Psalm 24 Continued…
Psalm 24:1 The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
Verses 1 and 2 are a hymn of praise to the Lord and in the first line it celebrates Him as the owner of the physical earth and all that that includes— in particular, the habitable world and all who live in it.
David is speaking of Him again as the Creator. This earth belongs to Him by right of creation and redemption. The earth does not belong to the Republicans or the Democrats. It does not belong to the president or the Pope. It does not belong to the communists or the United Nations. Nor does it belong to the devil, who is a usurper and will be thrown out. “All the earth is mine,” (Exodus 19:5), says the Creator, but in His goodness He has shared it with us. He is possessor of heaven and earth (Genesis 14:19, 22), and we are guests on His planet, stewards of all He has given us to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17) and to make use of. There are so many people today who want to run this earth, but it literally belongs to God. But why does God own it? The answer is given in verse 2.
Psalm 24:2 for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.
On the third day of creation God said, “. . . Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:9-10).
When God gathered the waters together, submerged land appeared out of the water. It was life out of death, and it speaks of resurrection and order. God reduced the watery chaos to order and firmly founded the earth upon that order. Once there existed floods, “springs of the great deep” (Genesis 7:11), “the waters below” (Exodus 20:4), these are the deep water below the earth’s surface (Deuteronomy 33:13). But upon those vast chaotic floods the Lord imposed His own mighty control and “established” the earth. We can sense here features of the combat between those seas and floods and the Lord, which is portrayed in Psalm 93. That combat forms the background of this brief hymn.
By the seas and waters he means the whole collection of waters, as well as the seas and rivers running into it, as well as the great abyss of waters contained in the bowels of the earth.
PRAY
Father, we know that you have power over all this earth. The mighty seas obey your whisper. Help us to be obedient to you as the waters of the earth.