A Mingled Strain
by
C. H. SPURGEON
(1834-1892)
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be
clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” — Psalm 51:7.
In what state of heart should we come to the communion-table? It is no light
matter: in what manner shall we come before the Lord in so sacred an ordinance?
By the very nature of the sacred supper we are taught that there should be a
mixture of emotions. The bitter and the sweet, the joyful and the sorrowful,
are here intermingled. The sacrifice of Christ for sin — is it more a subject
of sorrow or of joy? Can we look to the cross without mourning for sin? Can we
look at it without rejoicing in pardon bought with blood? Is not the most
suitable state of heart for coming to the communion-table just this — mourning
for our transgression, and joy because of the great salvation? There is a
double character about this holy rite: it is a festival of life, and yet it is
a memorial of death. Here is a cup; it is filled with wine; this surely betokens
gladness. Hearken to me; that wine is the symbol of blood! This as surely
betokens sorrow. In my hand is bread — bread to be eaten, bread which
strengtheneth man’s heart; shall we not eat bread with thankfulness? But that
bread is broken, to represent a body afflicted with pain and anguish: there
must be mourning on account of that agony. At the Paschal supper, the lamb of
the Lord’s Passover had a special sweetness in it: yet the commandment
expressly ran — “with bitter herbs they
shall eat it.” So is it at this table. Here we with joy commemorate the Lamb of
God which taketh away the sin of the world, but with deep sorrow we recall the
sin which, though taken away, causes us in the recollection of it to repent
with great bitterness of heart.
Our text is the expression of one who is deeply
conscious of sin, and yet is absolutely certain that God can put away that sin.
Thus it holds in one sentence a double thread of meaning. Here is a depth of
sorrow, and a still greater deep of hopeful joy: “deep calleth unto deep.” I
thought that this expression of mixed feeling might guide us as to our emotions
at this holy festival.
I. I shall handle the text by making three
observations. The first will be this: There Are Times When The Language Of A
Sinner Is Most Suitable To A Child Of God.
There are seasons when it is about the only
language that he can use, when he seems shut up to it, and he uses it without
the slightest suspicion that it is out of place upon his lips; and, indeed, it
is not out of place at all. I suppose that everybody will agree that the
language of David in this psalm was most suitable to his condition. When he
prayed, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be
whiter than snow,” he prayed a proper prayer, did he not? Surely no one is
going to cavil with David over this petition; and yet I cannot be sure. The
modern way of handling the Bible is to correct it here, and amend it there;
tear it to pieces, give a bit to the Jews, and a bit to the Gentiles, and a bit
to the church, and a bit to everybody, and then make it out that sometimes the
old servants of God made great blunders. We, in modern times, are supposed to
be more spiritual, and to know a great deal better than the inspired saints of
the Old and New Testaments. But still, I should not think that anybody would
say that David was wrong; and if he did, I should reply: This is an inspired
psalm, and there is not half a hint given that there is any incorrectness in
the language of it, or that David used language under an exaggerated state of
feeling, which was not truly applicable to a child of God. I think that nobody
will doubt that David was a child of God, and that, even when he had defiled
himself, he was still dear to the great Father’s heart. I gather, therefore — I
feel sure of it — that he was quite right in praying the language of this
fifty-first psalm, and saying, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy
lovingkindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my
transgressions; wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my
sin!”
Yet this is precisely the way in which an
unconverted man ought to pray, just the way in which every soul that comes to
God may pray. It is only an enlargement of the prayer of the publican, “God be
merciful to me a sinner!” This language, so suitable to the sinner, was not out
of place in the mouth of one who was not only a believer, but an advanced
believer, an experienced believer, an inspired believer, a teacher of others,
who, with all his faults, was such a one as we shall rarely see the like of
again. Yes, amongst the highest of saints, there was a time with one of them,
at least when the lowliest language was appropriate to his condition. There is
a spirit abroad which tells us that children of God ought not to ask for pardon
of their sins, for they have been pardoned; that they need not use such
language as this, which is appropriate to sinners, for they stand in a totally
different position. What I want to know is this: where are we to draw the line?
If, on account of a certain sin, David was perfectly justified in appealing to
God in the same style, as a poor, unforgiven sinner would have done, am I never
justified in doing so? Is it only a certain form of evil which puts a man under
the necessities of humiliation? It may be that the man has never fallen into
adultery, or any other gross sin; but is there a certain extent of sin to which
a man may go before, as a child of God, he is to pray like this? And is all
that falls below that high-water mark of sin a something so inconsiderable that
he need not go and ask any particular forgiveness for it, or pray like a sinner
at all about it? May I under most sins speak very confidently as a child of
God, who has already been forgiven, to whom it is a somewhat remarkable
circumstance that he should have done wrong, but still by no means a serious
disaster? I defy anybody to draw the line; and if they do draw it, I will
strike it out, for they have no right to draw it. There is no hint in the Word
of God that for a certain amount of sin there is to be one style of praying,
and for a certain lower amount of sin another style of praying.
I venture to say this, brethren, going farther —
that, as this language is certainly appropriate in David’s mouth, and as it
would be impossible to draw any line at which it would cease to be appropriate,
the safest and best plan for you and for me is this — seeing that we are
sinners, if we have not been permitted to backslide so much as David, yet we
had better come in the same way: we had better take the lowest place, urge the
lowliest plea, and so make sure work of our salvation. It is safest to assume
the greatest supposable need. Let us put ourselves into the humblest position
before the throne of the heavenly grace, and cry, “Have mercy upon me, O God,
according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender
mercies blot out my transgressions!”
But is not a man of God forgiven? Ay, that he
is! Is he not justified? Ay, that he is. “Who shall lay anything to the charge
of God’s elect?” Let that all stand true in the highest sense that you can give
to it; but, for all that, the sinner’s cry is not thereby hushed into silence.
True children of God cry, and let me tell you they cry after a stronger fashion
than other children. They have their confessions of sin, and these are deeper
and more intense than those of others. Whatever our confidence may be, our Lord
Jesus Christ never told us to pray, “Lord, I thank thee that I am forgiven, and
therefore have no sin to confess: I thank thee that I need not come to thee as
a sinner!” But he put into the mouth of his disciples such words as these: “Our
Father, which art in heaven, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that
trespass against us.” I reckon that the Lord’s Prayer is never out of date. I
expect to be able to pray it when I am on the brink of heaven, and if I should
ever be sanctified to the fullest extent, I shall never turn round to the
Savior, and say, “Now, my Lord, I have got beyond thy prayer! Now, Savior, I
can no more address my Father who is in heaven in this language, for I have
outgrown thy prayer!” Brethren, the notion sounds to me like blasphemy. Never
shall I say to my Savior, “I have no necessity now to come to thy precious
blood, or to say to thee, ’Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.’” Listen,
brethren: “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship
one with another,” and what then? Why, even then “the blood of Jesus Christ his
Son cleanseth us from all sin.” We still want the blood when walking in the
light, as God himself is in the light.
While we are here below we shall need to use
just such language as David did. Appropriate as our text is to the sinner, it
is equally appropriate to the saint, and he may continue to use it till he gets
to heaven. Remark, brethren, that when our hearts cannot honestly use such
language, we may think that we are upraised by faith, but it is possible that
we may be upblown by presumption. When we do not bow into the very dust, and
kiss the Savior’s feet, and wash them with our tears, we may think that it is
because we are growing in grace, but it is far more likely that we are swelling
with self-esteem. The more holy a man is, the more humble he is. The more really
sanctified he is, the more does he cry about his sin, whatever it may be — “Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?” When you get the clearest possible
view of God, what will be the result? Why, the deepest downcasting in your own
spirit. Look at Job. He can answer his wretched accusers, but when he sees God
— ah, then he abhors himself in dust and ashes! Was Job wrong in heart? I
question whether any of us are half as good as Job. I am sure few of us could
have played the man as he did under his sorrows. With all the failure of his
patience, the Holy Ghost does not call it a failure, for he says, “Ye have
heard of the patience of Job.” He says not “of his impatience,” but “of his
patience;” and yet this blessed, patient man, patient even by God’s own
testimony, when he saw God, abhorred himself. Look at Isaiah, again. Was there
ever a tongue more eloquent, more consecrated, more pure? Were there ever lips
more circumcised to God than those of that mighty evangelical prophet? And yet,
when he beheld the glory of the Lord, the train of the Lord filling the temple,
he said, “Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst
of a people of unclean lips.” Those of you that can do so may come to my Master’s
table tonight as saints: I shall come as a sinner. You that feel that you can
come there glorying in your growth in grace may so come if you like: I shall
come feeling that I am nothing, less than nothing. I shall endeavor to come to
the cross just as I came at first, for I find that if I get beyond the position
of a believing sinner, I get into a dangerous condition. Safety lies in
conformity to truth, and truth will not allow any of us to glory before God.
The more I know the Lord, and the more I live in communion with him, the more
do I feel happy in lying at his feet, and looking up to him to be my all in
all. I would be nothing, and let Christ be everything. Take this from one who
has been a preacher of the gospel for more than thirty-five years, and a
soul-winner who needs not to be ashamed — I am as entirely dependent upon the
free mercy of the Lord this day as ever I was, and I look to be saved in the
same manner as the thief upon the cross.
II. Secondly,
let me make another observation. It shall be this: An Extraordinary Sense Of
Guilt Is Quite Consistent With The Strongest Faith.
It is a blessed thing when the two go together.
David was under an extraordinary sense of sin, and right well he might be, for
he had committed an extravagant transgression. He had done a very grievous
wrong to man, and committed great lewdness before the Lord; and when the Spirit
of God at last aroused his conscience, through the rebuke of Nathan, it is not
at all wonderful that he should have bowed down under a deeply humiliating
sense of his own guiltiness. He was guilty, deeply guilty — more guilty than
even he himself knew. You and I, perhaps, may also be by God’s grace favored
with a deep sense of sin. But I hear some people say, “Did I understand you
rightly, sir, or did my ears deceive me? Favored with a deep sense of sin?“
“Yes, I said that; for while sin is horrible, a thorough sense of it, bitter as
it is, is one of the greatest favors with which God blesses his chosen. I am
sure that there are some of God’s children whose experience is shallow and
superficial, for they do not know the heights and depths of redeeming love,
neither are they established in the doctrines of grace, and all because they
never were deeply ploughed with a sharp sense of sin. These know nothing of
subsoil plowing, so as to turn their very hearts up under the keen ploughshare
of the law. But that man who knows what sin means, and has had it burned with a
hot iron into the core of his spirit, is the man who knows what grace means,
and is likely to understand its freeness and fullness. He who knows the evil of
sin is likely to know the value of the precious blood. I could scarcely ask for
any of you a better thing than that you should fully know in your own spirit
the horribleness of sin as far as your mind is capable of bearing the strain.
David was so conscious of his guilt that he
compares himself to a leper. The language of the text refers, I believe, to the
cleansing of lepers. Hyssop was dipped in blood, and then the sacrificial blood
was sprinkled upon the polluted individuals to make them clean. David felt that
he had become a leprous man. He felt like one who has contracted the horrible,
the polluting, the incurable disease of leprosy. He felt that he was not fit to
come near to God, nor even to associate with his fellowman. He confessed that
his guilt was such that he ought to be put away, shut out from the assembly of
the people. His guilt had polluted a whole nation, of whom he was the
representative, and to whom he was the example. Did you ever feel like that? I
tell you that you do not know all the pollution of sin unless you have been
made to feel yourself to be a polluted thing. If you had fifty leprosies, they
would not pollute you like sin, for a poor leper is not really polluted: he may
bear a grand and noble soul within that rotting body. Sin alone is real
pollution, hellish pollution, and abominable pollution. There is nothing in
hell that is worse than sin; even the devil is only a devil because sin made
him a devil: so that sin is the most horrible and intolerable evil that can
fall upon the spirit of man. David felt that dreadful truth. But yet, mark you,
though he felt the horror of the disease of sin, his faith was strong enough to
make him use the confident language of the text, “Purge me with hyssop, and I
shall be clean.” Black as my sin is, filthy, as it is, if thou do but purge me,
O my God, I shall be clean.
Yes, David is sure that God can cleanse him. He
pleads as one who has no question upon the matter towards God. His prayer is
— “Do thou purge me, and I shall be
clean! Apply the precious blood of the great Sacrifice to me, O God, and I
shall be whiter than snow!” There is about the Hebrew a sense which I could
hardly give you, except I were to put it thus: “Thou wilt un-sin me.” As though
God would take his sin right away, and leave him without a speck of sin,
without a single grain of it upon him. God could make him as if he had never
sinned at all. Such is the power of the cleansing work of God upon the heart that
he can restore innocence to us, and make us as if we had never been stained
with transgression at all. Believest thou this? Believest thou this? Oh, thou
art a happy man, if, under the deepest conceivable sense of sin, thou canst
still say, “Yes, I believe that he can wash me, and make me whiter than snow!
But will you follow me while I go a step
farther? The words of our text are in the Hebrew in the future tense, and they
might be read, “Thou shalt purge me, and I shall be clean;” so that David was
not only certain about the power of God to cleanse him, but about the fact that
God would do it: “Thou shalt purge me.” He cast himself, confessing his sin, at
the feet of his God, and he said, “My God, I believe that, through the great
Atonement, thou wilt make me clean!” Have you faith like that of David?
Believest thou this? Beloved, some of us can boldly say, “Ay, that we do; we
believe not only that God can pardon us, but that he will, ay, that he has
pardoned us; and we come to him now, and plead that he would renew in us the
cleansing work of the precious blood, and of the water, which flowed from the
side of Christ, and so make us perfectly clean! Yea, we believe that he will do
it; we are sure that he will: and we believe that he will continue to cleanse
us till we shall need no more cleansing. Hart’s hymn sings concerning the
precious blood —
“If guilt removed return and remain,
Its power may be
proved again and again.”
This witness is true, and we set our seal to it.
The Psalmist David believed that, although his
sin was what it was, yet God could make a rapid cleansing of it. He speaks of
the matter as wrought promptly, and speedily. It took seven days to cleanse a
leper; but David does not follow the type when the reality excels it. He says,
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” It is done directly, done at
once; — washed, and whiter than snow. It will not take seven days to wipe out
the crimes of seven years; nay, if a man had lived seventy years in sin, if he
did but come to his God with humble confession, and if the precious blood of
Jesus were applied to him, his sins would vanish in the twinkling of an eye.
The two facts come together. “Purge me: I shall be clean. Wash me: I shall be
whiter than snow.” It is done at once. Note the rapidity of the cleansing.
Mark the effectual character of the purgation.
“Purge me, and I shall be clean.” Not “I shall think that I am,” but “I shall
be. I shall be like a man perfectly healed of leprosy.” Such a man was not
purged in theory, but in reality; so that he could go up to the court of the
Lord’s house, and offer his sacrifice among the rest of Israel. So, if thou
wash me, Lord, I shall be really clean! I shall have access to thee, and I
shall have fellowship with all thy saints.
Once more — David believed that God could give
him internal cleansing. “In the hidden parts,” says he, “thou shalt make me to
know wisdom.” I do like that about the text. It is “Purge me with hyssop, and I
shall be clean.” Where? — Hands? Yes. Feet? Yes. Head? Yes. All this is good;
but what about the heart? There is the part that you and I cannot cleanse, but
God can. Imagination, conscience, memory, every inward faculty, the Lord can
purge us in all these. “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” This
includes the whole man. And this declaration falls from the lip of a man who
knew himself to be as defiled as he could be, a very leper, only fit to be put
away into his own several house, and shut up there for fear of contaminating
the rest of mankind. He boldly says, “If the Lord wash me, I shall be clean, I
am certain of it. I shall be perfectly clean, and fit to have communion with
himself.”
Notice one more remark on this point, namely,
that David, while thus conscious of his sins, is so full of faith towards God
that he appropriates all the cleansing power of God to himself: “Wash me, and I
shall be whiter than snow. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” There
are four personal words in one verse. It is easy to believe that God can
forgive sin in general, but that he can forgive mine in particular — that is
the point. Ay, it is easy to believe that he can forgive man, but to believe
that he will forgive such a poor specimen of the race as I am is quite another
matter! To take personal hold upon divine blessings is a most blessed faculty.
Let us exercise it. Can you do it? Brothers and sisters, can you do it? You
that cannot call yourselves brothers and sisters, you far-away ones, can you
come to Christ, all black and defiled as you are, and just believe in him, that
you shall be made whole? You will not be believing too much the Great Sinners’
Friend. According to your faith be it unto you.
III. This
brings us to our third and last point, upon which I will speak with great
brevity. Notice that A Deep Sense Of Sin And A Confident Faith In God Make The
Lord’s Name And Glory Pre-Eminently Conspicuous.
God is the great actor in the text before us. He
purges and he washes, and none but he. The sins and the cleansing are both of
them too great to allow of any inferior handling.
“Purge me.” He makes it all God’s work. He does
not say anything about the Aaronic priest. What a poor miserable creature the
priest is when a soul is under a sense of sin! Have you ever met with a person
who has been really broken in heart who has gone to a priest? If so, he has
been made ashamed of his looking to man, for he has found him to be a broken
cistern that can hold no water. Why, my brethren, if we had this platform full
of popes, and one poor soul under a sense of sin to be comforted, the whole lot
of them could not touch the sinner’s wound, nor do anything to stanch the
bleeding of his heart! No, no, the words of the best of men fall short of our
need. As the dying monk said, “Tua vulnera, Jesu!” — “Thy wounds, Jesus!” These can heal, but nothing else can. God
must himself wash us. Nothing short of his personal interposition will suffice.
Now, notice the next word, “Purge me with
hyssop.” We must have faith, which is represented by hyssop. How little David
makes of faith! He thinks of it only as the poor “hyssop.” Many questions have
been raised as to what hyssop was. I do not think that anybody knows. Whatever
it may have been, it was a plant that had many little shoots and leaves,
because its particular fitness was that the blood would cling to its many
branches. Its use was that it stored the blood, and held it there in ruby drops
upon each one of its sprays: and that is the particular suitability of faith
for its peculiar office. It is an excellent thing in itself; but the particular
virtue of faith lies in this — that it
holds the blood so as to apply it. Scarlet wool was used in the ceremony of
cleansing, and the scarlet wool was useful because it soaked in the blood, and
held it within itself: but the hyssop was still more useful because, while it
held the blood, it held it ready to drop. That is how faith holds the great
Sacrifice: it holds the atoning blood upon every spray, ready to drop upon the
tortured conscience. Faith is the sprinkling hyssop: it is nothing in itself, but
it applies to the soul that which is our cleansing and our life.
David, moreover, seems to me to say, “Lord, if
thou wilt purge me with the blood of the great Sacrifice, it does not matter
how it is done! Do it with the little hyssop from off the wall. However tiny
and insignificant the plant may be, yet it will hold the precious drops, and
bring them to my heart, and I shall be whiter than snow.” It is God, you see —
it is God all the way through.
“And I”
— there is just that mention of himself; but what of himself? Why, “I
shall be the receiver. I shall be clean.” “I.” What about that intensive “I”?
“I shall be whiter than snow”; — I shall be the material on which thou workest
— the guilty pardoned — the polluted made clean — the leper made whole, and
permitted to come up to thy house.
That is all I ask my Lord tonight — that he will
let me come to his table, and be the receiver, the eater, the drinker, the
cleansed one, the debtor, the bankrupt debtor, plunged over head and ears in
debt to the heavenly Creditor. Oh, to be nothing; to lie at his feet! Oh, to be
nothing, but washed — washed in the blood! How sweet it is no longer to ride on
horses, but to have God for your all in all; no longer to go forth sword in
hand, boasting our strength, and glorying in what we can do, but to sit down at
Jesus’ feet, and sing the victory which he alone has won! Come, let us pray
from our very hearts, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and
I shall be whiter than snow.” God bless you, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "Spurgeon Collection" by:
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
Box 314
Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022
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Email: tony@biblebb.com
Online since 1986