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Psalm 15
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Introduction
Do you know what it takes to get into a hog barn?
If you were to visit a barn and if you wanted to see what was going on inside, you would have to have a shower and put on the clothes they give you and only then could you visit the barn.
When trucks come to pick up pigs, they have to be washed down before they back up.
Some places even have a truck that transfers pigs from the delivery truck to the barn truck so that the delivery truck will not come in contact with the barn.
When new animals are brought into the barn, they remain in a quarantine area to make sure they don’t have any disease.
All of this is to prevent anyone who could jeopardize the health of the pigs from going in.
What does it take to go into the presence of God?
This is the question asked by Psalm 15:1, “Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary?
Who may live on your holy hill?”
At Christmas we celebrate that God has come to meet us.
We have parties, we have programs and we celebrate God’s goodness in coming.
But who is this God who has come to us?
We think about the baby in the manger, but in fact the God who has come is the holy God, just and righteous; high and lifted up.
Advent is a season of preparation for His coming.
If God is such a great and amazing and holy God, are we properly prepared to meet Him?
What does it take to prepare to meet the God who has come to meet us?
Psalm 15 is what is known as a Psalm of approach.
It was a Psalm which might have been sung by the people going up to the temple to meet God.
The temple is on a mountain and so the people would have walked up the holy “hill” as they walked towards it.
It was a “holy” hill because it was the place where God was and as they went up they would have had an awareness that they were going up to meet God.
The question and answer of this and other Psalms like it would have helped them prepare for that meeting with God.
As we recognize that God has come to us, how do we prepare to meet Him?
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I. The Question
As the people approached the temple, they asked these two questions.
They are not really two questions, but the same question repeated twice.
It was common in the Psalms to write such parallel phrases that mean the same thing.
The Psalmist uses the word “dwell” in one question and “live” in the other.
The implication is to ask who can come and stay in the presence of God.
But what does this question mean?
The first thought might be that the question is about who is qualified to enter into God’s presence.
It may appear to be about limiting access to the presence of God.
It is like access to the pig barn - only those who have showered and put on barn clothes can go into the barn.
Only those who live in the way prescribed in this passage can go into the presence of God.
Some of the translations suggest this kind of thinking.
In The Message we read, “God, who gets invited to dinner at your place?
How do we get on your guest list?”
Matthew 7:21-23 has a similar thought with the warning, ““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
Is this the kind of thought this question implies?
Is access limited to those who act in a certain way?
In Randolph County, West Virginia there is a high hill called “Bickels Knob” which is the highest point in that County.
You get to the hill by driving along a winding gravel road.
When you get to the parking lot, you are not yet at the top.
From there you need to take a 100 yard climb up a steep hill.
At this point, there is still not much to see because the trees in the area are so high.
When you get to the end of the path, there is a tower.
If you climb this tower, which is about 100 feet high, you get above the tree line to a platform which gives a spectacular 360o view of the hills and forests in the surrounding area.
Ralph Andrus writes, “Most people do not do not get here because of the difficulty, the effort and themselves being out of shape.”
Is the way to God a similarly difficult path which limits most people from meeting God because they just cannot measure up?
If that is how we read this Psalm, it would be a rather discouraging Psalm because most of us know that we are not fit to meet with God.
In fact, from other places we know that no one is fit to meet God.
Romans 3:23 reminds us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
In response, the gospel encourages us that we are made fit to meet God only because of what Jesus has done in dying and rising from the dead.
So perhaps the question has a different emphasis.
How else could we understand this question?
Perhaps, when we ask this question, we should rather ask it with a reflection on what kind of a heart desires to enter God’s presence.
Craigie talks about the question in this way.
He suggests that this speaks about “…the nature and character of the person who desires to enter God’s presence.”
When the question is put that way, I am reminded of the picture in Matthew 25:31-46.
In this passage, Jesus commends those who fed and clothed Him.
Those who had been kind to the poor and had fed and clothed them wondered when they had cared for Jesus.
The response of kindness was so natural to them, so much a part of who they were from the inside, at the depth of their being that they were hardly aware of their own goodness.
It is clear that such people had been changed by God and had become people who pleased God out of their very heart.
There are different ways of looking at who is fit to meet God.
Some think about it by thinking about what mathematicians call a “bounded set.”
When we think about this question from the perspective of a bounded set, we ask, “who is in and who is out.”
The other way of looking at this is by what mathematicians call a centered set.
When we look at the question this way, we ask a different kind of question.
We ask, “Who is moving towards God and who is moving away from God.”
I think the question in this Psalm is one that we should ask from the perspective of a centered set.
Who is moving towards God? Whose heart has been changed so that it is becoming what God wants it to be?
There are many examples of people in the Bible who were far from perfect, like David and Moses, but who longed to walk with God and whose heart and lives were faced towards God.
Such reflection invites us to ask the question of ourselves.
What are the indicators that I am moving towards God? Asking the question in this way invites us to examine ourselves by thinking about the markers in our life that would suggest that our heart is faced towards God.
What kind of a heart does one who desires to meet God have?
What kind of life does one who desires to meet God live?
Craigie says, “The question, if genuinely asked, will elicit an answer which invites examination of the self and hence appropriate preparation for admission to worship and to the divine presence.”
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II.
The Answer
So how do we recognize a heart, a life that is moving towards God and evidently desiring the presence of God?
The answer is given in Psalm 15:2-5a
There are 10 items listed here, probably because that would make it easy to remember the things written here as you counted off the ten items.
We also notice another memory device in that there are three positive items in verse 2, three negative items in verse 3, two positive items in verse 4 and two negative items in verse 5a.
It is a Psalm of approach, but in this section it is also a wisdom Psalm, teaching us the ways that will indicate the heart that desires to meet the God who comes to meet us.
I would encourage you to examine these ten items and reflect on how your life matches them.
Does your response to these items suggest that your heart is directed towards God?
I won’t go over all ten items, but would like to reflect on a few of them.
!! A. Walks and Works Righteousness
The first phrase is, in the NKJV, “He who walks uprightly, And works righteousness…” Although many translations use the word “doing” I prefer this translation.
The danger if we are “doing” righteousness is to develop a list and check off each righteous act as we do it.
The problem with that is that we feel guilty when we aren’t able to check off every item on our list, even if God never put it there.
The other problem is feeling superior to those who do not keep all the items on our list.
If we think about walking uprightly, we think of a journey which has a direction.
We may stumble, we may be weak, but there is no doubt about where we are going.
We think critically about those things that are right.
We desire to work into our life those things that are just and fair and good for the other person and pleasing to God.
That way of looking at it is not so much a check list, but a lifetime of discovery pointed in a God-ward direction.
The heart that desires to meet God is a heart that really wants to know God’s way and to walk towards God.
It is evidenced by a life that is marked by walking uprightly and working at righteousness.
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