The Lord has been revealing that He is ready to purge the Body of Christ. Purging is necessary so that we can give Him the offering of pure, holy praise and true worship, in accordance with Malachi 3: 3 which says, “He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver;
He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness.”
God wants true repentance from His people, and if God is going to judge the world, then judgement must begin in the Church first.
The Purpose of Purging
Purging brings fruit, faithfulness, and acceptable worship before God. He wants to purge the sinful ways out of His people – the poor attitudes and pitfalls, the rebellious ways and the disobedience so that He will receive full submission. There are even people within the Body of Christ who think they know more than their leaders. So even when their leaders gives them instructions to pass on to the people, they would change the instructions to the people as they saw fit.
Purging brings growth and when there is no growth God has to prune. (John 15) Purging is like taking a bitter ‘washout’. David said in Psalm 51 that God should purge him with hyssop – a bitter bush, for him to be clean. God wants to wash us with His blood for us to be clean. Hyssop was a herb associated with cleansing and purification; symbolically it means cleansing the soul.
The Hebrew word for wash is not the one used for a simple cleaning of a dish in water, but rather washing of the clothes by beating. David was asking for a thorough cleansing of the soul. (Numbers 19: 6) Psalm 51: 11 reveals that we must ask God to cleanse us so that He will not cast us out of His Presence – which is the absence of His Spirit.
Psalm 51: 16 tells us that ritual sacrifice or any other religiosity without a change of attitude within the inner man falls short of true repentance. God is ready to deliver us and purge us, but only those with a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart.
Purging of the Prophet & Prophetic Ministry
One has to be honest with God. (Isaiah 66: 1 – 2) The focus should never be on a physical building, but the spiritual temple. Psalms 34: 18 says: “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.” We want God to be near to us and we need Him to save us.
In Psalm 51: 6, David said He wanted truth within him – not only in the inward parts but also in the hidden part – the soul. David wanted to be clean and wanted God to purge Him so that He would line up with the Word.
Isaiah 6: 7 says: “And he touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.”
So it was necessary for Isaiah to be purged so that he could fulfill his purpose, and also that his eyes would open to see the unclean lips and the unclean lifestyle that existed in his environment. He knew that a sinful man in the presence of God would be doom if there was no holiness. So he wants us to know that God’s innermost nature is Holiness. Holiness requires separation. For many Christians, there is no distinction between their ways and the world’s ways. God wants to break the strongholds. There are many within the prophetic ministry, who are accurate, but are living sinful lives – sexual impurity, gossip, and open sin – church leaders sleeping with or living (unmarried) with church members. This is why moral cleansing must take place in the heart of every sinner, and this can only be done through the shed blood of the Lamb of God. When Christians sin, that hinders other people from coming to God.
Vessels of Honor
2 Timothy 2: 21 – 22 tells us that Christian teachers and leaders are to be righteous in character and conduct, and that only in righteous will they be fit for God’s work. To resist temptation is to flee from it, and we must pursue the following:
- Righteousness
- Faith
- Love
- Peace
God wants us to flee from sin and pursue holiness.
Throughout our lives as Christians, we either move from or toward something that peaks our interest. You either chase or you are being chased. We must set goals and Godliness must be our goal. So if that is so, then holiness, faith, love, peace and righteousness will be what we pursue. Put those goals on your wall or mirror.
1 Corinthians 5: 6 & 8 speaks about immorality and how it defiles the church. The Corinthians at that time were very tolerant and compromising of the immoral behavior in their midst due to the environment in which they lived. It was the norm to live immorally and they also had a false notion of what God’s grace was about – they took God’s grace for granted. Sons were sleeping with their fathers’ wives and so on. Paul, in the book of Corinthians, was saying that sin – the leaven – had spread, and by all counts, if sin is left unchecked it will spread.
In the Bible, leaven is almost always symbolic of sin. Ordinarily, leaven is any substance, (for example, yeast or baking powder) that causes fermentation and expansion of dough or batter. So, like leaven that permeates the whole lump of dough, sin will spread in a person, a church, or a nation, eventually overwhelming and bringing its participants into its bondage and eventually to death (Galatians 5:9). Romans 6:23 tell us that “the wages of sin is death,” which is God’s judgment for sin, and this is the reason that Christ died—to provide a way out of this judgment for sin if man will repent of his sins, accept Christ as his Passover sacrifice, and have his heart changed so that he can conform his life to what God commands.
Recognizing all this, know that there is nothing that the Blood of Jesus can’t wash away; it is the “App” for sin.