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A God Worth Seeking

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3  Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? 4  He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. 5  He will receive blessing from the LORD and righteousness from the God of his salvation. 6  Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah   Psalm 24:3-6 

Seeking God's presence, or being in God's presence is not just an occasional thing in the Christian life.  It ought be happening all the time.  If we are to have a relationship with the God that redeemed, reconciled and made sons and friends out of slaves and enemies, we must find a way to seek Him.  Psalm 14:2 "The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God."  Psalm 105:4 "Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually!" Isaiah 55:6-7 “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;  let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."

This Psalm helps us with the how.  How do we seek God?  How do we approach Him? These are the questions of vs 3 of Psalm 24.  Who is it that can stand in God's presence?  The one with clean hands, a pure heart, not worshiping idols or swearing deceitfully.  Oddly we find that seeking God has as much to do with the way we treat others as it does the way we seek God.  

Clean hands: Innocent in what we have done, toward God and others.  To be innocent or clean in the way that we act toward others.  What we say, what we do, what we say or do with other's reputations in the presence of others.  This has as much to do with seeking God as what we do on Sunday mornings.  It obviously also applies to what we do with our hands (our actions) toward God, but it is often most visible, and oddly hidden in our interactions with others.

Pure heart: What we do with our hands, just like what comes our of our mouth, is an expression of our heart. (Luke 6:45, Mark 7:21)  A pure heart is a pure fountain. Our impure motives, thoughts, desires and agendas toward others muddies the waters.  Out of a pure fountain comes pure water and out of a muddied fountain comes impure water.  Our heart (fountain) is corrupted and not only does that put a relational distance between us and others, but a lack of a pure heart puts (perceived) relational distance between us and God.  Such it is with our sin.

Forsaking Idols: "Who does not lift up his soul to what is false" or an idol.  Whatever functionally or in any way takes God's place in our hearts.  Whatever that we run to instead of God or first before God.  Our seeking of God is cut off before it starts because we are seeking other things instead.  All of us have things in our lives that we seek instead of God.  Or we seek other things before we seek God.  It stands to reason that if we aren't seeking God, we aren't seeking God.  In order to seek God we must, well, seek God, and seek Him first.

Tenaciously Truthful: Believers in Jesus Christ are those who seek the truth, tell the truth love the truth and even worship the Truth, as their Savior is "the way the truth and the life." (John 14:6)  This means that for the believer, deceit is out of the question. The issue is the same now as when God laid down the Ten Commandments: Ex 20: 16, Deut 5:20. Lying, deceiving or shaving the edge off of truth means forsaking the God of all truth.  And then, what is worse, we begin to believe of own web of lies and are sent on a path away from God.  We actually pursue and seek the father of lies who has been lying from the beginning. Satan himself. John 8:44  This is a far cry from seeking God.  

Seeking God means clean hands, Uprightness in all of our actions.  Seeking God means a pure heart, Motives and desires in check. Seeking God means forsaking idols, running to God first and primarily. Seeking God means insisting on the truth, rooting out our deceit. All of these things are gifts granted from God to be lived in and not attained, and yet we are called to seek God by seeking them. And the reward for seeking God? "He will receive blessing from the LORD and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob."  That is a God worth seeking.


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