Psalm 24:5 He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

I understand this is going to sound silly but the first thing I hear reading this is “Go with my blessing and take my Son with you.”

We can confuse blessing with grace and they are similar in that they come from God. Grace is imparted because of who God is in your relationship. It has nothing to do with the amount of effort you put into that relationship. Grace is unmerited favor. I find that blessing come from doing things with my Lord. If we only look at the effort we can easily overlook the blessing that flows out of it.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heavenly host:
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The Doxology written by Anglican Bishop Thomas Ken was always part of our church services. Just singing it lifted up our spirits. It might have been performed out of ritual but it wormed its way into our hearts and changed the hearts and minds of those who sang it. It blessed us richly.

Perhaps that is as good a reason to attach blessing with the effort of the doing. God is glorified and He smiles down on His children. Not everything has to be deeply profound. Sometimes the scriptures remind you of a time when you were blessed just being in the presence of the Lord.

Who is righteous?

Philippians 3:9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

This righteousness found in us is Christ, if we be found in Christ and Christ in us.

That is such a blessing.

Psalm 24:4 He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

The answer to who ascends is here in the first part of this verse. Put forth the effort as identified in PS 24:3a and the Word and the Spirit will get you to that place where you are prepared to make that climb. Whole libraries have been filled with all that faith, grace and forgiveness have done to prepare you.

Let us rather spend a moment thinking about the vanity portion of the verse. It is just as important to know what not to do as it is in knowing what to do.

Vanity is defined as emptiness as to results. If your goal is to climb the hill of the Lord and come into His presence, isn’t it important to pick the hill of His choosing? Moses investigated the burning bush that was not consumed because it was shown to him.

Is the mountain before you of your choosing or have you seen that invitation to come up and investigate? What would that mountain look like to you? Or are you that mountain?

Psalm 30:5-7 For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled.

All that effort, all that success and then to discover the Lord wasn’t there after all. We build our own mountain to attain that which we care about only to discover God wasn’t in the effort.

Ecclesiastes 2:11 Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.