INTRODUCTION

We must never forget that separation from God is the cause of the divisions in the human race. God sent Adam and Eve out of the Garden, and almost the next thing we are told is Cain killed Abel. The Devil was a murderer from the beginning with his lies (Jn. 8:44). Those lies tempted Eve to lust for the fruit and Adam plunged himself and the whole human race into death (Gen. 3:6); those lies tempted Cain to lust and murder his brother (Gen. 4:7). In the beginning, God gave the human race desire, as a holy appetite for His good gifts and for Himself (Gen. 2:17). But those desires, being twisted, have become the source of our wars and fights and murder (Js. 4:1-11). These cheap, craven lusts create cycles of violence that are only temporarily relieved by sacrificial scapegoats. Therefore, Christ is the only path to reconciliation with God and men. There is no true human community apart from the Cross of Christ.

THE TEXT

“And the Lord spake unto Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they offered before the Lord, and died…” (Lev. 16:1-34)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Leviticus 16 picks up from Leviticus 10 where Nadab and Abihu were killed when they offered strange fire before the Lord, and God says that priests may not come into the Most Holy Place at any time lest they die because God will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat (Lev. 16:1-2). On the day that God appoints, the priest must wash and put on special linen clothes, and he must bring animals for sin offerings and ascension offerings for himself and for the congregation (Lev. 16:3-6). Lots are cast upon two goats: one is designated as the congregational sin offering, the other is the scapegoat (Lev. 16:7-10). Aaron then cleanses the tabernacle with the blood of the sin offerings by sprinkling blood on the mercy seat seven times inside the veil, as well as the altar before the Lord, to cleanse all the uncleanness of Israel and to make atonement for all of their sins (Lev. 16:11-19). Finally, the priest is to lay his hands on the head of the scapegoat and confess all the sins of Israel, and the goat is to be released into the wilderness (Lev. 16:20-22). The priest is to change his clothes and bathe and offer the ascension offerings, along with several other final instructions (Lev. 16:23-28). This is to be an everlasting statute for Israel once a year, a sabbath of sabbaths, a day of afflicting their souls, on the tenth day of the seventh month (Lev. 16:29-34).

ATONEMENT & COMMUNITY

The scene opens with two dead brothers (Lev. 16:1). While the emphasis is certainly on who may draw near to the Lord and not die, there is also simultaneously an underlying message here about who may draw near to the Lord together and not die. In other words, as we come to the climax of the teaching of Leviticus on clean and unclean, we should not miss that God is also teaching His people how to be a congregation, the only way to be a true community (Lev. 16:16-20, 29-34). This is exactly how the New Testament talks about the sacrifice of Christ: “that He might reconcile both [Jew and Gentile] unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby… For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:16, 18). “And, having made peace through the blood of the cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto himself” (Col. 1:20).

A SCAPEGOAT SOCIOLOGY

Rene Girard has described the core conflict between people as “memetic desire.” It’s no accident that the 10^th Commandment is “Thou shalt not covet…” God made people with desire, hunger, ambition, and people tend to imitate the desires of others. We see what appears to us to be the happiness, success, blessing of others, and so we desire the things they appear to have desired and acquired. In a fallen world good desire (imitation) easily turns to envy, lust, jealousy, covetousness, hatreds, fights, wars, and murder (Js. 4:1-11). You can see this with little kids in a room full of toys, and one child is playing with one toy (perhaps rather apathetically), and another child enters the room and is immediately drawn to the one toy the other child has, and despite that child’s previous indifference to that one toy he was playing with, the sudden interest of the new child in that one toy incites a strong desire to keep that one toy, and that response only incites a stronger response in the new child and the cycle escalates from there. This is the essence of memetic desire and rivalry, and while we are often told by modern secularists that difference breeds distrust and animosity, memetic rivalry is actually the fiercest in those we are most alike: siblings, family, roommates, neighbors, fellow church members. And it tends to grow in communities like static electricity until it bursts out in violence, and we call the victim of that violence the scapegoat.

THE GOSPEL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT

The purpose of the Day of Atonement is to allow access to God’s presence (Lev. 16:2) and to cleanse the tabernacle from all the uncleanness and sin of the people (Lev. 16:16, 19). While Israel was required to keep the purity codes because God lived in their midst, the Day of Atonement indicates that the uncleanness of Israel is still accumulating at the tabernacle. We can also see that same basic goal of cleansing in the parallels with the cleansing for leprosy: sprinkling seven times (Lev. 16:14, 19 cf. 14:7, 51) and the doubled animals: one dying and one released outside the camp (birds/goats). This doubling should be seen as a simultaneous action: they are both the sin offering (Lev. 16:5). Atonement is God’s act of bringing sinners near while taking away all their sin. So the blood must go all the way into the presence of God, and the sin must be carried all the way out of the camp to an uninhabited land. And Jesus does both. He is the priest and He is the sacrifice: His blood purifies the heavenly sanctuary (Heb. 9:24), and He was led outside the gate of the city (Heb. 13:11-13).

CONCLUSION

The Day of Atonement was a type of Good Friday. When Jesus died on the cross the veil in the temple tore from top to bottom (Mk. 15:38), but Hebrews says that the real veil was His flesh. “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Heb. 10:19-20). This is how all envy, covetousness, rivalry, bitterness, hatred, and murder ends.

The only way into the presence of God is through the torn flesh of the only innocent victim, and precisely because He was innocent and died for all our sins, He brings us near together. This is the only basis for true human community. There is no Kingdom apart from the King, and the Kingdom flows directly from the King’s Cross.

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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.

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INTRODUCTION

Part of what the leprosy laws proclaim to us is that the central, highest calling of man is to worship his maker. Worship is central. Worship moves the world. When God restores men and women to worship, He is restoring their humanity, which in turn, by His grace, restores the world. Christ is saving the world by drawing the world to worship.

THE TEXT

“This shall the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: he shall be brought unto the priest…” (Lev. 13-14)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

A number of skin diseases and blemishes are described, requiring the priests to examine and reexamine over time to determine whether an Israelite was clean or unclean (13:1-44). If the person is determined to be unclean in an ongoing way, he was declared “utterly unclean,” and he was required to be quarantined outside the camp (13:44-46). Garments could also be infected by plague, and these needed to be examined and tested (13:47-59). For cleansing, two living birds were chosen: one was killed in an earthen vessel over water, the other was dipped together with cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop in the blood of the bird that was killed; it would be sprinkled on the one being cleansed and then the living bird would be released (13:1-7). The cleansed leper was completely shaved and washed and brought back into the camp, but waited for seven days, before being shaved and washed again (13:8-10). On the eighth day, three lambs were chosen, one for a trespass offering, one for a sin offering, and one for an ascension offering: some of the blood of the trespass offering was put on the right ear, the right hand, and the right big toe of the one being cleansed (14:11-14). And the same thing was done with oil (14:15-20). Finally, provisions were made for those who could not afford the lambs (14:21-32).

CLEANSING FOR WORSHIP

Remember that the designations for “clean/unclean” primarily designate who could draw near to God in worship. The clearest indication of this is the fact that the cleansing of the lepers almost exactly mirrors the ordination of the priests (cf. Lev. 8), particularly the seven days and the blood on the earlobes, thumbs, and big toes (Lev. 14:14). God was certainly using this ceremonial code to teach Israel about basic hygiene and health, but the primary point was that God is the source of all life and health and blessing. “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases” (Psa. 103:3). This means we ought rather to obey God than do what seems right to us. Remember Naaman the Syrian leper who was initially offended by the prophet’s instruction to bathe in a dirty Jordan River seven times (2 Kgs. 5:10). If we live in a land full of idolatry and perversion, failing to worship the Living God in the beauty of holiness, how can we be surprised if we are struck with diseases (cf. Dt. 28:60)? If Jesus says we ought be baptized, then we ought to be baptized. If He tells us to sing the Psalms, we ought to sing the Psalms. If He tells us to share bread and wine with joy, we ought to obey Him. Worship and its efficacy are God’s prerogative, not ours.

JESUS REVERSES THE CURSE

One of the great lessons of the purity codes of Israel was that under the Old Covenant, the curse of sin was infectious. In the New Covenant, sin can still be very deadly (2 Cor. 6:17); bitterness still defiles many (Heb. 12:15). But because of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, grace and healing have become more infectious. Where sin had abounded, grace abounds still more (Rom. 5:20). This is demonstrated when Jesus touches lepers or is touched by the unclean, and instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the unclean are cleansed: “And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, ‘I will; be thou clean’” (Mk. 1:41, cf. Mk. 3:10). Remember the woman with the flow of blood who touched Jesus, but instead of making Him (or his garment) unclean, power went out from Him and cleansed her (Mk. 5:28-30). This is because Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world: “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Is. 53:5).

CONCLUSIONS

Quarantines for the sick are biblical, but quarantines for the healthy are wicked. We see in these texts that God made the world such that there are visible indicators of infection and disease. The scientific ramifications for Leviticus 13 are tremendous. While there is much that we still do not understand, and there will no doubt be deep mysteries into the resurrection, the world is rational and knowable because God is rational and knowable, not random or capricious.

The heart of true worship is gratitude. Remember the Samaritan leper who was cleansed and came back and worshiped Jesus (Lk. 17:16). Our reasons for gratitude are manifold: gratitude for health and medicine, all of creation and beauty, answered prayers and our families, and every detail that points to our cleansing and redemption in the blood of Jesus. Jesus died that we might be sprinkled and set free. Jesus died that we might be sprinkled and drawn near to the Living God with His blessing on our lives, so that all things might be made new.

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INTRODUCTION

The Israelite purity codes point out potent, momentous elements of life and tell Israel to pay careful attention. Go slow here. Warning. There is something glorious here. What you eat, what you touch, your bodies, death and dying, sexuality, and childbearing are potent, powerful forces in the world that God made. Under God’s blessing, they are forces for good, but in our fallen state, they naturally become forces for evil, harm, and destruction. Uncleanness points to our natural fallen state, and points to our need for a new Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, and urges care, wisdom, repentance, worship, and obedience in all things.

THE TEXT

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying if a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days” (Lev. 12:1-8).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

When a woman gave birth to a son, she was ceremonially unclean for seven days, the son was to be circumcised on the 8^th day, and then she continued in a state of purifying for another 33 days, for a total of 40 days (12:1-4). When a woman bore a daughter, she was unclean for fourteen days, and then continued in a state of purifying for another 66 days, for a total of 80 days (12:5). At the end of the time of purifying, the new mother was to bring an ascension offering and a sin offering to the tabernacle, one for atonement and one for cleansing from her blood, with a provision for the poor (12:6-8).

THE PROMISE OF THE SEED

While these ceremonies can seem strange or even offensive to modern ears, there really is a logic to it all and something profoundly glorious is going on here. Remember, that God blessed Adam and Eve with the command to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and ruling over all the creatures (Gen. 1:28). This means that conception and childbearing was originally blessed by God and is part of what God pronounced “very good” (Gen. 1:31). But Adam sinned, and God pronounced curses on the ground that man worked and greater pain in a woman’s childbearing, and promised that now death would come upon all (Gen. 3:16-19). This general curse of sin and death in the world is what theologians call “original sin,” and all people (except for Jesus) are conceived and born with this covenantal guilt and natural proclivity to sin and corruption (Ps. 51: 5, Is. 48:8, Rom. 3:23, 5:12-19, 6:23). This is part of what God was teaching Israel in their purity codes: sin and death infects everything to some extent, and Israel cannot approach God unless He makes a way of cleansing. However, God also promised Adam and Eve a “seed” (a descendent) who would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). God promised that through the seed of the woman, the curse would be reversed.

FULFILLED IN JESUS

This text is fulfilled in the gospel initially in the circumcision of Jesus and Mary’s purification (Lk. 2:21-24). Circumcision was the Old Covenant sign that pictured the need for the shedding of blood for our sins and the cutting off of our sinful flesh. This is why the time for purification is cut in half for a baby boy because the baby boy at least symbolically shared the other half of the purification process. Jesus did not need to receive the sign of removal of sin for any personal sins anymore than He needed to be baptized for the remission of any sins, but in both cases it was to stand with us as our representative (covenant) head, to fulfill all righteousness (cf. Mt. 3:15). All of this was completely fulfilled in the cross, which Paul figuratively calls “the circumcision of Christ” (Col. 2:11), where our sins and the “uncircumcision” of our flesh was forgiven and all the condemnation of the law was nailed to His cross (Col. 2:13-14).

CONCLUSIONS

It’s particularly glorious that Jesus rose from the dead on the “8^th Day,” the day of circumcision, which is of course also the first day of the week, the day of new creation, the day of the removal of the curse.

Part of what this text underlines and which is highly offensive to modern sensibilities is the inequality of the sexes. We have been catechized and discipled by modern secularism to jump at every hint of inequality and to presume that this necessarily implies inequality of value. But men and women are gloriously unequal (1 Cor. 11:3, 7-11), and both bear the image of God equally in creation and are co-heirs of the grace of life in Christ (Gen. 1:27, 1 Pet. 3:7).

God loves the glorious differences and inequalities of male and female, and He loves how they image Him. And so should we, and therefore we hate the sexual promiscuity that makes light of this glory, the utter fruitlessness and impossibility of homosexuality, and the utter confusion and blasphemy of transgenderism.

This text points us to the glory of childbearing, the profound beauty of motherhood, the way that the curse of sin and death has attempted to infect it, and it all points to the glory of Christ who is now in the process of redeeming it all. By His blood, He has removed the ceremonial curse, and while we still battle with the presence of the curse in this world and in our bodies, Christ has commandeered death itself, such that even the remaining signs of the curse are turned into marks of the cross for those who are in Christ Jesus (cf. Gal. 6:17).

The reason our culture rages against motherhood is because it is so beautiful and powerful (Ps. 139). There is nothing more potent in this world than people made in the image of God. This is why marriage and the gift of children are so central to the working out of the gospel. This is why the Bible even says that a woman may be “saved through childbirth” (1 Tim. 2:15). This does not mean that a single or barren woman cannot be saved, but it does mean that all women are called to embrace by faith the vocation of motherhood. Whether or not you bear your own children, you are to be fruitful in your home, cultivate beauty, feed the hungry, and in all of it, be the glory of man.

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