O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?
Who shall dwell on your holy hill?
2 He who walks blamelessly and does what is right
and speaks truth in his heart;
3 who does not slander with his tongue
and does no evil to his neighbor,
nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
4 in whose eyes a vile person is despised,
but who honors those who fear the Lord;
who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
5 who does not put out his money at interest
and does not take a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things shall never be moved.
Sometimes, doing the regular things we do, find us in a quandary, not able to answer the most simple of questions. But maybe…maybe the questions are not as simple as we might have thought at first. How would you answer the question: Who gets an audience with God? Who gets to be in the presence of God?
That is really the question being asked, “Who shall sojourn in your tent who shall dwell on your holy hill.” Who is the man or woman, boy or girl, who thinks to have an audience with the king? You might think that such an answer is routine…but is it? The questions of the Bible are very important to pay attention to…Who is asking it? What is the context? What is being asked for and why?
Think of other questions we find in the bible.
~Psalm 24:3 “Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord, or who may stand in His holy place?”Answer: The one with pure hands, that is, who does what is right, a clean heart, so no hypocrisy, the inward and outward match, and who does not speak deceitfully. Their words are words of truth…words to be trusted.
~Acts 2:37 In response to hearing Peter preach the message of Jesus’ resurrection: “Brothers, what shall we do?” Answer: Repent and be baptized. Is that what you would say? Maybe repent, but would you tie baptize so closely to salvation? Peter did.
Luke 18:18 “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The answer Jesus gave: You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother…sell all that you have and give it to the poor…”
Again, is that what you would have said to someone wanting to know what to do so that they could go to heaven…keep the commandments? Sell your possessions? No Christian would answer the question that way…but Jesus did!There are many, many questions like these that are asked and the answer is not what our modern Christian culture would say in response…probably not what we would say in response.
The Rev. Patrick Henry Reardon commented on this Psalm: “Man cannot help but sense that, in order to abide in God’s tabernacle and to rest on His holy mountain, there truly is something that he must “do.”
Now, does that make you uncomfortable? Should it make us uncomfortable? What if the answer is, “It really shouldn’t…it really shouldn’t make us uncomfortable?
Remember when you are doing family worship with your young children and every question you ask them finds them answering, “Jesus???” Always with a question mark. Well, the answer to the Biblical questions is not always, “justification by faith”? Could it be that we are using that glorious truth of our faith, to hide? Could it be that because we say that our salvation is all of Jesus, that somehow we have taken that as a license, if not to sin, to at least be somewhat loose with our personal holiness? That was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s grave concern; namely that we can hide in Biblical truth and end up cheapening God’s grace.
Bonhoeffer taught us that: Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘You were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
A feature that stands out of this moral question in Psalm 15 is what we may call its implied eschatology. What we mean by this is that the Psalmist is telling us that we are going somewhere…that we are supposed to end up somewhere, somewhere that we are not yet at, and that we have to be intentional and purposed in how we think, feel and act if we are to arrive in this place.
Our lives are to be lived as a journey toward some determined destination, and the Psalmist’s question has something to do with making sure that he is pointed toward that destination. His whole life will mean nothing, will have amounted to nothing if at its end, he fails to arrive in God’s tabernacle, if he fails to rest on God’s Holy Mountain.
Let’s connect these first two points: Isn’t it interesting that the question is of ultimate importance, of eternal consequences; dwelling, living with the Lord, and notice that there is not one thing mentioned about faith, rather it is a matter of how one lived his or her life:
One who walks blamelessly…one who does what is right and who speaks the truth, notices, in his heart,not just externally, but internally…no slander, no evil to his neighbor, treats his friends correctly and on and on it goes…it is all about behavior.
Pastor, Are you saying that we get to heaven by our works?
Brothers and sisters, we are saved by grace through faith, absolutely. But our works, the lives we live because of the grace and faith that we have been given, tell a story and God listens and even judges us based on the story our lives tell. So, what story is your life telling? Not what story do you want it to tell, but what story is it telling? And I mean the whole of your story, not just what other people see.
*Here is what Jesus says in Rev 22:12 “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me to repay everyone for what he has done.”
The reason this statement strikes us as it does is that this truth, everywhere testified to in the Bible, that Christ will judge our lives according to our works, according to how we lived our lives, is almost never taught in the evangelical pulpit in our day. I would not be surprised to learn that a great majority of Christian people, that is, those who believe the Bible and trust in Jesus to save them, a great majority of those folks have probably never heard, even once in their lives, that there is a judgment according to works, even if they have been Christians for most of their lives, they probably have not heard that explained.
And, with all humility, I don’t think it is very hard to understand why this is true, that is, why this is not taught and why most Christians will flinch when it is taught. You see, there is a fear that if this is taught and even if it is qualified to death when it is being taught, there is a fear that somehow such an assertion would undermine our confidence in our salvation being by grace, through faith in Christ, and nothing else.
If we talk too much about what we must do, if we talk too much about the eternal consequences of our obedience or disobedience as Christians…if we hold up the prospect of having to answer for the behavior of our lives, it might be hard for us to continue to believe that in respect to our salvation God does all and must do all? (RSR)
But there is another reason; perhaps the most important reason why this is not taught in the believing church, or is very rarely preached and it is simply this: We don’t like it, and so we don’t want to hear it. The thought that our moral failures have some kind of abiding consequence…that our failures damage people we love and that the consequences might reach into the future…way, way into the future…
Well…that is almost too much to bear…that presents us with an abiding torture of conscience. We would much rather believe that our moral failures have no abiding consequences, they are forgiven, to be sure, if truly repented of…And the consequences, well if there are any they disappear very quickly…so we wistfully wish. We would rather believe that every Christian is going to get the same reward in the world to come, irrespective of the greater or lesser faithfulness of his or her life.
Kind of like the participation trophies that every child gets…everyone gets one…everyone gets the same. The end. I understand, humanly speaking, why we would prefer that to be true, for if it were true: We wouldn’t have to answer for our failures of faith and behavior. We wouldn’t have to endure the pressure of thinking that there is an “or else” attached to our responsibilities and callings as Christians.
And, when life, as it is in our time for most of us, has mucked up so much failure…when it is almost impossible not to see just how broken we are, and how vacant we are of true Christian virtue so much of the time…failure in marriages and failure in families and failure to overcome, in any significant manner, our own personal problems and weaknesses, failure to conquer the sin of our own hearts and lives…No wonder people don’t want to hear that they might still in some way have to answer for all of that…who wants to hear THAT message?
Believe me brothers and sisters, I know very well the temptation to think this way and to wish the Bible had never said what it so clearly says about Christ coming with his reward and giving to everyone according to what he has done, but alas…that IS what the Bible says.
To be continued…
Prayer: Father, give me a resolute mind and heart that I might set myself to make every effort to enter by the narrow gate and live a life of true Christian virtue. I know the path will be filled with difficulty, trial and temptation, but Father, you have shown me the joy, the peace, the hope and the end of such a journey. May I put to death all sin of self-reliance and self-promotion that I may be given fully to the pursuit of my Savior, for it is in his name I pray, Amen.
Psalm 15