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. (Psalms 24:3-4, NIV)
The Psalmist here speaks of hiking up Mount Zion to visit the temple, which is the “holy place” of God. This reminds me of Hebrews 10:22 which directs us to “draw near to God with a sincere heart” (NIV) just after mentioning that we have the privilege of entering the holy of holies (the innermost room of the temple where the presence of God dwelt) through the blood of Jesus. Also, remember Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God” (NIV).
So God promises that those who come to him in sincerity and holiness will have the privilege of “standing” in his presence. We will see God better; we will have more participation in his nature; we will drink more of his Spirit.
One area of purity that is especially important in our world today is the issue of the image that we view. Through technology we have nearly unlimited choices of what we can view. But they are also temptations. It is easy to rationalize that it is okay to watch shows with sexual content and violence and the pursuit of worldly philosophies. But these images have an effect on us. When we view them we are placing them in our memory. They become a pile of refuse in our otherwise Christ-centered minds. They are areas where Christ can not dwell because he does not dwell in corruption.
So the encouragement is that it is more than worth it to exercise self-control over the images that we view. When we have extra time on our hands it is easy to just let ourselves watch a show that “seems” like it will be okay. Then when the bad content shows up we let it go on because we don’t want to stop the show in the middle of the story. But if we do stop it then we have protected our soul so that we can “draw near to God with a sincere heart”. Our heart can “stand in [God’s] holy place”. This is a treasure that is more than worth the cost of self-control.
