Every Public Relations campaign needs good visuals. Every product to be sold needs pictures that represent the product. We need pictures that tell the story we are trying to tell. If there are just words on a page, people will skip and move on to something with pictures. The old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” still holds true. Pictures draw us in.
We sometimes lack the visuals when it comes to right living before the LORD. I am not just talking about still photographs, but about lives lived. We as Jesus-followers need to see others living out their faith so that we know what living out faith looks like.
Let me give you an example. So many people grow up in broken homes today. As a result, very few people know what a faithful, loving, committed relationship looks like. How do couples like this resolve their disagreements? How do they weather the illnesses? How do they manage their finances, juggle their multiple responsibilities, go through the changes of life, and stay on fire for Jesus? How do they not let the kids get in the middle? How do they raise the kids?
But if we have living examples that we can watch over the years, interact with, ask questions and get answers, then healthy marriage becomes something we can understand in a real way. We don’t just hear the statistics about divorce and believe that good marriage isn’t possible. We have seen it with our eyes and hearts, and know what it looks like. We know it is possible because we have witnessed it firsthand.
Our Psalm today gives us David’s visuals on what someone living for the LORD would look like, what they would be doing, what their attitude would be. He starts by giving us the final venue of such a person. He tells us they will be living in God’s presence. Now this might sound like it isn’t such a big deal, but being in the presence of the LORD here on earth usually spelled death. The only person who would ever get to even walk into the Holy of Holies, the sacred tent, was the High Priest, and that only once a year for a few short minutes. No one else was allowed anywhere near the tent.
So for someone to live in that tent would be someone very special indeed. But that tent also was the presence of God here on earth. And as such represented the throne room of God in heaven. So in one sense, David was giving us a description of people who will inhabit heaven. Remember, the High Priest only entered because the LORD had provided a way for him to enter. He couldn’t enter on his own; he entered with a blood sacrifice for his sins. Jesus is our blood sacrifice, just as Jesus was for him.
You see, on our own we could never be in that tent. None of us qualifies. Even the list of things that David writes in this Psalm is beyond even the best of us. None of us had a perfect record at living right. It is only as the LORD allows us to enter that we may go in. He provided the way, Jesus.
The Arnold Journey 