Make My Heart New and Clean Again

Uriah the soldier was dead,
and King David could not stop seeing what he had done.
He had taken Bathsheba, another man's wife, as if she were his own.
Then, to hide it, he had sent her husband, Uriah, to the front of the battle to be killed.
Then Nathan the prophet had pointed straight at him
and said, "You are the man."

So David did a thing kings almost never do.
He wrote a song that said, "I did it."
(He even gave it to the leader of the choir,
so all Israel would sing it after him.)

"Have mercy on me, O God," he sang,
"because your love never lets go.
Wipe out the wrong things I have done.
Wash me, and keep on washing,
until no sin is left on me.

I know what I did.
I see it in the morning.
I see it when I shut my eyes.
I have been going wrong since the day I was born.
Against you, you only, I have sinned,
and done what is evil in your eyes,
and you were right to judge me.

Clean me with hyssop, and I will be clean."

(Hyssop is a bushy plant.
On the night of the first Passover,
God's people dipped it in a lamb's blood
and painted their doorposts with it.)

"Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness again.
You have crushed me down to the bones.
Now let those bones dance.

Don't keep looking at my sins.
Rub them out.

Make a clean heart in me, O God.
Make my insides new and steady.
Don't throw me out of your sight.
Don't take your Holy Spirit away from me.
Give me back the joy of being rescued by you.

Then I will show other people who have gone wrong
the way home to you,
and they will come back.

Save me, God, from the guilt of the blood I spilled,
and I will sing about how good and right you are.
Open my mouth, Lord,
and I will shout your praise!

You don't want a pile of animals on the altar,
or I would bring you a hundred.
What you want is a heart that is sorry,
broken all the way down.
A heart like that, O God,
you will never push away."

David could ask God for a clean heart.
He could not build one.
And at the altar the priests kept killing lambs,
year after year,
because the stains kept coming back.

Hundreds of years went by.
Then God made a promise through the prophet Ezekiel:
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.
I will take out your heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh."

Someone was coming who would do the washing himself.
One afternoon outside Jerusalem,
someone lifted a sponge on a hyssop branch
to a man hanging on a cross.
He drank, and said, "It is finished,"
and he died.
His blood was not painted on a doorpost.
It was poured out for every stain David ever had,
and for all of ours.
Then God raised him from the grave,
and soon he sent his Holy Spirit
to make sorry hearts new.

His name is Jesus,
and the people he washes
come out whiter than snow.