Book of Psalms - Psa. 15, Vs. 1-5 (05/28/2023)

Park Meadows Church

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We are going to be in the book of Psalms, Psalm chapter 15.

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Let me pull up my blue letter Bible here. Number 15, it's my favorite number.

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It didn't used to be. It became my favorite number because of basketball. It was my basketball number when

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I first joined the basketball team in junior varsity or junior high, something like that.

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They said, what number do you want? And I said, I want 50, that's David Robinson's number. They said, sorry, it's already taken.

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And I said, okay, how about 21? That's Tim Duncan, already taken. Avery Johnson, number two, taken.

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Goodness gracious. I said, well, what's available? They said, you could have 15.

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And I said, well, who's got 15? They said, Benny Del Negro. And I said, who's he?

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Who's Benny Del Negro? Never heard of this guy. And they said, well, he's one of the

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Spurs. Okay, give me 15. But then over time,

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I just became known as number 15 on the basketball team and became a part of my identity to a lot of people that didn't know me.

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I was just number 15. Hey, go guard that number 15. Don't let him get in the paint, that kind of stuff.

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And so over time, I grew to love the number. It's funny how something like that just kind of becomes part of your identity, right?

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Psalm 15 is something that we should want to identify with. It's going to describe the type of person who can be in the presence of the

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Lord. And so the identity that we should strive for is found right here in Psalm 15.

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A lot of things going on at the time that this Psalm was written. The tabernacle was currently in Gibeon.

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And if you recall, the tabernacle is like a precursor to the temple, right? The temple hasn't been built yet.

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The tabernacle is like a tent that is supposed to be the house of God and it moves around with the

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Israelites. And eventually, they're going to build the temple on God's holy hill,

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Mount Moriah, I believe is what it's called. But this is

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David writing the Psalm. And keep in mind, David really, really, really wanted to build the temple.

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Another thing at this time was the Ark of the

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Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant is another symbol of God's presence.

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So if the tabernacle or eventually the temple symbolizes

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God's home, right? Where you could come into the presence of God, the

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Ark of the Covenant was something that signified God's presence going with you. And it is very likely that during this time when

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David wrote this Psalm, that it was around the time he was trying to bring the Ark of the

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Covenant back into Jerusalem. So there's a lot of things that go on with that.

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I'm gonna give you a little bit of the journey of the Ark of the Covenant here. The Philistines had captured it.

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We read about that in 1 Samuel chapter four. And they hold on to the

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Ark of the Covenant for about seven months. Now, the very fact that someone else could hold on to the covenant, the

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Ark of the Covenant was something probably pretty fearsome to the

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Israelites. Like, man, this has been stolen from us. This signifies the presence of the Lord with us.

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So now the presence of the Lord has gone out from us. And the presence of the Lord, in a sense, is dwelling with the

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Philistines, right? Like, this is terrible. And the Philistines bring the

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Ark to Ashdod. They set it up next to their idol god,

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Dagon. Does anybody remember what happens when they set up the

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Ark of the Covenant next to their idol god, Dagon? First, they start hopping into Dagon.

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Dagon is this idol god, and they've got a statue of him. And they come in and they find out that the statue keeps, in a sense, bowing down to the presence of God.

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It keeps falling over. And they say, well, this isn't going to work for us.

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The God of the Israelites is kind of being mean to our

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God. Yeah, this isn't good, right? So they decide, after this happens a couple of times, they're like, all right, we gotta get rid of this thing, because this is bad for us.

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They don't want the presence of God, which is interesting. So they decide they're going to move the

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Ark of the Covenant. And they bring the Ark to Gath. There, there's a mighty destruction against the town.

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And if that wasn't enough, God killing a whole bunch of people in the town, he then strikes the ones who are not dead with emrods, which is the biblical equivalent to hemorrhoids.

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Really, really, really bad, right? So this is bad. Like, and so you could, there are all kinds of ways you can get into the flesh and say some funny things there, but I'm not going to today.

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These guys say, we don't want this here. Like, this is, we've been killed.

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God has slain a bunch of our people. And the ones he left alive, he's torturing with emrods.

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So they decide we got to get rid of this thing. They don't want the presence of God either. So they send the

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Ark to Ekron. And here's what the people of Ekron say.

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I'm paraphrasing. Are you kidding me? We don't want this thing. Did you see what it did to the last place?

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We've heard the stories. God killed a bunch of people and the ones who were left alive probably wished they were dead.

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Like, we don't want this. Get rid of it. So they don't even keep it there. Like, they're not even going to chance it.

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They're not even going to, you know, try to have the presence of the Lord. They're like, we want no part of it.

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And so the Philistines decide they need to just ultimately return the Ark to God's people.

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And so then you have David who wants to bring it back into Jerusalem, who remembers what they did when they tried to bring it back into Jerusalem.

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They do something that's not right. They put it on a cart, which is against specifically the rules for carrying the

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Ark. It's supposed to signify the burden of the Lord to carry that Ark.

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You don't try to make it easy and use high -tech wheels and things of that nature.

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You know, like, this is the new technology. And I want you to imagine for a second that God's people, in doing so, to some degree, mean well.

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Like, we're going to bring the best new cart that we have for the Ark, but they are not obeying the specific instructions of the

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Lord. And so they put it on a cart and they go wheeling it back.

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Well, at one point, the cart starts to tip, and one of the

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Levites tries to keep it from tipping over.

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Now, there's a little backstory to this Levite. He's the son of Abinadab, because they've basically had, when the

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Philistines returned the Ark, Abinadab and his boys, they attend to the

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Ark. It stays there for, like, 20 years.

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20 years. So the Philistines, they've returned the Ark to the Israelites. The Ark is not yet in Jerusalem.

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When the Philistines decide they're going to return the Ark, they try to put, like, all kinds of peace offerings in, because they want to make sure that God's not mad at them.

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Ultimately, what happens is they open the Ark and God, like, kills 70 people for peeking in the

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Ark. And so there's all kinds of stuff that happens in just the transfer of the

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Ark from the heathen over back to God's people. But then it resides in the house of Abinadab for, like, 20 years.

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So this guy who tries to keep the Ark from falling has been a part of keeping care of the

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Ark for 20 years. And yet, he does it wrong.

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They move the Ark on the cart, the cart tips, and this young man,

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Uzzah, puts his hand on the Ark. When he does this, God strikes him dead, because it's also against the rules.

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You don't touch anything holy. And in doing so, he's erred a couple of ways.

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And I've looked up all the different ways that Uzzah has actually erred, according to some of the, not philosophers, commentators.

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One, he erred in thinking it didn't matter who carried the Ark, because they don't have specifically

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Levites carrying the Ark like they're supposed to. He erred in thinking it didn't matter how the

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Ark was carried, so he stuck it on a cart, he and his family. He erred in thinking he knew all about the

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Ark, because it was in his father's house for so long. It'd been there for 20 years. There's a carelessness about how he's moving what's supposed to be signifying the presence of God.

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He erred in thinking that God couldn't take care of the Ark himself, because he's going to try and save the

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Ark from falling as it starts to tip. He erred in thinking that the ground of Nachan's threshing floor, which is where this occurred, was less holy than his own hand.

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Think about that. He's thinking, uh -oh, it's going to fall in the dirt.

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Don't let it fall in the dirt. Put your hand on it, right? And he's thinking, well, that's better than falling in the dirt.

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And he's not realizing just how unholy man actually is. And so that was a pretty big error on his part as well.

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So he saw no difference between the Ark and any other valuable article. At least that's how he treated it.

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His intention was definitely to help, but there was a profound insensibility to the awful sacredness of the

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Ark on which even its Levitical bearers were forbidden to lay hands. This is according to the commentator

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McLaren. So bad move, bad move.

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David, writing Psalm 15, has all of this in his head, right?

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Like, these are my people. These are God's people. And this guy took care of the

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Ark for 20 years. And like that, God just dropped him dead. So he's killed heathen.

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Okay, I can understand that, right? If you're David, you're probably thinking, that makes sense, it's the

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Philistines. But now he's killing his own people too. He actually ends up getting mad at God over this, but also really scared of God because he's done this.

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So just imagine the things as we go through Psalm 15, which is very short. It's only five verses.

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Imagine the things that are going through David's mind. He wants to build the temple. He's considered a man after God's own heart, disqualified from building the temple because he's got too much blood on his hands.

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But whose blood is it? Mostly it's God's enemies. So that's kind of a strange thought to have in there too.

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Like, I'm disqualified as a man after God's own heart to build the temple. I want to bring

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God's presence back into Jerusalem in the form of the Ark of the Covenant.

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And when I tried, he starts killing his own people. Obviously he's not doing it the right way.

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But a lot of that is going on in David's head. And it's widely thought that he wrote

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Psalm 15 around this time when he's trying to bring the

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Ark of the Covenant back in. Now, ultimately, he does get to. He gets to bring the Ark of the Covenant back into Jerusalem.

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He gets right with the Lord. He starts doing it the right way. He's like, let's not do it on a cart this time. All right, let's carry it like we're supposed to.

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Let's make sure it's Levite's carrying it like we've been commanded. And so he does this the way he's supposed to.

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And so here's where we'll start Psalm chapter 15. It's a Psalm of David.

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And it starts off, Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

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Okay, so he starts with a question. And the rest of the four verses that follow are going to answer that question.

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But think about what must be going on in his head when he asks this question.

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Like, who can abide with you? Who can dwell with you? Because I see you killing

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Philistines. I see you killing your own people. And like, I just wanna make sure I get this right. Because we've gotten it wrong.

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We've messed this up before. And now I gotta make sure that I understand fully.

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And so he has a two -part question. The first part, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?

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The tabernacle being the tent that precedes the temple, right? The tent can move around.

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It doesn't stay in one spot. It goes wherever Israel is residing at the time.

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But if you're gonna go into the presence of the Lord, you're gonna go into the tabernacle. The word abide is gur.

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It means to sojourn, almost like visit. This almost has like a temporary feel to it, not like a permanent feel.

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So when it says, who shall abide in thy tabernacle, who can visit your presence?

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Who can come into your presence for a time? And this has some significance to it because anyone who came and visited a sojourner who came into the

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Israelites' land, if they were received into someone's house as a sojourner, as a visitor, they enjoyed some benefits.

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They would be protected by their host at very great cost.

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We see some examples of this culture when you look at the story of Lot, right?

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And he has some sojourners come into his house and he has other people come that want to do bad things to the sojourners.

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And he says, no, you can't have them. And he's like, take my daughters instead. That's a pretty high cost, right?

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So like the idea of being a visitor in someone's home meant that you were protected and also you were provided for.

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They would provide all your needs and make sure you had food, you had clothing, you had a place to sleep, but you also were protected with their very lives.

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So to sojourn was kind of a great deal if you're sojourning with God's people because that's how it was expected to be.

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So David here is asking, who can have protection and provision in your presence?

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Who qualifies for that? What did it take to qualify as a sojourner in the house of Israel?

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If you were gonna be somebody's visitor, what did it take? What do you guys think? Any guesses?

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You just had to sojourn. Yeah, I mean, think about it. If you had somebody come over, right?

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You would say, I have visitors, sojourners, right? And you would say they came to visit, right?

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We often don't talk about the part where it's like, well, I invited so -and -so over.

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That can come up in conversation, but we almost always talk about from the perspective of they came to visit, because you could invite somebody and then they don't come, right?

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But when they come to visit, that's when they're your visitor. I think about what that means. There's a responsibility of the sojourner to sojourn in order to become a sojourner, right?

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To be a visitor, you gotta visit. And what's interesting is if you were to just go and show up, you would show up into a town as a sojourner, someone who's visiting the town, but you couldn't just go into anybody's house, could you?

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You had to be invited first. And so otherwise, you were actually at great peril sitting in town with no place to stay.

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Someone could come and get you. But if you were invited in, then you had the opportunity to come and visit.

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It's a beautiful picture of salvation if you think about it, because no man cometh unto the Father, or cometh unto me except the

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Father draw him, right? So there is an invitation, the Father draws them in, but there's still this responsibility of man piece where man has to come in, you know?

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And he will, he will come in because it's like what

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David says, like there's just no other choice if you think about it. If you're a sojourner in a strange land, you're at great peril, and now you're being provided protection and provision, are you not gonna go?

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Of course you're gonna go. Yeah, it's insulting if you don't. Right, it doesn't happen.

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People, I mean, anyone with half a brain is gonna go, right? And so when the

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Father draws you, he's giving you a choice that you really don't have to make, right?

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Because it's done. Like, of course I'm going. David often refers to, he's the shepherd, and he has the food, and you're the sheep, and what are you gonna do?

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You're gonna go to the shepherd for the food. Calvin called this irresistible grace, right?

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You just can't resist it. You gotta go. So it's got a lot of significance, this word abide, this idea of visiting.

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And David's asking, who can abide in thy tabernacle? So then there's a second part to this question, and that is, who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

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That's a good ring. I like that ring. That's one of the happiest ringtones I've ever heard.

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Watch, mine's gonna do it next. Yeah, who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

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The word dwell here is not to visit. This is more like becoming a citizen of the town, right?

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So like, if you're a sojourner, you're coming to visit the town. You're not a citizen, and maybe you are depending on the citizens for protection and for provision, but the idea of being able to dwell there, that makes you a citizen.

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You become a citizen, there's something even better, because you're not just protected by a single household, you're protected by the soldiers of the town, right?

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So now you've got an even larger protection when you are dwelling in a particular place.

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And so what David's really talking about here is who can come into God's presence?

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Who's qualified, right? Who shall do it? Well, we know nobody.

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Nobody's qualified, right? Nobody's actually qualified. And so he's going to begin to answer this question, or rather the

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Lord through the Holy Spirit answers the question for David. And that's when we get to verse two.

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He that walketh uprightly and worketh righteousness and speaketh the truth in his heart.

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All right, so to walk uprightly, this is one who walks with integrity. Like you say you're gonna do something, you do it, right?

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Someone who doesn't change what they say. That's kind of a tough thing to do, if you think about it.

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It's a pretty high calling for that. And we're gonna see that idea of integrity repeated in this very short

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Psalm here in a minute. We'll expound on that here in just a second, but it means to walk with integrity, to be upright.

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To worketh righteousness, right? So he that walketh uprightly and worketh righteousness.

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This is someone who does good works. There's fruit, right? And if there's fruit, you're connected to the vine.

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Fruit, root, right? You may not see the root, but you definitely see the fruit and the fruit is a result of being connected to the root.

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And speaketh the truth in his heart. Okay, before we get to that,

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I want us to focus real quickly on these two things. Walketh uprightly, right? Someone who acts with integrity.

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Someone who works righteousness, right? Who does good works.

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It's interesting that this starts out, the answer starts out with acts, like works, right?

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Who can dwell in God's holy hill is someone who has good works.

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That seems almost backwards, but remind yourself we're in Old Testament times. And if you look at the

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Old Testament times, in order to enjoy the presence of the Lord, you had to have obedience to the

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Lord, right? What's interesting is this side of the cross, that kind of gets flipped on the head because you can only have obedience to the

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Lord when you have the presence of the Lord. So the presence of the Lord comes first and obedience comes as a result of that presence, which is so much better if you think about it.

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Because think of how hard it was for them to attain obedience, lacking the presence.

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Man, it was hopeless in so many ways. It literally only came as a result of God's grace and His mercy saying, all right,

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I'm gonna make it where you do all right. I'm gonna make it where you do good for a little while, then I'm gonna come back unto you.

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In fact, that's often how the prophecies would go. He would say, you're gonna mess up.

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You're gonna be destroyed. You're gonna be driven out. You're gonna be enslaved, but you will remember me, right?

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It's like He preordained the works to happen so that they could then enjoy the presence of the

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Lord. That's how it worked back there in the Old Testament. It was a really cool picture, looking forward to the

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New Testament. Then speaketh the truth in His heart, right?

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So this is a third thing that we must do in order to abide in the tabernacle or dwell in the

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Holy Hill. Speaketh the truth in His heart. This is showing us a congruent believer.

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He is the same on the outside as He is on the inside. You can feign obedience. You can kind of make it look like you're an obedient Christian.

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You can seem like a standup person and be absolutely rotten on the inside, right?

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We can look good to everyone around us and completely fail on the inside, and God judges the heart.

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I was asking Myron yesterday, like how do you get your kids to be more confident?

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And I loved your answer, Myron. You got it from the Bible? You do that often.

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His answer was seek approval vertically, not horizontally.

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So don't just try to appease the people around you, the people at your level, your friends. Seek approval going up, which of course ultimately ends with the

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Lord, right? Seeking the Lord's approval. And someone who speaks truth in His heart is someone who is seeking the approval of God.

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There's someone who has a strong moral character, not just good works to show off to other people, right?

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They don't just pray loudly in the temple and throw their coins in the plate nice and loud.

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We had this guy at our old church in San Marcos when the plate would be passed by, he'd flick the bottom of it to make it sound like he put something in it.

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And then he'd laugh because he was doing it tongue in cheek. That was Mr. Blake would do that sometimes.

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Yeah, so then verse three, he that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor.

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He doesn't speak poorly of others. He doesn't backbite with his tongue. He doesn't take advantage of others.

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And he doesn't even think poorly of others. Now, how many times do we bridle our tongue?

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And we work hard at that sometimes, I think. Some Christians don't, but some Christians do. And the ones who do tend to be living more peaceful lives with the people around them.

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And the people who are around them tend to like them more because they've learned to bridle their tongues. That's great.

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That's one qualification. What I love about what Jesus does and what the Lord does through his

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Holy Spirit in this scripture is he always kind of takes it to the nth degree. He takes it so far that the standard is beyond your reach.

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Because there's the man who doesn't speak poorly of others, right?

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He doesn't backbite. He may not even do bad things to other people. He generally helps other people.

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But if he's grumbling in his heart, he's still disqualified. I'm doing all this, and nobody really appreciates what

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I do for them. And I don't really wanna do it, but I'm gonna do it because I'm expected to.

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I don't wanna do this at all, but you know what? It's the right thing to do, and everybody's watching.

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And he grumbles in his heart, disqualified. How many times did Jesus do that whenever he was talking about the law?

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He didn't come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. And boy, did he, because he took it so much further than what man had already taken it.

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Man tried to add some rules, and the whole reason why man adds rules is because he wants loopholes to get around the law.

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And Jesus blew through all of that. He blew through all the rules and basically said, like, even if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, fornicate it, right?

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Like you've heard the law say, you should not covet your neighbor's wife.

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Okay, well then what about the ones that aren't my neighbor's wife, right? You see, he's like, I'm gonna blow that rule out of the water.

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You have the man who comes and asks, what does it take to attain eternal life? And Jesus says to him, well, what have you read?

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He's a lawyer. And ironically, the man says the right answer. He says, love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus says, hey, do these things and you shall attain eternal life.

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But then the lawyer says, so who's my neighbor? What's he doing? He's looking for the loophole, because what's he really asking?

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Who's not my neighbor? Because if it's not my neighbor, that's the guy I can get away with doing whatever

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I want to. And so the man who speaketh the truth in his heart doesn't ask those questions.

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He doesn't ask a qualifying question so that he can get around and do bare minimum to do what

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God asks him to do. He just does it. He does it fully. And we all fall short of that.

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Every one of us. Verse four, in whose eyes a vile person is contemned, but he honoreth them that fear the

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Lord. He that sweareth to his own hurt and changes not. Okay, there's two things here that I want to tackle.

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Let's see. Make sure I didn't lose my notes here. Okay, when you think of a vile person, what do you think about?

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I didn't say who do you think about? I said, what do you think about? I said, don't name names, right?

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Oh, ah, pop, wow. I won't repeat that for anyone listening online.

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People who do evil things to others, right? Right? Okay, so that's interesting because out of the heart, the mouth speaketh, right?

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Have you ever seen someone who looks pretty good on the outside, but you can just kind of tell they're a little bit rotten on the inside?

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You can kind of tell that some of the things they're doing are self -serving. Some of the things that they're doing are designed to vault themselves up, not to really improve the lives of the people around them.

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Those are vile people. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's so true.

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Spurgeon said that, and it's to that very point, he said, sometimes you may respect the office, but despise the person, and that's okay, right?

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Because you're supposed to contemn a vile person, right?

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But you may still have to respect the office of that person. If you don't, then you're gonna end up in trouble, right?

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Because God's put people in authority over you for a reason, and sometimes they're good, and sometimes they're bad.

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I saw a chart of all the kings of Israel, and the chart showed the good ones and the bad ones.

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There weren't too many good ones. There were very few good ones, and boy, was that, they were short -lived often when they were good in the grand scheme of things.

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They may have a lifelong rule, some of them, King David being one, but man, the majority of their history was filled with evil kings, and a couple that started off good and ended up evil, you know?

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And so, the way Spurgeon put it was, you may honor a cabinet, the roughest of cabinets for the sake of the gems, right?

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You may, for the sake of the jewels inside, you may honor the roughest of cabinets for the sake of the jewels inside, and then he said, but you don't honor, oh,

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I can't remember the quote, and I thought I had it written down, he says, there are some where the gems are rotten, right?

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And that's really what you wanna watch out for. Where's the heart? Where's the person, like the inner man, how does that come out?

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And so, a person who is qualified to abide in the tabernacle, or to dwell in the holy hill of the

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Lord, he contends a vile person, but he honoreth them that fear the

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Lord. How do you know if someone fears the Lord? Yes, Proverbs tells us that the fear of the

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Lord is to hate evil, right? So, they must hate evil.

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If you see a person who hates evil, there's a good chance they fear the Lord, because the word is is an algebraic term which means equals, right?

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So, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. So, it's a pretty good indication. If you see someone who hates evil, they fear the

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Lord. Let's tackle this next part, because this is where that concept of being a person of integrity comes back into play.

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God hits this one twice. He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not.

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So, this is someone who may or may not purposefully swear to his own hurt, right?

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You could purposefully swear to your own hurt. I see my wife do this sometimes. She will overcommit herself for the sake of others.

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She will, and she'll know she's doing it, and she'll usually text me, or if I'm sitting there, she'll say,

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I'm gonna need your help. And I'll be like, okay. But she will swear to her own inconvenience, or sometimes literally to her own hurt.

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She's gonna follow through, right? Sometimes, it's a time when you didn't mean to swear to your own hurt, right?

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You might schedule something, right? How many of us have scheduled something?

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You promised to help. You scheduled a thing. You got ensnared by the words of your own mouth.

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You're like, I didn't even know what was gonna hit me this week when I agreed to that last week. And all you can think of is, how can

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I get out of doing this thing? What can I do to make it not happen?

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Can I call in sick? Can I actually get sick so that I can just stay in bed?

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But the man who can abide in the tabernacle of the Lord and dwell in his holy hill, he doesn't change.

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Whether it was purposeful to swear to his own hurt or not, he doesn't change, he follows through. He that putteth not out his money to usury or taketh reward against the innocent, he that doeth these things shall never be moved.

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Okay, so this last verse here, usury is considered an abominable sin, right?

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Because we've been talking about the man, we've been talking about the outer man, the outward appearance of the man, someone who does good things on the outside, but it also seeps into the inside.

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It's a congruent person, someone who is just as good on the inside as they look on the outside. That's the kind of person who can come into the presence of the

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Lord. But also, not only does he not do evil, he doesn't allow his assets to be used for evil, right?

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Now this can extend, if you think about it from a business perspective, this can extend beyond the man himself.

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He may try with his own employees, for instance, to make sure that his own employees are not using his assets for usury.

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I picture a bank, right? Not just a banker. You may have the man who owns the bank, who has the majority of the assets.

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He's gonna make sure that his assets are not gonna be used for evil, even if he's not the one directly in charge of the interaction with the people around him.

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So he putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.

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So we have here an example of a person who is good inside and out.

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David asks the question, who can abide in thy tabernacle? Remember the word abide means to sojourn.

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So who can enjoy the protection and the provision of the Lord? Who can become a citizen of his city and enjoy the protection of his armies?

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And he begins to list out a truly perfect person if you look at it, right?

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So the answer is only one. Only one man qualifies, and that man is

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Jesus Christ. He's the only one who ever completely fulfilled the qualifications set out in Psalm chapter 15.

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None of us did, but when we have the Lord in our lives, when he is in our hearts, when he has saved us and become a part of us and is no longer

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I who lives, but Christ who lives within me, we become qualified.

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Not by our works, lest any man should boast, but by his, right? He did the work.

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He fulfilled the law. He took it to the nth degree and said, I'm not just gonna fulfill it the way you think it's supposed to be fulfilled.

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I'm gonna fulfill it beyond what you ever imagined because that's what holiness truly is.

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It's set apart. Jesus wasn't just set apart from other men. He was set apart from all of creation, from even man's ability to think about what set apart is.

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So he took holiness to infinity, and he said, now, when

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I die on a cross, I'm gonna take that holiness, that righteousness, and debit it from my account and put it into yours.

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I'm gonna take all the mess ups when you plan something and you messed up and you decided

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I'm gonna chicken out and I'm gonna change, or when you took advantage of somebody, or when you lied, or when you cheated, or when you stole, or when you did all the good things and then grumbled in your heart about doing them,

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I'm gonna take all that out and I'm gonna put my righteousness in. And so now because of me, you can sojourn in the tabernacle of the

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Lord. You can dwell in his holy hill. And so the identity, remember, we started there, the identity that we're supposed to have is

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Christ. We're Christians, which means little Christ. We're supposed to look like him, talk like him, act like him, be like him.

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Just like the master and his servants in the parable of talents, when he says, well done, my good and faithful servant, thou has been faithful over few,

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I'll make you ruler over many, enter now into the joy of thy Lord. In Sunday school growing up, we always heard we're supposed to be more like Jesus.

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That's what that's supposed to mean, right? And we are, we're supposed to be more like him.

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And Paul said, imitate me even as I imitate Christ. So our identity is in Christ.

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Our identity, we all have our own little individuality. We have something else that we get to bring to the table when we co -labor with the

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Lord, but without him, we're nothing. We certainly are disqualified and we'd be like the

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Philistines trying to carry around the Ark of the Covenant, getting slayed left and right and hit with the biblical hemorrhoids as well.

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Like it's just, life's gonna get uncomfortable. You cannot have the presence of the Lord in your life and not be his and enjoy that presence, right?

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You gotta be his and then you can enjoy that presence and you can answer that question that David asks at the beginning of Psalm chapter 15.

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So that's it. Got a little bit of time before we start church. So shall we pray?

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Does anybody have anything else you wanna say before we pray? Yes, sir. Yeah, the part of me, the obedience of God, for it is

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God that works in us. And to go on, they couldn't go on.

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Right. Because they have, we can't keep up with the same power and praise of Jesus that dwells in us, which to an extent, we don't want because of Christ.

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Of Christ. Because of Christ, yeah. Oh, I love that. Myron, for those of you listening online, Myron's here and he said that the idea of the

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Old Testament where they had to have the obedience to enjoy the presence of the

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Lord and the idea that here on this side of the cross, we had the presence of the

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Lord, which gives us the ability to obey. It reminded him of Philippians 2 .13. It is

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God who works within us to will and to do his good pleasure. So it's

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Christ in us that even gives us the ability, but that's the point is that we can keep, we can be this person now, whereas they couldn't be before.

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Now we can be this person in Psalm chapter 15 because of Christ. Thank you, sir. Love that. Anything else?

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All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for this church where we thank you most of all for your word.

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And we ask that you help us to adhere to it, help us to make it a lamp into our feet and a light into our path.

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Help us to hide your word in our hearts so that we won't sin against you and help us to take on that identity that you've given us so that we can become more like this man in Psalm 15, who can enjoy your presence.

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We can dwell in your tabernacle and or abide in your tabernacle and dwell in your holy hill.

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Lord, we love you. We thank you. And we can't wait to see what you do for us next.