Nothing But the Blood of Jesus

SCRIPTURE: Jeremiah 2:22 For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before Me," says the Lord God.

OBSERVATION: The stain of sin is impossible for me to remove. Trying to cover over it only makes things worse.
The word for 'lye' in this version is actually more like a carbonate of soda. It is nitre, taken from the bottom of lake Nitron in Egypt. When exposed to the sun it becomes dry and hard. Then, when vinegar is poured on it, it bubbles and effervesces, like alka-seltzer. (See Proverbs 25:20 for the same word.) Neither the activity of nitre nor the cleansing power of soap are sufficient to remove the mark of sin. There is no substance known to man that can cleanse a person from sin. There is no activity that I can undertake that will cleanse me of my sin.

APPLICATION: Left only to myself, this verse would be a life sentence. Like the mark that God put on Cain because of his sin, I carry that same mark. Nothing I can do changes that.
That's why Jesus came.
There is a song that keeps going over and over in my mind as I write about this verse:
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
How precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow.
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Jesus' blood becomes more precious to me when I consider it's unique ability to solve my sin problem. Activity can't cleanse me. Soap can't make me clean. Only the blood of Jesus can.

PRAYER: Jesus, thank You for coming to cleanse me of my sin. Your blood is able to do what nothing else could do. I am clean because of You.