Reading through Psalm 15, David is clear that only those people that live their life totally surrendered to the Lord will be able to enter God’s Holy Tent and live on His holy mountain. I like the way the New Century Version translates this very small but powerful Psalm.

“Lord, who may enter your Holy Tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? Only those who are innocent and who do what is right. Such people speak the truth from their hearts (emphasis mine) and do not tell lies about others. They do no wrong to their neighbors and do not gossip. They do not respect hateful people but honor those who honor the Lord. They keep their promises to their neighbors, even when it hurts. They do not charge interest on money they lend and do not take money to hurt innocent people. Whoever does all these things will never be destroyed (emphasis mine).” Psalm 15:1 – 5 (NCV)

When I think about entering into the Lord’s Holy Tent or living on His holy mountain, I think about the eternity I am going to spend praise dancing Jesus! I couldn’t help but put that out there. We were made to worship the King and we will all be dancing around the throne in Heaven singing praises to the King of Glory. I can’t even begin to imagine what that is going to be like. I mean, I have heard songs about heaven…“Surrounded by your glory what will my heart feel? Will I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be still?” Now I know how Bart Millard (of the band MercyMe) must have come up with the lyrics…but the fact remains it is simply hard to imagine anything like it!

Ok, let me come back down to earth for a minute. I want to focus in on one other aspect of Psalm 15. In the passage above, I emphasized the words from their hearts. Committing your life to Christ is just that…a commitment! It is not a check the box thing or a follow the law thing. It is a living, breathing, life-altering, heart-changing thing. There will be no way to spend eternity with Christ if we just try to follow a bunch of laws and check a box at the end of the day saying we managed to “color within the lines today.”

Everyone is separated from God because of their sin and their sinful behavior. The apostle Paul tells us in Romans (3:23) that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Paul continues in Romans (6:23) to tell us that the wages of sin is death. But the gift of life is through the price God’s one and only son paid on Calvary for your sin and for my sin. Jesus loves us so much that HE paid the price so that none of us had to die. Isn’t that wonderful news?!? This is the gift of grace. We did nothing to earn it. It’s a free gift. All we have to do is accept it. I love the way the Message sums it up in Ephesians 2:7-10:

“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he as gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”