We need to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit so that we never come to take sin lightly. Lady MacBeth was at least bothered by her conscience. In fact, God hates our hypocrisy (Isaiah 1:14). He isn’t impressed with our special music, our preaching, our praying, or our singing if we are carrying bloodguilt around. Is their blood on our hands? That is, is our conscience crying out that we are guilty before God for having broken His commandments, for failing to do the good we know we should do, or for being caught up in self-righteousness? Ecclesiastes 5:1 says, “Guard your steps as you go to the house of God and draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools for they do not know they are doing evil.” Just going through the religious motions is no good if we haven’t drawn near to God by seeking Him with all of our hearts in purity and holiness by faith. When we enter the house of God, we need to think about the state of our hearts. Then, once their hands were clean and their hearts pure (Psalm 24:3-5), they could enter the presence of God in worship and praise Him in His house in a way that would bring Him joy rather than grief. They needed to begin doing good, seeking justice, and defending the needy (v. 16-17), all of their “holy” and “sacred” acts were worthless and even annoying to God. Until they were willing to wash themselves and make themselves clean by repenting and seeking God’s forgiveness (v. He says that He will hide from them when they pray and that He will not listen to their petitions because their “hands are covered with blood” (v. He says that their solemn assemblies, feasts, holy days, incense, offerings, and prayers are a burden to Him and that they are making Him weary (v. 13) in light of the fact that they are constantly sinning and violating the laws of God.

In Isaiah 1, the Lord tells Israel that He has had enough of their animal sacrifices and that He takes no pleasure in them (v. Long before Shakespeare came along, our Lord indicted the people of Israel for a similar sin, saying that they had blood on their hands. Of course, there is no blood visible to the eye, but her conscience, even while she is asleep, knows that there is blood on her hands. After MacBeth and Lady MacBeth conspire to murder King Duncan, Lady MacBeth, who initially seems the more hardened to the effects of guilt, essentially loses it and begins ranting about the blood that she can’t get off her hands no matter how many times she washes them. One of the more iconic scenes in classic literature is played out in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Pure heart clean hands