Cleansing–a Covenant Blessing
(No. 1921)
DELIVERED BY
C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
"Then will I sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean: from
all your filthiness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you."
Ezekiel 36:25.
THIS is one of the opening words of the glorious Covenant of Grace.
Ezekiel's copy of the Covenant is full and clear and deserves to be
written in letters of gold and hung up in the best chamber of every
Believer's dwelling This is the Magna Charta of saints–the title deed
of the land of our inheritance! Glorious Covenant of Grace, our heart
delights in every line of promise wherewith you are enriched!
You perceive that this promise deals with sin and it deals with sin
because sin broke the first Covenant and thus ruined us all. Sin must
be removed before Covenant relationship can be reestablished. Sin must
be purged from the conscience before Covenant communion can be enjoyed.
Sin must be abhorred before Covenant union can be consummated. Blessed
be God, sin shall be washed away, for thus it is written in the
Everlasting Covenant!
Sin is the great plague and pest of our lives, now that we are awakened
to discern between good and evil, and now that the new heart and the
right spirit have been put within us. Is it not well that this cause of
misery should be destroyed? It is sin, my Brothers and Sisters, that
keeps us away from God. Should not this barrier be utterly broken down
and swept out of the way? It was because of sin that we needed to be
reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Should not that atoning
death effectually kill sin? Sin has done all the mischief. At first it
withered Paradise and sowed the earth with thorns and thistles. And
ever since it has brought forth the same painful crop. Still it saps
our strength; it destroys our comfort; it robs us of usefulness–it is
the foe of all good–it is all evils in one. O curse of curses,
fountain of Hell and father of the devil, you unutterably horrible
monster, Sin! Shall we not be doubly blessed when we are rid of you? We
certainly should never fear death if we had no sin–neither need we
even fear the devil, himself, for, if there were no traitor within the
city, Mansoul might laugh to scorn all the attacks of her enemies
outside.
Sin, to the awakened sinner, is his burden, his misery, his horror. It
is a nightmare which haunts him! He can never escape from it. Like
David, he cries, "My sin is ever before me." Even when sin is forgiven,
the memory of it often makes a man go softly all his days. We could
bear disease if we were cured of sin. We could bear the world's
troubles if there were not these spiritual sorrows. We could be content
to pine in prison on bread and water all the rest of our natural lives
if we could be clear from sin. Yes, I guarantee you that the darkest
dungeon would be a bright paradise to a Believer, if there he could be
exempt from the temptation, from the remembrance and from the presence
of sin! It is, therefore, a very blessed thought on the part of our God
to make the Covenant to bear so much upon our sin and our
sinfulness–and especially to make it open with this unconditional
promise of infinite love–"Then will I sprinkle clean water on you and
you shall be clean: from all your filthiness and from all your idols, I
will cleanse you." As the laver at the Tabernacle door, so stands this
promise at the entrance of the Covenant. Let us wash and be clean.
I. Our first remark at this time shall be that GOD BEGINS TO DEAL WITH
HIS PEOPLE WHILE THEY ARE YET IN SIN. The text evidently implies this.
He does not wait until they are clean before He bestows His love and
pity upon them. He does not wait till they have saved themselves and
then comes to them with a nominal salvation. He does not make promises
of purification to them upon condition that they cleanse themselves,
but He comes to them according to the riches of His Grace, even when
they are dead in trespasses and sins! He finds them in all their
defilement, rebellion and iniquity–and He deals with them just as they
are. Jesus saves sinners! God's love comes to those who in no degree
merit it. His Grace stoops to the ruin of the Fall and lifts us up from
it.
These are very simple words, you say, but there are those here to whom
these plain sentences will sound like the ringing of the silver
trumpets of jubilee! I know them, for I once was one of them–they are
a people sighing because of their defilement which they mourn over, but
cannot remove. Dear Hearts, you have not to look for any good in
yourselves when you come to God–you are to come just as you are.
However filthy, however enslaved by idols you may have been, however
much your own heart condemns you, you are to come to Jesus on terms,
not of merit, but of Grace! And you are to approach Him as sinners,
without any further qualification. Christ is a Savior who came to save
His people from their sins. And His salvation, therefore, begins with
them while they are yet in their sins. He does not wait till He spies
out some sound spot in the patient, but when he is covered all over
with leprosy from head to foot–and there is not one sound speck on him
as big as the point of a pin–then it is that the Great Physician comes
and makes the leprous one to be clean!
This is plain enough, if you will look at the text, for, first, it is
clear that those to whom God makes His promise of His Covenant are
unclean and unfit for fellowship with Him. He speaks of their
filthiness, yes of, "all their filthiness," so that there was much of
it, for God's "alls" are, by no means, trifles. There were also idols
about and many of them, for He speaks of "all your idols." These are
abominations unto the Lord, but there they are, and they must be put
out of the way. He says, "Then will I sprinkle clean water on you and
you shall be clean." Not, "You are clean and, therefore, you may come
to Me," but, "I will come to you and make you clean."
Some time ago we explained the type of the ashes of the red cow, how
they were kept in water, ready to be used and applied to all persons
who became ceremonially unclean. After this water had been sprinkled
upon them, they were permitted to return to the camp and go up to the
Lord's Tabernacle. But until that purification had been applied, they
were shut out from fellowship with God and His people. The people of
God could not converse with them. The priest of God could not commune
with them. God, Himself, would have nothing to do with them. They were
unclean and so were set aside under a kind of quarantine not to come
near the camp lest the rest of the people should be polluted by them.
Now that is just where God finds His people when He begins with them.
They are not fit for communion. They are not fit that the saints of God
should associate with them, nor that they should stand in the Holy
Place of the Most High. They are not fit for any service, for the Lord
will not have the unclean to bear His vessels. Their prayers are
defiled; their praises are defiled; there is nothing about them but
what is unclean. In such a condition the man could do nothing
acceptable to God–his uncleanness put him out of court and rendered
him altogether incapable of pleasing the pure and holy God. He that was
unclean made everything unclean that he touched–the pollution was most
contagious. If he sat upon a chair, no one else might sit there, for
the seat was unclean. If he touched a vessel in the tent, the vessel
was unclean and the tent was unclean! He was a source of defilement and
wherever he went, he spread pollution. Such is every sinner in the
sight of God. He is a well of foul waters, a fountain of bitterness. He
is defiled and defiling. The God of all Grace visits His people at the
first when they are in this terrible condition!
I may be speaking to one who is ready to cry out, "I am not fit to be
in the House of God tonight. I am not worthy to lift my eyes to the
place where His honor dwells." That is where He finds you–just
there–and it is to you in this sad position that the Covenant of Grace
refers. Our Redeemer comes to us in our very worst estate! As I was
speaking to an aged Brother in Christ, who is, probably, very near
Home, he said, "I feel what a blessed thing it is to still come to
Christ with the cry, 'God be merciful to me, a sinner.' I do not rest
upon past experience, nor upon anything else, but I constantly begin at
the beginning. I come to Jesus even as I did at the first, only more
humbly and with a more intense sincerity than I ever knew before."
I am sure there is wisdom in this course and in no other. If the
Covenant of Grace did not deal with sinners as sinners, I should be
afraid to come to Christ. But because it opens its mouth wide to me
while I am yet unclean and polluted by sin, I feel that it meets my
case. The Free Grace of the Covenant does not come half way and say to
me, when I am nearly dead, "Get up and take what I give you and I will
deliver you." But it comes, like the good Samaritan, where I am. It
sees me to be unconscious and it awakens me. When it sees me conscious
of my wounds, it pours in the oil and the wine. When it sees my
weakness to be so great that I cannot stir a step, it sets me on its
own beast and takes me to the inn. When it marks my utter poverty, so
that I am not worth so much as two pence, it does not ask me to pay my
own way, but discharges everything for me and leaves its promise that
whatever more is needed shall be freely given! O blessed charity of
Covenant Love! It will not be turned aside by our abominable
filthiness, nor will it leave us because of our idols! Glorious Grace,
which begins with us where sin and death have left us!
You may notice in the text, or gather it from it by clear
inference–that these people with whom God dealt were not only unclean,
but they could not cleanse themselves. It is a rule with miracles, as
well miracles of the Spirit as miracles of the body, that God never
does what others can do. As long as there is strength left in the
natural laws, God does not go beyond them, but our extremity is God's
opportunity. Now, inasmuch as the text brings in God saying, "then will
I sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean," it is clear that
this evil could not be cleansed without the Divine interposition. There
was no other way for the purging of the chosen ones but by the direct
interposition of the Lord! Oh, but divines have fine notions nowadays!
It appears, according to the latest information, that children are not
now born in sin as they used to be! They say that certain highly
favored children commence life in a most extraordinary way–they are
born gracious! They do not need any degeneration or conversion, for the
stock is so superior that the branches naturally bring forth good
fruit!
I have never read of such people in the Scriptures, but I am often told
that there are such, nowadays. At least their parents and their parsons
say so. Of old it used to be, "That which is born of the flesh is
flesh," and only, "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." That,
of course, is very old-fashioned doctrine! Well, when we have a
new-fashioned god, I dare say we shall have new-fashioned truth–but at
present, the Truth of God seems to me to be as Immutable as God
Himself! If it is true, today, it was true yesterday and will be true
even to the end, even as God, Himself, changes not. As for myself, I
know that I was born in sin and I know that in me, that is in my flesh,
there dwells no good thing. I know, also, that I once tried to purge
and cleanse my own heart and labored at it, I believe, as honestly as
any person that lived. I went about to seek a righteousness of my own
and I endeavored to stop all sin–and my failure was complete!
I do not advise any other person to try self-healing. It brought me to
despair. It drove me, almost, to the loss of reason. The more I
scrubbed and cleansed, the blacker I became. I washed my Hottentot self
and he was more of a Hottentot after I had bathed him than he was
before! I only saw how black the black man was when I had whitened him,
for the moment, with my soap. Job said, "If I wash myself with snow
water and make my hands never so clean; yet shall You plunge me in the
ditch and my own clothes shall abhor me." And it was so with me.
Therefore I speak of my own experience and, taught by my own failure, I
cannot urge any man to seek cleansing by his own doings or efforts, but
I urge him to accept that cleansing which God has promised in the
Covenant of Grace.
Cleansing cannot come from any other place, therefore seek it of the
Lord who says, "I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be
clean." If you go about through Heaven, earth and Hell, you shall find
no other detergent that shall take away sin but the precious blood of
Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You shall sooner redden every wave of the
Atlantic as you plunge your hands in it than you shall take away one
spot of condemnation from off your soul! There is your sin and there it
must eternally be unless Jehovah, Himself, shall blot it out! He that
is filthy shall be filthy still, throughout the ages, unless the Divine
One interpose. Our only hope lies in this faithful Word of God, "I will
sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean." The Lord begins to
save His people when as yet they have no strength and cannot cleanse
themselves.
More than that, when God begins to deal with His people, many of them
have a special filthiness. "From all your filthiness and from all your
idols, I will cleanse you." When He begins with them, they are given up
to their idols. Other lords have dominion over them and these lords
lead them into filthiness. Some upon whom God has looked with
everlasting love have become, before their conversion, openly,
manifestly, loathsomely filthy–and yet He begins in His Grace with
them! The harlot–she strays into the House of God and feels that she
has no right to be there–and yet the day comes when she stands behind
the Master, washing His feet with her tears and wiping them with the
hairs of her head because she has had much forgiven. The man who has
been guilty of foul vices, of which we say but little, but which he
would gladly weep over with tears of blood at their remembrance–when
the Lord of Love comes to such a horrible offender in a way of mercy,
He says to him, even to him, "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud,
your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your sins."
I am afraid I do not always speak plainly enough, though I try to do
so. Let me try again to cast in the big net. The Lord Jesus Christ
forgives thieves and robbers, liars and drunks and criminals of all
sorts. The Lord Jesus has mercy upon those who have been blasphemers.
"All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." I have
seen, with great
joy, cases of infidels who have mocked at the Scriptures, denied the
Deity of Christ and persecuted God's people–they have stepped in and
heard the Gospel and they have been melted down by it–rescued from
their obstinacy and cleansed from their iniquity! In fact, there are
such here tonight! "Such were some of you: but you were washed." Oh, it
is not for me to tell all that I know of how the Lord has taken some of
the ringleaders in the service of Satan, first in all manner of
mischief, and has cast the devil out of them and made them to sit at
His feet, clothed and in their right mind! We believe in a sinners'
Gospel. To the guilty we preach remission!
The heathen of old once reported that ours was the religion of the most
abandoned. They laughed at Christianity, for they said it was like the
building of Rome when Romulus received everybody that was in debt and
discontented–and all the criminals from all the towns round about came
to make the city of Rome! There is much truth in the statement– it is
a very good figure, though meant to be a slander. The Lord does receive
the devil's runaways. If there is one here that is servant to that
black master, I would recommend him to run to Christ tonight and not
give his master five minutes' notice. Quit the tyrant's employment and
run for it at once!
But then look at this–the Lord receives sinners to cleanse them. He
does not receive them that they may remain as they were! The Lord Jesus
receives sinners just as teachers receive children into a Ragged
School. It is their glory that it is a Ragged School! The more ragged
and the more dirty, the more welcome the child! But why do they receive
the ragged child? Why, to wash him, to teach him, to clothe him, to
instruct him! We do not receive ragged children for the love of their
rags, nor to keep them in their rags–but that they may be taught,
cleansed and elevated. Such is my Master's house of mercy! It is a
hospital–sick folk are always welcome. It is not a place for spreading
disease, nor for treating it light-ly–it is the place where disease is
discovered, set apart and made to appear in all its horror–in order
that it may be conquered and destroyed! Nobody speaks so sternly
against sin as Jesus and those who believe His Gospel, but yet it
forever stands true, "This Man receives sinners." You may come to
Jesus, dear Friend, whoever you are! Into whatever sin and iniquity you
have plunged, you may come right now without any hesitation or
deliberation, for the gate stands wide open and the blessed Lord, with
His nail prints still in His hands, stands there to welcome you and
say, "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white
as snow."
Still is that declaration grandly true, "All manner of sin and
blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." Still does God meet men while
they are yet in the blackness and filth and degradation of their sin
and then and there, just as they are, He says concerning them, "I will
sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean: from all your
filthiness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you." O poor
wretched sons of Adam, how earnestly would I invite you to Christ! I
preach a Savior for the worst and vilest of you! Oh that you would come
to Him! I know your house. It is stuffed full with idols of one sort or
another. You delight in strong drink! That is your Moloch, or, perhaps,
some sin of the flesh has fascinated you and carried you away–and your
house is ruled by Venus and Bacchus and other dunghill deities! Ah me,
what chambers of imagery there are in this city! Notwithstanding all
that, the Lord of Love will come to your house with His salvation, turn
those idols out and reign in their place! Your life, it may be, is full
of filthiness and as you sit here you are remembering it to your
heart's sorrow. Be of good cheer, you broken down ones, for the Lord
Jesus will come to you just as you are and put your filthiness away!
Do not think that I am talking, now, only to those who have been
grossly immoral, though I do speak to them most certainly in literal
terms. But even to those who have never sinned after that similitude I
speak at this time. Thank God, there are some who have been kept by the
restraints of education from ever going into the more outwardly filthy
sins. It was so in my case. I might claim as to most actual sins to be
blameless, but, oh, if there ever was a wretch on earth that felt his
filthiness more than I did, I pity him! I loathed myself–utterly so.
How often I wished that I had never been born! It seemed horrible to me
that such a being should have lived at all. To have lived so long in
sin and unbelief seemed still more a marvel–and though I was not then,
15, it appeared horrible to have lived so long without loving Christ!
What an awful wretch I judged myself to be to have been surrounded with
such mercy and not to have thought of my
God!
Is was shocking beyond measure to have lived those years without love,
without trust, without delight in God. I felt myself to be so foul and
filthy a thing that I ought to be cast into the common sewer of the
universe and swept away. But, oh, this blessed Word of God–"From all
your filthiness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you." This is
spoken as
only God can speak! See, then, how God begins with us, just where we
are, to the praise of the Glory of His own Grace. So much upon our
first head.
II. The second is this–that GOD PROVIDES FOR THE CLEANSING OF THOSE TO
WHOM HE COMES IN SOVEREIGN GRACE. "I will sprinkle clean water upon
you." He does not ask them to find the purification, but He brings it
Himself. Where could this "clean water" be found by mortal man? Though
he should climb up to the heights of the Alps to melt the virgin snows,
or descend into the deep which couches beneath where come the sparkling
springs, yet he could find no "clean water" that could take out the
stain of sin! God Himself provides–it is His way–in the mount it
shall be seen that He is Jehovah Jireh. The type is carried out in its
antitype in this way–that God has provided a system of cleansing men,
perfect in itself, just, right and effectual. Pure water is the best of
purifiers and the Lord has provided that which is the most sure
purification from sin. When, under the old Mosaic Law, they took water,
scarlet wool and hyssop–and sprinkled the unclean, he was ceremonially
cleansed–and now, under the Gospel, God has provided a wondrous way by
which, being Himself perfectly pure, He can put away the impurities of
our nature and the iniquities of our lives.
It is a righteous way. Do you need that I explain to you the way in
which God puts away our filthiness? Whether you do or not, there are
many who do and, therefore, we must have the Gospel over again. You put
bread and salt on your table at every meal and even so, every sermon
should have the Gospel in it! God must be just. Even if He would
forgive sin, He must still be just. Sin must not go unpunished. It
would be ruinous that such a thing should be. Therefore the Lord took
sin and laid it on His Son, that His Son might bear what was due for
our transgressions. This, the Lord Jesus did as our Substitute and
Savior. "He His own Self bore our sins in His own body on the tree." He
made a full Atonement and Expiation for the guilt of men so that,
"whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
In addition to that, God has given the Holy Spirit as a gift of Christ
on His Ascension–and that Holy Spirit is here to renew men in their
hearts, to take away from them the love of sin, to give them a new
life, to create in them a new heart and a right spirit–and so to
change their inward longings and desires that their outward conduct
shall become altogether different from what it was before. Here are two
cleansings–the blood of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit–and
these are as clean water. God can justly forgive you, my fellow sinner!
And God can totally change you and make you to be as though you had
been new-born, tonight, and were now to begin afresh. You see it is a
clean way which God has devised–there is nothing in it which favors
wrong or injustice.
And what a simple way it is, as well as clean! "I will sprinkle clean
water upon you." The application of the blood of Jesus Christ to the
conscience and the coming of the Holy Spirit to the heart are as simple
as the sprinkling of water. The wisdom of God made the rite by which
the leper was cleansed under the Law very simple, but even more simple
is the act by which God applies the merit of His dear Son to us. Oh,
that we might have the blood of Jesus sprinkled on our hearts at once
by faith! Oh to feel the Blood of Sprinkling to which every Believer in
Christ has come–the blood that "speaks better things than that of
Abel!" It is a very simple way.
It is a way of universal adaptation, too, for wherever there is a soul
on whom God has looked with love, He can apply to that soul the Blood
of Sprinkling. Whoever you may be, you cannot cleanse yourself, but God
can sprinkle you with this clean water! He can save you by the merit of
His Son and by the renewing of the Holy Spirit. No one is outside of
this possibility, for the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us
from all sin. If you are guilty, tonight, and you cry for mercy, that
mercy can come at you and you can come at that mercy, for so has the
Lord put it–"Then will I sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be
clean."
It is a way of unfailing efficacy, for He says, "From all your
filthiness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you." He does not
only attempt the cleansing but He accomplishes it. You may have a
thousand sins, but this clean water can put the thousand sins away.
Your heart may be a very pandemonium of idols, but the power of the
Holy Spirit can break them all to pieces and can do it for you at once.
The, "then," of the text has to do with the time when Israel was full
of sin. It has to do with such a time as there is with you unconverted
men and women at this hour. Now, even now, in the midst of your
filthiness and your idolatry, God can come with a high hand and an
outstretched arm and commence the work by which you shall be perfectly
delivered! Though your heart is like the Augean stable, the labors of
Hercules shall be outdone by the wonders of Jesus! He shall cast your
sins into the depths of the sea. Your hardness of heart, your pride,
your lust, your unbelief, your enmity, your fickleness shall all go
down at a stroke, as when Dagon fell before the Ark of
God. Oh, do it, Lord! Do it, we pray You, with many that have strayed
into the Tabernacle tonight, that Your name may have the Glory!
Thus we have come so far and we see clearly that God begins with His
people in their filthiness and provides the means of their cleansing.
III. Thirdly, GOD HIMSELF APPLIES THIS MEANS OF CLEANSING. See how He
puts it–"Then will I sprin-kle"–"I sprinkle clean water on you and
you shall be clean; from all your filthiness and from all your idols, I
will cleanse you."
Ah, dear Sirs! If God had only provided the medicine, but had never
brought it to us, we could not have found it, reached it, or applied
it! If He had made the plaster and had left it by the side of the
wounded man, the poor wretch would have died, for he never could have
laid it to his own wound. The same Grace which "first devised the way
to save rebellious man" carries out all the plan from the beginning to
the end! Who can sprinkle clean water on the foul sinner? "I will do
it," says the Lord. I am sure that I speak to many Brothers and Sisters
here whose experience will bear out what I am going to say–it was the
Lord who made us first to feel that we were filthy and that we loved
idols. We were very fine people once–were we not? Our own
righteousness was quite as good as that of anybody else and a little
better. If we had sinned, we had a great many excuses for our failings
and, besides, we always meant to be so good, by-and-by! Therefore we
felt that we ought not to be condemned, but rather to be commended!
The Lord fetched us down from the tree and made us lie at the bottom of
it and cry for mercy. We would still have refused to taste of His mercy
and we would have perished in our sin if Divine Grace had not convinced
us of our folly. Some of you remember when the Lord first revealed to
you how much you needed to be cleansed–that discovery was a great part
of the cleansing. Then did it not seem to you impossible that you could
be cleansed from so much defilement? It seemed to me–I dare say it did
to you–the most extraordinary thing in the world to believe in Jesus!
I could not make it out. How could I get to Christ? I could see that He
was a Savior. I could see that He saved others and I was glad that He
did. But the thing was, how could I ever come to be personally a
partaker of His power to save?
I heard about that woman touching the hem of the garment and I felt
that if Christ were before me, I would touch the hem of His garment
with my finger, but I could not understand how I was to touch Him
spiritually. To this day the simplest thing under Heaven is perverted
by our evil hearts into difficulty and mystery! Faith is as clear as
the sun, yet many make it as dark as midnight. Our hearers are
ingenious at misunderstanding us when we speak of faith. I tried, one
evening, to explain faith as simply as I could and I quoted that verse
of Dr. Watts–
"A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, On Christ's kind arms I fall."
A young man came to me afterwards and said that he could not fall. This
perplexed me, for I thought such an assertion was impossible! It may be
hard to stand, but it is easy to fall. Falling does not require
strength, but the very reverse. I intended to express the abnegation of
all doing and all effort and the yielding all into the hands of Christ.
But my young friend could not see it, nor could I make him comprehend
it. All electric light would be of no use to stone-blind eyes. O God,
it is as much a miracle of Your Grace to give us faith as to give us a
Savior to believe in! And he that has faith knows that it is so.
Despite the simplicity of faith, no man ever would have savingly
believed in Jesus Christ if the Lord had not guided him and led him
into that faith.
Oh yes, the clean water is provided, but the clean water must be
sprinkled by another hand than ours if we are to be cleansed! Are we
not witnesses of this? Do we not acknowledge that when, at last, we
were made clean through the precious blood of Christ, the closing act
of faith was worked in us by the Holy Spirit? That was no small thing,
that passing from death unto life, that being washed in the fountain
filled with blood. Neither was the faith a trifle which brought us that
washing–all, all was of Grace! I have heard a great deal about human
free will. I never felt any inclination to ascribe the great blessing
of confidence in Christ and consequent full justification to any
uncreated willingness of mine. I was "made willing in the day of His
power"–and to God I must give the Glory! Oh, that bright, that happy
day when I could say–
"'Tis done! The great transaction's done! I am my Lord's and He is
mine." At that day I could not help also saying, "He drew me"–
"He drew me, and I followed on,
Charmed to confess the voice Divine." Yes, it is God that applies the
power which purifies!
And all the way through the rest of life it is just the same. "All
things are of God." If He that has brought me so far towards Heaven
does not help me throughout the rest of my journey, I must die even
within sight of the promised land! If the Lord is not with you, even if
you should get your foot upon the diamond doorstep of Heaven and your
finger on the golden latch–you could not enter! Without fresh Grace to
carry us the rest of the way, all our previous journey is in vain. When
we get to Heaven, it will be, "Glory be to God forever, and ever, and
ever!" We shall not hum even a single note to ourselves for our own
glory, or on account of any part of the work for which we deserved
credit–but we shall ascribe the whole of our salvation to infinite
love, undeserved favor and to the unceasing faithfulness and power of
our gracious Covenant God!
Let us come back to this blessed text and read it again–and then
conclude our sermon with our last point–"Then will I sprinkle clean
water on you and you shall he clean: from all your filthiness and from
all your idols, I will cleanse you."
' IV. I close with this last remark–THE LORD EFFECTUALLY CLEANSES ALL
HIS PEOPLE.
First, He cleanses them from all their filthiness. I want to dwell on
that for a minute. "From all your filthiness will I cleanse you." All
of it. Oh, what a vast "all" that is! "All your filthiness." All the
filthiness of your birth-sin; all the filthiness of your natural
temperament, constitution and disposition. "From all your filthiness
will I cleanse you." All the filthiness that came out of you in your
childhood, that was developed in you in your youth, that still has
vexed your manhood and, perhaps, even now dishonors your old age. From
all your actual filthiness, as well as from all your original
filthiness, will I cleanse you. From all your secret filthiness and
from all your public filthiness–from everything that was wrong in the
family; from everything that was wrong in the business; from everything
that was wrong in your own heart–"From all your filthiness will I
cleanse you."
From all your pride. What a filthy thing that is! From all your
unbelief. What an abominable thing that is! From all your tainted
imaginations; from all your lusts; from all your wrong words; from all
your covetousness; from all your murmuring; from all your anger; from
all your malice; from all your envy; from all your distrust–"From all
your filthi-ness will I cleanse you."
Just read right down the Ten Commandments and then stop at each and
say, "Lord, You have said, 'From all your filthiness will I cleanse
you.' Lord, cleanse me in both ways–take away the evil of the sin, and
take away my tendency to the sin–
'Let the water and the blood,
From His riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.'" Oh, Beloved, that seems to me to
be so full of richness–"From all your filthiness will I cleanse you."
Do not believe that any filthiness need stay upon you in practice. As
to the matter of sanctification, do not say to yourself, "I cannot
overcome this sin." You can! You must overcome all sin through Jesus
Christ. "From all your filthiness will I cleanse you." Do not say to
yourself, "I always was quick-tempered and I must always remain so, for
this is a part of my natural temperament." No! "From all your
filthiness will I cleanse you." I know that a certain troop of our sins
are hard to kill in battle and they need to be sharply looked after
lest they continue to plague us. They get into the cave of our secret
hearts and there they hide themselves away in great quietness, biding
their time. They do not even whisper–and we half fancy that they are
dead. They are alive enough, as we shall soon see, if we are not awake
to them.
If we are foolish, we are content to roll a big stone at the mouth of
the cave, and let the rascals live in their den. This is dangerous work
and when our Joshua comes to us, He puts an end to the perilous
experiment! He cries, "Bring them out. Hang them up before the sight of
the sun, for these enemies must not live." God help us to never
tolerate any known sin. We too readily fall into evil habits, but oh,
for Grace to keep out of them. Do not excuse sin so much as to call it
an "infirmity"–call it, rather, an infamy, and drive it from your
presence! We do unguardedly yield to sin but, Brothers and Sisters, we
must not excuse ourselves–we must seek with all our might to obtain
perfect holiness. Oh, to know the fullness of this blessing–"From all
your filthiness will I cleanse you."
And then it is added that we shall be cleansed "from all our idols." We
are, all of us, idolaters by nature and by practice. The unregenerate
man always has an idol. He will worship anything rather than his God.
Yes, he will sooner worship himself than his Savior! Even the Christian
may find, to his own surprise, that his dear Rachel whom he loves so
much has managed to hide the idols away under the camel's furniture and
she is, even now, sitting on them and concealing them. I do not know an
idol that is more apt to escape being broken than the idol that some
beloved Rachel protects! But it must not be–"the idols He shall
utterly abolish." God's way is, "From all your idols will I cleanse
you." If there is anything, Beloved, that has our love more than God,
it is an idol and we must be purged from it.
This is not a threat, but a promise–it is a great blessing to have our
images of jealousy put away. If you make an idol of a child, either
that child will die, or something else will happen which will make your
idol to be your burden. If you want to kill your husband, idolize him.
If you desire ill to a beloved one, set him up in Christ's place. We
can, alas, make idols of baser things than these! We can love gold, or
dress, or honor, or rank, or even a forbidden thing. We are so dull and
carnal that our affections are soon captured by earthly objects.
Whatever it is that we idolize, God says, "I will cleanse you from it."
And I think that we can say, in response, "Lord, be it so"–
"The dearest idol I have known, Whatever that idol be, Help me to tear
it from its throne, And worship only Thee." We have no wish that any of
our old lords should retain or regain dominion over us.
Now, poor Sinner! Do you see what the Lord can do with you? He can
break you loose from your temptations. He can set you free from every
sin that holds you in captivity. Jesus gives pardon and purity most
freely. Trust Him to cleanse you and the work shall be surely done.
Trust Him that hung upon the tree to redeem His people and you are
delivered. Trust Him to sanctify you wholly by His Spirit and He will
purify you till every spot and wrinkle is gone. It is His work to save
His people from their sins! Believe in Him and you shall triumph in His
salvation!
May the Lord add His blessing, for Jesus' sake!