The cross is such an ironic symbol. In context, 2000 years ago, a cross was a horrible instrument of torture and death, it was feared and reviled, it was a punishment so dehumanizing that it was to be a major deterrent to crime, and those sentenced to death on a cross were humiliated and debased. It was, quite literally, the worst that the Romans could come up with (and they were well practiced in war and death).
And now we sing of “the wonderful cross”, we sing “simply to the cross I cling”, we sing fondly of “the old rugged cross”. We wear it as jewelry. We put it on buildings. The “Red Cross” is known everywhere in the world as an organization of peace that seeks to bring healing and emergency relief to war zones and disaster areas. People tattoo it in permanent ink on their bodies. What changed?
Jesus embraced the cross, gave His life willingly on the cross for you and me, and through the cross defeated the power of sin and death and rose again victorious.
We are on a journey towards the cross, and then through it to the empty tomb. I’ve been using very specific language this year, we remember the cross and celebrate the empty tomb. Today is the 4th Sunday of Lent, Passion week begins in two weeks on Palm Sunday, and Good Friday and Easter Sunday follow at the end of the month. Are you ready for Easter? Ready to confront the reality of what our sin caused, ready to be renewed in desire to live a life of holiness and joy and love for God who has done so much for us, ready to celebrate life over death, forgiveness over condemnation, freedom over slavery, hope over despair, fellowship with God over separation from God, and the empty tomb over the cross? There is so much to celebrate!! And it is coming soon.
The Journey:
Our Lenten journey this year has been one of confronting sin in our lives, so that we can live in victory. We’ve been studying Psalm 51 as a guide, and here is a quick review of the steps on the journey thus far:
• step one was an orientation to Lent and introduction to Psalm 51. We talked about how God’s hatred of sin is because of His love for us, and we talked about the background to the Psalm of David’s sin with Bathsheba.
• step two looked at the experience of conviction of sin, and how in verses 1-2 David begins his confession within the security of his relationship with God and then pleas for washing and cleansing from sin.
• step three we took last week, verses 3-5, and they are hard verses. They constitute a fearless look at our sinful old nature, and give words to the grief and agony that each follower of Christ should have over the presence of sin in our lives. If we don’t have that grief and agony, there is something seriously wrong with our love for Jesus.
• today we take the next step, and the road becomes a little easier. The focus turns from the ugliness of sin to the incredible beauty of God’s forgiveness.
Psalm 51 (NIV): (read together)
For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 You desire truth in the inward being;[a]
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.(NRSV)
7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will turn back to you.
14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my Savior,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
18 May it please you to prosper Zion,
to build up the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous,
in burnt offerings offered whole;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.
Stepping Out of Death:
I love the movement from verses 3-5 into this next section. There was no denial or minimization of sin, the confession was complete, and now the next step – out of the death of sin, is just as complete. And it is really beautiful, full of energy and optimism and such longing and anticipation of new life and joy and restoration.
6 You desire truth in the inward being;[a]
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.(NRSV)
7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
We looked at verse 6 last week, and it marks a change from what David sees in his heart – sin – to what he knows God wants. And it is a deep, heart-level transformation. He sees that God wants truth and wisdom, that deep down in the core of his being there is a work of God that must happen to replace sin and death with beauty and life. And this is something only God can do. Our part is to really look at our sin, be convicted of our sin, and then honestly confess it before God. And then God does His part, which we will see in the verses that follow. Those two parts – our part and God’s part – are deeply interconnected. If we minimize or ignore our sin, or casually ask for blanket forgiveness of a bunch of nebulous “sins”, without ever doing the work to really name our sin and allow ourselves to see the death that our sin brings, grieve it, and then specifically confess it with a deep hatred for that sin and longing to live differently; then it is like we put our hands over our ears while God is trying to speak and do His part – or like we only let a tiny trickle of water out of the shower head and wonder why we are still caked in mud. In reality, God wants to do something far more profound and beautiful and transformational.
Cleanse, wash, rejoice:
Verse 7 paints a picture of what that transformational change looks like. “7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.”
Anybody know what “hyssop” is? Is it familiar from anywhere else in Scripture? It is a plant that was used in several important places in Scripture, most notably for sprinkling as part of a purification rite. The best example is from the beginning of the Exodus, when the angel of death was coming to Egypt and the Israelites were instructed to take the blood of the lamb and sprinkle it on the sides and tops of the doorframe so the angel of the Lord would pass over their houses and spare their first born – the Israelites were specifically told to “22 Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the door frame. None of you shall go out of the door of your house until morning.” (Ex 12:22). The other purification rites also involve dipping the hyssop in blood and sprinkling it. It reminds me of Heb. 9:22, “without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness”. And then that reminds me once again of the cross of Jesus.
That is kind of gross imagery, don’t you think? Especially when we enter in to the verse and pray the same thing – “cleanse me with hyssop”. We are asking God to dip a plant into the blood of Christ and sprinkle it on us. It is graphic imagery! With a glorious result: “I will be clean”. Now this “cleansing” is a spiritual cleansing, a declaration in the sight of God that we are now spiritually clean, that the defilement of sin has been dealt with by the blood of the innocent Lamb of God, and so now we are clean.
But in the imagery, we would be left with blood on our face, were it not for the next line: “wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” I love it! The Psalm progresses so beautifully and perfectly – we aren’t left with blood, we are cleansed by it and then even the cleansing blood is washed away so that we are pure.
We paused to imagine the hyssop, now let’s pause to imagine the purity. Here it helps to live in Edmonton. “whiter than snow”. Remember waking up to beautiful sunny skies, after a night of 4-5 inches of gentle falling snow (and to stay with the positive imagery, let’s imagine that your neighbor always insists on shoveling it all for you – so no worries about that, just enjoy the view). Look out the window. The dirty road is gone. The trampled path is covered. The trees and the fences and the shed and the deck and the field – all blanketed in pure white. Clean. Fresh. Pure. That is what our hearts look like after God forgives.
The result begins in verse 8. It is new again. The bones that were crushed rejoice, and where there was misery there is now “joy and gladness”. It is expressed as something ahead, a hope, a promise, of a party and celebration of renewal and goodness. The purity of heart that comes with cleansing and forgiveness re-opens the door into that place of joy and gladness and rejoicing, like being welcomed back into the feast of God and knowing we fully belong.
The Rhythm of vss. 9-12:
There is a rhythm to verses 9-12, negative to positive, negative to positive. Verse 9 is negative, “hide your face” followed by verse 10 which is positive, “create in me a pure heart”. Verse 11 is negative, “do not cast me from your presence” followed by verse 12 which is positive, “restore to me the joy”. We’ve spent lots of time in the past weeks on the negative reality of sin, so instead I want to concentrate on the positive imagery and message in verses 10 and 12.
I love the prayer of vs. 10. It expresses my longing for myself, and for you as well. “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” It’s a prayer for God to touch deeply, to reach into a heart that was darkness and stained by sin, and to replace it with something pure – a heart of love and full of goodness and purity. To take the guilt that we talked about last week and remove it completely. What a great trade! And something only God can do. Do you long for that as well?
If so, maybe you’d like to imagine this. Close your eyes, and try to imagine your heart in your hands. What do you think it would look like? Is it hard and black? Is it covered with scar tissue, barely functioning? Does it look ok on the outside, but you know beneath the surface it is diseased and dying? Or maybe it is a little too small; maybe it is healthy but with a few bruises. Now, in your imagination perhaps the words of the Psalm come to mind: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love… I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me… Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice… Create in me a pure heart, O God…”. And as the words come, imagine the power of God going to work on your heart. He sprinkles with the blood of Christ on a hyssop branch and makes it spiritually clean. He washes and makes it whiter than snow. And God touches and makes it pure. And the bones that were crushed rejoice! There is great joy, and gladness!! The God of the Universe has His face light up and a smile erupts and He grabs us in an embrace and a laugh and does a dance of joy, twirling us around in His arms. This is the start of verse 12 as well, “restore to me the joy of your salvation” – take me back to that time when I knew I was saved, when I embraced forgiveness and passed from death to life, when I knew the love of God that saved me for eternity and adopted me into the family of God, when I experienced the “old is gone and the new is come”.
One More Prayer:
There is one more prayer, very similar in both verse 10 and verse 12, which takes us the next step. “renew a steadfast spirit within me” and “grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me”.
This prayer takes us back into the reality of life day by day. “renew a steadfast spirit within me” – it’s a prayer for help and companionship and determination to remain in this state of purity, to forsake sin and choose life, and to do so willingly; “grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me”. The prayer recognizes one of the great truths about being truly and deeply forgiven and cleansed – that the transformation God works in us includes a change in the way we see sin, from something “tempting” that we have to fight to something disgusting that we see brings death to us. That steadfast/willing spirit we pray for here keeps us going by growing our love for God and helps us to focus on the joy of walking with God day in and day out.
Conclusion:
6 You desire truth in the inward being;[a]
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.(NRSV)
7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
