Who may Stand in God's Holy Place?

Here we see David asking a question similar to the one we thought about earlier this week. We should all want to know how we can approach our holy God. Yes, we must know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, but it even goes beyond that. When Moses saw the burning bush and came before God, he was told to take off his shoes because he was on holy ground. That gives us a clue about the only way we can stand before God. David spelled it out for all of us very well. (Psalm 24:3,4) After asking who could ascend the mountain of the Lord and who could stand in His holy place, David spelled out what is required. We must have clean hands and a pure heart. We must not have appealed to what is false, and we must not have sworn deceitfully. Let's take time to think about what this means for us today.

The significant word here is "holy." Who may stand in His holy place, since God is holy and that place is holy? The answer is that we must be holy, like God is holy. God never does the wrong thing and always does the right thing. In fact, we are commanded to do this in the Bible. (I Peter 1:15,16) That is God's purpose for every believer. He begins the process when we are saved. We are set apart from sin, and set apart for His service. However, then we must live out our holiness in our daily lives by having clean hands. This means we are doing God's will, keeping His commandments, and acting like Jesus, so no sin is on our hands. Of course, we all sin, at times, but we must sincerely confess it to be cleansed and to be holy again. Then, we need to have pure hearts. We can't be mixing sin and righteousness in our thoughts and feelings, since God sees our hearts. We see this happening when we do not appealed to what is false by letting our soul be drawn away from God. Also, we see it happening when we speak truth, and we do not deceive others by what we say. That is living in holiness every day. When we do this, we can stand before our Holy God any time and hear Him speak to us, as He spoke with Moses on His mountain.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read Psalm 25-28.