The Cleansing Shower Series

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?