Notes of Faith May 17, 2025
Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Psalm 51:7
Some of the flowers mentioned in the Bible are unknown to us in the West. Hyssop is an example of a flowering plant known in the Middle East and southern Europe but unfamiliar to us. It is a shrub-like plant up to two feet tall with woody stems which grow upright, producing leaves and small fragrant flowers in the summer. Cutting and bundling the stems with their leaves intact produces a brush-like tool for dipping and “painting” liquids.
In Egypt, on the night of the first Passover, the Hebrew slaves were instructed to take “a bunch of hyssop,” dip it in a basin of blood from a sacrificial lamb, and spread the blood on the doorposts of their house (Exodus 12:22). The blood would be a sign to “the destroyer” to pass over that house (verse 23). David recalled that imagery when his own sins were found out and he needed to be cleansed: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.”
Thank God today that Jesus is the sacrificial Lamb of God whose blood takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29).
‘Twas grace that gave me to the Lamb, who all my sorrows took.
Philip Doddridge
Ex 12:21-22
21 Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, "Go and take for yourselves lambs according to your families, and slay the Passover lamb. 22 "You shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts; and none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning. (The death angel would “Passover”.)
The wages of sin is death. We earn death through disobedience to God. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But God provided a sacrificial lamb. A perfect sinless sacrifice, to die in our place, that we might have His perfect life placed to our account, to redeem us, to save us, to give us eternal life. That sacrifice is Jesus. There is no other sacrifice for sin and salvation. Praise God for giving His Son and the Son for the glory that is His in those He saves through His blood! Death has lost its victory through life eternal in Jesus!
Pastor Dale