Cleansing: A Covenant Blessing by C H Spurgeon; Ezekiel 25-36; Part 5

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. It is therefore a very blessed thought on the part of our God to make the covenant to bear so much ripen our sin and our sinfulness, and especially to make it open with this unconditional promise of infinite love, “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you,” etc.

I. GOD BEGINS TO DEAL WITH HIS PEOPLE WHILE THEY ARE YET IN SIN. 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. His grace stoops to the ruin of the fall and lifts us up from it. 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. You may notice in the text, or gather it therefrom by clear inference — that these people with whom God dealt were not only unclean, but they could not cleanse themselves, lit Is a rule with miracles, as well miracles of the Spirit as miracles of the body, that God never does what others can do. Cleansing cannot come from any other place, therefore seek it of the Lord, who says, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean.” If you go about through heaven, and 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. 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, will I cleanse you.” 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.

II. GOD PROVIDES FOR THE CLEANSING OF THOSE TO WHOM HE COMES IN SOVEREIGN GRACE. Where could this “clean water” be found by mortal man? God has provided a system of cleansing men, perfect in itself, and just, and right, and effectual. When under the old Mosaic law they took water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled the unclean therewith, he was cleansed ceremonially; 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.

1. It is a righteous way. 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 Saviour. In addition to that, God has given the Holy Ghost 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.

2. And what a simple way it is, as well as clean! 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.

3. 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.

4. It is a way of unfailing efficacy, for He says, “From all your filthiness and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.” He does not only attempt the cleansing, but He accomplishes it. What though your heart be like the Augean stable, the labours of Hercules shall be outdone by the wonders of Jesus.

III. GOD HIMSELF APPLIES THIS MEANS OF CLEANSING. Some of you remember when first the Lord 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 Saviour. 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. 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 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. And all the way through the rest of life it is just the same. “All things are of God.”

IV. THE LORD EFFECTUALLY CLEANSES ALL HIS PEOPLE. First, He cleanses them from all their filthiness. Oh, what a vast “all” that is! All the filthiness of your birth sin; all the filthiness of your natural temperament and constitution and disposition. 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 dishonours 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.” 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. If there is anything that has our love more than God, it is an idol, and we must be purged from it. This is not a threatening but a promise: it is a great blessing to have our images of jealousy put away.

( C. H. Spurgeon.)