TIME TO CLEAN UP

Psalms 51:10 “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

Do you remember Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Telltale Heart”? In that story, the main character has committed murder and he buries the body of the victim in his basement. But the murderer is unable to escape the haunting guilt of his deed. He begins to hear the heartbeat of his dead victim. A cold sweat pours over him as that heartbeat goes on and on, relentlessly, getting louder and louder. Eventually, it becomes clear that the pounding which drove the man mad was not in the grave below but in his own chest.

You get the feeling that that’s how David felt when he committed the sins of adultery and murder. The guilt he felt became almost unbearable. So God sent a prophet to David. God loved this king, loved him too much to let him go on covering up and thus damaging himself and his entire kingdom by this hidden sin. When David was confronted, he acknowledged the terrible sin he had committed. He fell on his face before God and out of that experience of confession came this verse.

Much like David, our lives are in need of a cleansing from time to time. I heard about two bachelors who were talking one day, and their conversation drifted from politics to sports to cooking. One of them said, “I got a cookbook once, but I could never do anything with it.” The other one said, “Too much fancy work in it, huh?” You first one said, “Yeah, it sure was. Every one of the recipes began the same way - ‘Take a clean dish.’”

The problem with our relationship with God is much the same. God says, “Take a clean life”, and we go, “Wait a minute, that’s a problem. Because, as Paul said in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” And because we have all sinned, we’re all in need of forgiveness. The concept of forgiveness, of being made right with God, is pictured in the Bible in many different ways, sometimes as a new birth, sometimes as the crossing out of a debt, sometimes as the breaking off of a heavy chain.

But the picture of forgiveness that David uses here is perhaps the most common picture throughout the word of God -- he describes it as a cleansing. “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” A few verses earlier, he wrote, “Wash me thoroughly from my sin, and cleanse me from my sin.” (Psalm 51:2). And then in verse 7, “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51:7).

You see, sin is dirty, it’s filthy, and it stains our lives. Isaiah put it this way: “But we are all like an unclean thing and all our righteousness is like filthy rags…” (Isaiah 64:6). The NCV translates the first part of that verse: “All of us are dirty with sin.” Like the mechanic who’s been working under the car all day, or the gardener who’s been out digging in the dirt, we’re covered with filth.

And there is the need for us to be cleansed. So David says, “Purge me, purify me, wash me.” The words he uses imply a thorough scrubbing. And you can almost picture an old-time mother with her child at the sink scrubbing him until his skin literally shines and squeaks, getting behind the ears, getting rid of every bit of dirt. David says, “God, that’s what I want you to do to me. I’ve gotten myself dirty. I’ve been out messing with some things I shouldn’t have been messing with, and I’m covered with filth. I need for you to clean me up.”

The most beautiful part of this story is that God did that for David and he’s willing to do the same for any of us. God’s delights in having the opportunity to forgive. And when he forgives, he doesn’t continue to hold it over our heads. Whether we are filthy like the prodigal son in a pig pen or like King David who tried to hide a dirty secret, God is ready and willing to accept us and to clean us up. We should never delay in laying our dirt at the feet of the cross and turning towards him that cleanses all.