Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and
in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward
parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge
me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than
snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken
may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create
in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not
away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me
the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free Spirit. (PSALM 51: 5-12)
If I were to
ask you to think with me of a glass you would have a picture in your mind. This
picture would vary from person to person and could well be nothing similar to
my own thoughts. If my description was a champagne glass not only would our
picture become more alike but your mind also begins to fill in why I am asking
you to think about this glass; coffee may mean I want you to wake up and see a
certain thing but champagne is an indication I want you to celebrate something
with me. This is the power of imagery and symbols in our communication.
God uses
these two powerful tools to help us to understand His redemption and life in
us. The symbolisms of the scripture are seen by some as a way of hiding the
truth but in reality they are meant to be a way to better explain to us the
things of God. Yet to understand them we must study the way in which they are
used by the scripture and allow the scripture themselves to define them.
I set out to
discuss our need for being purged of the thoughts and ways generated in us by
the world, the flesh, and the devil in order to experience the fullness of the
life of God shared with us. The Lord it seems has taken me into a different perspective
of discussing the symbolism of hyssop in scripture.
Hyssop in
scripture is used to symbolize the work of the Holy Spirit in our salvation. If
we look at this symbol we can better see the way in which we trust in God as
our master and maker and how we become what God has told us we are.
And the Lord spake unto Moses and
Aaron in the land of Egypt saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning
of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak ye unto all
the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall
take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb
for an house: And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his
neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls;
every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb
shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from
the sheep, or from the goats: And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day
of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall
kill it in the evening. And they shall
take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door
post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it. And they shall eat the flesh in that night,
roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.
Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head
with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof. And ye shall let nothing of it
remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye
shall burn with fire. And thus shall ye
eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your
hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord's passover. For I will pass
through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the
land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute
judgment: I am the Lord. And the blood
shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the
blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy
you, when I smite the land of Egypt. EXODUS 12: 1-13
And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in
the basin and strike the lintel and the two side post with the blood that is in
the basin and none of you shall go out until the morning EXODUS 12: 22
It is the life blood poured out that saves us from the
destruction, it is faith in God’s word that makes us to trust in the blood, but
for the blood to be effective it must be applied. It cannot be applied by a man’s
hand, for it is not by might (works) or by power (will) of man, that God’s
salvation comes but by His Spirit. The blood must be applied by hyssop (the
Spirit).
It is the blood of Jesus that gives us life but it is the
Spirit that quickens our mortal bodies. The blood applied to our life is the
only effective power we have part of. To make a comparison to the natural the
scripture tells us that the life is in the blood. We know thanks to modern
science that this is true because the blood transports the oxygen which is
vital to all our bodily functions. What cannot be overlooked is how the oxygen
gets to the blood. This is facilitated by the breath.
Now the Hebrew word for breath and Spirit are the same. In
this carnal world the blood cannot be sustained and made effective without the breath
and the breath is of no use without the blood. The same is true of our life in
God; without the Spirit the power of the blood is not applied in our life and
of course without the blood the Spirit can only serve witness to our death.
Jesus said that when the Spirit came He would show us all
things and also that He would not speak of Himself but only those things of
Messiah. So it is with great humbleness that the Spirit, which is the life of
God and Jesus, that raised both Jesus and those who believe into a life that is
shared of the Father, joins the pillars and post of our body soul and spirit
with the blood of the sacrificial lamb of God to the end that we are kept of
God.
Though it is important to understand the symbols of unleavened
bread, and the lamb and the blood, the doorpost of our habitation are not joined
with these things without hyssop.
In my next post we will look at Leviticus and cleansing of a
leaper.
