TEXT: Psalm 51:2b, 7,10

SUBJECT: Kids’ Sermon #50: Wash Me!

Listen up kids!

This is the second Sunday afternoon of the month and time for another sermon just for you. I hope your mom and dad listen too, but I prepared the sermon for you kids and I prayed that you would understand it, believe it, and do what it says—because true sermons are not the advice of your pastor (or some other man) but the Word of God! When the Lord speaks, we need to listen.

For the last couple of months, we’ve studied the first verse of Psalm 51. Before we move on to the other verses, let me ask you a few questions. These are things we’ve already covered—and if you listened carefully and have a good memory—they’re things you ought to know.

• Who wrote Psalm 51?

• What sort of mood was he in when he wrote it?

• Was that the right mood to be in at the time?

• Don’t answer this one aloud, but: Do you feel this way right now?

• In two words what did David do?

• In one word what did he pray for?

• What is mercy?

• What kind of mercy did David want first?

The first mercy David wants from God is forgiveness—"Blot out my transgressions". He feels horribly guilty because he is horribly guilty and he knows that as long as he is guilty, he can have fellowship with God or go to heaven when he dies. Forgiveness is always the thing you first want from the Lord. You need forgiveness more than anything else and until you’ve got it—you’ve got nothing!

As important and wonderful as forgiveness is, it is not everything. It’s not the only thing David wanted and not the only thing you should pray for.

The second thing the king wanted and the second thing you should pray for is…cleanness.

Listen to the verses again,

David uses different words, but they all mean the same thing: wash, cleanse, and purge all mean Make me clean. After his sins were forgiven, the thing David wanted most was cleanness.

Why did David need washing?

That’s an easy one: for the same reason your hands need washing or the dishes after dinner or the car after it runs through the mud or your clothes after you’ve played all day and gotten all sweaty. Your wash these things because they’re dirty!

David wanted washing because he was dirty, filthy and stinky!

When I say "David was dirty" do you think I mean his hands were greasy or his feet were muddy or his underarms were sweaty? No, that’s not what I mean at all. David was a king and could take all the baths and showers he wanted. He even had servants to scrub his back if he wanted them to. The king’s dirtiness wasn’t on his body.

It was on his soul. David had committed some really wicked sins: he stole a man’s wife, he killed her husband, he covered it up for months, and pretended that everything was fine between himself and the Lord. You can’t get much worse that adultery, murder, and hypocrisy. Yet these were the sins he was guilty of.

His awful sins left a dark and ugly stain on his soul. If you compare his soul to your shirt, then don’t think of a little dust getting on it, but rather, something like a pen leaking all over it. Dust can be brushed off; dirt can be washed away, but ink? That’s a hard one to get out.

And that’s what David’s soul had all over it: the black ink of stealing another man’s wife and the red ink of her husband’s blood. He was stained all the way through.

You kids haven’t committed the same sins that David did. But you’re also stained and the grime has been rubbed into your soul. This is true—even if you’re a good kid and make your parents proud of you.

The Bible says

"All" means everyone—except for the Lord Jesus Christ. Including you and me. Our sins are not little mess ups, but very bad, dirty, filthy, stinky. The Prophet Isaiah puts it this way:

Think of clothes that are so dirty, so gross, and smell so bad that they make you sick. When I was a boy, I knew a girl who was a real slob—her last name could have been, Pigpen! Her whole family was gross. One day she got hurt very badly in a bike accident and I went over to see her. I had never been in her bedroom before—and what a mess! Of all the disgusting things I saw that day, one of them stood out and I can still remember it thirty years later: Her underwear was in the middle of the floor and her cat had had kittens on it! Gross out!

That’s what our sins look like—and smell like—to God. And not just humungous sins, but all sins—from murder to gossip to the thought of foolishness.

We’re all dirty before the Lord. And that means we all need washing. Not a bath or a shower but the washing of our souls.

If your hands are dirty, you know where to go: the bathroom sink. If your whole body is dirty, you know where to go: the bathtub or shower.

But where do you go when your soul is dirty?

Before we get to that, let me ask you: Did David live during the New Testament times or the Old Testament?

He lived under the Old Testament. He was a Jew living under the Law of Moses and all its ceremonies. Did you know that some of these ceremonies were for cleansing? If a man committed some sin, he would confess the sin, offer a sacrifice, and take a special bath, after which the priest would declare him, clean.

The ceremonies were commanded by God and were very good for Israel. Hebrews 9:13 says they were for

The Jew got many blessings from them—and escaped many wars and famines and other bad things because of them.

But as good as these special baths were, you notice that David didn’t take one. He was far too dirty to be made clean by any kind of ceremony.

His sins were so filthy that he went straight to God for washing!

If the Lord did not wash him, David would never be clean!

The same thing is true for you and me. Baptism is a kind of bath and the Bible says it has something to do with forgiveness of sin and washing of the soul. But baptism itself does not wash away your sins!

Only the Lord can do that!

All the verses I started with today have an implied subject—You [that is, God],

The biggest temptation you’ll ever face in life is the one to make yourself clean. Millions have tried it, but not one of them as ever done it.

In the New Testament, the Pharisees were famous for this. They were always trying to clean themselves up. Did they do it? Well, in a certain way, they did. The Pharisees made themselves very, very clean in the eyes of other men.

But they didn’t look so good to the Lord Jesus Christ. He said the Pharisees were something like polished cups full of polluted water or like beautifully painted tombs full of rotting bodies!

That’s the best they could do. And you can’t do any better. Saul of Tarsus was the hardest-working Pharisee who ever lived. Yet, after he was saved, he said all he had done in the past was dung. It was as clean and fresh smelling as…poop!

Nobody can say that. Not David, not me, not you.

You need to be clean. But you can’t do it yourself. Only God can make wash away the pollution of your sins. He says in Ezekiel 36:25,

How does God remove the stain of sin?

What you wash with depends on what kind of mess you have. If your hands are dusty, then water will wash them up just fine. If they’re dirty, you need a little soap with that water. If they’re greasy, ordinary soap won’t do any good at all—you need that slimy stuff that mechanics us (I can’t think of the name of it).

But what if a skunk has sprayed you? A strong smell requires more than an ordinary soap. I’ve been told that nothing but a bath full of tomato juice can get that smell off you.

But the stink of sin is far worse than a skunk’s spray! And you need something stronger than tomato juice to get it off you.

And here it is:

In Revelation 7:14 John saw some men standing before God clean and glistening white. He asked who they were and the angels told him they were the ones who had

This sounds weird and gross to us—bathing in blood? Yuck! But whether it sounds gross or not, it gets the job done!

You can be clean: your dirty mouth, your dirty mind, your dirty soul can be made clean. But only in the blood of Christ. It is only as you believe in His death for you—and keep on believing—not once, but every day—that you’re made clean, clean enough to live with yourself and clean enough to live with God.

Don’t you get tired of being dirty? When I feel that way, I get in the tub and don’t get out until I’m clean.

What’s good for the body is even better for the soul. Are you tired of being dirty on the inside? If you are, God has a bath for you—a bath of grace in the saving work of Christ.

The water is run. The tub is full. Come on it. Wash and be clean.