. Before David, they were just a tribal people, again, dominated by great powers around them. David gave Israel its 40 years of greatness, you might say of success, and the Jews never forgot it. That's why you cannot understand
Israel apart from that Zionist thread, that nationalistic thread, that success thread. The messianic hope is seen in terms of David, that there will be a king like David that will come. And so that's the Davidic thread. We're going to try to understand that thread. It's a profound thread to understand. If you can understand it, you'll better understand yourself. You'll understand your own yearning for happiness. If you can understand the Davidic thread. It's a fundamental thread in
the life of the Jews, in the life of the Old Testament people, and the New Testament people as well. It's what might be called the kingdom thread, the fulfillment thread. Well, there you have it. You have these three threads. The institution that keeps the third thread alive is the institution of the kings, the institution of their kingdom. The institution that keeps the second thread alive are the prophets, and the institution that kept the first thread alive
were the priests. Now what we need to see about these three threads is that they're archetypical. They're not only the story of Israel, but like the writer of the Hebrews points out, they're the story of our lives too. Because each of these threads are your threads. For instance, the first thread, the yearning for identity, is a profound thread in your life. You won't express it in Abrahamic terms, but you certainly express it. If you're an African
American, if you're an Asian American, if you're white, if you're whatever background you have, you know how much our culture right now is identity-oriented. It's one of the parts of the so-called nostalgia phase we're in as a country. It's people trying to get a hold of traditions, trying to know who they are, trying to know where they came from. That's the identity yearning. It's the Abrahamic thread, and it's very much a part of your
life. It's very much a part of what makes you you. You know, I remember when the movie Fiddler on the Roof came out. By the way, isn't it marvelous? Topol, who made the movie when he was not even 30 years old, he played Reb Tevye. Would you believe it? And now on Broadway, right now, there's a reprise of the musical. It's a smash success coming back to Broadway again, and Topol is playing the role of Reb Tevye. And
I love what the New York Times said when they gave the review of the musical. They said, now Topol has grown into the role, because he was 30 years old when he first made Reb Tevye, who's supposed to be almost 60 in the movie, in the play, and now he is almost 60. So he's come into his role, and it's a marvelous musical. The opening song of that musical is absolutely whimsical and wonderful. The song is simply
called Tradition. And Reb Tevye tells us at the opening of that musical that we know who we are in this strange little Russian town of Anatevka. We know who we are. The rabbi helps us to know who we are. Everyone has a role, the matchmaker. Each person plays a role so that we know who we are. And that yearning is a profound yearning. It's the Abrahamic yearning. I had a girl come to me after that musical first
came out when it was in a movie form, and she was a teenager, and I was a young youth pastor at the time, and she came to me and said, you know, I want to complain about my parents. Well, now I thought it would be a typical adolescent complaint about parents, as a 16-year-old was probably, I thought, going to say, you know, my parents are too strict and they don't let me do this, they
don't let me do that. And instead this girl said to me, I'll never forget it. She said, I wish I had a father like Reb Tevye. She had just seen this musical. And she says, I wish I had a father like him. And then she explained. She says, you know, I wish I had a father that would argue with me like Reb Tevye does with his daughters. Of course, I'd like to win my way, too. I'd like to
get my way, but I want to get my way after an argument. Remember, two of the three girls argue with their father over who they're going to marry, and they get their way. Though it's really tough. They have to fight their father all the way. But they like that. She wished her father cared so much about who she was going to marry that he would struggle with her. But she says, you know, my dad doesn't even
care who I go out with. And it kind of ruined it all. It's no fun if you don't have somebody to strain against. If you don't have some tradition. If everything is just vague and you go to hit for a wall and you never find a wall, it just sort of moves into kind of fog. Nobody likes that. Because this girl was yearning for tradition. She was yearning for something to struggle against. And she couldn't find
it in her father. She wanted a father like Reb Tevye, who struggled with each daughter, and yet he did negotiate with him, too. You have to do that. And that's tradition. That's the Abrahamic thread. And it's in every one of us. And also the Mosaic thread. We have a yearning to be redeemed. I'm going to say more about that, but it's a profound yearning. We all know it. Every one of us, there's so much being written
about this right now, but every one of us feels oppressed. Boy, we're the oppressed people. Have you ever heard? You read any newspaper. And we feel oppressed either by people outside of us or from within us. And we all need to be liberated from oppression. Every one of us. We've got a story to tell of who's oppressing us, don't we? And so that is a profound yearning in every person. It's not necessarily only in the Jews
with their Mosaic thread. We have a Mosaic thread. Because we want to be set free. And then the Davidic thread. Do I have to prove that one to you? Every one of us in this room wants a king like David, or better yet, we'd like to be the king. We want to be fulfilled. We want success. And we want to be happy. You may deny it, but you're lying if you do. Every one of us wants
to be happy. And that's the fulfillment thread. We all want to be fulfilled. The most that we can be. Now, these themes then are in the Old Testament and they're also in our lives. We have the yearning for identity to know who we are, to know our roots. And this is that chosenness thread in Jewish life. Now the interesting thing about the first thread is that we do not choose our parents. We do not choose our
identity. And that makes this thread a much less complicated thread than the other two. But yet it's very important to us and we celebrate it. The second thread is more complicated. That's the thread, the yearning for deliverance. Deliverance from oppression. The resolution of crisis. Sometimes the crisis of our own making, or the crisis that's brought on us by somebody else that's oppressing us. Every one of us wants this. But this is more complicated because we cannot
solve our own crisis. We cannot confer forgiveness on ourselves. I'll give you a Luther phrase. It is extranose. It has to come outside us. The first thread is intranose. It's inside of us. It's our identity. The second thread has to be extranose. For instance, supposing you had a big fight with your brother or sister before you went to school this morning or yesterday and you slammed the door on their face and their nose got disjointed and
there they are, stuck in the door. And they finally come out of the door and the nose is always twisted. Maybe it'll be that way for the rest of their life. Big little bend in their nose. And then you go to school and you say, Isn't that terrible how bad I feel? But I must forgive myself. Otherwise, I'll be psychologically disoriented. And after all, I've got to get on with my life. Aren't you sick of that
phrase? Everybody is getting on with their life. That's how you justify divorcing everybody, to get on with your life. After all, I've got to get on with my life. So I'll just forgive myself. But it doesn't work. Because you have disjointed your neighbor's nose or your brother's nose or your sister's nose and they are the only ones that can forgive you. They've got to do it. Sooner or later, you have to make peace. You can't just
pass it off. You can't just, you can't divorce your children. You may divorce your wife or your husband. You can't divorce your children. And you leave a whole residue of wreckage. And it does come back to haunt. And forgiveness and resolution has to come. And you can't do it all by yourself. It's extra nose. And so that's that mosaic threat. The law comes in, makes us feel more guilty, and shows us God's will. And then redemption
comes in to set us free from the Egyptians or set us free from ourselves. And that is the second thread. It's more complicated. Now isn't it interesting? The second thread disciplines the first thread. Now the first thread is your identity. And have you ever noticed how many times we defend what we do by saying it's in my genes? I'm just born aggressive. And I just beat up everybody because that's the way I am. Or my family's
that way, you know, the old godfather argument. I'm in the Cannelloni family and I simply have to be in that way I was born. That's what William Shakespeare is struggling with in Romeo and Juliet. The Montagues and the Capulets always fight each other and they kill off the young man in both families. They have a lot of fun doing it. And we just always do it. We always fight the Capulets. We always fight the Montagues. And
it was Romeo and Juliet came along and said, why do you have to do that? That's a bad tradition. You see, some traditions are downright evil. And it takes the prophet to challenge the identity thread and say, listen, your identity thread is fouled up. You are doing evil things and you're justifying them because you say, well, it's in my genes or I'm always doing it that way. I'm just always a selfish person. I can't help it.
That's the way I am. What do you mean? You'd better help it. Otherwise, it'll destroy everything. And so sometimes you can't use the argument from identity to get away with everything and say, I'm just born that way. That's why I always am. Because the second thread challenges it. Have you ever noticed how the prophet Jeremiah does that with Israel? The people of Israel would say, we are the children of Abraham. We are the children of Abraham.
We are the children of Abraham. And Jeremiah challenged them on that and said, be careful. Don't say that because God will raise up children of Abraham from the rocks. It isn't enough to say you're the children of Abraham. You have to do the will of the father. You have to obey the God of Abraham. And so you see, that's the role of the prophet who challenges the first thread. And by the way, the prophets challenge the
third thread, too, your Davidic thread. That's your desires. Every one of us have many, many raging desires, powerful desires for happiness. And the desires for happiness need to be disciplined by the redemption thread. They need to be redeemed. Otherwise, they destroy you. The desire to be successful, the desire to be rich, so you can support your family, of course, but the desire to be rich can be a destructive desire and can ruin your life. You know,
I talked to a young man yesterday that I've known for many years, and his company has just gone bankrupt. And he said to me something very amazing. He said, you know, I'm going to come out of this okay, I think. But he said, you know, in a way, I'm kind of glad it happened because it's forced me to reevaluate all my priorities because I was having a string of successes, and I don't think they were really
my successes. I think I was riding a crest, and I'm kind of glad in a way, he says, I don't believe this too much, he said, but I'm not too sad that this failure has hit me because I think it's taught me a very important lesson. In a sense, his success had to be seen through the redemption. It had to be disciplined, and maybe that's what this young man was trying to tell me. Well, at any
rate, here are the three threads. They're a part of your life, just like they're a part of David's life, or they're a part of the life of the people of Israel. And it's important that we see these three threads. Now, all three are important. They're all important in your life, and you shouldn't downgrade them. Even though the prophet disciplines the first and the third, they should not be downgraded. They're all important. That's why it's very important
that you feel good about your, if you're an African American, or if you're an Asian American, or if you're a person that was born in California, or you just moved to California, wherever you're from, you should feel good about who you are. You should feel good and know that that is bounded by God's decision. And you should know that sense of chosenness. It's important. By the way, that's why it's so important in relating to people, like
in the Persian Gulf right now. It's very important that we don't paint ourselves into a corner diplomatically, where we cause people to lose face, even people we think of as enemies. You shouldn't take lightly the fact that every single person has to preserve their identity, and they're also that Davidic thread. They can't be made to lose that sort of, that's why in all cultures of the world, the loss of face is such a very complicated thing.
Where a person, you've got to be careful you don't paint a person into a corner where they must lose face. It's very delicate in diplomacy. Because it's a part of the way we're made. Those threads are in our lives. We have to feel good about our roots, we have to feel good about what we're doing, and we have to feel good and know that we can be redeemed. Those are the three threads, and they're all there.
We need successes too. The Davidic thread we need. By the way, parents, the best thing to give your children is not a huge bank roll or a huge estate when you die. Don't leave them lots of money. Leave your parents, leave your children vision. Leave your children success. If you've got a lot of money now, spend it on their education. Leave them able to do something with their hands. A lot of money left in somebody's hands
will do more to destroy them probably than to help them. Give them a sense of vision. Give them a sense of ability to do something with their own hands and with their own heart. And you've given a kid a far better legacy. This is our challenge. It's our challenge to help a person Davidically, to succeed. See, that's the Davidic thread. Well, but all these threads, the most important, obviously, is the second thread. The healthy intervention of
the Redeemer is the most important of all the threads. It's the thread that disciplines the other two and makes the other two make sense. Now, I've got to stop, but let me read the psalm that was read earlier by Jim in the service. Psalm 24. Because in that psalm, a psalm of David, David remembers all three threads. And he gives you all three of these great threads in one psalm. Notice there are three strokes in the
psalm and one stroke per thread. Look at Psalm 24. It starts with the first thread. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. Notice he sees it in a universal sense. For he has founded it upon the seas and he has established it upon the rivers. See, God is the author, the beginner. He's the one who chooses and puts into motion our lives. Good, healthy doctrine of creation. And
that's the first thread. And David sees it first. Now, notice the second thread he gives the most time to in the psalm. Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Now, we expect him to say the chosen people will stand, right? Surprise, he's heard the prophets. He who has a clean hand and a pure heart. Who does not lift up his soul to what is false. Who does not
swear falsely or deceitfully. He or she will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from the God of his salvation. And there's the second thread, the mosaic thread. David heard it. It is enough to say I'm a child of Abraham. Isaac and Jacob and Sarah. I must also obey the will of God if I'm going to stand in the high place. And David claims this in the psalm. And then he goes on to say, such is
the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. And there, of course, the Abrahamic thread. And now the last thread is Davidic, pure David. Listen to it. Lift up your heads, oh gates, and be lifted up, oh ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Now we expect to say, and by the way, the King of glory is David. With my star and my flag, I'm coming in
now. And now a surprise. Because David, like a good psalmist and a good theologian, says who is this King of glory? Who is the King of glory? And now the surprise. The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your head, oh gates, and be lifted up, oh ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. And now he, Jewish poems love to say everything twice. So now he says it twice. Who
is the King of glory? In case you didn't catch it the first time. The Lord of hosts is the King of glory. Not David. David's Lord is the King. Now, brothers and sisters, we have now ahead of us, these next eight weeks, a chance to look at David's life. And I want to tell you something about David's life right now. That when David remembers this psalm, he's great. And when David forgets this psalm, he's tragic. And
you're going to see both. It's also true of you and me. When you remember all three threads, there's a chance for greatness. When you forget, or I forget, the story's tragic. You'll see both. Just thank God the second thread is the strongest of the three. The Redeemer thread is the strongest. I love what Pascal says in one of his lines. He says, it's good to be weary and worn out in the vain pursuit of the true
good, that we may open our arms, the Redeemer. Thank God for that thread. Heavenly Father, thank you for the chance to do this study today and to see how every one of us is a part of the journey of David. And David is a part of our journey. As is Moses and Abraham, Sarah, and all the people of the journey of Israel. They're a part of our history. And Lord, we're a part of theirs. And now
Father, help to keep us faithful to what's true and allow that redemption thread to discipline the other two. And Lord, we're grateful that all three of these threads are fulfilled in the King of glory, Jesus Christ our Lord. In his name we pray, Amen. God, magnify the world. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. For he hath regarded the lowest date of his hand made in. For behold, from henceforth all generations shall come he
blessed. For he that is mighty hath known to be great things. And all is his name, and his mercy is on a verb that came from generation to generation. He hath put strength with his own. He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats. And exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away. He
hath opened his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, as he spake to our fathers and to Abraham. And to his seed forever. Amen.