Lesson 2: Washing at the Cross
Questions 1 and 2
Greetings again friend, welcome back to your course, so good to be here with you today!
Review
We learned in our previous lesson about the absolute necessity for heart change. If we don’t have a heart change, we’ll go from one program to another, studying and learning, put on all kinds of filters and accountability programs, yet keep falling and failing. A heart change remedies this.
So how do we get a heart change?
God: The Source of Heart Change
Well, we will begin to answer that question in this lesson, but first, let me share with you that before I received my heart change, I was so deeply involved in impurity that I ruined one marriage and was well on my way to destroying my second one. But God had other plans. Through a series of events, my wife Jody and I found ourselves at a church where the pastor was also a biblical counselor. We started attending regularly and going to counseling.
What my pastor did to help me was unlike other counseling I had received. He helped me see the gospel! I’ll share more of this story with you throughout the course.
For now, suffice it to say that God has changed and is changing my heart. My marriage is now decades strong, and my heart is free. And while God used my pastor and others along the way, the glory for my transformation goes to God alone for only He can change a human heart.
I’m glad you’ve come to this course, and I am praying that it will be a means of God’s grace in your life, but understand this: no program, friend, mentor, pastor, etc. can change your heart, only God can. Turn to Him and ask Him for this. He will do it, in His time.
Question 1. Are you seeing the need for a heart change and asking God to do it?
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Washing at the Cross
You’ll remember in the previous lesson, we heard David crying out for God to wash him and cleanse him from his sin (Psalm 51:7). This soul cleansing is what is needed for us too. We need to experience a deep scrubbing, a washing of renewal (Titus 3:5), a purifying of our hearts (Titus 2:14).
The reason for this is that pornography and sexual impurity are defiling; they leave dark splotches on our souls, like black ink on canvas. Sexual sin glitters and appeals, but once consumed, it leaves us full of shame and guilt.
And that sin guilt is like an undertow that drags us back out into the ocean of sin. This is the very thing that worldly recovery groups are trying to get us to overcome by “working the program” to reach the final step, so we can now feel better about ourselves and function better. But God has given us a heart-changing, life-transforming way centered in His Son Jesus, and I’m excited to share it with you.
Today we are going to discuss the first of three foundational principles to freedom. This principle is first in importance (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) for without it there is no real hope of freedom.
This first principle is called “Washing at the Cross.” King David prayed to be cleansed from his defilement, to be washed and made new, and that prayer was literally answered years later when Jesus Christ came to this earth, took David’s sin upon Himself and died under the penalty of it, thereby providing a cleansing fountain that removed sin.
What I want us to understand in this lesson is that when we first see the cross of Jesus and believe that He is dying for our sins, we are washed and saved (Titus 3:5) for eternity (John 3:16); and yet coming to the cross is not merely for salvation; it is not a one-time event. It is to happen daily! (Luke 9:23)
And it’s possible that you and I had remained trapped in impurity because we were just walking around dirty and defiled, not knowing how to be cleansed. The key message is: when we are cleansed, we are also freed!
Let’s look at a passage of Scripture today that shows the real function of the cross:
On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity. "On that day, I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more,” declares the Lord Almighty. “I will remove both the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land.
Zechariah 13:1-2 (NIV)
Question 2. What is it that would cleanse people from impurity and remove idolatry from the land?
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