Psalm 15
Let’s hear God’s word together
as we read from Psalm 15. This is a psalm of King David,
and it begins with a question. Oh, Lord, who shall sojourn in
your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy
hill? He who walks blamelessly and
does what is right and speaks truth in his heart, who does
not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor,
nor takes up a reproach against his friend. 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, 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. Let’s pray together. Our God
bless now the reading and the proclamation of your holy word.
We thank you for this. exercise, which is strange to
the world, but food for our souls. May we, as the old English prayer
book, ask in prayer that we read and mark and learn and inwardly
digest all these things for our own sake and for your glory.
This we pray in Jesus name. Amen. This is a song that begins with
a very important question, but As you can imagine, it leads
us to other questions. Look at the very beginning of
Psalm 1. It says, O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who
shall dwell in your holy hill? And in order to understand the
rest of the Psalm, we have to understand what it means to sojourn
in the tent of God. What does it mean to dwell on
his holy hill? So to answer that question, we’ll
ask another question to get our minds going. Where does God meet
with his people? Well, he meets with them in all
kinds of places. If you were Adam and Eve, he
came into the garden and walked with them. In the afternoons,
they enjoyed fellowship together. They must have talked about how
life should be lived according to his word. There was worship
and adoration. There was friendship, fellowship.
But then we realized that soon that special time with God was
lost by their falling to sin. So where did God meet and dwell
with his people? Where did he interact with them?
Well, he appears to Moses. There’s altars. There’s ultimately
the tabernacle in the wilderness. There’s the temple set up in
Jerusalem. And now in the new covenant, we recognize that God
himself dwells in each of us. We are temples of the Holy Spirit.
We gather in worship and worship together. And ultimately, our
hope is to be with him someday in heaven, where we will be with
him in his presence forever. But this question, these two
questions the psalmist asked, get to the heart of the matter.
How can one be in the presence of God? Whether it’s in Eden,
or in a tent, or in a tabernacle, or in a temple, or in heaven
itself, how does one get into the presence of God? How does
one dwell with him on his holy hill? These are statements about
his presence. How do we get in the presence
of God? Well, if you flip to the end of Revelation, chapter
21, where John, who is caught up into heaven and sees what
is to be, he sees what his future, he sees what is present. He sees
what is ultimate for Christians. It says in verse 22, he’s in
the new heavens and the new earth and in the new Jerusalem. And
it has just been described as a certain size and made of certain
materials. But it says this, I saw no temple
in the city for its temple is the Lord God, the almighty and
the lamb. And the city has no need of sun
or moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light and
its lamp is the lamb. By its light will the nations
walk and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it
and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night
there. They will bring into it the glory
and the honor of the nations. But, but nothing unclean will
ever enter it, nor anything or anyone that it does what is detestable
or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book
of life. And so we see that in Eden, we
see that in the New Jerusalem, and we see that somewhere in
between in King David’s time, the question is always this,
how can an unholy or unrighteous person get into the presence
of a holy God? That was the $10,000 question
Martin Luther wrestled with. How can an unrighteous person
have a right standing before God? Well, as you read through
the Bible, you will see that God has always had ritual purifications
and he’s had ethical demands for his people to be in his presence.
You remember in the old covenant language, we’ve looked at it
some in Hebrews that there were hand washings and foot washings
and certain ceremonies and this and that and the others. You
must do these things in order to be fit to enter the tent or
the tabernacle or the temple. But the man of God also must
be ethically right and pure. And so this question comes to
us as a very serious question. It’ll appear again in Psalm 24,
but it asks this question, how can we be in the presence of
Almighty God? Now, we’re going to look at six
answers that are given here, but we’re going to ultimately
end on the ultimate answer. And that ultimate answer is that
we must be found righteous in Jesus Christ or we will not get
into the temple that is described in the New Jerusalem. So what
does he say in Psalm? What does King David say is the
answer to this question? Well, let’s look at it this way.
God approves. God approves of the person first
of good character. Good character we find in verse
2a. At the beginning he says, he
who walks blamelessly and does what is right. So God approves
the person of good character. Their walk is blameless. They
do what is right. We mentioned it this morning
and it is a great example tonight. Enoch. Enoch is that strange
man in the Old Testament in the book of Genesis. We see him again
in Hebrews 11. All it says of him is he walked
with God and he was not because God took him. So he walked with
God. His manner of life, his way of
living was a godly way. He must have known of worship.
He must have known of learning God’s righteous demands. He must
have known something of what it was to fear God and not be
a pagan. Remember in the book of Genesis,
is it after the birth of Seth? What does the scripture tell
us? began to call upon the name of the Lord. Okay, there are
epics, there are periods of time where people do not call upon
the name of the Lord. So this is a person who walks
with God. He is without blame. He is whole,
he is sound, he is not falling apart as it were. But seven days
a week, he loves and serves the living God. All that he does
and his thoughts and his words and his deeds are right. What
he says is, I will do what the scriptures teach. I will do what
God’s word tells me I ought to do. And so he does that which
is pleasing in God’s sight. Now, what does that mean in the
old covenant? Well, under the old covenant, a righteous person
like Abraham or Job could be described in this way. They were
hospitable. They were kind. They were merciful. They did works of righteousness.
Those would be the fruits of the spirit, in a sense, under
the old covenant. And so this person approved by
God who may sojourn in his tent, who may dwell on his holy hill
is a person of good character. But the second thing we see in
the end of verse two and the beginning of verse three is this
person is a person of good speech. Not only do they walk blamelessly
and do what is right, but they speak truth in their heart and
they do not slander with their tongue. And so this is a person
of good speech. They tell the truth. And they
speak the truth. They maintain the sanctity of
truth. Now, we’re in the middle of a
political season. And what do we say? What’s the
old joke? How do you know if a politician is lying? Well,
their mouth is moving, right? And we are wondering what is
true and what is false. And we don’t know what to believe.
But there will be an election and there will be someone elected
to office. But we live in a very destructive time when truth is
not maintained, where perjury is no longer perjury, where we
can We can do what we want and say what we want. And if we hire
a good enough lawyer or if we’re loud enough about it, we can
push our way into doing as we please. And that is not the way
of the godly. So this person tells and speaks
the truth. They choose their words carefully.
They do not flatter. We can be comforted by their
words. We can trust their words. We can believe that what they
say is true. Now, as Christians, where do
we get this ability? Where do we get this desire?
What example do we have? Well, we have an example in the
Trinity. God himself is three persons.
God himself is one. And when he speaks, he speaks
truth. This morning we sang in that opening hymn, we spoke of
the verity of God, the truth of God, that what he speaks is
right. And shouldn’t it be the same
of those of us who bear his image? Not just because one of the Ten
Commandments says do not bear false witness, but because we
are made in the very image of God that we speak truth. One
of the ways that we will find ourselves most sinful, and I
say this particularly as one who teaches because what does
James say? Those who teach are more prone in a sense to make
a mistake. We have to be so careful with
our tongues. We don’t take God’s name in vain. defame the character
of another person. We don’t flatter. We don’t use
speech in a in a unhealthy or ungodly way, because God himself
speaks and he speaks truth. And when the Trinity speaks to
us, we can believe it. When God’s word speaks to us,
we can believe it. But shouldn’t we be able to trust
the word of his fellow image bearers? That’s a weighty thing
for us to consider. Now we live in a world of untrue
speech. We live in a world of untrue
speech about others. We live in a world where we are
destructive with our tongues, both in the Christian faith and
outside. We use what we call ad hominem attacks. We attack
the man. We destroy, we defame, we ruin
people. We see it now with young people
in particular. You often will read of a young
person dying because of a social media onslaught And they believe
in their heart and mind that they cannot overcome this damage
to their reputation. And so they take their lives.
And so we see that our words can either bring life or can
take life. And so we must really consider
hard our words. But God approves of the person,
not only of good character, but the person of good speech. One of the things that we say
in our household sometimes, now this is like nuclear button,
but when our children sometimes are, you know, getting at each
other, Maybe as a parent, sometimes you don’t wanna deal with it
the way you really ought to deal with it. Sometimes we’ll get so frustrated,
we’ll say, you take that word or that phraseology and you take
that name and you take it back to hell where it came from. That’s what James says, isn’t
it? Our tongues are set on fire by the flames of hell. And that’s
something we ought to recognize. The third thing that we see in
this passage though, God approves of the person of good conduct. So this is a man of good character,
of good speech, but third, of good conduct. And we find it
in the second part of verse three. He does no evil to his neighbor,
nor does he take up a reproach against his friend. His conduct
is good. He seeks the good of others.
Consider the second part of the table of the commandments. The
first four deal with how we love God. We’re loving heart, mind,
soul, and strength, neighbor as self. So the way we show our
love to God, we don’t take his name in vain. make idols, we
have no other gods, we remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy.
But how is it we relate to one another? How do we relate to
our fellow man? If somebody asked you, how do
you love your neighbor? Maybe we think of this community
effort here. How do we have open arms to the
community? How do we have open arms to the
community with the violence that’s been here lately? Well, we do
it the way God says. So what do we do? Children obey. your parents. That’s what the
Fifth Commandment. We don’t murder. We don’t commit
adultery. We don’t lie. We don’t steal.
We don’t covet. And so what’s one of the ways
that we can say to our community, we do not tolerate murder. Right. We don’t get soft on it. We don’t
get easy on it and say, well, what’s good for you is good for
you and what’s good for me is good for me. Try that. Somebody
tells you they believe that they say, you know, truth is relative. You know, what you believe is
what you believe, and that’s great. I’ll tell you how to cure
that. They say there’s no right and wrong. You reach and steal
their wallet. OK, that’ll cure them right then and there of
that. So how do we relate to our community? How do we relate
to our neighbors? We do it with the law of God. God’s law is
designed to make society work well. It was good for Israel.
But these things teach us what is good conduct. We seek the
good of others. No murder, no lying, no adultery,
no coveting, no stealing. Honor your father and your mother.
Wouldn’t that? I know Bill Cosby’s gotten a
bad name lately, and maybe deservedly so. Who knows? We’ll see. But
you know, one of the things he did is he told parents, you’re
failing. You know, we can say all day,
no murder, no adultery, no stealing, no lying, and no coveting. But
we’ve got to have parents who expect obedience from their children,
and children who love and obey their parents. as if they’re
obeying God himself. So that’s this idea of good conduct. I had a neighbor when we lived
down in the Charlotte area. And when we first were moving
into our house, this neighbor came to the back door and knocked.
His wife was with him. She brought a chocolate chest
pie. We were to receive many more of those. That’s why I have
the figure I have. But he said to me, I intend to
be a good neighbor. He said, I’ll stay out of your
way, but anything you need, I will bring to you. We try to visit
them from time to time. And they’re older in age now.
He’s in his 80s, has Parkinson’s disease, hardly recognizes us
when we do visit. But these are dear friends to
us, dear neighbors to us, because they did exactly what they said
they were gonna do. When babies were on their way
and we had the call to go to the hospital in the night, we
could say, hey, we’re ready to go. And they would sweep right
in and take care of the other kids while we went. gave birth
to another one. They always were there for us.
When we had an emergency and needed a ride to the hospital
or something of that nature, they were always there for us.
But this man was known in the community for being a good, godly
man who was a good neighbor. And so that’s what David is saying. This person is one of good conduct. He does not do anything that
would harm his reputation. He is not a disgrace to the covenant
community. Well, what’s the fourth thing?
The fourth thing is, A man approved by God has good values. So there’s
good character, proper speech, good conduct, and now good values.
We find that at the beginning of verse four. It says, in whose
eyes a vile person is despised, but he honors those who fear
the Lord. This person has good values.
Think about who we imitate these days. Who do our children want
to grow up and be like? You know, they want to be like
the greatest, the next pop singer. They want to be like the next
movie star. They want a Disney lifestyle.
Well, you know who really ought to be our kids’ heroes? It ought
to be Corey Ten Boom. It ought to be Jim Elliott, Elizabeth
Elliott. It ought to be the Saints. It
ought to be, the elders of the church, the deacons of the church.
It ought to be the most common but godly person who daily wakes
up and says, I’m going to do what God has put before me. You
know, not everybody gets to live the Disney life. And in fact,
those who I have seen live the Disney life, they have just that.
It’s Disney here, but friends, Disney down because of not having
a relationship with Christ is not something to achieve or strive
for. And so we ought to put our eyes
on people who have good values. Notice how he says it in verse
four, in whose eyes a vile person is despised. I know we live in
a time where we want everybody to be equal in each other’s eyes. But the Christian is called to
make judgments. And here it is saying we do not
put our eyes on, we do not We do not value a vile person. Now we can be kind, we can be
forgiving, we can be open, we can be generous, we can be gospel-proclaiming
and all the rest, but there is a point in time where Christians
must separate, where the godly person must separate from the
world. David in another psalm says, I’ve made a covenant with
my eyes to put no vile thing before it. I remember preaching
on a Wednesday night at our church about that very subject. And
I challenged the young men in the congregation who were really
into video games. I got nothing wrong with that.
I grew up with the Atari 2600, you know, back in the old days.
Played it as a family together. My parents would come home from
school and they were on the thing. So I’m not saying video games
are bad, but I was trying to challenge them. They’re into
these rough games, these vile games, a lot of violence and
sexuality. And I made the point just in
passing that certain things will rewire you. They’ll rewire you
into not being sympathetic because you’re so violent now. At least
your heart is beating that way. Or towards sexual things, to
perverse things. And so there is a real strong
sense here where we ought to say our values are of things
that are pure and not what is false. We need to be careful.
How does the saying go? Be careful, little eyes, what
you see. We need to be careful with the
company we keep. We need to be careful with the values that
are pressed upon us. I mean, yes, it’s one thing to
say I don’t want to be like the rich and the famous and those
who have worldly success. Maybe maybe that’s not the right
standard. The right standard is what is
righteous and what is unrighteous. And what was the point of the
covenant community in Israel? It was to be a community of people
set apart for God to live pure ways. The world would look in
and say, who in the world are you people and who is the God
you serve? And so we want to be people of
good values. We want to despise what is vile
and unrighteous, but we want to honor God fears. Who should
we who should we put on pedestals in our lives? We should put on
pedestals godly people. One of the biggest sections of
of our bookshelf, my bookshelf is on biographies. Oh, yes, systematic
theology is wonderful. Commentaries are great. Ethics and other issues are wonderful
to think about, but it’s wonderful to read biographies and to hear
what made the saints of old tick, because it shows us that, yes,
the Christian life is hard, but it can be lived and it can be
accomplished. When we make our way to Hebrews
11 in a couple of weeks, we’ll see the value of biography. We’ll see the value of godly
examples. But we want to esteem those who
honor God, those who fear God. And they are often ordinary men
and women, boys and girls who are husbands and fathers, women
and wives who are children and who just faithfully day after
day in a mundane fashion, possibly serve the Lord. And so that’s
who we put our eyes on, these everyday heroes. Well, the fifth
the fifth person who God approves is the one of integrity. So there’s
the person of good character, the person of good speech, the
person of good conduct, the person of good values, and fifth, the
person of integrity. This is a person we find in verse
4B. It says, who swears to his own
hurt and he does not change. He swears to his own hurt and
he does not change. This is a person who keeps his
word. One of the things we did as a
session last fall when we interviewed our officers-elect. We read Psalm
15. I don’t know how many of you
guys in the room remember that. But one of the things we pointed
out, and I think we did it with both of our officers-elect. If
we didn’t, we should have, but here it is now, is we really
landed on this. At the end of verse 4, it says,
this person will swear to his own hurt and will not change.
You know, one of the greatest things you can have in a church
officer is somebody who will make an oath and keep an oath.
And even when hell is thrown at them, they will swear to uphold
that vow to their own hurt. Now, why is that good and practical? Well, it’s good for them as an
individual to give their word and keep their word. But guess
what? When the rest of the congregation is depending upon them, you need
to know out of shadow of a doubt that when hardship descends upon
the church, when The onslaught of the devil comes against our
congregation that these men who swore to serve, even if it cost
them everything, they will do it for the sake of Christ and
they will do it for the sake of you. And so who can enter
into God’s presence? Well, it’s the person. It’s the
man of good integrity. He keeps his word. He advances
not his own agenda, but God’s. And when he swears to his own
hurt, it may be to his advantage. It may to be of no advantage
to him, but he does. We find very few good men in
the world. We find very few good men in
the scriptures. And ultimately, the only good
man in the scripture is one. And that’s Jesus. But we see. We see Joseph in the Old Testament.
You know, he had to get out of jail free card. He could have
just run with the wife of Potiphar. He could have lied. No, he sat. He submitted to the will of God. And, you know, for, what, 10
years he was in prison. But God was raising him up. God
was setting him apart. God was preparing him for that
ministry to save both Israel and Egypt from famine. And so
what is the practical thing we should consider for the person
of integrity? Let your yes be yes. Let your
no be no and no gray, no in between, but let your word be true. Well, there’s a final characteristic
here, and it’s this. The person God approves is a
good economy. And we find it in verse five
at the beginning. It says he does not put out his
money at interest and he does not take a bribe against the
innocent. He puts people before gain. You
know, we’re hearing all these allegations now of various politicians
of the hundreds of millions of dollars they have made and earned
from political allies, from from from from negotiated gain for
themselves. And then we say they want to
be a public servant. What is God saying here? He says those
two things do not go hand in hand. One is crooked. Being a
public servant means you serve even at your own hurt. And so
we put people before gain. It is not OK to negotiate for
your own gain against the heart of the people. Do you remember
Nehemiah? He comes and rides around the city in the night.
He rebuilds the city and it’s wonderful. He serves as its governor
for a time. But there’s this unknown time
in Nehemiah’s life where he goes back to, was it Artaxerxes? I
can’t remember which king it was. But he goes back to Babylon
and he maybe serves there again as cupbearer for a certain period
of time. But then he returns to Jerusalem and what does he
find? He finds that the rulers, the powers that be, are serving
for their own gain. And he’s angry. You know, he’s
angry. He’s beside himself that all
that hard work has been undone in a short period of time. Well,
what is the godly person? He’s one who does not put out
his money. at interest. He doesn’t take a bribe against
the innocent. He’s out to serve others. See,
in the Jewish culture, you didn’t borrow money unless you were
in dire straits. Now, they didn’t have our modern-day mortgages.
They didn’t have $57,000 cars to purchase and that sort of
business and the price of higher education. Money in their economy
was to be earned and spent, earned and spent, earned and spent.
So to borrow money was a rare occasion. And what is he saying?
He’s saying, don’t put out your money at interest, assist somebody,
help somebody, help them in some way. Don’t don’t loan out money. I think in the case of Nehemiah,
he found that they had loaned their money out at such a high
interest. People were not only selling theirselves, they were
selling their children and they were selling even the homes they
had just rebuilt. And he’s saying, no, this cannot
be. And so the godly man is a person of good economy. He puts people before gain. He
protects the innocent. He does not take bribes for his
witness in a trial, but we affirm that two or more witnesses are
necessary in order for a conviction. So back to the original question.
Back to the beginning of Psalm 15. Who shall sojourn in your
tent? Who shall dwell on your holy
hill? Well, you’ve probably been listening
to this list of character and speech of conduct of Values,
integrity and economy. And you say, well, X, X, X, I
flunked all of these. That’s what we ought to say,
isn’t it? I am none of these, but for the grace of God. God
in his rich mercy has sent Jesus to uphold his law. He sent Jesus
to do what Adam failed to do. And Jesus has succeeded. And
so when Jesus takes your sin and he pays for it on the cross,
he also exchanges your sin for his righteousness. And so God
gives you and you receive it by faith, the righteousness of
Jesus, his perfect obedience, his character, his speech, his
conduct, his values, his integrity, his economy. And it becomes yours.
God does not see your sin. He sees Jesus perfection and
obedience. And so by faith, that is what
we have. But also by faith, we love the law of God, which under
the new covenant is written on our hearts. It’s preached to
us week after week. It’s read by us in our scriptures.
And so we have our marching orders. And by faith in Christ, by the
power of the Spirit, and by the virtue of having new hearts,
we are able to live lives of good character, of good speech,
of good conduct, of virtue and value and integrity and economy.
And so how is it that we are able to ascend God’s mountain
into his presence? How is it that in Revelation,
God won’t come to the gate and say, no, you can’t come in because
you are vile and have done detestable acts? And yes, yes, we have. It’s because we come in the stead
of Jesus. We come on his work and his righteousness. So how is it that we can ascend
his holy hill? It’s only because of the blood
of Jesus. And how is it that we can obey his law and reflect
new creations in Christ? It’s because of his spirit and
his word and power in us. And so we give thanks to God
that we have access to his presence, but that this can be said of
us. You know, every one of us will. Pass on the glory, many
of us will be late up here someday, right? For our funerals. Wouldn’t
this be a wonderful epitaph? And may it be so by God’s grace,
pray with me. Our Heavenly Father, we thank
you for giving us this word tonight for showing us the impossibility
of obeying the impossibility of achieving the status but the
possibility of it through Christ. We pray, Father, that our faith
would be strong, our obedience would be quick, and that the
fruit of our justification, the fruit of our repentance would
be great, and that people would see us as these things for your
sake, but also for the good of your church. Help us, we do pray
in Christ’s name, amen. you shall sojourn in your tent
and dwell upon your holy field. The one who walks in righteousness
and speaks the truth He slanders not with wicked speech,
nor does his neighbor lead him on. Across his eyes he will not
hear, nor will his breath with faithless tongue. He swears to His own perfect
love and changes not but keeps His word. Amen.