Repentance Reflections #5       April 2, 2025

Psalm 51:7                                   Pastor Ryan Wolfe

Relying on God’s Grace

One of the benefits of growing up on a small dairy farm is that I grew up with an aptitude for financial conservatism. Critics call it being “cheap.” I prefer “frugal.” For better or for worse that means I’m always looking to get the best value I can get out of most anything. One of the ways that has manifested itself over the years in my ministry has been taking advantage of a certain office supply store’s ink recycling program. Every month for the last 10 years at least I’ve recycled printer ink cartridges so that the church can get free store credit and make our offerings go a little further. It’s great! Except for handling the cartridges. You see, they leak after they’ve been used and If I’m not careful I sometimes get that ink on my hands. Or my car seat once. There’s almost NOTHING that can remove those stains.

Just like that printer ink staining my hands, sin stains the human heart. And there’s nothing on earth that can remove that stain. Which is why we are in such awe that God sent someone from heaven to do it for us. The only thing that removes the stain of sin? You know it: the holy, precious blood of Jesus shed for sinners on the cross. God the Father sent his Son. Jesus made the sacrifice. The Spirit gives the gift of faith. From beginning to end we rely entirely on God’s grace for forgiveness.

If you’ve been here for our midweek services you know that David has been painting a pretty dark picture of who we are by nature. David’s sin with Bathsheba that prompted this whole situation and his need for repentance didn’t just come out of nowhere. We are stained in sin from the very beginning, “From the time my mother conceived me,” David said. I know we’ve heard it, but it bears repeating. If we aren’t reminded of how stained we are in sin, we easily forget how much we need our Savior’s cleansing.

As proof of this, just look to the summary of God’s holy will in the Ten Commandments. How often do you go down the list, commandment by commandment, and ask yourself how you’ve done at keeping each one? Maybe you have and didn’t like the results. Or maybe you haven’t because you’re afraid of what you’ll discover. It is, however, a healthy spiritual exercise to do every once in a while.

There was a woman once who was going through adult instruction with her pastor in order to become a member of the congregation. They were working their way through the Ten Commandments as part of the course. Before they studied each of the commandments, she would say, “Pastor, I think I’ve done pretty well with this one.” To which her pastor patiently responded, “Let’s look at what God’s Word says and see if there’s more than meets the eye.”

They studied the Scriptures together, identifying what God commands and forbids in each commandment in attitudes and words as well as actions. She soon realized that she had broken every one of the commandments and far more often than she had ever imagined. Let’s not do all the commandments tonight, but maybe we should try a couple?

The first commandment says, “You shall have no other gods.” This one’s easy, right? We know that we are to worship no one but the one true God. We know not to bow down to golden calves like Israel at Mt. Sinai. We don’t worship Allah and Buddha and all the rest. We reject the ancestor worship that’s a part of some of the cultures here in the Twin Cities. So we might be tempted to check this one off since we’ve never bowed down to an idol of wood or stone or string. That is, until we look a little more deeply. Until we remember that God wants not only our outward worship but also our hearts. Being completely devoted to him means serving him with everything we do every moment of our lives. Total devotion would mean never breaking any of the commandments. Never putting ourselves and our interests ahead of what God would have us do. Every time we sin, in a sense, no matter what the sin is, we’re worshiping ourselves and putting God second. Better uncheck that box that says we’re good on the first commandment.

How about the fifth commandment? “You shall not murder.” I’ve never murdered anyone. I would venture to guess nobody here has ever ended someone’s life in cold blood. However, God’s Word tells us in 1 John 3:15, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.” I’m a pretty gentle person overall, but I’ve had hateful thoughts. You have too. We’re murderers who have no eternal life in us. And another illusion of commandment obedience falls by the wayside.

We could keep going, but I think you get the point. Should we talk about the sixth commandment and the adultery that’s everywhere we look in this country? That’s just a sample of the ways we think we’re doing better than we actually are at keeping God’s law. That woman studying with the pastor came to realize both how often she had sinned and how much she needed her Savior’s forgiveness. I hope you realize that too. We need our Savior’s cleansing because by our very nature we are stained with sin. And everything we do then is stained with that sin – our thoughts, our words, our actions. All of it.

Everything we’ve seen so far in Psalm 51 provides ample evidence that David understood his need for God to wash his sin away. But now in verse 7 we’re getting to the good stuff. The stuff I’ve been preaching each week because we knew this was coming. David pleads with the Lord: “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” We know about the second picture. Whether you were happy to see it or not this morning, the world was cleaner and brighter under that layer of freshly fallen snow, wasn’t it? But what about the first picture? The hyssop?

Hyssop is a shrub that grows in the Middle East. Its oil has antiseptic properties and it was used as a medicine or an ointment to fight infections. If an infection isn’t cleaned, it can cause the body to rot. Even today, infections can turn to gangrene and then the infected part of the body might have to be cut off just to save the person’s life.

King David saw sin for what it is—an infection. And like an infection sin causes us to rot spiritually. If it’s not treated, that rot leads to us being cut off permanently from God for all eternity. But just as the people of David’s time treated physical infections with hyssop from the field, God treats spiritual infection with the hyssop of the gospel. David knew there was no worldly cure for sin, but he knew that God could make him clean nonetheless. David had to trust God’s promise that one day a Messiah, a Savior would come. He would do the work to save David from his sin. We have an advantage over David. We know exactly who that Savior was and how he makes us clean.

We know the only way for God to remove the infection from sinful hearts is through the blood of Christ. This spiritual hyssop that David hoped for is the history of what we’re looking at every week in these services. It’s Jesus’ perfect life, lived as a substitute for the imperfect lives that our sin causes. It’s Jesus’ innocent suffering and death, making payment for the guilt our sins accumulate. And when the Holy Spirit led us to believe these things, God applied to us individually what Jesus had earned for all. It’s why baptism is such a powerful sacrament and a means of God’s grace. We’re used to thinking of water as a washing element. So God tells us to connect it with his word in the sacrament. And that water then reminds us just what God is doing in baptism – washing away the guilt of our sin. Baptism then serves as a continual reminder that God has made us clean in his sight. No longer are we dirty in his eyes. No longer are we guilty in his judgment. Oh we’re still sinful because that sinful nature never goes away until we stand with Jesus in heaven. But God declares us not guilty because of what Christ did for us. We could never have done it for ourselves so God does it for us. Indeed, we rely entirely on God’s grace in Christ.

So thank the Lord that we have this opportunity every year in Lent to walk through the Passion History of our Savior. It is a blessing to hear again the suffering our Lord Jesus endured because we know he did it in our place as he carried our burden of sin. As hard as it may be, it is a privilege for us to see him beaten and scourged, spit on and mocked, nailed to a cross and forsaken by God the Father – because we know it means we no longer face that ourselves. As Isaiah famously prophesied, “The punishment that brought us peace was on him. By his wounds we are healed.” It is those wounds of sacrificial love that we rely on for our hope of heaven. This is why we’re sure of our forgiveness. Sure of our future in that blessed place.

Some stains can’t be removed unless you have the exact right solvent. But while we could never remove the stain of a single sin, God washes away every sin in the cleansing blood of Christ. And he promises that all who believe this, all who rely on God’s grace for forgiveness – well, they will not perish but have everlasting life. May God bless us with repentance that sees our sin, but also sees Jesus overcome that sin for us. This is our hope. This is our peace. God bless us in Jesus’ name. Amen.