Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3056
“Purge me with hyssop, and/shall be clean: wash me, and/shall be whiter than snow.” Psalm 51:7.
[Another Sermon by Mr. Spurgeon on the same text is #1937, Volume 32—A MINGLED STRAIN.]
You know how David had sinned. To the sin of adultery he had added that of murder. David felt like one who was shut out from God and was unworthy to approach Him. He could not be content to remain in such a condition. He longed to be reconciled to God and he remembered that he had sometimes seen a man who had the leprosy put out of the city as an unclean person, or he had seen one who had defiled himself by touching a corpse shut out for a time from all communion with those who drew near to worship God. “Ah,” he thought, “that is just as I am—I am unworthy to appear before God, for I am spiritually unclean.”
But David had also seen the priest take a basin full of blood and dip hyssop in it—and when the bunch of hyssop had soaked up the blood, he had seen the priest sprinkle the unclean person therewith and then say to him, “You are clean. You have admittance now to the worship of God. You can mingle with the great congregation—I pronounce you clean through the sprinkled blood.” And David’s faith, acting upon the telescopic principle, looked far down the ages and he saw the great atoning Sacrifice offered upon Calvary. And as he saw the Son of God bleeding for sins which were not His own, he desired that the blood of Christ might be applied to his conscience, feeling that it would take away his defilement and admit him into the courts of God’s House and into the love of God’s heart. And so he prayed this prayer, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.”
He felt, too, that sin was a very great defilement—that he was black and filthy—but he knew how he had often, when hunted like a wild goat among the mountains, stooped down to a cooling brook and washed away the dust and stain of travel in the running water and his face and hands had been clean again. And so, bowing down before God he sees, in the Sacrifice of Christ, a cleansing flood and his desire is expressed in these words, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” The words do not require any exposition—they require application. They do not need to be explained—they need to be offered up to God in prayer by broken-hearted suppliants!
There are two things I shall try to talk about, as God shall help me. The one is that sin is a very foul thing—David says, “Purge me.” “Wash me.” The other is that the cleansing must be very great—this process of sprinkling hyssop and of washing must be very potent, for he says, “I shall be clean.” “I shall be whiter than snow.”
I. First, then, a little about THE DEFILEMENT.
Sometimes it has been asked by unconverted men, “Why do you talk so much about Atonement? Why could not God be generous and forgive sin outright? Why should He require the shedding of blood and the endurance of great suffering?” Sinner, if you had a right sense of sin you would never ask such a question! In asking that question you speak upon the supposition that God is such an One as yourself. But He hates sin. He sees in sin such loathsomeness as you have never dreamed of! There is, to Him, such horrible abomination, such a heinousness, such a detestableness and uncleanness about sin that He could not pass it by. If He did, He would bring upon His own Character the suspicion that He was not holy. Had God passed by human sin without a substitutionary Sacrifice, the seraphim would have Suspended their song, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts.” The judge who winks at sin is the abettor of sin. If the supreme Ruler does not punish sin, He becomes Himself the patron of all guilt and sin may take its rest beneath the shadow of His wings! But it is
not so and, Sinner, God would have you know, and have angels know—and have devils know that however lightly any of His creatures may think of sin—and however foolishly simple man may toy with it—He knows what a vile thing it is and He will have no patience with it! “He will by no means spare the guilty.”
I have heard it said by persons looking at the subject from another point of view, that the preaching of full forgiveness through the Savior’s blood, to the very chief of sinners, is apt to make men think lightly of sin—that, when we tell them—
“There is life for a look at the Crucified One, There is life at this moment”—
for every soul that looks at Christ, we do, in effect, find a plaster for men’s wounded consciences which, when thus healed, will only aid and abet them in going to sin again. How untrue this is! A moment’s reflection will show you. We tell the sinner that God never does gratuitously pass by a single sin and that pardon never could have come to one man of Adam’s race had it not been procured by the tremendous griefs of the Savior who stood in men’s place. Our own belief is that all the proclamations of the Law of God and all the threats of judgment that were ever thundered forth by the most Boanerges-like of ministers, never did show man so much the vileness of sin as the preaching of this one great Truth of God—“The Lord has caused to meet on Him the iniquity of us all. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” That is the great condemnation of sin—the Savior’s death! Never is God dressed in such resplendent robes of glorious holiness as when He is smiting sin as it is laid upon His only-begotten Son! Having lifted it from sinners and laid it upon Christ, He does not spare it because of the worthiness of the Person to whom it is imputed. He smites and crushes it with His full force and fury till the oppressed Victim cries out, “Behold, and see if there is any sorrow like unto My sorrow which is done unto Me when Jehovah has afflicted Me in the day of His fierce anger.”