This week’s Song To Live By is Psalm 24

Andy writes:

This is such a rich Psalm… we really would do well to spend the whole of this week in it. Humming it whilst we wash up; belt it out in the gathering with our believers; singing it in the shower. You can tell it’s come out of David’s extended lifelong meditation on who the God of Israel is. What would we give to hear him sing it to its original tune?

David begins by rejoicing in the fact that we are not dealing with some local or lightweight tribal deity… no, we are coming to the Creator God. The Lord Almighty, the Maker of Heaven and Earth. The Psalm pinpoints how he is both the owner and the establisher of the earth. Wherever you go, you are in his jurisdiction; there’s nowhere you can travel that he did not architect and assemble. We come to the Creator today. He’s everywhere, the whole thing is covered in his fingerprints…

And yet, whilst he’s everywhere this God is also hard to reach. In one sense He’s out there for everyone, and yet in another sense he has to be sought. He’s always available to acknowledged, but there’s sometimes an ache of emptiness when we seek to experience him. There’s a holiness to him certainly; and almost a frustrating hiddenness. It leads the psalmist to a meditation on the moral requirements for mingling with the Maker.

Clean hands.

A pure heart.

A right gaze.

Unadulterated assertions.

The song makes us stumble… it’s a draw to repentance… it’s an acknowledgement of our inadequacy to come before our great God… and yet there is also an invitation to continue to seek.

In fact, David’s repentance soon turns to request. Our apologies turn to asks. Our sorrys change to statements. Where we were seeking God, we now celebrate that He is seeking us. It’s not that we are knocking on his door, but that he is knocking on ours. It’s not that we want to get to him, but that he wants to get to us. So we invite and we intercede. The walls of our hearts; and the gates of our cities - we tell them to open wide that our God may come in. He owns it; he is holy beyond imagining and yet the record shows he wants to come and dwell with his people. This King of glory, this great warrior, this beautiful creator… let him come in.

A Prayer

God I acknowledge that you are the maker, and you are the owner of all things. In you all things hold together. I recognise my sin before you. Please clean my hands; purify my heart; I turn to you and acknowledge you as my King. So would you come Lord; into my life, into my family; into my work; into my city. Let every gate be open to you, King of glory.