Give Us Clean Hands – David and Charlie Hall

 

He was looking for something personally, and then realized more people than himself could use what he’d discovered. Was that what the ancient songwriter-king David found also, a pretty intimate time with God that he cherished and then thought others should hear? “Give Us Clean Hands”, the worshippers of David’s time would have cried, as the ark of the covenant was carried into the Temple (as seen here in this 15^th Century work), or perhaps as they later commemorated that occasion. So, it was no accident when Charlie Hall opened his bible some 30 centuries later and found some insight into approaching God, since this God doesn’t change and asks those who want to draw near Him to do what the worshippers at the Temple did so long ago. Purity…such a hard thing to acquire. Charlie found the words of the psalm were convicting. Ready to practice some submission?

 

Charlie Hall was doing one day (sometime around the year 2000) what he’d done on numerous other occasions: bible study. He indicates in an interview that he was looking for God to speak, to provide something to spur a change in his heart. Why Charlie thought he needed a heart-check is not clear, but perhaps he wasn’t any different from others who come close to God just to find that undefinable something that seems to be missing. Psalm 24 jumped off the page (or off the screen) for Charlie, who says he wasn’t aiming to write a song. It was just a few moments in which he needed to be alone with Him, singing back to God what He was saying to him in scripture, a kind of prayer. And then he read what David wrote (v.6 of Psalm 24) about a ‘generation’ of would-be worshippers. Perhaps this was when Charlie realized that his personal moment could resonate with others. Everyone needs to ‘bow..hearts and bend..knees’, to be ‘humble’ before the Holy Creator. Consequently, all things ‘evil’, and especially ‘idols’, need to be cast aside. Not only ‘clean hands’, but ‘pure hearts’ are the decontamination that is a part of the separation from idols, of making God the one and only being toward whom worship is directed. David’s ‘generation’, and Charlie’s three millennia later, sought God’s ‘face’, the visage of this ‘God of Jacob’. That’s quite a thing to say to this Holy One…to be submissive to Him, and try in one’s own imperfect way to be pure before Him, and then say you want to see His face. Are you and I really ready for this?

 

That goal, to see God’s face, is really an aspiration that none of us will truly realize until Eternity dawns. Moses, too, asked to see Him and was denied by the merciful God (Ex. 33:18-23) – God wasn’t quite ready for Moses to die; He wanted him to do more. Those of David’s time did not yet have Jesus, and those of us in Charlie’s time have only an artist’s conception of what the God-Man might have resembled physically. But, I can sense what’s in my own heart, see whether my hands have engaged in wrongdoing, and admit when I am a bit too close to earthbound things. Those are the three things I can put on my daily agenda to try to rectify, if I am honest and really do want to meet Him face-to-face one day. Just weigh these things on your spiritual scales, including how long they will last…earthly habits and attitudes for something like 80-90 years (?), versus what He can give me in the afterlife that never will end. What’s your scale’s readout suggesting to you?

 

Watch the song story recounted here: https://www.worshiptogether.com/songs/give-us-clean-hands/ (New Song Café) …Based on Psalm 24 by David (story on video from beginning to 2:09 mark (appx)

 

See some information here also, including a brief recitation of the story: https://hymnary.org/hymn/LUYH2013/628

 

See here for the song’s copyright date: Give Us Clean Hands (arr. Joshua Chandra) Sheet Music | Chris Tomlin | Piano, Vocal & Guitar Chords (sheetmusicdirect.com)

 

NIV Study Bible, Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985, and accompanying notes re: Psalm 24’s background also provided details.

 

Find the image of ark here, along with public domain status of the picture: File:Folio 29r - The Ark of God Carried into the Temple.jpg - Wikimedia Commons This work (The Ark carried into the Temple from the early 15th century, Pol, Hermann and Jannequin de Limbourg (1370s–1416); Jean Colombe (c. 1440–93)) is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1928.

You Are Good -- Israel Houghton

 

This songwriter must have first heard the foundation for this song, really the fulcrum for his life, from his mother. The moment in San Diego (see its flag here) in 1971 that most influenced Israel Houghton’s life happened before he was even born, but is it possible that he might have heard or detected some noteworthy words though the umbilical cord while still in his mother’s womb? There were other words like “You Are Good” that he later adopted as his own life’s theme when his purpose became clear. His life's start, even before his birth, was not very auspicious, but that part of his story must have made the bounty of his life by the time he reached 40 years old seem so much sweeter. Don’t ever forget the pit where you might have been, except for the charity of an anonymous person, someone who was just a willing vessel for the God who is good. Israel hadn’t forgotten, and so he composed something so that would make it impossible to overlook what had happened four decades earlier.  

 

Israel’s first name emerged from what his mother began to read along a lonely street – it was the gift of a bible from a woman she’d never met, someone who just thought this young eight-months pregnant woman needed God in the worst way. She kept seeing ‘Israel’ in this book, following her submission to Him on Carlsbad Avenue that day, and so his name and Israel’s direction were already in progress. His parents’ cross-cultural union (Israel’s biological father was black, his mother was white) had disintegrated, but his new stepfather’s work as a church pastor, and his mother’s musical background (she’d been a concert pianist) gave the one-year-old Israel lots to build on. His mother’s parents had tried to convince her to abort the unborn fetus within her, a fact that some mothers might have chosen to conceal from their offspring. But it was just one more startling ingredient within Israel Houghton as he approached 40 years old, one more reason to say ‘thanks’ to God, over and over in 2001. Using Psalms 100 and 124, Israel created a way to vocalize how much he appreciated the path he’d been blessed to take, certainly not something he could have chosen for himself as an unborn child and then as a youngster in California. But he was grateful not to have been an abortion casualty, and Psalm 124 helped him find what he calls ‘an internal platform’ in his role as a worship leader; it’s an attitude that, as David penned, “If it had not been for the Lord, who was on my side...”. That’s what motivates Israel, who uses some brief words from Psalm 100 to express in ‘You Are Good’ his gratitude. It’s not a complicated affair in ‘You Are Good’, but rather repeated phrases directed toward the Lord, including the song’s title words, and that His ‘mercy endureth forever’, and that all ‘nation(s)’ and ‘tongues’ from all ‘generation(s)’ can praise Him. Israel invites all others to join his celebration of what has transpired. He’s evidently said it for himself so much, that he now solicits multitudes of other people to join him, so that his otherwise solitary praise might be magnified properly to advance the name of the One who can save. He can do, and will do, for countless others what Israel’s life has already represented in one small episode.

 

Being saved can take on a wide variety of looks. To calculate it, you can begin by taking a world census, and that might get you close to how many ways God can save. And by imagining that, you’ll see just how good He really is. Then, multiply that across all of human life’s presence here on Earth…how many people, and how much time would that portray? It’s just way too much to process. But, the last of the Apostles got to see something like that, when he writes of the multitude that was before his eyes (Revelation 7:9; 17:15; 19:1 and 19:6), a sight and a sound that must have given him chills. That is the home of this good God. Imagine the cosmic salvation scene that awaits. Seems like Israel Houghton already has.   

 

See some information on the author-composer here: Israel Houghton - Wikipedia

 

See biography of the author-composer here: http://www.integritymusic.com/artists/bio/israel.html

 

See the song story briefly here: The Story Behind the Song You Are Good | PraiseCharts

 

See Israel’s story here also: Israel Houghton: An Intimate Portrait of Worship | CBN

 

See information on the image of the San Diego flag here: File:Flag of San Diego, California.svg - Wikimedia Commons This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1928 and 1963, and although there may or may not have been a copyright notice, the copyright was not renewed. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart and the copyright renewal logs. Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (50 years p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 years p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 years p.m.a.), Mexico (100 years p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 years p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.