"Leprosy & Mold & Bodily Discharges (Oh My!)" (Lev. 11-15) | 2/25/24
Leviticus 11-15 | 2/25/24 | Will DuVal
Last week we left off our study of Leviticus in ch10 with the troubling story of Nadab & Abihu, the priestly sons of Aaron whom God struck DEAD “merely” for offering the wrong kind of incense on God’s altar. To which some might respond: “Wow, God, OVERREACT much?”
But to those who would presume to sit in judgment over God’s judgment, here is how the LORD replies, in Psalm 50: God rebukes “the wicked”, for not taking their sin very seriously, and he tells them, ‘See, your problem is: “You think that I am like YOU.” (v21) You think that I view your sin like YOU do.”
But, God says, the TRUTH is: I am NOTHING like you! Isa 55:9, God declares, “as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways”. I’m not LIKE you!
And friends, without understanding that very basic truth, you and I cannot even HOPE to understand the most IMPORTANT truth of ALL: the GOSPEL.
The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ forgives, purifies, and reconciles sinners like us with a holy God by his atoning death and LIFE-giving resurrection, which alone can SAVE those who would simply turn from their sin and trust in Him, in Jesus.
And the gospel is EVERYTHING to us, as Christians!
But… the good news of SALVATION is predicated on the BAD news of SEPARATION. These twin truths that:
1) There really IS a God, who really is HOLY. And yet…
2) We really do SIN, which really does SEPARATE us from him (Isa 59:2).
In other words: God’s not LIKE us. HE is HOLY. WE are NOT.
BUT… God adds: I WANT you to be like me; I WANT you to be holy, as I am holy. God will repeat that TWICE this morning in ch11, and 4 more times later in the book of Leviticus. “Be holy, as I am holy.” To be HOLY means to be “set apart”; to be DIFFERENT, other. And God’s gonna show us how here in Leviticus 11-15; how HE is different from US.
At a HIGH level, the ANSWER, and the unifying theme of all 5 chapters here, is that God is PURE, whereas we are often IM-pure or “unclean”. The words “clean” and “unclean” appear 157x in these 5 chapters. And that DISTINCTION between “clean” and “unclean” was meant to REMIND the Israelites of the distinction between GOD and US, CREATOR and CREATURE. Who HE is and who WE are. So the various ritual observances we’re gonna read about here - what not to eat; what not to touch; what to do after childbirth; what to do when your house gets infected with MOLD; or you get SICK; or you’re on your PERIOD; or after SEX - ALL of these laws and rituals were meant to remind Israel of who their GOD is. They are OBJECT LESSONS, tangible symbols.
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Every time I put on my wedding ring, I’m reminded of my covenant commitment to my wife. Every time you see your tattoo, you’re reminded of how much you MISS your deceased MOTHER (or how much you REGRET your ex-boyfriend).
Every time an Israelite would eat kosher, or avoid a corpse, or take a BATH, or scrub their HOUSE… they would be reminded of their uncleanness, not JUST physically, but SPIRITUALLY as well; they were reminded of their SIN, and thus their need for PURIFICATION.
Moreover, they’d be reminded not just of who THEY were, but of who GOD is.
THAT’s why these 5 chapters, filled with obscure and obsolete laws that we no longer follow today, under the new covenant in Christ, are nevertheless still RELEVANT for us today: they remind us TOO of who GOD is - the SAME God ISRAEL remembered every meal and bathtime 3,500 years ago; he hasn’t changed. So we would do well to ASK ourselves this morning as we work our way through these laws: how might WE become more mindful of our sinfulness and God’s holiness in the everyday moments of OUR lives as well?
Now, TYPICALLY this is the time in the service where I’d invite you to STAND with me, but since we have 5 chapters & 204 verses to cover, I’m gonna give your legs a break. We won’t read every single verse this morning, not even MOST of them, actually. I trust that you all are reading along at HOME before you COME on Sundays, like you’re supposed to. So I’m mainly gonna hit the high points - SUMMARIZE, then CATEGORIZE, then ANALYZE and finally PRACTICALIZE for you (try and make the text practical for us).
There are a LOT of ways we could outline these 5 chapters. Skip Heitzig labels them this way: they ALL concern a person’s ritual impurity as a result of something:
1) In ch11, it’s what goes INTO your body & what is touched by your body (laws about food & corpses)
2) In ch12, it’s what is produced by the body (namely, babies)
3) In chs13 & 14, it’s what grows ON the body (leprosy)
4) And finally, in ch15, it’s what issues FROM the body (namely, discharges of fluid).
I’m gonna organize them around what each of these laws has to teach us, remind us, about ourselves, and more importantly, about GOD - in what ways he is holy, DIFFERENT from us.
And we BEGIN in ch11 with the recognition that unlike us, God is neither: 1) FALLEN nor COMMON. (11:1-23, 41-47)
He is the OPPOSITE; namely, God is pure & holy.
Let’s read just a LITTLE of ch11 together:
“And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying to them, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, These are the living things that you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth. 3 Whatever parts the hoof and is cloven-footed and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat. 4 Nevertheless, among those that chew the cud or part the hoof, you shall not eat these: The camel, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. 5 And the rock badger, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. 6 And the hare, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. 7 And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you.”
And we won’t read it, but we see a similar pattern in vv9-12 with the SEA animals, and then in vv13-19 with the FLYING animals, and then in vv20-23 with the INSECTS.
Now, there are lots of THEORIES about how God determined his LISTS here. One is the HEALTH theory: God warned them to avoid PORK cuz it’s bad for you and contained higher amounts of harmful bacteria. The problem with that theory is that camel and rabbit are actually quite healthy meats, while BEEF, cow meat, is actually worse for you than PORK.
I think the BETTER explanation is TWO-fold. First, notice what God says in v3: “Whatever parts the hoof and is cloven-footed and chews the cud” - why those criteria? Because that’s how beasts of the field are SUPPOSED to be, were CREATED to be. Allan Moseley explains (116): “[Some] interpreters have pointed out that the animals listed in Lev 11 are divided into the same categories in which they were created. The first chapter of Genesis divides the animals into sea animals, sky animals/birds, land animals, and animals that creep on the ground. Lev 11 [does the same]…. From that parallel [they] say that the forbidden foods of Lev 11 are forbidden because their appearance does not conform to the creation order. For example, fish that don’t have fins or scales… appear to defy their proper form and kind”.
Have you ever wondered: if God created everything GOOD in the beginning, did he really make MOSQUITOES? HORSE-flies? Fire-ants?
Well, what if he DIDN’T! At least not in the form we CURRENTLY encounter them; what if they are the result of the FALL? We know God cursed the SNAKE in Genesis 3; it lost its legs and has to crawl on its belly henceforth; what if that was just the beginning of the curse as it applied to the animal kingdom?
It makes a lot of SENSE to ME, looking at this list: camels - nasty animals! Lobsters (v10) - BIZARRE, freakish (and disgusting too!). Ostriches (v16) - UNNATURAL doesn’t even BEGIN to cover it; a BIRD that is taller than Pastor BRIAN and CAN’T fly, but can RUN faster than a GREYHOUND, with a head that’s DETACHED from its BODY - that is downright DEMONIC if you ask me. Remember when the DEMONS came and impregnated humans in Genesis 6 and spawned the NEPHILIM? I think they must’ve got some BIRDS pregnant too and they became OSTRICHES. That’s MY theory.
Vultures (v13), SCORPIONS, BATS (v16) - a BAT is a RAT with wings and NEEDLES for teeth and a thirst for BLOOD; these animals are WICKED, and terrifying and disgusting. They are DISTORTIONS of God’s perfectly good creation order, and they are to be AVOIDED.
But friends: let’s not forget whose FAULT that is. There wouldn’t BE any bats or mosquitoes if not for OUR SIN! Moreover, the animals weren’t the ONLY ones affected by the Fall, were they? We humans, originally designed in God’s own perfectly GOOD image, we all suffer the SHATTERING and DISTORTION of God’s image within us; that’s why Colossians 3 talks about how Jesus has to REMAKE us, “re-NEW us” in the image of God.
We ALL suffer the effects of the FALL. Not just for ADAM’s sin; but OUR OWN sin. Rom 5:12 “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned”.
But God is not LIKE us. He is “not a MAN, that he should [sin, and need to] REPENT”, the Bible says (Num 23:19). And Israel was reminded of this at every single MEAL - their sinfulness; God’s holiness.
The second reason God labeled certain foods off-limits was simply to set Israel APART from her neighbors, the surrounding pagan nations. Israel was supposed to be DIFFERENT, and their DIET was just one way to PRACTICE that, externalize it. God is not COMMON. So you TOO, be “HOLY” as I am holy, he commanded them.
What does this mean for US, today? Cuz we don’t EAT kosher anymore. In Mark 7:19, Jesus declared ALL foods CLEAN. Because he realized that over the 1,500 years since God had given Moses that SYMBOL, that OBJECT lesson, Israel had completely forgotten the true MEANING of the SYMBOL! It would be like if the CHURCH today went around BAPTIZING folks without any reference at ALL to them being washed of their SINS; the INTERNAL cleansing that the symbol is intended to POINT to. Or if we came to the Lord’s TABLE, communion every Sunday, just to satisfy our PHYSICAL hunger with a cracker and juice, without any remembrance of Jesus’ BODY and BLOOD that he gave to feed us SPIRITUALLY. The Pharisees had so BASTARDIZED the law - the SYMBOL - that Jesus said, “You know what: I’m just gonna FULFILL the law for you; now go eat whatever you WANT.” And when Peter didn’t quite catch on, God COMMANDED him to eat bacon in Acts 10. ““What God has made clean, do not call common” or unclean (v15).
But here’s the PRINCIPLE, Church: God wants us to be HOLY. Different. Set apart. Maybe it IS in what we eat, drink. Maybe it DOES mean 1 glass of wine for you, when your unbelieving friends are enjoying 2 or 3. But our externalized holiness should also extend to things like… our MEDIA consumption. What we WATCH, LISTEN to. The point of the Leviticus 11 is: what we put in our bodies MATTERS, and our MOUTHS aren’t the ONLY way stuff comes in. How about our EYES… our EARS… How about our HEARTS? 2 Corinthians 6 says, “Don’t be unequally yoked with unbelievers”; don’t marry a non-Christian. Don’t let them that DEEP inside your HEART.
Garbage in, garbage out. So “be HOLY,” God says, “as I am HOLY”.
“Whether you eat or drink, [or WATCH or LISTEN or DATE or MARRY] or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31).
#2) God is NOT… MORTAL or VULNERABLE; instead he is eternal & unassailable (11:24-40; 13:1-59).
Look at the MIDDLE part of ch11 now; v24: “by these [animals] you shall become unclean. Whoever touches their carcass shall be unclean”. And vv24-40 here deal with ritual impurity as a result of contact with a CORPSE. And not just the “unclean” animals; v39 clarifies that “if any animal of which you may eat dies, whoever touches its carcass shall [ALSO] be unclean”. Why?
Because DEATH defiles. Because death was BIRTHED by SIN. Moreover, it defiles because death is literally UNGODLY. Our God is a God of LIFE. God IS Life (Jn 5:26). It’s not just that God DOESN’T die; God CAN’T die. Death is completely contrary to his very NATURE. So once again, Israel was REMINDED of this - both God’s eternality as well as their own MORTALITY - every time they saw a dead BODY.
And we should be TOO. It’s still a pretty good rule of thumb for us to avoid touching carcasses whenever possible, and when we CAN’T avoid it, to go WASH UP afterward. But every time we ENCOUNTER death, whether you’re just driving by that flattened squirrel on the side of the road or whether you’re attending a FUNERAL, like I will be this afternoon, for NICK, the neighbor I mentioned last Sunday - he DIED on Monday; pray for his family. Specifically, pray that this funeral today will not only remind them of Nick’s LIFE, but of his DEATH as well, and that it might therefore remind them of their OWN inevitable, unavoidable deaths as WELL. And pray that Nick’s family and friends’ contemplation of their OWN mortality might drive them into the arms of the God of LIFE, who alone has the power to OVERCOME death, and who PROVED it by raising his Son JESUS from the grave.
Now flip ahead to ch13, and the “laws about LEPROSY”, as my Bible titles it. 59 verses; let’s just read the first EIGHT, to get a taste: “The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 2 “When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling or an eruption or a spot, and it turns into a case of leprous disease on the skin of his body, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons the priests, 3 and the priest shall examine the diseased area on the skin of his body. And if the hair in the diseased area has turned white and the disease appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a case of leprous disease. When the priest has examined him, he shall pronounce him unclean. 4 But if the spot is white in the skin of his body and appears no deeper than the skin, and the hair in it has not turned white, the priest shall shut up the diseased person for seven days. 5 And the priest shall examine him on the seventh day, and if in his eyes the disease is checked and the disease has not spread in the skin, then the priest shall shut him up for another seven days. 6 And the priest shall examine him again on the seventh day, and if the diseased area has faded and the disease has not spread in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him clean; it is only an eruption. And he shall wash his clothes and be clean. 7 But if the eruption spreads in the skin, after he has shown himself to the priest for his cleansing, he shall appear again before the priest. 8 And the priest shall look, and if the eruption has spread in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it is a leprous disease.”
Few things to note here: first, the Hebrew word translated as “leprous” here - tsa-ra-ath - can really refer to a whole RANGE of skin diseases, not just Hansen’s disease, modern-day leprosy. That much is EVIDENT by the widely varying symptoms listed here: the disease in v3 may go DEEPER than the skin and turn one’s hairs WHITE; but the disease described in v10 is a flesh-EATING one. The disease mentioned in vv18 & 42 causes BOILS and then “reddish-white spots”. The disease in v30 turns your hairs “yellow and thin”; “It is an itch, a leprous disease of the head or the beard.” According to vv47-58, SOME of these diseases weren’t even just relegated to one’s SKIN, since they were able to spread to and then continue to grow on and spread within one’s CLOTHING. As a matter of fact, ch14, v34 will even use this SAME word - tsa-ra-ath - to describe SOME kind of “disease” that can even “break out” in one’s HOUSE, probably a FUNGUS or MOLD or MILDEW of some kind. So although it is translated “leprous” here, it is used 29x in these 2 chapters as a CATCH-all, to refer to any GROSS, transmissible contagion that, if left unchecked, could cause DEATH.
And therefore, God instructed them NOT to let such diseases GO unchecked, but rather, in every ONE of these cases, the person was commanded to go before the PRIEST, who, amongst ALL of his OTHER roles - religious leader, legal expert, judge, butcher - the priest was ALSO expected to be a HEALTH inspector. And in ch14, a BUILDING inspector.
And while some of God’s instructions might seem HARSH to us - vv45 & 46 say ““The leprous person… shall wear torn clothes… and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ 46 He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease… He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp”; lepers were social OUTCASTS - but we’ve gotta remember: this was before modern MEDICINE. These diseases were INCURABLE. So in his MERCY, and out of concern for the REST of his people, the entire VILLAGE, God invented quarantining here, 3,500 years ago, not to PUNISH the sick, but to PROTECT the healthy.
But once again, the underlying PRINCIPLE here, that all of this POINTS us to - is just how vulnerable and at RISK, how FRAGILE we are; you and I are just one handshake, one cough, one WORSHIP song - your neighbors are just SPEWING those aerosol particles all around you - and all it takes is one tiny, microscopic, unseeable germ to land you in BED for the next WEEK. Glued to the TOILET for the next 24 hours.
We are VULNERABLE. To DISEASE and ultimately, to DEATH.
But friends: God is NOT. He is ETERNAL and UNASSAILABLE. God is not - CANNOT be - threatened. He is IN-vulnerable; INCAPABLE of being hurt.
And at least ONE of the reasons that God ALLOWS illnesses to continue to plague this fallen world of ours, is to FLAUNT it: just how invincible HE is. There’s another APPLICATION point for you: God wants us to be REMINDED of his invincibility every time we encounter sickness.
Remember that, the next time YOU are glued to the toilet; it’s an occasion for WORSHIP: “God - you are UNASSAILABLE! I’m just a fragile, vulnerable CREATURE” - sickness sure has a way of HUMBLING us, doesn’t it; I don’t care HOW big and important you think you are; Donald Trump gets SICK; Taylor Swift will have a 24-hr date with her fancy toilet SOMETIME in the next year or two; we are ALL susceptible - “but God, YOU are NOT! You are UNTOUCHABLE!”
By the way, I cannot move on to point #3 without highlighting v40 of ch13: ““If a man's hair falls out from his head, he is bald; he is clean.”
No quarantining needed HERE, friends: God has pronounced me “CLEAN!” We read these chapters last week in our D-group for our Bible-in-a-year reading plan, and Brad Young shared that Leviticus 13:40 is his “life verse”. Amen, brother. I feel you.
#3) These laws remind us that God is NOT CREATED or GENDERED; rather, he is Creator and Unbounded (12:1-8; 15:1-33).
Many Christians are BEFUDDLED by ch12. Because as we’ve pointed out, one of the common themes of these chapters is that DEATH defiles. But THEN we read in ch12, v2 that “If a woman conceives and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean for seven days.” And you’re thinking “WAIT a minute; are you telling me that LIFE actually defiles as WELL?” Giving birth, bringing LIFE into the world… WHY??
And I think there are THREE possible ways to make sense of God’s law here, and they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive.
First, MOST scholars argue that it’s not actually the BIRTH that makes a mother impure, but the BLOOD that accompanies it; v7 says, “she [must] be clean from the flow of her blood.” And because BLOOD was associated with DEATH, THAT’s why she became temporarily impure.
But a SECOND possibility is that the birth DOES also defile her, because even though God IS a God of LIFE, and even though children ARE a “blessing from the Lord” (Ps 127:3); even though God COMMANDED us to “be fruitful and MULTIPLY”, and FILL the earth with babies… the fact of the matter is: because of the Fall, every BIRTH brings one more SINNER into this world. When Trey and Jen bring baby Luxton to church, as much as we will all gather ‘round and fawn and tell them how PRECIOUS he is, how ADORABLE he is, we WON’T remark - like OTHERS might - about how SWEET & INNOCENT he is - because he’s NOT. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,” Psalm 51:5 says, “and in sin did my mother conceive me”. Remember Romans 5:12 “sin came into the world through one man, and… spread to all men”. That baby - cute and cuddly as he may be - is a natural-born SINNER; he is WIRED from BIRTH to think and care only for HIMSELF. He must be TAUGHT to care about anyone ELSE; including GOD.
And that is all true. But I think there’s a THIRD reason why a mother was ritually impure after giving birth, and that’s simply because, once AGAIN, childbirth was yet another reminder of how literally un-GOD-like we humans are. We must be BORN. We had to be CREATED. But God is eternally SELF-existent. “From everlasting to everlasting, [He is] GOD” (Ps 90:2). Some people ask, “Well, if God created everything, then what created GOD?” And the obvious and TRUE answer is: NOTHING. Because God wasn’t CREATED. That’s why his NAME, Yahweh, just means “I AM”. I just AM! I am the ground of ALL being; the very SOURCE of all life and existence.
And childbirth REMINDS us of that - we are created; God is creator. Even to the extent that God made us LIKE him - gave us TOO the ability to create life, to BRING children into the world - it’s a reminder of how DIFFERENT our creating is from GOD’S: We need another PERSON to create; God doesn’t need ANYONE. We’ve gotta have SEX (sure, we GET to have sex; but as those of us who dealt with infertility can tell you, when you want to make a baby but it’s not working out, even something as wonderful as SEX can become a BURDEN, a source of STRESS). Then even when it DOES work out, we’ve gotta wait and hope and pray for 9 months. And then the big JOYFUL day finally arrives, but because of the FALL - Eve’s CURSE - it is ALSO the most scary, PAINFUL day of your life, isn’t it, moms?? 3,500 years ago in Moses’ day, as many as 1 in 4 babies are estimated not to have SURVIVED delivery, and because most women had MULTIPLE babies, as many as 1 in 4 mothers are estimated to have DIED eventually as a RESULT of childbirth. Creating is COSTLY for us.
But God SPEAKS, and things come into BEING. He creates by the word of His POWER.
Now, if you DID do the reading for this morning, there’s something ELSE in ch12 that might have TROUBLED you: vv2-4 say “If a woman… bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days… [Then circumcise him on the EIGHTH day…] Then she shall continue [in her uncleanness] for thirty-three days”. But v5 says, “But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean for two weeks… And she shall continue in the blood of her purifying for sixty-six days.” So TWICE as unclean, for a baby girl. Why?
Some scholars suggest that because the BLOOD makes a woman impure, this is a recognition that the baby girl ALSO contained that same defiling blood within HER, so a mother had to be purified of TWO bloodflows, her present one and her daughter’s future one.
Others suggest that the male child’s CIRCUMCISION on the eighth day somehow served to PURIFY his mother, so she wouldn’t have to MISS this important ceremony for him due to her own ritual impurity.
Whatever the reason, the point I want to highlight here is that as HUMANS, you and I are GENDERED. There are MEN, and there are WOMEN, and God had different LAWS for us BOTH. And as much as we want to CELEBRATE our genderedness - we throw gender REVEAL parties, to CELEBRATE our baby’s BOY-ness or GIRL-ness… we teach Sunday school classes on “Biblical Masculinity or Femininity”... as much as we CELEBRATE it, we ought to also recognize that it’s just one more thing about us that makes us NOT like GOD. God is not a MAN; the Bible uses masculine pronouns and metaphors for God - he is our FATHER - but they’re just that: METAPHORS. It feels CRASS to even point it out, but God doesn’t have male reproductive organs. God is SPIRIT, John 4 says; he doesn’t have a physical BODY. JESUS does, his SON. But not God the Father. But rather than limiting him - God’s body-lessness is actually a feature of his UN-limitedness. God’s gender-lessness makes him BOUNDLESS. Think about it: my being a MAN, wonderful though it may be, means I will never be able to give birth, or breastfeed, or flirt and get out of a speeding ticket. But ladies, you're being a WOMAN, wonderful though it is, means that you can’t open pickle jars, or pee standing up, or PREACH
And we don’t have time here to get into ALL the differences between us, and why God DESIGNED it that way - the BEAUTY of his creating us “male and female”; remember: gender is NOT a result of the Fall! It was there in Genesis ONE: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (1:27).
And I’ve heard churches talk about what it means to be made in the “masculine” image of God vs. the “feminine” image of God; I’m here to tell you: there AIN’T no “masculine image of God”! That third line of Genesis 1:27 - the part where God said “male and female I created them” - that was to make it clear to us that our being made in God’s IMAGE does NOT make us mini-GODS. God made us LIKE him, while simultaneously giving us these penises and vaginas - giving us bodies in GENERAL - to make it clear that at the SAME time, we are VERY different from him. God’s not LIKE us. He’s not LIMITED by a BODY, or a GENDER.
And while we’re TALKING about the limitations of our bodies, and our genders, let’s go ahead and knock out ch15 now: laws about BODILY DISCHARGES. Arguably the GROSSEST chapter in the entire Bible. But I will say: I LOVE God for including this in his word. Because it proves once again that he cares about EVERY ASPECT of our lives. Someone complained last week that I mentioned “POOP” in my opening joke. I said, “I guess I could call it DUNG next time, if you prefer, since that is explicitly biblical.” A rose by any other name… you can call it what you want, but POOP is in the Bible - it was in Leviticus 8 just last week; what God instructed the priests to do with the bull’s DUNG, after they SLIT its throat, and the animal lost control of its bowels and DEFECATED, the priest needed to know what to do with that “dung”. And unlike some of us nice, prim & proper church folks, God isn’t embarrassed talking about poop or penises - that’s what the Hebrew word “basar” in v2 of ch15 now, is a euphemism for; “When any man has a discharge from his [BASAR]” - God’s not embarrassed talking about SEX or SEMEN or MENSTRUATION; this is real stuff of LIFE. HUMAN life, anyway; NOT life for GOD. Which, once again, is the whole POINT. God doesn’t suffer from “bodily discharges”. He’s not LIKE us.
And we won’t spend a LOT of time on ch15 - you can submit your questions and I’ll try and cover them in the “AFTER the sermon” podcast tomorrow; “why is this guy with the discharge SPITTING on people, in v8?!” I don’t know that one. Most scholars think the source of the discharge in vv2-15 is probably an STD, something like GONORRHEA… maybe the kinds of guys who would contract gonorrhea are the most likely candidates to SPIT on people. (Please don’t SPIT on me today after church, if I’ve offended you.)
Vv16-18 describe the purification process post-ejaculation.
Vv19-24 describe ritual impurity during a woman’s menstruation now. And the only thing I want to point out about it, that I found helpful, is that while we might initially view this PUNITIVELY - “Why would God punish these women, isolate them from others, just for getting their PERIODS?” - back THEN, Israelite women probably would have viewed this not as God’s PUNISHMENT, but as his PROTECTION. Against social stigma, others’ JUDGMENT. Periods were far less frequent. You got married at 13, and started having kids - or TRYING - ASAP; no contraception, and why would you want it ANYWAY; “children are a BLESSING from the Lord”! Moms would breastfeed MUCH longer, 3+ years, so basically, a woman could go her entire life and maybe only ever get a few periods. And when she DID, it could be a source of SHAME; “God DIDN’T give you the gift of a child this time around? Maybe there’s some hidden SIN in your life, some reason God has NOT to bless you with a child…” These women were probably RELIEVED to stick to their own tents for a week.
But vv25-30 cover a woman’s CHRONIC issue of blood, which as Jay Sklar notes (409), might have resulted “from such things as anovulation… uterine fibroids… or uterine or cervical cancer.”
You might recall the story of the woman in Luke ch8 who had suffered from “a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her [money] on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.” Until she met JESUS. And do you remember what she DID? Luke says, “She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment”. That was ILLEGAL. She VIOLATED God’s LAW, here in Leviticus 15, because that SHOULD have made JESUS unclean. But what happened instead?
Luke says, “immediately her discharge of blood ceased.” She was HEALED. CLEANSED.
She didn’t make JESUS unclean; HE made HER CLEAN!
And that brings us to our final point, in ch14 of Leviticus:
#4 - that God is not LIKE us; he is neither EXCLUDING nor UNCLEAN; rather, God is both ACCEPTING and CLEANSING
(14:1-57)
I’ll keep it short: ch14, like ALL these chapters, makes it clear that you and I really are UNCLEAN. Maybe not ALL the time, but at SOME point, EVERY person, would become ritually unclean. You’d EAT the wrong thing, or touch the wrong thing, or sit in the wrong chair… or for those self-righteous Pharisees, who prided themselves on avoiding ALL ritual defilement - some would live a celibate lifestyle, stay away from menstruating women, one rabbi around Jesus’ time bragged that he would NEVER buy meat that was sold in a marketplace that was located on a STREET on which any leper had EVER walked (Skip Heitzig, “Leviticus 11-13”) - that’s how SERIOUSLY they took this stuff, and how self-RIGHTEOUS some of them became about it. But look at ch14, v34, what God would do specially sometimes for THOSE kinds of folks: “When you come into the land of Canaan… and I put a case of leprous disease in [your] house”; sometimes God HIMSELF would afflict them with mold, mildew, a skin disease… just to PROVE to them: you really ARE UNCLEAN! And not just RITUALLY, on the OUTSIDE, but SPIRITUALLY, on the INSIDE - ALL of these defilements are just SYMBOLS meant to remind you of your more serious, “unclean” SPIRITUAL condition: that you are a SINNER! In need of CLEANSING.
But THAT is the whole point of ch14 here: vv1-32 outline the process of CLEANSING for those skin diseases; vv33-53 outline the process for CLEANSING that HOUSE of its mildew. Because unlike US, God doesn’t WANT people to remain excluded. In our sin, we secretly LOVE to exclude people; because it makes us feel more special for being INCLUDED. When we can climb our pedestals and look DOWN on others. Some people don’t think God wrote the Bible; they think these are all just a bunch of man-made rules. You know how I know HUMANS didn’t write the Bible? Because WE wouldn’t have included chapter FOURTEEN of Leviticus, the part where diseased people get CLEANSED, and get to rejoin society. We’d take the opportunity to KEEP looking down our noses at them. But friends: GOD wants us to be ACCEPTED. He isn’t content to leave us separated; he is a God of RESTORATION.
But here’s the thing: in ORDER to accepted, to be RESTORED to relationship with a PURE, holy God, we must be CLEANSED. Ch15, v31 warns us against TRYING to approach God, in our UNCLEANNESS: “you shall keep the people of Israel separate [in] their uncleanness, lest they die… by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.” If you tried to get near to God in your UNCLEANNESS - it was the LAST thing you’d ever do; game OVER!
But here’s the point: we don’t HAVE to. Even the Israelites didn’t have to; God made a way in ch14 for them to be CLEANSED. And you can read if for yourself, but one thing that oughta jump out at you, in vv10-32, is how SIMILAR the process of cleansing is to a priest’s ORDINATION, from chs8 & 9.
Isn’t that beautiful: that in restoring a person who had suffered from a LEPROUS disease - this most excluded, OUTCAST of people - God was symbolically showing them: “I am making you PERFECTLY cleansed; you’re gonna be like a holy PRIEST in my eyes.”
But don’t miss this: CLEANSING is COSTLY. Ch14 is FILLED with the required SACRIFICES, needed to make one clean. And once again, in his MERCY, God made special provision in v21 for those who couldn’t AFFORD the three lambs that were typically called for, because God made sure that NO ONE was too poor to be cleansed. But it was STILL costly - “two turtledoves or two pigeons, WHATEVER you could afford”, v22 says. Sometimes cleansing might cost you your GARMENT, ch13, v52 says, and most people only HAD like ONE garment! Sometimes, according to ch14, v45, cleansing could cost you your whole HOUSE; if it had a “persistent leprous disease” in the walls; “tear it DOWN”, God said.
Don’t you see the SPIRITUAL analogy? Before we come to JESUS, for our CLEANSING, we ALL had a “persistent, deadly SPIRITUAL disease” growing in us, infecting us. And being cleansed from THAT kind of disease, friends, is COSTLY.
It cost JESUS his LIFE, on the cross, to PAY for our sins.
And it will cost US OUR lives as well; to be cleansed, we must be CRUCIFIED with Christ. We must DIE to our OLD lives, our SIN, in order to be RAISED to NEW life, in Christ.
Are you willing to let Jesus tear your HOUSE down, WRECK your OLD life, a life of SIN and DEATH, in order to build you a NEW house, a CLEAN house, with HIM?
If you want to be ACCEPTED by God, you must be CLEANSED by Jesus. 1 John 1 says “the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin…. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ” (vv7,9)
CONCLUSION: The old Levitical law said: “Keep out! You are unclean!”; Jesus says, “Come near! Let me MAKE you clean!” (adapted from Derek Tidball, Leviticus, 169)
Will you come to him TODAY, for your cleansing?