Leviticus 15:31
“Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is among them.”
After a long day of playing, I used to run into the house with my face and hands dirty only to hear my mother say, “Son, go get yourself cleaned up.” As a young boy, I didn’t think I was that dirty. I would go into the bathroom and wash what I thought was dirty, then go into the dining room to eat supper. My mother would look at me and say, “Son, I told you to clean up.” She then took me back into the bathroom and grabbed the washrag and cleaned the back of my neck and behind my ears. She wanted me to be clean before I ate my supper.
A Christian may not have a mother who is making sure they are clean, but they have a Holy Spirit Who indwells them to let them know when they are dirty. If you don’t listen to the Holy Spirit, then you will never know when sin has soiled your life. It is vitally important for the Christian to listen to the Holy Spirit as He tells you to go back to the spiritual bathroom and get yourself clean.
In the verse above, God is showing the Israelites that they needed to clean themselves up from their uncleanness. He shows throughout the chapter some things that cause them to become unclean and what they needed to do to clean up. Those steps they needed to take to clean up are the same steps you must take to clean up from your sin. Let me show you these steps.
First, identify and acknowledge your uncleanness. Don’t try to compare your life to man’s standard; rather, compare it to God’s standard. Man’s standard of living is soiled by sin, and that is why you must not look at man to see if you are clean. Once you identify your sin, you must acknowledge you have a problem. Identifying and acknowledging you have a sin problem is the first step in cleaning yourself up from sin.
Second, separate from those things that caused you to become unclean. You can’t get clean while you are in the mud, you have to get out of the mud to be cleaned. Likewise, you can’t clean yourself up while you continue to run with those with whom you got dirty and with a world that is filled with sin. You must separate from the friends and worldly lifestyles that pulled you into the filth of sin.
Third, wash yourself through the water of God’s Word. God told them in verse 13 to wash themselves with water. God’s Word is the cleansing agent for your sin. You can’t get clean unless you use soap, and God’s Word is the soap that cleans the Christian. If you don’t spend time reading, studying and memorizing God’s Word, you will continually struggle with sin in your life.
Fourth, you must be accountable to someone to be clean from sin. In verse 15, they were to go to the priest for help in being cleansed from their uncleanness. You need to be accountable to someone about your sin. Accountability will put pressure on you to overcome the uncleanness of sin in your life.
Friend, what is the uncleanness in your life? What sin have you struggled with for years? Take these scriptural steps to cleaning up and you will find that God’s method of cleaning up will help you overcome that which has soiled you for so many years