99 44/100% pure

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 First off, if you old, you know what that number means.  If you're a country music fan, you might think it's a line from a Ronnie Milsap song.  For the rest of you, it's what Ivory soap purports itself to be...

I shared that with you because I have a story to tell about Ivory soap.  Without going into too many details, I couldn't sleep last night and in the middle of the night, a hot shower sounded good.  In the first place, my back hurts so a hot anything sounds good, but I thought maybe a shower would help me relax and take my mind off of some things I was dealing with.  

I'm a body wash guy, but there's a bar of Ivory in the shower in case I need it.  It's a good soap to wash one's face with and for some reason, I opted to grab the bar of soap instead of the body wash last night.  I know that's kind of personal stuff, but the thing is this....I felt better and as I was washing with the 99 44/100% pure soap, I got to thinking about something David wrote after his affair with Bathsheba in Psalm 51 verse 7 (KJV)

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Ivory used to be called Ivory Snow.  As I was taking said shower, I thought of these words.  David asked God to cleanse him from his sins and it kind of brought me a little bit of peace.  As I said, I couldn't sleep; sometimes the hardest battles we fight are with our own selves, in our own minds, and sometimes those battles take us back to past sins.  In David's case he wrote those words after coming face to face with his own sins and this is a cry to God to cleanse him from the wrongs he'd done; first the affair, then the murder to cover it up after the plots to cover up the pregnancy that resulted from it failed.  God heard David's cry and forgave but didn't let David escape the consequences of his sins.  They followed him all the days of his life forward.

As I was drying off, it came to me:  I felt clean but the stain of my sins would have still been on me.  The only thing that could cleanse me of my sins was the precious blood of Jesus.

Ivory soap is only 99 44/100% pure.  Jesus was 100% pure.  I was reminded of that tonight as we started studying Psalm 22 in our Bible study class.  David, in Psalm 51 knew that washing himself wasn't going to get it done, either.  Notice, he asks God to cleanse him.  David knew that he needed God to do for him what he couldn't do for himself.  And so do we.  

We need Jesus.  i needed the blood of Jesus to be clean of the sins in my life and that stark reminder from a bar of soap and a shower at 2 a.m. was a very vivid example of what Christ did for me that I could never do for myself.

I wanted to share that story so I wouldn't forget it.  I hope I never do.  I hope I always remember that I'm not my own, that I was bought with a price, and that resonates so much with me tonight.  And I hope you find some value in reading it.

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