INTRODUCTION
The Bible teaches that our bodies are temples, houses that God intends to live in (1 Cor. 6:19). And the Church is a holy house, a temple built out of God’s people, filled with the Holy Spirit, and together we are also the Body of Christ (Eph. 2:15-22, 1 Cor. 3:9-17, 12:12-27, 1 Pet. 2:5). In Adam, mankind is a sin-diseased house that God cannot dwell in, but the promise of the gospel that God began to display to Israel in the wilderness, is that God intends to make His people holy houses again, and together the Church will be a glorious temple-city where God will dwell forever (Rev. 21:1-3ff). As foreign as it may seem, the ceremonial requirements of the OT law for infected houses and bodily discharges proclaimed this reality of sin and uncleanness, and the promise of the gospel that God will dwell with us and make all things new (Rev. 21:1-5).
THE TEXT
“When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession…” (Lev. 14:33-15:33).
SUMMARY OF THE TEXT
We pick up our study finishing chapter 14 where we are told that not only bodies can have “leprosy” but also houses (14:34). This clearly indicates that what is meant by “leprosy” in Scripture is a far broader category than modern day Hansen’s disease. When this plague is suspected, the owner of the house is to summon the priest, the house is to be emptied (to keep everything from being declared ceremonially unclean), and the priest is to examine the plague, wait seven days and re-inspect (14:35-39). If the plague has spread, the portion of the house infected is to be broken out and replaced, the entire house is to be scraped, and plastered (14:40-42). If the plague returns, and the priest confirms, the house is to be destroyed (14:43-45). Anyone who goes into the house while it is closed off will only be unclean until they have washed and waited until evening (14:46-47). If after seven days the plague has not spread, the priest will declare it clean, and he shall perform the same cleansing ritual with the two birds as was done with the cleansed leper (14:48-57, cf. 14:1-7).
Finally, chapter 15 describes the uncleanness that occurs with any kind of bodily discharge, including sexual intercourse, and menstruation (15:1-33). What the unclean person touches becomes unclean, including people (15:4-11), until the person or the object washes with water and evening comes (15:10-12, 16-18, 21). As long as a woman has a flow of blood she is unclean, even if the flow of blood lasts longer than usual (15:25), as it did with the woman in the gospels (Mk. 5:25ff). When the discharge or bleeding ends, they must wait seven days from its ending, wash their clothes, bathe, and offer a sacrifice on the eighth day (15:13-15, 28-30).
GOD IS LORD OF ALL
The first thing to underline in all of this is that God is Lord of everything. We do not serve a pagan deity of the water or the land or the sun or the harvest. We serve the God who created all things, and is therefore Lord of all things. He is Lord of our houses, and He is Lord of our bodies and all of their functions. Secondly, sin has infected everything. Sin and the curse of sin has crept into everything: thorns, weeds, sickness, pain, and death come from the Fall (Gen. 3:16-19). And God is determined to heal it all, restore it all, to make all things new, to wipe away every tear (Rev. 21:4-5): houses, bodies, families, and nations.
WHAT COMES OUT OF A MAN
Part of the message of this passage for Israel was that when they would build houses in Canaan, sin would not have disappeared (Lev. 14:34). After the Flood, God had washed everything clean, but Noah and Ham sinned again right on schedule (Gen. 9:21-25), indicating that sin goes deeper than mere externals. Sin is inside of us, and it can get inside our homes and families, like a mold or a mildew or gangrene. Our bodies are defiled temples because of sin, and God taught Israel to remember this particularly as discharges and blood came out of their bodies. Jesus famously taught what this pointed to: It is not what goes into a man that defiles him but what comes out: evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, lies (Mt. 15:11-20). You need a clean heart (Ps. 51:10).
HOUSES DEFILED
This defiled house came to picture Israel: “Son of man, when the house of Israel lived in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds. Their ways before me were like the uncleanness of a woman in her menstrual impurity” (Ez. 38:17). So it doesn’t seem like an accident that when Jesus entered the temple on Palm Sunday and “looked around” at everything (Mk. 11:11), returned to overturn the tables and not allow anyone to walk through the temple, calling it a den of thieves (Mk. 11:15-16), and then upon a third visit, He declared that not one stone would be left upon another (Mk. 13:2). He’s mimicking the priestly inspection and declaring the house unclean and in need of destruction. This same principle applies to all governments today: families, churches, and nations. Failure to honor father and mother and marriage vows cannot result in blessing (Eph. 5:22-6:3), Jesus promises to remove lampstands from particular churches who do not repent of their sins (Rev. 2-3), and Jesus reigns over the nations with a rod of iron, dashing the wicked to pieces like potters vessels (Rev. 2:27, Ps. 2:6-12).
CONCLUSION: AS FOR ME & MY HOUSE
The overarching picture of people as bodies and houses is an image of covenant life. We are bound together. We are bound together in marriages and families; we are bound together in the church; and we are bound together in cities and nations. It is certainly possible to be a busybody, and we really must mind our own business (1 Thess. 4:11). But what we do effects those around us; what they do impacts us. What a husband is doing effects his wife as his own body (Eph. 5:28-30). One part of the body cannot say it does not affect anyone else (1 Cor. 12). Achan sinned in his heart and in his tent, and he troubled all of Israel (Josh. 7:25).
This is because we are bound by covenantal bonds. This means that we are bound together by oaths and promises before God, and as we keep our promises, He blesses us, but if we break our promises He will curse us: a man reaps what he sows (Gal. 6:7-8). The covenants of family and nation are not salvific, but they are sanctifying. We are not saved by our families or nations, but Christ calls us to love our neighbors and as we grow in that, we grow in Christ. But our covenant in the Church is with Christ our head, and so it is a saving covenant, as we trust in Him. And the central thing we are trusting Him for is cleansing by His blood.