Psalm 24:7-10 March 13, 2009

Ps 24:7-10 "Lift up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. 8 Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle. 9 Lift up your heads, O you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. 10 Who is he, this King of glory? The LORD Almighty — he is the King of glory." NIV

This is a great example of prophetic declaration. David is speaking to the gates in a prophetic call for the coming Messiah! In his natural understanding this is a psalm declaring the coming of the king of glory, an earthly king. But in the realms of the prophetic Spirit that has come upon him David is prophesying both about the coming Messiah and speaking to the gates and doors as if to say “open up”, “Prepare the way.” One of the mysteries of the spirit realm is the power of the anointed word. God’s Spirit comes and rests on a man or woman who is in a place of worship or prayer and begins to speak or sing through them words that carry power in the Spirit realm. In Psalm 42:8 David reflects on the Lord giving him a song that is in turn prayer back to God, “at night his song is with me — a prayer to the God of my life.” Ro. 8:26-27 enlarges on this principle as Paul talks about the role of the Holy Spirit to bring forth “groans” through us as he intercedes for the saints when they don’t know what to pray. Imagine the Holy Spirit praying through a yielded life. This is Psalm 24:7-10 and this is what the Lord wants to do with you.
David continues on in this prophetic Spirit to celebrate the coming king! “Who is this King of glory?” David has glimpsed a vision of the glorious king, Jesus Christ. Listen to his description: the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, the Lord Almighty, the King of glory! There is such a powerful work of the Lord taking place in this passage. David is operating in a prophetic Spirit declaring that there is a king coming, mighty in battle. He is seeing hundreds of years into the future and even more so he is seeing millennium into the future for what he is really seeing is the second coming when the Lord returns as a triumphant warrior clothed in the glory of eternity not a humble servant clothed in the rags of mortal flesh. The Holy Spirit is releasing an image into the earth as a witness for all time of the coming glory of Christ through the mystery of prophetic prayer as David speaks forth by the Spirit.
This work of prayer is not limited to the simple announcement that encourages the heart. David is also entering into the realms of spiritual power as he speaks to the doors and the gates in this prophetic utterance. What are these doors and gates that David is speaking to? The power of these words is best understood by considering multiple realms of effect. In one prophetic act David is speaking to the doors of the human heart saying open to the King of Kings, speaking to the doors and gates of the spiritual realm where spiritual forces stand to resist God’s agenda, and he is speaking to the doors of Jerusalem that on that great day will open to receive the returning Messiah. Understand the power of this one act, this one declaration. For thousands of years now, from the first time this prayer was prayed, the power of these words has resonated through the realms of spirit and flesh speaking over and over as each new heart hears them spoken, as each new pair of eyes reads them and takes them in. These words of David’s are now alive with the power of God and working every moment of every day to further the advance of the King of glory into hearts, into cities and ultimately preparing the way for the glory of God to once again march through the gates of Jerusalem as the King of Kings returns to establish his dominion in “Zion, the joy of the whole earth.”