pure heart – Moment to Moment (Bible blog)

Because Jesus went before us

Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart. (Psalm 24:3-4)

If you think about it, those are weighty words.

Who, after all, has completely clean hands before the Lord? Who has never done a sinful thing?

And who has a perfectly pure heart before the Lord? Who has never struggled with wrong thoughts and wrong motives?

Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?

By those standards: no one.

Only one person ever perfectly fulfilled those requirements: Jesus.

He then went to the cross to pay the price for our sins. Upon doing so, he ascended to heaven, entered the holy temple there with his own blood. And because he went before us, the author of Hebrews writes,

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus—he has inaugurated for us a new and living way through the curtain (that is, through his flesh)—and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.

Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, since he who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:19-23)

No, none of us are worthy to ascend the mountain of the Lord. None of us are worthy to stand in his holy place.

But because of Jesus, we receive blessing from the Lord. And the greatest blessing, is that the God our salvation clothes us with Christ’s righteousness. (Psalm 24:5)

So with full confidence, let us draw near to him!

Keeping a pure heart

Today I was reading I Corinthians 5 and Psalm 19, and as I meditated on them, the two passages connected in my heart.

In I Corinthians 5, Paul was talking about sin in the church and the need to discipline Christians living in unrepentant sin.

But as I read that passage, I also thought about how it applies to our personal lives.

Paul said concerning the Corinthian church’s response to this man,

And you are arrogant! Shouldn’t you be filled with grief and remove from your congregation the one who did this? (1 Corinthians 5:2)

Again, he’s talking about dealing with a Christian living in unrepentant sin.

But how often do we have that same attitude toward our own sin? Instead of grieving over our sin and asking God’s help to remove it from our lives, we blatantly continue to live in it.

Paul later tells the church,

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little leaven, leavens the whole batch of dough?

Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as indeed you are. For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.

Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:6-8)

A little sin can spread quickly in our lives, and soon we start making excuses for everything we do.

So Paul says, get rid of the old leaven, the sin that dominated our lives before we became Christians, and live in sincerity and truth.

Christ cleansed us of our sins on the cross. Why go back to it?

What does this have to do with Psalm 19? David’s words and prayers at the end of it. May it be ours as well.

Who perceives his unintentional sins?
Cleanse me from my hidden faults.

Moreover, keep your servant from willful sins;
do not let them rule me.

Then I will be blameless
and cleansed from blatant rebellion.

May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you,
LORD, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19:12-14)