Friday, February 18, 2005
Psalm 51:9 Hide Your face from my blame and wipe away all my perversity.
HIDE YOUR FACE, O GOD
We are not strangers to the concept of hiding. In fact, human nature is very good at the hiding game. It is one of the first things that human nature did when it sinned. Adam and Eve hid themselves when the Lord came to them in the cool of the evening. Hiding sin is as natural as breathing. Do something wrong and our first reaction is to cover it up as best we can, or at least to hide the worst of it. Sometimes we can get away with it. We do that wonderful two-step and throw others off the track, or act surprised as if we knew nothing of what happened.
This does not work with God. We cannot hide sin from God, nor has David in the first verses of this Psalm been looking to do such. David is rather asking the Lord to hide His face from his sins. "Don't look at what I have done. Turn away from it." What David here asks the Lord to do is not a cover up attempt as when we at times ask someone to pretend some thing never happened. David knows that the Lord knows, but the emphasis is on the forgiveness that is there through faith in Jesus. Asking the Lord to hide His face from our sins is simply asking Him to look on us through Jesus Christ so that He does not see us as we are by nature, but as we are through faith in Jesus.
Consider a dirty kitchen counter. There on the counter are all the spills and stains of food, coffee, and wrappings from meat packages. Either one can ignore it all and pretend it isn't there, allowing the filth to build up, or the garbage can be thrown out, then the counter washed with sponge, water and cleanser. The counter top is now clean. That is what David here is seeking from the Lord. He is asking the Lord to take the garbage of sin and throw it out. Take the righteousness of Jesus, wipe us off, and clean us up.
When Isaiah says, that the Lord laid on Him, Jesus, the iniquity of us all, we see our Father lifting away from us our sin and guilt, removing it from us so that we are clean, not simply dirty children which dirt God ignores. We are cleansed from all our perversity through Jesus. 