Psalm 24

Taken from the book, Psalms: The Pilgrims Ascent, by A. B. Saint

An Audience with the King of Kings

“Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place? 
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. 
He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his Salvation.”
Psalm 24: 3-5

Isn’t it funny how sometimes something can just pop into our minds from seemingly out of nowhere. This happened to me only the other day. Suddenly, out of the blue, my thoughts began to rest upon a line or two, a prayer really, which as the day went on I could not put out of my mind as it kept resurfacing to the forefront. At the same point in time, I was conscious that alongside this text, someone whose name had escaped me at that moment, had prayed it on a very particular occasion and I was aware that it proved to be, in a spiritual sense, very important, not only for the man who prayed it, but also for those around him. 

I knew the prayer had been taken from the book of Psalms because of its wording. I also knew it was taken from Psalm 24, which as we know was a Psalm written by David himself, but it was not until sometime later the following day that I remembered who the person was. More about him later.   

The 24th Psalm began in the heart of  David, for it was he who penned its few short but meaningful verses. Since its writing, like many others, it has been read and spoken and sung about countless myriads of time. It is the last of a trilogy of Psalms for which David claimed penmanship. For many years Psalms 22, 23 and 24 have been affectionately known in picture form as the Psalm of the Cross, the Psalm of the Crook, and the Psalm of the Crown. Psalm 22 pictures the death of our Saviour on our behalf, Psalm 23 pictures our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ in His keeping power as our earthly Shepherd, and Psalm 24 pictures our Lord as Sovereign King who is coming back for us.

The opening verses speak out that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.” David is saying here that everything belongs to God. He is the Creator of all things, and He is the One who holds all things together. He is so great and so powerful and so holy that David begs the question, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place?” Moved by the Spirit of God, the answer he gives lies in verse 4 when he says: “He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.”   

It would seem that to reach a Holy God, some kind of perfection was required, yet which of us I ask in our natural state ever stands perfect before a Holy God? When at any time has any individual upon the face of this earth ever not had an impure thought or action? When he writes, David is not speaking to a perfect people but rather to imperfect ones just like us. 

Under the Old Testament Covenant, sacrifices had to be offered daily and in the end we know they could never expiate or atone for our sins. Hebrews chapter 7 and verse 19 says: “For the Law made nothing perfect.” There are several really interesting verses in the book of Leviticus chapter 21 and verses 21-23 which remind us that in their generations, if any of the sons of Aaron the high priest were imperfect in any way through blemishes upon the skin or some kind of deformity, they were rejected from Service. They could eat of the offering, but they could never offer it before the Lord.

It was the same with the animal sacrifices. In Deuteronomy chapter 17 and verse 1 we read: “Thou shalt not sacrifice unto the Lord thy God any bullock, or sheep wherein is blemish….”  To offer to God something which was obviously disfigured or flawed in some way was seen to be an abomination, and so dishonouring to God. To us this may seem difficult to understand, but the God who loves everyone and wants everyone to draw near unto Him was making a spiritual point or two here.

God is perfect and all His ways are perfect, but man on the other hand was born in sin and is prone to sin, therefore how can sinful man have access to a Holy God if he is spiritually blemished or has spiritual imperfections in his life? What do the first three verses of Hebrews chapter 10 say?

“For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers perfect For then would they not have ceased to be offered  because that the worshipers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.”  

The second picture that God was painting here is that the Old Testament sacrifices were in fact a type of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Supreme Sacrifice which was in time to come. Were there any imperfections in Him? No.  His heart was never impure for a second and His hands were never unclean in their actions for a moment. He never spoke an untruthful word, but rather His conversation was always in truth.

Thank God, He was the Spotless Sacrifice on our behalf. Under the old sacrificial covenant, the people were justified and forgiven, not through the blood of these animals but rather through the anticipation of the Cross of Christ. Through faith in Christ the Perfect Sacrifice we who believe in Him stand perfected. Today we can approach a Holy God through Christ who has become the mediator between God and man.    

When David speaks in verse 4 of the necessity of us having clean hands and a pure heart in order to reach God and to please Him, he is not speaking here of those people who through either religion or ritual only outwardly observe but inwardly deny, but rather he is speaking of those people who possess that constant inner desire to live right before Almighty God. People who are lovers of God rather than lovers of pleasure. People who find an intense delight in spiritual things rather than material things. People in whom there is no falsehood. People who want to live a God honouring life where both character and conduct support their beliefs.

David is right when he says that these people will know something of the blessing of God upon their lives.

In the following verse, David makes it clear and plain that it is to those who possess such a heart for God that shall receive both “Blessing from the Lord and Righteousness from the God of his Salvation.” What is the blessing of the Lord other than the joy of knowing His Divine favour upon them, not only in this life but also in the life to come. 

A man who gets himself right with God and every day keeps a short account with his Maker, depending not upon his own righteousness but the Righteousness of Christ Jesus the Lord, will gain audience with the King of Kings. No more standing in condemnation but rather walking in holiness he will stand before God. He will have an open heaven before him. His praise will reach heaven and his worship ascend as a sweet smelling savour before the Lord. His prayers will go up even to the very throne room of his God and will be heard. 

Remember the cry of the man over in Psalm 118 verses 19 and 20 when he says, “Open to me the gates of righteousness, I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord.” He enforcers his statement by adding, “This gate of the Lord, into which the righteous shall enter.” The writer here was plainly referring to those literal gates which had to be passed through before entering the House of the Lord to begin worship. For the New Testament believer however, this Gate of Righteousness becomes the indubitable, unquestionable picture of Christ Himself as the Door of the sheep. He is the only entrance, the only access to Father God, the only point of entry into all those spiritual blessings laid up for those who love Him. All the righteous must pass through Him.   

Coming to a close, and therefore seeing the requirement for drawing the threads together, this brings us very nicely to the point as to why the Lord has brought this particular Psalm before us at this moment in time. If you remember it all began with a rather hazy memory I had of a man who stood before the Lord in prayer, with the words from Psalm 24 upon his lips.

I believe the year was 1949. Of course, much water has gone under the bridge since this date, yet when we consider the age of the earth, or when this Psalm was first penned, it does bring the matter closer to us and in so doing gives a little insight into something which took place on the Hebridean Islands in Scotland. God brought about a revival there. It is a revival which my husband often talks with me about. In fact, some evenings you will often find us both musing upon and chatting about some of the revivals which we ourselves have read about and which over the years have taken place both in our own land and in other parts of the world. If I am correct in my thinking and at the time of this writing, this particular revival was the last recorded revival in the whole of the British Isles.

From what I have read it would seem to me that every revival which had gone on before, started with an earnest believer seeking after God in prayer. Someone, though sadly unknown to me, once spoke these very wise words, in which when I first read them I wrote them down. They said, “Needy people pray. Humility motivates prayer but self-sufficiency hinders it.” 

Leonard Ravenhill, much used to prayer and the crying out to Almighty God for revival, once said: “No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organisers, but few agonisers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers but few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, few fighters. Failing here we fail everywhere.”

Concerning the Hebridean Revival, we do have the names of some of those individuals who gathered together for prayer for the community in which they lived. Other names we do not have. Burdened, they went about setting particular times in which they met God through intercessory prayer. Two elderly sisters met together in their own home on prayer duty. A group of  men met regularly in a barn with the ever increasing desire laid upon them to pray for revival, for change in their community. 

In pursuit of God’s Presence, they were brought to that place of brokenness. Persistence in prayer was called for. This went on for some months. It was at one of these meetings that a young man who was a deacon proceeded to read from the early verses of Psalm 24. After the reading he then turned to those leaders present with the thought which had gripped him whilst reading this Psalm. 

Was it possible that they could be coming together in these times of prayer and yet their own hearts and own lives maybe not being as God would have them be? Were their hands clean and were their hearts pure? It was then he prayed, and lifting up his hands before heaven he cried out, “O God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?” This prayer invoked the blessing of the Lord and the Spirit of the Lord fell upon the barn where they were meeting. 

Duncan Campbell, the man who was the Minister at that time, was always quick to tell how that it was not he but God alone who brought about that revival; a revival wherein souls were saved, and lives were completely changed. A revival which changed the community where they were living. 

Mr Campbell had this to say: “When I speak of revival I am not thinking of high pressure evangelism. I am not thinking of Crusades or of special efforts convened and organised by man. That is not on my mind. Successful evangelism sees hundreds and thousands of people making decisions for Christ, but the community remains untouched, and the Churches continue much the same as they were before. Revival is altogether something different. Revival is a moving of God in the community and the community becoming God conscious, before a word is spoken by any man.”

True revivals are of God. In Psalm 85 verse 6, man prays: “Wilt Thou not revive us again: that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?  

In Isaiah chapter 44 verse 3 God says: “For I will pour water on him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground.  I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.”   

Prayer:  O Lord, if ever revival were needed its now!

Taken from the book, Psalms: The Pilgrims Ascent, by A. B. Saint