Psalm 51:7-8
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
David has been totally honest about the seriousness of his
sin. He has done evil. He is unclean before God. What's the solution? How can his sin be dealt with? Notice that he doesn't even consider trying to get rid of it himself. He knows that if he is to be made clean, it must be the God who he has sinned against who does it. But how? What can wash away his sin? The answer is ... hyssop! It's a plant. But not just any plant.
Hyssop is what God told the priests to use when he gave them instructions for cleansing unclean things. Everywhere in the Old Testament where we see hyssop used for cleansing, it's part of a ceremony that involves a
blood sacrifice. Hyssop was what the Israelites used to paint the lamb's blood onto their doorposts, so that their firstborn sons would be spared, on the night when God rescued them from slavery in Egypt. When an Israelite heard the word 'hyssop' they'd probably picture a handful of sticks and leaves, dripping with the blood of a sacrifice. It's not the most obvious thing to use if you want whiter-than-white laundry! But it is the perfect thing to take away the guilt of sin. Only the blood of a perfect
sacrifice can cleanse sinners.
So perhaps it's no coincidence that when Jesus, dying on the cross, is offered wine vinegar to drink, it's offered to him on a stick of hyssop. There, just as in the Old Testament ceremonies which foreshadowed it,
hyssop + blood sacrifice = cleansing.
What can take away OUR sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus, which washes us white as snow. Responding rightly to that means doing what David does in this psalm - both grieving the seriousness of our sin and rejoicing in our forgiveness. My sin is so serious it required the Son of God to be crushed in my place. How can I take
that lightly? Yet because he was crushed, I can be free. I don't have to live weighed down for ever by the memory of my past failures. I can rejoice in the grace God has shown me.
So let's thank and praise Jesus today for the joy of knowing that our sins have been completely washed away at the cross.
