Cleanliness is next to Godliness
Leviticus 22:3, “Say to them, ‘If any man among all your descendants throughout your generations approaches the holy gifts which the sons of Israel dedicate to the LORD, while he has an uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from before Me; I am the LORD.'”
A saying from the past that I used to laugh at is “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Now, of course when most people used to say that they were referring to a clean, washed body. They were trying to express the idea that it is important to keep things dirt free, but dirt is a fact of life eventually everything is going to collect dirt. Unless things are kept in a totally sterile environment 24 hours a day they are going to get dirty, and if they are kept totally isolated then they are of no use to anyone!
God knew when He gave this command that it was impossible for His priests to keep clean all the time. That’s why He commanded them to go through their own ritual cleansing before they offered the Holy gifts from the Israelites. The cleanliness of the priests, in/of themselves, was no better than the cleanliness of anyone else. Isaiah 64:6 says, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment ; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Not even the priests are right before God, every human being is guilty of sin! Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” None of us are right before God, and the shocking thing is none of us can ever be right with God. That’s to say none of us can ever be right before God without Jesus Christ.
Romans 3:23 reminds us of how far we are from God, and Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death,” reminds us of what we deserve because of our uncleanliness; but Romans 6:23, “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” ends with the promise we have from God what we have been cleaned by the blood of Jesus Christ! And because of His righteousness we can be “dirt free”.
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Father, I ask that You remind me that in myself I am a filthy garment before You, and I thank You for showing me that I can only be clean before You by the Blood of Jesus Christ. In Jesus”name, Amen
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The image above can be found at: http://babystepsjmj.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html
Yes, You Can Ministry 