Who Can Enter God’s Presence?

We come to Psalm 15. Structurally it’s a very simple psalm. There’s a question, an answer, and a promise. And this short message will follow that simple structure. I want to make a few observations about the question, spend the bulk of the time on the answer, and then land with the promise.

The Question

This psalm was written in the days before Israel built the temple, but when the tabernacle—the tent of meeting that Israel used in the wilderness—had become a temporary but fixed place of worship at Mount Zion in Jerusalem. David asks the question in two ways, and each way of asking pushes in a different direction. “Who shall sojourn in your tent?” suggests a pilgrim mentality. We’re guests in God’s tent. He’s the host, and we’re passing through. The second question—“Who shall dwell on your holy hill?”—seems to suggest something more permanent. We’re not just sojourning; we’re dwelling. We’re abiding. We’re making our home with God on his holy mountain. We’re not just guests; we’re now residents, citizens. This is our home.

So David is asking a very practical question. What are the qualifications to visit and dwell in God’s house? What do you have to do to sojourn in God’s tent and abide on his hill? But there’s an assumption underneath that question that I don’t want us to miss. David assumes that we want to dwell in God’s house. David assumes that we want to enter God’s presence and abide there. And so before we get to the “how” question, I just want to pose this more fundamental question: Do you? Do you want to dwell in God’s presence? Do you want to enter his courts? Do you want to have a room in his house? This is such an important question and next week’s sermon on Psalm 16 will focus more deeply on the glory of dwelling in God’s all-satisfying presence.

For now, I’m assuming that you do, that your desire is to be with God, to dwell with him, to make your home where he is. And that brings me to my final observation about the question. I don’t think that many of us recognize what a colossal question this is. Having been raised in the church, having been raised with the Bible, having been Christians for a long time, I suspect that we sometimes forget what an astounding thing it is that we can dwell in God’s house, that we can enter his presence. For us, the idea of coming into God’s presence is easy. There’s a familiarity to it. “Of course, we can sojourn in his tent.” And yet, according to the Bible, the highest and purest angels cover their faces in God’s holy presence. To the biblical authors, the idea that we could enter his tent, not only that, but that he might actually welcome us into his presence, is almost unbelievable. I suspect that the saints in the Old Testament felt this more acutely than we do. The sacrificial system with its regulations and rules and blood, the gradations of holiness around God’s presence—these reminded Israel that the living God is a consuming fire and must not be taken lightly. And that’s where David’s question comes from. Given God’s holiness and majesty and power and glory and worth and value and purity and righteousness, who can even visit him in his tent? Who could possibly presume to dwell in his house? That’s the question. Now for the answer.

The Answer

The next four verses give eleven qualifications for entering God’s presence. A few general comments about them.

First, they are clustered (3-3-3-2), and they alternate (positive, negative, positive, negative). Three things you should do; three things you shouldn’t. Three things you should do, two things you shouldn’t.

Second, they all have to do with how we treat other people. And this might seem a bit strange. We might expect, “Who can sojourn in God’s tent? He who loves God above all else, and prays morning and evening, and offers his sacrifices from a pure heart.” And I think those would be good answers. But in this psalm, David highlights obligations from the second table of the Law. He highlights neighbor-love directly.

But if we’re thinking biblically, we know that the Bible regards neighbor love as a fruit of divine love. The second greatest commandment is like the first and flows from it. The apostle John makes this explicit in his first letter. “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:20-21).

Third, and more specifically, the qualifications listed all seem to flow from the eighth and ninth commandments especially (which means our sermon series on the Ten Commandments may prove useful).

Finally, I don’t think we should read this list as exhaustive. Rather it’s representative. We have other lists like it in Psalm 24 and Isaiah 33. In that sense, it’s like the qualifications for pastors in 1 Timothy and Titus. The list uses a specific list to identify an overall character of integrity and godliness. Godly character is the main thing, but the eleven qualifications make godliness concrete so that we can actually evaluate ourselves. So let’s move through this list.

The first qualification is, I think, the overarching qualification. “He who walks blamelessly” or “He who walks with integrity.” That’s the fundamental qualification. There is an integrity of mind and heart, of thought and action, of desire and behavior that marks the one who is permitted into God’s presence. All of your faculties and powers are oriented to God and therefore to the good of your neighbor. Even the imagery of the psalm suggests this with the references to body parts. Your walk matters. Your heart matters. Your tongue matters. Your eyes matter. To enter God’s presence requires a single-mindedness, a purity and integrity of life.

Second, you must do what is right. Again, this is somewhat of a general qualification. You must work righteousness. Your faith in God must be an active faith, a living faith, not a dead faith. As the apostle James says, “Faith without works is dead; it avails nothing.” True faith works through love. The one who has integrity of heart is attuned to God’s word and God’s world and therefore does what is right.

Third, and now we start to get specific, if you want to enter God’s presence, you must be a truth-speaker. Here we see the ninth commandment in action. The blameless one speaks truth, and not lies. But notice where David puts the accent. It’s not just that we must speak truth. We must speak truth in our hearts. This is about inner speech, and it actually pairs well with Psalm 14. As we saw last week, the fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” In other words, David is highlighting our inner speech here. Not just what we say to others, but what do we say to ourselves. Not just what we say out loud, but what we say in secret, where only God can hear. Because make no mistake, he hears. He has searched us and known us. Before a word is on our tongue, he knows it completely in our heart.

We never talk about God behind his back. And I think this characteristic is particularly relevant in our present circumstances. Let me ask you, “What’s your inner speech been like lately?” Are you speaking truth to yourself? Or are you speaking folly and falsehood in your heart? What is your inner monologue like these days? God cares about that. As you’re rubbing shoulders with your family in quarantine, as you navigate the challenges of homeschool and shelter-in-place, as you’re forced to collide again and again with the same faces, what are you saying about your spouse, your kids, your roommates? What are you speaking in your heart? Is it truth? Or not? This qualification presses us to have integrity between our inner speech and our outer speech, between our hearts and our tongue. No double-speak, no evasions, no equivocation, no flattery or falsehood. Integrity of speech from our hearts to our mouths.

Next, we turn to three negative characteristics, which I’m summarizing as “No slandering, no evil-doing, and no fault-finding.” Take each in turn. Slander and back-biting is the photo negative of speaking truth in the heart, but here the accent is on our tongue. Do we represent other people accurately, fairly, charitably? Or do we paint them in a negative light? Do we put a spin on things, and always spin others to their disadvantage? Do we speak one way to our neighbor’s face, and another behind his back? Remember, God hears both, and when it comes to his welcoming you into his presence, integrity of speech about others matters to him. You can’t sojourn in his tent, if you slander with your tongue.

Next, we come to “doing evil to your neighbor.” This, I think, is the negative side of “doing what is right.” Instead of working righteousness, we work iniquity. The question is, do we look to benefit others, or to take advantage of them? Do we consider our own interests, or the interests of others (which are really the interests of Christ) above ourselves? God cares about our words, but he also cares about our actions, about what we do. So in our isolation, are we seeking to do good to others, and not harm?

Third negative, “nor takes up a reproach against his friend.” The slanderer starts the rumor; when we take up a reproach, we listen to the slander and gossip with eager ears. We may not start the fire with our tongue, but we feed the fire with our ears. We fan it into flame. Taking up reproach against another means that we become fault-finders. When others criticize, we pile on. When the mob wants to cancel someone, we join right in. John Calvin highlights the “undue credulity” that we give to rumors about the flaws of others.

We readily believe negative things of others. We take up reproaches and lift them high for all to see. C.S. Lewis invites us to consider the following scenario. Imagine that someone you know—an opponent or enemy—is accused of something. Perhaps a member of a different political or religious tribe. Then a few days later, the accusation is proved to be false. What’s your reaction? Is it relief? “Thank God they’re not as bad as all that.” Or is it disappointment? Perhaps you even cling to the accusation and question the exoneration.

Lewis warns us about that demeanor. In those moments, we are wishing that darkness could be even darker. Again, this one is particularly relevant in our quarantine. The faults of your family or your roommates are probably evident to you right now. How easily do you “take them up”? In this difficult season, it’s easy to magnify the faults of others, to make mountains out of molehills. But eager fault-finders, David says, can’t dwell in God’s presence, cannot sojourn in his tent.

The next two qualifications are a package, and they help to interpret each other as well as guard against a misunderstanding of what we’ve just said. The one who wishes to enter God’s presence must abhor what is evil and love what is good. The language of despising the vile person is strong. It makes us uncomfortable.

And, of course, we must qualify despising the vile person with the call to love even our enemies. But nevertheless it’s there. One commentator notes that this pair is fundamentally about allegiance. Who are your people? Those who exalt vileness, or those who fear the Lord? This pair implicitly indicts flattery and cowardice.

Often times, we’re tempted to go with the flow, to flatter those who revel in what God hates. They call evil good, and good evil, and we’re tempted to go along with it. On the other hand, it’s easy to dismiss other Christians because they act weird, or because we want the cool unbelievers to like us. We’ll throw the ridiculous Christians under the bus, so that we can maintain our respectability with the world. This isn’t about lying about the failures of Christians. We should speak the truth in our hearts and with our mouths. And we should hate what is evil, no matter who does it. But in the modern world, Christians—and especially young Christians in an urban setting—are very susceptible to being cool-shamed, to honoring what is vile because we want the approval of the world, and despising certain segments of God’s people because they embarrass us.

Ninth qualification—he who swears to his own hurt and does not change. If you want to abide with God, you must keep your word, even and especially when it hurts. This means that we trust God, and we follow-through. We don’t cut and run because it will cost us. Now this doesn’t mean that you can’t seek relief if you’re in a bad way. Proverbs 6 discusses a situation where you’ve made a promise and can’t deliver, and urges us to plead with our neighbor for relief. If they’re willing to alter the agreement, that’s great. We can accept it. But, if they don’t, we take the hit. We remain faithful, no matter what.

Finally, the last two have to do with taking interest and taking bribes. This is about integrity in our public dealings with others, in financial transactions and legal settings. The bribery one is obvious. The question is whether we bend the truth for our own benefit. Is our integrity for sale? Will we massage the truth, will we make stuff up, if someone promises some benefit to us? And don’t just think about money here. Our compensation might be some other benefit—approval with the right people, a welcome into the right crowd, as long as we look the other way.

Taking interest is a little bit more difficult. It would require more time than I have in this message. So I plan to put together a little article this week to give some context for this qualification. [1] For now, I’ll simply note that in Israel the taking of interest was associated with taking advantage of the poor, of seeking to enrich yourself at the expense of someone else. It was the opposite of loving your neighbor. So the point of the final pair is show integrity in your financial and legal dealings with others.

The Promise

Finally, we turn to the promise. “He who does these things shall never be moved.” If you do these things, you can sojourn in God’s tent. You can dwell on his holy will. You can abide in his presence, and no one can kick you out. And, if we consider the general character of what we’ve seen, we can see that it is in some measure attainable. But, if we’re honest, it’s not perfectly attainable. No one reads through this list and thinks, “I’ve nailed it.” And that was just as true in David’s day. Because while these qualifications were the general expectation for God’s people, no one came into his presence without blood, without sacrifice. And this is because, as Pastor David preached last week, there is no one righteous, no, not one.

At least, not until Jesus. But in Jesus, we see the true worshiper of Psalm 15. Jesus walks blamelessly, with integrity, and with single-minded devotion to God and his house. In fact, zeal for God’s house consumes him. He is the ultimate worker of righteousness, not only for himself, but for others. He doesn’t just speak the truth. He is the Truth. He doesn’t slander or do evil to others. Instead, he endures slander and has evil done to him. He’s not a fault-finder; he’s a fault-coverer. His love covers a multitude of sins. He loves righteousness and hates wickedness. He despises what is evil; he clings to what is good. He refuses to flatter the successful, and his heart is open to the lowliest of those who fear God. He swears to his own hurt and does not change. He keeps his promises unto death, even death on a cross. And when it comes to his wealth, he doesn’t expect to be paid back. As the God-man, he cannot be enriched by us. He owns everything, and therefore, everything he gives, he gives freely.

And because of this, Jesus can sojourn in God’s tent. He can abide in God’s house. He can enter God’s presence. He can blaze a trail into the holiest of the holy places. And once there, he’ll never be moved. And because he’ll never be moved, neither will we. Because he is our forerunner, our failures don’t keep us outside the camp. It’s why we sing, “I know that while in heaven he stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart.” By faith we can ascend the hill of the Lord and approach the throne of grace with confidence.

———————

[1] For further study, see “Brief Reflections on Charging Interest from Psalm 15” by Pastor Joe Rigney.