O 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.
Well.
Isn’t that encouraging.
“He who does these things shall never be moved.”
I do not hit that standard.
Let’s pretend, for a second, that I was reading this psalm without any knowledge of who Jesus is. That I approached this text as someone who just wanted to figure out how she could work her way to God and earn some holiness.
I think I would throw the book through a window and start hyperventilating after I read these words.
Everything that David lays out here – everything that it takes to dwell on the holy hill of the Lord – I do the opposite of those things.
For crying out loud – today alone I could place a checkmark by most of the list, indicating that which I failed to comply with.
But.
Thankfully…
I have Jesus.
I have the One, and only One, who has ever completely and wholly done these things. The only One righteous enough to sojourn in the tent of the Lord, to dwell on His holy hill, has bled and died on my behalf, and rose after 3 days in a borrowed tomb to redeem my soul and place me on the holy hill of the Lord Almighty.
I don’t have to work my way up the mountain.
I don’t have to live in despair in the valley.
Jesus – the Savior Himself – fulfills the law for me so that I can enter the presence of the Most High God and be declared clean & righteous in His eyes. And so I am.
Kayla Smith 