Clean Hands

“Who can ascend the mountain of the Lord? or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart...” Psalm 24:3-4

In 1847 the concept of germs bringing infection was unheard of. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis observed that pregnant women avoided the student-run clinics and preferred to give birth in the streets because the mortality rate was so high in the clinics. It was almost inevitable that the women died of puerperal fever, an infection of the female reproductive organs. He concluded that the students brought something into the clinic from the mortuary where they performed autopsies. He ordered the students to wash their hands in a chlorinated lime solution before every examination. The death rate dropped from 18% to 1%! 

The amazing thing is Dr. Semmelweis was ostracized and ridiculed because doctors refused to believe their hands were dirty. The wrath of the medical community drove the wise doctor out of Vienna into an insane asylum where he died 14 days after at the age of 47 years old. 

In Psalm 24, we learn that it is only those whose hands are clean and whose heart is pure who can go up God’s mountain and keep company with Him. We cannot claim to have clean hands and a pure heart unless we wash our hands and heart. Just as Dr. Semmelweis advises, we have to do this all the time, because we always come from the mortuary of the world. Just as in the good doctor’s time, many people today ridicule God’s Words and bullheadedly do their own thing. 

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16) 

Let us go to Jesus all the time so He may wash us in His blood, and bathe us in His mercy.