(I want to listen to this sermon)

Psalm 24:1-10

John 13:1-13

Personal Hygiene

Christmas is fast approaching. The stores are piled high with all kinds of things that you never knew you needed. I wonder whether you have drawn up a list of things that you would like? I wonder whether you expect to receive the same type of present as you've always done? A few years ago I might have suggested that you men were likely to receive socks while you ladies were more likely to get some 'smellies'. As a boy growing up soaps and talcum powder were always a safe stand by for female relatives. Nowadays, I'm not so sure. Today, men seem to be just as likely to pamper their bodies as do their women-folk!

Personal hygiene, that's the thing! Or so the marketing men would tell us – after all, we're worth it!! And there is a biblical precedent for it:

Proverbs 27:9 "Oil and perfume make the heart glad,"

Indeed the Bible has a lot to say about matters of personal hygiene using words such as washing cleansing purifying etc. Ind this is hardly surprising as Scripture contains many indications that because God is holy and pure and clean so therefore should be the man or woman who would approach him.:

e.g. Psalm 24:3-4 "Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart."

Speaking through the prophet Isaiah the Lord himself will not pay any attention to those who come to him in an unclean state:

Is.1:15 "When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil,"

But just how is a man or a woman to do this? We are not surprised by the question asked in the Book of Proverbs expects the answers "no-one":

Proverbs 20:9 "Who can say, “I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”?"

You see, left to himself, man can't do it – he must apply to God for help from outside himself. And in the Bible's prayer book, the Book of Psalms, we find just such a plea being made:

Ps 51:10 "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."

Have you ever cried out like that? My friend, it is oh so important that you do, because heaven is not for those who are spiritually unclean.

Rev.21:27 "But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life."

This morning we are going to take a look at what the Bible says about being made clean and about being washed! We will need to keep in mind that the language is used figuratively – our hymns often pick up on the imagery inspired by the picture language used in Revelation where Christians are described as having been washed in the blood of the Lamb, in the blood of Jesus Christ. Such language is not to be taken in a crassly literalistic sense "the blood of the Lamb" refers to the sacrificial death of the Saviour upon Calvary's cross and being washed in this blood means that His sacrifice is the means and the only means of our spiritual cleansing.

Rev.7:14 "I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

There is a rich variety of ways in which the Christian life and one's entry into the Christian life is described in the Bible and one of those ways involves the imagery of washing.

Let me remind you the passage we read earlier from John's Gospel.

Alone with his disciples in the upper room Jesus took a basin of water, wrapped a towel around his waist, and proceeded to wash his disciples feet. When he got to Peter this disciple was embarrassed and did not want Jesus to carry on. In the ensuing discussion Jesus made it clear that two types of washing were important:

Firstly, there was an initial bathing and secondly, there is an ongoing partial washing.

We find here a pattern that we can apply to the Christian life in general.

Firstly, a person must come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith for his initial bathing – this is conversion or regeneration. But that is not the end of the matter rather it is just the beginning.

Secondly, the Christian is not saved in order that he might go on sinning but saved so that he might live a new life of holiness towards God. Old, habits, however die hard and the new believer is not instantly rendered sinless, he has much progress to make. This sin that he commits as a believer is still a spot and a blemish which needs to be cleansed. He does not have to be converted all over again! (That would be equivalent to taking a new bath and Jesus says that that is not necessary.) All that he stands in need of is the equivalent of a little foot washing. But he will need this regularly and on a daily basis.

Let us see how the rest of the New Testament builds upon and develops this same fundamental pattern:

Firstly, we see that the beginning of the Christian life is described in these terms of washing. Ananias was sent to speak to Saul of Tarsus after this latter had had his dramatic encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus road. Years later Saul still remembered how Ananias had challenged him to respond in faith:

Acts 22:16 "And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.’"

When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth he needed to remind them of just how big a change had taken place in their lives as they came to know and trust the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to how he describes their experience:

1 Corinthians 6:11 "And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

In a similar way when Paul wrote to the Ephesians he described what Jesus had done for the church:

Ephesians 5: 25-26 "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,"

And what was true of churches was true of individuals too!

Titus 3:5 "he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,"

Have you realised just how significant and important this initial washing really is? Have you come to see that before a holy God you are anything but clean? We tend to have an inflated opinion of ourselves but in God's sight even those things of which we are most proud he sees as disgustingly filthy! And we must properly understand what this lack of cleanness before God actually means.

Our uncleanness, which separates us from a holy God, is no superficial thing. It is not about some surface dirt that can easily be washed away. What makes us unclean in God's sight is what comes from our heart – and it is our heart that must be made clean. Do you remember what Jesus said?

"But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander." (Matthew 15:19)

We have already seen that this truth was known to at least some of the writers of the Old Testament nevertheless it is very easy to overlook such truth and to focus all of our attention elsewhere. This is just what the religious people of Jesus day had done. The Pharisees paid a great deal of attention to the externals of religion – and these externals lay within their own power of action.

This is how Jesus assessed them:

Luke 11:39 "And the Lord said to him, "Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.""

Or again:

Mt 23:25-6 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self–indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean."

The problem was that they focused entirely upon what they could do and so did not cry out to God for him to do what only he could do. They could tinker with the outside but only he could cleanse them inwardly and to give them a fresh start.

Don't make the same mistake as the Pharisees. Don't try and clean up your life on your own. You may well succeed in making yourself a moral person and you may impress the people who live round about you but you will never succeed in making your heart clean before God. If we are to be put right with God then he must be active in cleansing us.

This is where so many go wrong and assume that Christianity is merely talking about making a few adjustments in our lives and tidying up a few details here and there. That may well be appealing to human nature because we all like to believe that we are capable of doing whatever we set ourselves to. But the good news of Jesus Christ is not that of a self help gospel rather it is all about the grace of God freely offered to those who will humbly receive!

This washing at conversion then is akin to what Jesus said about being bathed and it is absolutely fundamental. Have you been to Jesus for this bath? For this washing of regeneration?

Having spoken about the fundamental need of a spiritual bath in order to begin the Christian life, we must now come to consider what else the New Testament teaches concerning washing.  In the upper room Jesus did not only speak about a bath he also spoke about a more limited washing.

This more limited washing was relevant only for those who had already undergone even more important bath. We are not to imagine that these different types of washings are alternatives between which we may choose – as though some might choose the washing of conversion while others the series of smaller washings – the witness of the New Testament is that both types of washing are essential for the believer. Indeed, holiness is a prerequisite for seeing the Lord!

Heb.12:14 "Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord."

Conversion is a radical change – by it, the sinner is made an entirely new creature. The old has been done away with and the new has been brought in. The formerly spiritually lifeless man or woman who was utterly cut off from God is now infused with a new life principle. This believer is now charged to live his life in harmony with his new spiritual nature – he is no longer free to continue in sin to do so would be to go against his new nature.

However, this new believer has much to learn and much progress to make in the living of his Christian life. He will quickly discover that he is still capable of committing sin and to some this discovery may for a while prove devastating. He may even ask himself the question:

"Can I really be a Christian if I behave like that?"

The question is, of course, a good one! The Christian should always be troubled by his sin, indeed, any other reaction would be far more worrying! And yet that does not tell the whole story. A Christian leading a thoroughly consistent life would not sin but the reality is that we do not live such lines. Instead we all lapse into sin from time to time. Such lapses remain just that for the true believer – they are lapses and they are not the dominant feature of his life. Sin now worries the Christian in a way that it never did before conversion. Happily though, the gospel of Jesus Christ is not a half gospel! There exists a solution and a remedy even for sin in the life of a converted man.

1Jn 1:7-9 "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

The apostle John wrote these words not to the unconverted but to those who had already come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They were not to pretend that sin was no longer an issue for them in their lives – in fact he is very clear to point out that to imagine otherwise is a serious form of self-deception. But neither is the Christian to lose heart – Jesus Christ is his advocate before the Father in heaven.

As the Christian lives his everyday life he makes mistakes, he fails to do what he should do, and sometimes deliberately does what he knows he shouldn't do – it is a bit like going for a walk across a field, at times our foot slips and we kick up some mud which spatters over us so that we need a wash when we get indoors. It is no good imagining that are clean when we are not. Spiritually speaking, the wash that we need comes as we confess our sins trusting him to be faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness!

There is of course a right way to respond to the problem of sin in the life of a believer. John has told us how we are to respond when we are made aware of sin and failure in our lives.

However, we do not always respond as we ought and it is possible to err in one of two different ways. We can develop an unhealthy interest in our sin and the way in which it disfigures us. Or on the other hand, we can fail to accord it the significance it warrants. Let me explain what I mean:

Some people develop oversensitivity to cleanliness and they spend an inordinate amount of time in washing and re-washing their hands – this is not normal behaviour and is an inappropriate response to life as it really is. We give such behaviour a name, we call it obsessive-compulsive disorder and it can be very debilitating indeed both for the sufferer and for those who live with him or her. (This can be big business by the way. When I searched books on "obsessive-compulsive disorder" on the Amazon website I was offered more than 900 suggestions!)

 The spiritual equivalent would be agonised soul-searching to try to find each and every possible fault in order to confess it to God. In extreme for one it would be to act as Peter did in the upper room, for getting what had already been done for him and seeking to begin all over again. We must not forget that we have already been made clean the Lord Jesus Christ and by the word he has spoken to us (John 15:3). The Roman Catholic Church by its use of the confessional encourages this type of morbid introspection where the penitent must find something which he can confess.

Were we to go to the other extreme we would deny any significance at all to the presence of remaining sin in our lives. And yet such sin exists and blights the life of the Christian – it affects both his testimony and his enjoyment of Fellowship with the holy God. Such a carefree and cavalier attitude towards failure Christian life is a sure-fire way of impeding progress towards Christian maturity.

The advice that I received as a teenager starting out on my Christian life was good advice. "Keep short accounts with God". What this basically means is that as soon as we are aware that we have committed sin or that we have something we need to confess to God we don't delay we do actually go to God and make confession to him.

There are times when we need to take ourselves very seriously in hand because the enemy of our souls will try to suggest to us that somehow God is against us. Yet it is God, this holy God, who himself has bid us come and that because he longs to forgive us and to cleanse us once more.

Now while it is not good to embrace sin willingly with the intention of subsequently confessing it, it is also not good to delay repentance once we have been made aware of sin. On the one hand we are cheapening grace and trading on it while on the other hand we may well be unwittingly suggesting that we can contribute something to our own forgiveness by being determined to feel bad for a while before we will confess our sins.

When I was a teenager I used to mess around with engines and in order to stop my hands getting too dirty I would use tins of Swarfega barrier cream which stopped oil and grime getting too much into the skin.

Well in the spiritual realm too prevention is better than cure and we should take steps not to allow ourselves to become unclean in the first place!

So should we take care over what we fill our minds with:

Phil.4:8 "Brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

So too we should watch our speech:

Eph 4:29 "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths,"

Eph 5:4 "Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking,"

Col 3:8 "But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth."

And so too should we take care over what we do:

Col.3:17 "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."

Col.3:23 "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,"

If we are alert with regard to our thoughts, words and deeds then our need for ongoing cleansing, while not being completely done away with, will be progressively reduced. And this is possible if by the Spirit we put to death the misdeeds of the body. This is the way He fits for  heaven to live with Him there!

Amen.