the world and its inhabitants,
belong to the LORD;
There is a good question asked.
"Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in His holy place?"
The answer is in the following verses,
"The one who has clean hands and a pure heart..."
There are two aspects of holiness and righteousness. We know that apart from the righteousness of Christ we cannot be holy or righteous before God. But on the other hand, we have to live lives that are holy and clean and pure. Hmmm... I'm not sure I'm wording this the way I had it figured out in my head. Let me start again.
We can only come to God when we have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. A person turns from sin (repents) and trusts Him for salvation and he becomes "right" with God. But once we have made that confessions of sin and turned to Jesus we then need to live lives that are clean and pure. When we come to God in prayer or in worship we can boldly approach the throne of grace because of what Christ has done(Hebrews 4:16 NAS Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.) But we read in other passages of scripture of our need to confess our sins and to turn from our wicked ways. Being "saved" doesn't give us a liscense to sin and then show up on a Sunday and talk to God like nothing is going on. We have to live out our lives in such a way that His righteousness is seen in how we live.
I hope in my effort to write something short that I haven't just confused everyone.
Changing the subject...
I have a song that I wrote several years ago based on Psalm 24. Reading this Psalm reminded me of it and I think I'll get it out and teach it to the congregation here at Hilldale. I like to use it as a Palm Sunday song.
You can see it here - Psalm 24 by R. Lyndel Littleton
2 comments:
I like the song. We should sing it soon!!
Two things strike me about this Psalm. The first is verse 2. It is part of the Coat of Arms of the Cayman Islands: "The Cayman Islands Coat of Arms is made up of three elements; the shield, the crested helm and the motto. ... The motto 'He hath founded it upon the seas' is taken from Psalm 24 and acknowledge's Cayman's strong Christian traditions."
The other verse that I studied on today was verse 1: "The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." We need to live that way, remembering and acknowledging that everything is God's. I so often try to grasp things and hold onto what isn't even mine.
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