Psalm 15:1, 2 LORD, who may dwell in your sanctuary?
Who may live on your holy hill?
He whose walk is blameless
and who does what is righteous,
who speaks the truth from his heart.

David asks a valid question in verse one, and then seeks to answer it in the rest of the Psalm. For once I think the NIV is probably grammatically correct in rendering everything from verse 2 through the first half of verse 5 as one sentence, though the Japanese doesn’t do so. David is not talking about sinless perfection here, but is rather listing some very specific characteristics of a person pleasing to God. He was writing many years before his son Solomon built the first temple, so what the NIV renders as “sanctuary” is actually “tent.” In any case, David is talking about fellowship with God. It is very interesting to me that the first specific characteristic David mentions is honesty. The NIV says “speaks the truth from his heart,” and the Japanese says “speaks the truth that is in his heart.” I think that goes beyond simply not lying, but extends to the sort of thing David expanded on in Psalm 40:9-10, where he speaks of proclaiming the things of God “in the great assembly.” A person pleasing to God is going to be talking about Him to others, giving Him thanks and praise openly. Not telling lies is of course foundational, but speaking truth doesn’t stop there. A third aspect is mentioned in verse 4, and that is being true to what you have said, even when it is worse than inconvenient. A person’s character is really tested in that case!

Once again I grew up with a magnificent example. One of my father’s foundational principles was absolute honesty. It was one of five “absolutes” that were taught at a conference he attended as a young, single missionary, where, I believe, he was baptized in the Holy Spirit. To my knowledge he never spoke in tongues, but that conference brought him to deep repentance before God and absolutely shaped his life from that point onward. I certainly saw the principle of absolute honesty demonstrated in his life. It was something he talked with me about in the brief 2½ months Cathy, the girls and I lived with my parents in Fukuoka before they left for the furlough in the US during which he had the heart surgery from which he didn’t wake up. I had intended to be honest before I had that conversation with him, but that established it as a principle in my own heart and mind. Of course, as a missionary pastor and educator, my father also did a lot of talking about God, both “in the great assembly” and in private. That too is something I have sought to emulate, though it was several months after my father’s death that I accepted the idea of going to seminary. I do not claim that I have always acted as I have described here, but by the grace of God, this is my choice of how to live.

Father, thank You yet again for being so gracious to me. I am reminded of one of my father’s, and his father’s before him, favorite verses, in the very next Psalm. “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.” (Psalm 16:6) Help me share the overwhelming bounty You have poured out on me, more and more effectively drawing others into fellowship with You so that they may receive it too, for their salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!