Is my heart pure?
By tony Campbell
The Hebrides Revival began with two sisters: Peggy and Christine Smith. One was 84 years of age and blind, the other 82 and crippled with arthritis. They were greatly burdened because they’d been told no young person attended their church. They decided to pray about this twice a week. For several months, on Tuesdays and Fridays they got on their knees at 10pm, and remained there until 3 or 4 in the morning.
Peggy had a vision of the church crowded with young people and they persuaded their minister to call ‘a session’. Seven men made a covenant not to cease crying out to God until He moved. Those men also began to meet on Tuesday and Friday nights for several months.
One night in November a young man prayed Psalm 24:3-4. He began ‘God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?’, but he got no further. He fell into a trance and lay on the floor of the barn. Within a matter of minutes three other elders also fell into a trance. The minister and other intercessors were gripped by the conviction that a God-sent revival must always be related to holiness and godliness.
“Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear deceitfully.”
Now David wrote this Psalm and it was probably used as a responsive song as the entrance of the temple gate. Someone would pose the question “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?” and the people would respond “He who has clean hands and a pure heart” acknowledging together the holiness of God and the need for purity in His presence. But here we have a problem.
Who of us actually has clean hands? Who of us actually has a pure heart? No one (Romans 3:9-12). The same man who wrote this Psalm, just like us, also had defiled hands and an impure heart. So the gloomy answer to the question of who may ascend the hill of the Lord… is no one.
Except! There was one man whose hands were kept completely clean. There was one man whose heart was kept completely pure. And as He ascended a hill called Golgotha, those hands were pierced and even as his blood ran down them, they remained clean. After He breathed His last, that pure heart was pierced. And as the temple curtain was torn in two, a new answer to that question arose.
Who may ascend the hill? Jesus! And all those who through repentance and faith are in Him! It is in the name of Jesus that we stand in the very presence of God as though our hands are perfectly clean and as though our hearts are perfectly pure. The prophet Isaiah seemed to accidentally find himself in the very presence of God and feeling the weight of his sin in the light God’s holy glory he expected that death would escort him out. But instead he was purified!
Many are in a rush to skip past the seriousness of sin and focus solely on the righteousness that we have been given in Christ. I don’t blame them, but I do pity them. A poor shepherd boy and a king can eat at the same royal table but they enjoy the feast VERY differently. This Psalm was written by a man who was both. He also wrote that blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered (Psalm 32:1) and so it’s no wonder that he called us taste and see that the Lord is good because he knew that we are blessed when we take refuge in Him (Psalm 34:8).
As we begin a new year and meditate on this Scripture, let’s truly ask the question “God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?” Let’s allow the Holy Spirit to convict us of any sin that we still live in and look to Christ for our deliverance! Let’s remember that to be holy is to be set apart. If God is holy then He is set apart from everything. But if God calls us to be holy as He is holy, then the call to holiness is a call to intimacy (Leviticus 11:45 & 1Peter 1:16). He wants us with Him where He is (John 17:24). Let’s come before His holy presence in reference and awe for our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:28-29).
