Today's Message: CLEAN HANDS AND PURE HEARTS

Praise the Lord!!

“... Touch no unclean thing! Come out from it and be pure, you who carry the vessels of the Lord. ” (Isaiah 52:11)

When King Hezekiah took the throne of Judah, the nation was a moral and spiritual garbage, with idolatrous altars literally on every street corner. But King Hezekiah turned the entire scenario and led his people into a powerful national revival. After cleaning out the neglected and defiled temple of God, Hezekiah called the people for a national Passover celebration. It has been long since the people of God had observed this holy remembrance of God's deliverance. And so a very large crowd of people assembled in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. In the midst of celebration, the priests and Levites stopped what they were doing. II Chronicles 30:15-16 says, "They (the people) slaughtered the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the second month. The priests and the Levites were ashamed and consecrated themselves and brought burnt offerings to the temple of the Lord. Then they took up their regular positions ..” Why did they do so? Because they were deeply aware of their own sin, their own compromise and their own failures and so they consecrated themselves to the Lord to get rid of their garbage. They realized they were not holy enough to handle the holy things of the Lord.

Dear friends, like these priests and Levites, we may have been entrusted with some spiritual responsibility - teaching, leading, preaching, counseling, organizing or administering God's work. We need to always remember that we are handling the very things of God - the holy God. We should never ever let our work for Him become careless or mechanical or self-serving. It is a solemn, even a dangerous mistake to handle the holy without clean hands. "Serving Christ is not fun and games, or just a little spiritual exercise. It requires a holy life", writes Ron Hutchcraft. So let us first purify ourselves from all uncleanness before we come to God’s presence.

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, you have given me a great spiritual responsibility of serving you. But I realize that I am not holy enough to minister to you. I see the dirt in my heart and I want to deal with it before I handle the holy. Cleanse me, I pray, with the blood of Jesus. Amen.