Deep Cleaning
Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: Deep Cleaning------------------------------ Date: 1/25/2001
Keywords:
"clean" "joy" "ritual"
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Passage: Psalm 51:7-9*
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.
Questions
1. Who is the best at cleaning our sin?
2. How clean does he get us?
3. Does the cleaning process feel good?
4. If God hides his face from our sins, is he in denial?
Practical help
The life of faith is filled with ritual. The cleansing that David mentions in verse 7 has little to do with bathing, or with ritual sprinkling, and all to do with submitting to God's plan for washing away sin. Religious rituals accomplish nothing in the body; they are meant for the spirit and are only understood when we consider their significance in our hearts.
Perhaps you have been submitting to a spiritual ritual of a different sort, the worship of human flesh at the web porn altar. You may have justified it by thinking that nobody's getting hurt and it's just a private, personal secret. In reality, your spiritual bones are being slowly crushed, pulverized until there is no strength left in them. They've been replaced by a hardened heart that refuses to listen to the gentle call to turn away from sin. God's desire is to crush the calcified strata that resist his mercy, so that your broken bones can again rejoice.
If you attend a church, pay closer attention to the ritual next time, to see the deeper significance. Not just the acknowledgement of events that took place 2000 years ago, but the personal knowledge that God wants to cleanse you of your sin. Be specific, and lay your porn habit at his altar.
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*Scriptures are from The Holy Bible: New International Version © Copyright 1973,
1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.
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