The Holiest of All By Andrew Murray

382 abe 1bolie0t of all
wrote :
There are three who bear witness, the Spirit and the water
and the blood. The same Spirit who applies the blood in power
to the heart, takes possession and mastery of the body washed
with water. And where in Scripture
the word and water are
joined together (Eph. v. 26 ; John xiii. 10 ;
xv. 3), it is because
the word is the external manifestation of what must rule our
whole outer life too.
It is in this connection the two expressions are used here :
Our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, our bodies washed
with pure water. The thought was suggested to our author by
the service of the tabernacle. In the court there were only two
things to be seen the brazen altar and the laver. At the one,
the priest received and sprinkled the blood ;
at the other,
he found the water in which he washed, ere he entered the
Holy Place. At the installation of the priests in their office they
were first washed and then sprinkled with blood (Ex. xxix.
4, 20). On the great day of atonement the high priest, too,
had first to wash ere he entered into the Holiest with
the blood (Lev. xvi. 4).
And so the lesson comes to us that if
we draw near with hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience,
we must also have the body washed with pure water. The
liberty of access, the cleansing the blood gives, can only be
enjoyed in a life of which every action is cleansed by the word.
Not only in the heart and the disposition, but in the body and
the outer visible life, everything must be clean. Who shall
ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in PIis Holy
Place ? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart. A heart
sprinkled with the blood, a body washed with pure water from
every stain, these God hath joined together ;
let no man
separate them. There have been some who have sought very
earnestly to enter into the Holiest of All and have failed. The