“Unclean! Unclean! (Numbers 5 & 19)", Will DuVal | 2/2/25
This morning we’re talking about “uncleanness”. And once again, as with the “organization” theme from a couple weeks ago, I feel a bit out of place covering the topic, since I am NOT the cleanest person. My poor college roommate was a neat-freak, and OCD; he insisted that the apartment needed to be cleaned at LEAST once a week; I insisted that cleaning at MOST once a MONTH was sufficient… So we “compromised”, and I only had to clean it every fourth time. That’s called the “art of the deal”; trademark.
You've probably heard the expression “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” While you won’t find it explicitly in the Bible, chapter and verse, it’s certainly true that spiritual cleanliness is required for closeness with God. In 2 Corinthians 6:17, God declares, “touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you”. So Hebrews 12:14 exhorts us to “Strive for… the holiness without which no one will see the Lord”. In other words, God is HOLY - spiritually, he is PERFECTLY “clean”. So if you want to “SEE” him, if you want to BE with God, enjoy his perfectly pure presence, you must be HOLY.
Which presents a PROBLEM for spiritually UNclean people; those who are guilty of “SIN”. Quick show of hands: how many of you committed at LEAST one sin this week - the Bible says even ONE sin, even the SMALLEST one, is enough to separate you from a holy God. Now if you DON’T have your hand up, you’re either LYING, or you’re SLEEPING in church; either way, that’s at least ONE sin you’re guilty of.
Romans 3:23 says “ALL have sinned”! Isaiah 64:6 laments, “We have all become like one who is unclean… and our iniquities [our SINS] take us away.” Away from God’s pure presence.
So what can we DO, to get BACK, to be CLEANED and thus restored… returned… reconciled to relationship with our holy God?
That’s what Numbers chapters 5 and19are all about for this morning. So let’s begin by READING them together, and I’m gonna warn you: we’re gonna read the whole THING this morning. So if some of you can’t stand the whole time, we understand. But for those able, I invite you to stand…(SCRIPTURE: Num 5 & 19)
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“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Command the people of Israel that they put out of the camp everyone who is leprous or has a discharge and everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead. 3 You shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell.” 4 And the people of Israel did so, and put them outside the camp; as the Lord said to Moses, so the people of Israel did.
5 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 6 “Speak to the people of Israel, When a man or woman commits any of the sins that people commit by breaking faith with the Lord, and that person realizes his guilt, 7 he shall confess his sin that he has committed. And he shall make full restitution for his wrong, adding a fifth to it and giving it to him to whom he did the wrong. 8 But if the man has no next of kin to whom restitution may be made for the wrong, the restitution for wrong shall go to the Lord for the priest, in addition to the ram of atonement with which atonement is made for him. 9 And every contribution, all the holy donations of the people of Israel, which they bring to the priest, shall be his. 10 Each one shall keep his holy donations: whatever anyone gives to the priest shall be his.”
11 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 12 “Speak to the people of Israel, If any man's wife goes astray and breaks faith with him, 13 if a man lies with her sexually, and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband, and she is undetected though she has defiled herself, and there is no witness against her, since she was not taken in the act, 14 and if the spirit of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife who has defiled herself, or if the spirit of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife, though she has not defiled herself, 15 then the man shall bring his wife to the priest and bring the offering required of her, a tenth of an ephah of barley flour. He shall pour no oil on it and put no frankincense on it, for it is a grain offering of jealousy, a grain offering of remembrance, bringing iniquity to remembrance.
16 “And the priest shall bring her near and set her before the Lord. 17 And the priest shall take holy water in an earthenware vessel and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water. 18 And the priest shall set the woman before the Lord and unbind the hair of the woman's head and place in her hands the grain offering of remembrance, which is the grain offering of jealousy. And in his hand the priest shall have the water of bitterness that brings the curse. 19 Then the priest shall make her take an oath, saying, ‘If no man has lain with you, and if you have not turned aside to uncleanness while you were under your husband's authority, be free from this water of bitterness that brings the curse. 20 But if you have gone astray, though you are under your husband's authority, and if you have defiled yourself, and some man other than your husband has lain with you, 21 then’ (let the priest make the woman take the oath of the curse, and say to the woman) ‘the Lord make you a curse and an oath among your people, when the Lord makes your thigh fall away and your body swell. 22 May this water that brings the curse pass into your bowels and make your womb swell and your thigh fall away.’ And the woman shall say, ‘Amen, Amen.’
23 “Then the priest shall write these curses in a book and wash them off into the water of bitterness. 24 And he shall make the woman drink the water of bitterness that brings the curse, and the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain. 25 And the priest shall take the grain offering of jealousy out of the woman's hand and shall wave the grain offering before the Lord and bring it to the altar. 26 And the priest shall take a handful of the grain offering, as its memorial portion, and burn it on the altar, and afterward shall make the woman drink the water. 27 And when he has made her drink the water, then, if she has defiled herself and has broken faith with her husband, the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain, and her womb shall swell, and her thigh shall fall away, and the woman shall become a curse among her people. 28 But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children. [Actually, let’s skip ahead; because vv29-31 just recap & summarize]
Ch19 now… Now the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 2 “This is the statute of the law that the Lord has commanded: Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish, and on which a yoke has never come. 3 And you shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered before him. 4 And Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger, and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times. 5 And the heifer shall be burned in his sight. Its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall be burned. 6 And the priest shall take cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet yarn, and throw them into the fire burning the heifer. 7 Then the priest shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward he may come into the camp. But the priest shall be unclean until evening. 8 The one who burns the heifer shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water and shall be unclean until evening. 9 And a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place. And they shall be kept for the water for impurity for the congregation of the people of Israel; it is a sin offering. 10 And the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. And this shall be a perpetual statute for the people of Israel, and for the stranger who sojourns among them.
11 “Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days. 12 He shall cleanse himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day, and so be clean. But if he does not cleanse himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not become clean. 13 Whoever touches a dead person, the body of anyone who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the tabernacle of the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from Israel; because the water for impurity was not thrown on him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is still on him.
14 “This is the law when someone dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent and everyone who is in the tent shall be unclean seven days. 15 And every open vessel that has no cover fastened on it is unclean. 16 Whoever in the open field touches someone who was killed with a sword or who died naturally, or touches a human bone or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. 17 For the unclean they shall take some ashes of the burnt sin offering, and fresh water shall be added in a vessel. 18 Then a clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water and sprinkle it on the tent and on all the furnishings and on the persons who were there and on whoever touched the bone, or the slain or the dead or the grave. 19 And the clean person shall sprinkle it on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day. Thus on the seventh day he shall cleanse him, and he shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and at evening he shall be clean.
20 “If the man who is unclean does not cleanse himself, that person shall be cut off from the midst of the assembly, since he has defiled the sanctuary of the Lord. Because the water for impurity has not been thrown on him, he is unclean. 21 And it shall be a statute forever for them…” [Let’s end there; This is the word of God…]
Now, let me just say right off the bat: I expect a LOT of good “After the Sermon” questions for our podcast tomorrow, because these are some of the most interesting chapters in the book of Numbers, maybe in the whole OT, but I really don’t want us to lose the forest for the trees this morning, and get too bogged down in the minutiae, fascinating though they may BE. We’ll touch on SOME of it, but please do submit your questions on the particulars I DON’T cover.
But as far as the BIG picture goes, these two chapters teach us four important truths about our uncleanness, as it relates to THE LORD.
And the first is really what I highlighted for you already in the introduction, namely, that 1) Our uncleanness causes SEPARATION from the Lord. (5:1-4)
In vv1-4, God commands 3 categories of people to be “put OUTSIDE” the camp of Israel; who is it?
1) everyone who is LEPROUS
2) who has a DISCHARGE (of blood, or semen)
3) and everyone who has touched a CORPSE.
WHY? Why would they be temporarily exiled? What do those 3 “ritual defilements” share in common?
Answer: DEATH! Commentator Iain Duguid explains (69): “Contact with dead bodies self-evidently brings you into contact with death. Equally, blood and semen were associated with LIFE, so their LOSS or emission moved you AWAY from the realm of life and into the realm of death. Finally, skin diseases of the kind that withered or ate away the flesh were a kind of living death, in which the body was literally dying in front of your eyes. All such contact with death in the OT unfitted you for the presence of the LIVING God.” He is “NOT the God of the DEAD, but of the LIVING” (Lk 20:38).
So the ISSUE here isn’t so much the spread of contagions - although that’s a nice SIDE effect of them obeying this command: Israel was spared of the spread of many of these communicable diseases that would have CAUSED leprosy, rashes, discharges, STDs… - but according to v3, it’s really LESS about the spread of contagions, and MORE about their SEPARATION from an otherwise CONSECRATED, CLEAN camp; God says, “don’t DEFILE the CAMP… in which I dwell”. If you want ME to stay, you MUST keep it CLEAN.
And we’ve gotta realize that ALL of these physical impurities were really intended to be SYMBOLS, object lessons, reminders of Israel’s deeper and even more defiling, more sequestering SPIRITUAL impurity. THAT is the REAL problem here, when it comes to relationship with God: not leprosy but LAW-lessness; not discharges but disobedience; not coming into contact with physical death, but with SPIRITUAL death… with SIN.
Isaiah 59:2 says “your iniquities [our SINS] have made a separation between you and your God”.
So MANY of us don’t really BELIEVE that, do we? We try and minimize both our SIN (“It’s not really THAT big ‘o deal…”; “I’m a mostly good person…”), while also minimizing God’s HOLINESS (“He GETS it; NO one’s PERFECT…” ).
But that’s not what God’s WORD says on EITHER front; according to GOD, our sin IS that “big ‘o deal” - like… big enough for just one SIN to keep us out of HEAVEN FOREVER! (Mt 5:48) - and second, God DOES not, WILL not, he CAN not simply turn a blind eye to sin; God is simply too JUST to ignore sin. He declares, I am “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love… forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin… BUT who will by no means CLEAR the guilty”.
In other words, WHEN we sin, God says, “I can and will and I LOVE to FORGIVE you… to show you MERCY and GRACE… but you CAN’T get it for FREE. I don’t just “CLEAR” your guilt, overlook your offense. It’s gotta be DEALT WITH, somehow… in some WAY… by some ONE.
And that “way” and that “one”, in the OT, was through the sacrifice of an animal’s life in your place. And it brings us to core truth #2 now…
2) Our uncleanness requires RESTITUTION TO the Lord. (5:5-10)
Now, there’s an important dimension of HORIZONTAL restitution we see here in vv5-10 as well: “When a man or woman commits any sins… and realizes his guilt, 7 he shall confess his sin [and] make full restitution… adding a fifth to it and giving it to him whom he wronged.” So if YOUR ox gored MY ox to death, it’s not enough for you to say, “Bummer, I’ll pray for you this plowing season…”; NO! You’re gonna GIVE me YOUR ox for plowing season… PLUS whatever 20% of the going market rate is for an ox, for my trouble.
This is a GREAT law, by the way, isn’t it? God’s law was WAY more fair and just than OURS is today. Dreka was telling our life group about her neighbor hitting her CAR the other day… you can see her car’s paint on the other guy’s DENTED bumper; the OTHER neighbors saw it HAPPEN… but she said the guy’s DENYING it, and she could never PROVE it to the satisfaction of OUR judicial system, and she’d never get compensation even if she COULD.
Then the Lindenschmidts told us LAST week they woke up one morning to MSD tearing up their front yard - they cut down two mature trees, ruined all their grass… didn’t even give them NOTICE. Said they MIGHT help cover the cost of some new grass.
Not in ancient Israel, they wouldn’t have gotten away with such INJUSTICE. They’d be replanting those two fully grown trees… plus 20%... they’d have to add half an ADDITIONAL tree.
But the horizontal dimension isn’t even the MAIN issue with our sin; it is the VERTICAL component that poses the BIGGEST problem for us. And the passage gives us THREE CLUES to that end:
The FIRST comes in v6, where God says, “if you commit a sin… by breaking faith with the Lord”. Your ox… your sewer line… doesn’t just cause you to break good faith and relationship with your NEIGHBOR; you’re breaking faith with the LORD.
King David understood this. That’s why he declared in Psalm 51:4, “Against you and you ONLY have I sinned, O Lord”. Even though he had kinda sorta maybe kidnapped and RAPED Bathsheeba, he unequivocally ADULTERATED and STOLE her from Uriah, and then he MURDERED Uriah to cover it up, but David says, “As BIG as those horizontal offenses are, I know enough about God’s HOLINESS to know that by far my GREATEST offense here is the VERTICAL one, against a perfectly HOLY God”.
Because without Him, there’s no “SIN” to speak of anyway. You can’t have moral laws without a moral law-GIVER. If there IS no God, there’s absolutely NO REASON for David NOT to rape and steal Bathsheeba and murder Uriah; that IS the “ethics” of evolution: the powerful RULE, and get to pass on their DNA. That’s the way it goes with every other species, and the way it works works for US TOO, in the absence of a GOD who says, “No, I’M your Creator; I’M making the rules around here…”
But the SECOND clue that sin requires VERTICAL restitution comes in v8, where we read that in the event that “the restitution [PAYMENT] for wrong” CANNOT go to your victim, it “shall go to the Lord”.
Again, you do the CRIME, you gotta pay the FINE… if not to the [*pointing OUT*] one you WRONGED… then to the [*point UP*] ONE you WRONGED, violating HIS moral law. ALL sin is ultimately and most egregiously sin against GOD.
But that’s made most explicit - third clue now - in the very NEXT phrase of v8: the sinner must make his restitution payment… “in addition to the ram of atonement with which atonement is made for him”.
You may remember this from our study of LEVITICUS last year - the GUILT offering from ch5: ““If anyone sins, doing any of the things that by the Lord's commandments ought not to be done… He shall bring to the priest a ram without blemish… for a guilt offering, and the priest shall make atonement for him” (vv17-18).
This is the essence of atonement: “We owe God EVERYTHING. All of our heart, mind, soul, strength… our LIVES - he deserves it ALL!
Yet we hold so MUCH of it BACK from him. Sin isn’t just the “bad stuff” we do; it is failing to give God the full glory He is DUE; failing to live our lives in perfect, holy surrender and obedience to Him.
Yet in His MERCY, God graciously provided a way for sinners like us to REPAY that “life debt” that we owed him, through SACRIFICE - “atonement” - another’s life, standing in the place of my OWN. Life for life, death for death.” (DuVal, “Leviticus 4-6”, 2024)
Because it’s really NOT enough to just say “I’m sorry, God.” “Bummer.” “I’ll try harder next time.” NEXT time doesn’t fix THIS time; THIS wrong, this offense, this SIN. How you gonna make it RIGHT?
God says, “The WAGES of sin is DEATH” (Rom 6:23), and “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” (Heb 9:22) You make it RIGHT, with BLOOD. Restitution.
But the THIRD truth we’re taught here is that before we can make repayment for our sins, our uncleanness, it 3) must FIRST be EXPOSED by the Lord. (5:11-31)
Now we come to the part of the text you’ve all been waiting for - this EASILY could have made it into our “Tough Texts” sermon series from a few years back, because Numbers 5:11-31 is EASILY one of the toughest texts there IS. For SO many reasons:
**“Why isn’t there a test for a wife’s HUSBAND cheating on HER?”
(Now I WILL point out that the law is actually intended to - and in practice, would have functioned to - PROTECT women. Back in those days in MOST cultures a man filled with a “jealous spirit” could file for divorce or WORSE, just have his wife put to DEATH without the need for ANY evidence. But God says, “NO; she gets due process. And I will be the judge.”)
**”BUT”, you ask: “Where is the PUNISHMENT for the husband who FALSELY accuses his wife?”
(And again, I will just point out, or let Warren Wiersbe point out that (259-60): “There were clearly some built-in “roadblocks” here that would make a husband hesitate to rush to the priest and ask for his wife to be tried. To begin with, it was a public event [“in front of the tabernacle”]… the whole camp would know about it. Would a husband want to expose his marital problems that openly, especially when he couldn’t know the RESULTS of the trial? Furthermore… if the husband truly loved his wife… why would he want to expose her publicly? But if he DIDN’T love her and only wanted to hurt her, he might be embarrassed and proved wrong. [Either WAY,] a wise man would think twice before having his wife judged this way.” )
**”BUT”, you inquire: “Did this test for adultery ever even get IMPLEMENTED in Israelite society?” There’s no RECORD of such a trial ever being performed in the rest of the OT; just this LAW for it here…
So Wiersbe speculates (260): “Perhaps the very existence of this law proved a barrier to adultery and a warning that sin would be found out.”
**”BUT”, you protest: “This SOUNDS an awful lot like the Salem WITCH trials of the 17th c, and I don’t remember THOSE turning out so good…”
But let’s don’t OVERLOOK the fact - the facTOR - that makes Number 5 so different from those WITCH trials: it’s that GOD COMMANDED this test, and promised to personally superintend OVER the results. And that’s just the incredible, bizarre, unavoidably SUPERNATURAL part about it: this procedure makes ABSOLUTELY no sense scientifically - there’s no reason ONE woman should be able to drink this water and be just FINE, while ANOTHER woman drinks the SAME water and her reproductive organs start ROTTING away - the ONLY possible explanation is v21: if “the Lord makes [her] thigh fall away and [her] womb swell”.
And God never promised the PURITANS - 3,000 years LATER - that he would supernaturally supervise THEIR lie detector tests; he didn’t NEED to! Because by THEN, God had given us something BETTER than oaths and curses and bitter water; He’d given us His WORD, and his Holy SPIRIT to “guide us into all the truth” (Jn 16:13).
And THAT is how God EXPOSES our SIN today: his “WHY” is the same - because “the first step is admitting you have a problem”, so God is GRACIOUS and KIND to help us recognize our sin by uncovering it… bringing it to the LIGHT - but “HOW” he does it is of course different now: no more public drinking contests; just His WORD and his SPIRIT.
The Bible says that God’s LAW is like a MIRROR (Jas 1:23; Rom 3:20), that when we gaze INTO it, it shows us our sin, the spiritual spinach between our teeth. But the Bible ALSO says our problem is WORSE than that, cuz you can just floss spinach away; the LAW reveals our spiritual WARTS, our spiritual SKIN cancer (speaking of “leprosy”...). But even THAT we could TRY and “treat” on our own. So God goes one step further and diagnoses the ROOT of our sin problem: “The heart is WICKED above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer 17:9). Jesus pulled out God’s mirror - his X-RAY machine - to help us see that it is “from within, out of the heart of man, [that] evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness…. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”” (Mk 7:21-23) It’s not just the external “dirt” of the WORLD that makes us unclean; we’ve all got enough dirt DEEP down INSIDE us to keep us from ever having a PRAYER of relationship with a HOLY God… UNLESS we receive a HEART TRANSPLANT.
And friend: maybe you’ve been in DENIAL, not only about your SIN but about it’s SEVERITY, and you’ve been trying to floss and brush away a problem that according to GOD, requires a TRANSPLANT; that’s a surgery you cannot PERFORM on your own. But take HEART; God doesn’t ASK you to! He has promised, “I will sprinkle on you clean water, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses… [water not just to DRINK and PROVE our cleanness, but to be WASHED in and MADE clean! ] And I will give you a new heart… I will remove your heart of stone… and give you a heart of flesh” (Ez 36:26).
God continues: “And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and obey my rules” (v27). Mirrors are helpful, for exposing sin. But you can’t brush your TEETH with them and you DEFINITELY can’t replace a HEART with ‘em. So God says, “I’ve got JUST the instrument for the job: MY SPIRIT!”
“I will put my SPIRIT within you” - not ONLY to expose your sin; Jn 16:8 “when the Helper comes, he will convict the world concerning sin” - but the SPIRIT does something the LAW never could; he “sprinkles clean WATER” on us and CLEANSES us from all uncleanness - 1 Corinthians 6 warns: “the unrighteous will NEVER inherit the kingdom of God”; sin SEPARATES us from Him. “And such were… you”.
“But”, God declares, “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified… by the Spirit of God” (vv9,11).
But we need more than WATER for this cleansing, friends, for heart cleansing… SPIRITUAL cleansing, also requires BLOOD.
Which brings us to our fourth and final point, and ch19, where we see, most vividly of all, that 4) Our uncleanness must be CLEANSED by the Lord. (19:1-22)
Not just with WATER, but with BLOOD.
Commentator Iain Duguid notes (242-3): “This was the only sacrifice in the OT where the blood was burned rather than poured out at the base of the altar. The reason for this change is simple: Since the cleansing power of the sacrifice resided in the BLOOD, it too had to be rendered into ashes… After the sacrificial heifer had been burned completely, the ashes were to be gathered up and stored… until they were required. The ashes were, thus, a kind of ‘instant purification offering’. Just as we have instant tea or instant soup, to which we simply add water and they are ready to serve, so these ashes were reconstituted… to make them ready for cleansing use.”
No cleansing WITHOUT the blood - “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”
“Bring a red heifer without defect… it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered… And Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood… and sprinkle it toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times.”
We won’t unpack all 22 verses, but consider quickly with me all the rich symbolism here, packed into just these 2 verses:
*A HEIFER was about the most COSTLY sacrifice there was; the VAST majority of Israelites didn’t OWN one, and wouldn’t have therefore even been able to OFFER this sacrifice. A sacrifice SO great, that YOU don’t even have the means to MAKE it.
*It had to be “without DEFECT”. Because God deserves our BEST. And yet even our BEST falls short of what He truly deserves. And even our best SACRIFICES, to make RESTITUTION, fall short too, because “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins”, Hebrews 10:4 says. All these sacrifices, under the Old Covenant, in the days of NUMBERS, were just pointing God’s people ahead to our true and BETTER sacrifice: JESUS!
*The One who would ALSO be taken “outside the camp”, Hebrews 13:12 says, and SLAUGHTERED. “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted… like a lamb that is led to the slaughter… he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities… and with his wounds (by his BLOOD) we are healed.” (Isa 53:5,7).
*But Jesus isn’t just the sacrifice; he’s the SACRIFI-CER as well - our great high priest, who makes “intercession” for us, sprinkling his OWN precious blood, not just “toward the tabernacle”, but Hebrews 10:22 says “our hearts [are now] sprinkled clean” by the blood of Christ, because THAT’s where God DWELLS now: our HEARTS are his temple!
So Jesus PURIFIES us COMPLETELY; that was the symbolism of the SEVEN sprinklings, the biblical number of wholeness, perfection. 1 John 1 promises “the blood of Jesus… cleanses us from all sin [COMPLETELY - past, present, future… ALL sin!]. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. [The first step is admitting you’ve got a PROBLEM; we’ve got to bring it to the LIGHT… EXPOSE our sin…] 9 If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (vv7-9)
Why “faithful and just”? I mean, “gracious and merciful” makes sense. But how does God’s forgiving us… CLEANSING us… make him “JUST”? Cuz it seems pretty UN-just, doesn’t it; pretty UN-fair; “Pastor, I thought you said God required RESTITUTION? You do the crime, you gotta pay the fine…”
But friends- JESUS… in all of his grace and mercy… saw that you and I don’t HAVE a heifer; we don’t have the spiritual capital to PAY the fine. So he stepped in and paid it on our behalf; JESUS paid it ALL! You need not - you CAN not - add a single DIME to your debt payment; HE paid it in FULL on that cross. That’s why he said, “It is FINISHED!” He didn’t say, “It is ALMOST finished… but you need to be a good person and finish making those payments…” - NO! FINISHED!! So finished, that it would be UNjust now for God NOT to forgive us. Double jeopardy. You don’t pay for the same sin TWICE, and friends, JESUS’ payment was MORE than sufficient, for ALL of your sin.
But it wasn’t FREE. That’s the last thing we need to note here in Numbers 19; Duguid pointx out (243): “The cost for the priest who MADE the offering on [another's] behalf was substantial… The one making the offering had to temporarily sacrifice his own state of cleanliness in order to let those who had become defiled enter in.” – Jesus BECAME sin, though he HAD no sin of his OWN, 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Jesus took all our uncleanness upon himself on the cross, that he might GIVE US all of HIS righteousness and holiness, WITHOUT which no one can see God.
CONCLUSION:
Friends: this is the GOSPEL. The GOOD NEWS of our salvation:
Jesus experienced SEPARATION from God the Father on that cross, so that separated SINNERS like you and me could be brought NEAR…
He made RESTITUTION TO God the Father, on our behalf, when we were spiritually penniless, laying down his own precious life - his BLOOD - for us…
And this morning he wants to GRACIOUSLY EXPOSE your sin…
So that you can come to HIM for your CLEANSING.
The Old Covenant Law, in Numbers 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?