Who May Dwell with God?

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:

1        LORD, who may dwell in your sacred tent?

    Who may live on your holy mountain?

2        The one whose walk is blameless,

    who does what is righteous,

    who speaks the truth from their heart;

3        whose tongue utters no slander,

    who does no wrong to a neighbor,

    and casts no slur on others;

4        who despises a vile person

    but honors those who fear the LORD;

who keeps an oath even when it hurts,

    and does not change their mind;

5        who lends money to the poor without interest;

    who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.

Whoever does these things

    will never be shaken. (Psalm 15, NIV)

REFLECTIONS:

Imagine what would happen if I walked up to the main gate at the White House and said to one of the dressed-in-black Secret Service agents: “Excuse me, sir. I want to live with the president and his family.” He would probably just stare at me with a look that says: “Hit the road! And make it quick, before I arrest you for lunacy.”

Who is worthy to live with God? On one hand, the answer to this question is always: no one. No one born to man is worthy of living with God. We know, both from experience and from Scripture, that we all "have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). We are sinful from birth, even from the time our mother conceived us (Psalm 51:5). Our hearts are "deceitful above all things" (Jeremiah 17:9). Our words, attitudes, motives, and actions are driven by a love of self. Even our righteous acts are "like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). There is nothing in ourselves alone that make us worthy of dwelling with God.

Thankfully, however, our God is incredibly gracious and generous. In his kindness, he extends the invitation to us all: Come and be with me. And, thankfully, he not only extends the invitation, but he has done what only he can do to enable us to truly dwell with him in intimacy. He sent his Son to dwell with us—to take on flesh, to live among us, to demonstrate the life of faith, to teach us the truth, to minister God's grace, to suffer on the cross, to pay for our redemption, to rise from the grave, to ascend to God's right hand, and to send his Spirit to dwell within us. And now, we who are “in Christ” can indeed dwell in God’s sacred tent. By God's grace, we who are living by faith in Jesus can indeed live on God's holy mountain in fellowship with our Lord.

David always was a little bit envious of the priests. When we read the Psalms, we find David saying such things as, “Oh, those priests. They have it so good. They are able to walk in the temple of God. I can’t do that. I can’t go into the Holy Place.” Because he was from the tribe of Judah, and not from the family of Aaron, he was forbidden from entering the Holy Place. Spiritually David could enter, but physically he couldn’t. And he was jealous of the priests’ privileges. But, thankfully, because we are in the Lord Jesus Christ, we can come boldly into the presence of God—not just to visit him but to live with him.

David describes the kind of person who is able to live with God. He must have the right kind of feet (“whose walk is blameless”) and hands (“does what is righteous”), lips (“speaks the truth”), and heart. What we say with our lips always has to come from our heart. Verse 3 also talks about the tongue: “whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor, and casts no slur on others.” This is the person God welcomes at his front door and says, “You come and live with me.” That person has clean feet, clean hands, and a clean heart that produce clean words and clean motives, one in whose eyes a vile person is despised. His eyes look upon only what is right and good.

Here is a beautiful picture of the kind of person God chooses to live with him. And the beauty of it is this: Such a person will never get an eviction notice. “Whoever does these things will never be shaken” (verse 5). How can we be this kind of person? Through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Through confidence in the power of Christ to transform our hearts and lives.

We bring our hearts and our lives to Jesus. We recognize and admit our personal inability to live in a manner worthy of God, and we lay our full selves at his feet. In surrender, we simply and authentically ask him to change us from the inside out—to renovate our hearts, to renew our minds by his word of truth, to radically alter the thoughts and emotions that dominate our lives, to re-program our bodily impulses for good, to re-invigorate our relationships. We lay our lives before Jesus as an offering of praise, and we rely upon him for inspiration and empowerment to live the kind of life he lived while on the earth.

To state it another way, we embrace the Apostle Paul's declaration as our own: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).

PRAYER:

By your grace, strengthen us to live in intimacy with you today. Give us the grace, the discipline, the inspiration, and the power to walk with you. Allow us to see with your eyes, to hear with your ears, to live with your heart, to speak according to your truth. Enable us to treat others with kindness and patience and generosity. Empower us, by your grace, to live in fellowship with you and to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.

WHO AM I?

I am Tres Sansom, and I am so grateful for the rain!