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The Glory of Manhood (King’s Cross Church)

Christ Church on May 15, 2022

INTRODUCTION

Sinful humanity is at war with God but they cannot actually reach Him, so they hate His image in human beings and seek to destroy it. This is what abortion and transgenderism are all about, but that impulse begins much earlier, in refusing to give thanks to God our Creator, which includes His infinite wisdom in making us male and female (Rom. 1:21). Today we look particularly at the glory of men, and the Bible teaches that the glory of men is their strength. That strength is for sacrificial love and leadership in homes, churches, and the broader world.

THE TEXT

“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

It’s striking that Paul gives this charge to the entire church at Corinth, made up of men and women. There are four imperatives, but arguably, two of them are subsumed under one of them. Being watchful and standing firm in the faith is how the Corinthians must “act like men.” And the final command, explains what that requires: “be strong.” It takes strength to remain watchful through the night, over the course of many days or many years. It takes strength to standfast in the faith, trusting and obeying God and not wavering even when it hurts, when it is hard. This is the duty of all Christians, but it is the particular glory of men to lead in this.

THE GLORY OF MEN

“The glory of young men is their strength” (Prov. 20:29). “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (1 Jn. 2:14, cf. Ps. 19:4-5). Glory is what makes someone shine. This can certainly include appearance, but in men it primarily points to action. The Bible does not mind pointing out when men are “handsome” (Gen. 39:6, 1 Sam. 9:2, 16:12), but the glory of men is not their appearance. It is their strength. It is what they do with the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength that God has given them. And this requires courage. C.S. Lewis says that courage is not merely one of the virtues, but it is every virtue at its testing point. So biblical masculine strength is the commitment to virtue to the pain, to the suffering, to the death. Biblical manhood is constantly watchful and steadfast in the faith, and courage holds the line, standing fast, when everything seems to be falling apart, when it doesn’t look like it’s working. This masculine courage fundamentally trusts in Christ, who is the Resurrection and the Life. He will raise us from this moment or else He will raise us from the dead.

THE SHAME OF SOFT MEN

Effeminacy is softness in men, particularly at the very places where we are called to be hard and strong and courageous. This is sometimes as simple as cowardice and fear (Dt. 20:8, Jdg. 7:3), but that trembling, especially in the face of battle, the Bible describes as acting like a woman (Is. 19:16, Jer. 48:41, 49:22, 51:30). This softness can also be a confusion of glory, seeking the glory of a woman through inordinate care and concern for appearances and luxury (Dt. 22:5, Mt. 11:8, Lk. 7:25). The woman is the glory of man, and this glory is in her beauty and beautiful way of cultivating life (Gen. 2:23, 1 Cor. 11:7). This is why it is right and proper for a woman to have longer hair, and it is shameful for men to do so (1 Cor. 11:14-15). And this softness in men is not at all unrelated to homosexuality (1 Cor. 6:9). And so we must practice strength and courage as men and teach it to our boys.

While we certainly do have a plague of sexual rebellion and confusion in the world, driven by many soft men in the Church, we should not miss the fact that men can often hide their softness in veneers of sacrificial strength. But God calls men to use their strength obediently, and this means taking responsibility and choosing the obedient sacrifice. God created Adam first, so that he could be cut open first. Man was made first so that he might bleed first. Men love courage and heroism, and so they do not usually embrace pure cowardice openly or immediately. Instead, a man will choose a disobedient sacrifice and decorate it with suffering (which sometimes includes tattoos and piercings), but this is just cowardice masquerading as courage. So a man may go hunting or work on the car instead of pursuing his wife, disciplining his children, or starting a new business, school, or church. And by the same token, sometimes a man needs to go hunting or learn to work on his car and get out of the office. The point is responsible obedience.

DO NOT GIVE YOUR STRENGTH TO WOMEN

“Give not thy strength to women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings” (Prov. 31:3). Lemuel’s mother is particularly warning the king against sexual immorality. Think of the story of Samson and Delilah. Samson literally gave his strength to a woman in exchange for sex. But this is what all sexual sin is: an offer of fake respect in exchange for empty pleasure. Real respect is shown in commitment, loyalty, obedience, encouragement, praise, and service. A wife swears to honor and obey you in the Lord, which makes you a stronger man. But “by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread” (Prov. 6:26). “For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her” (Prov. 7:26).

In 1 Kings, there are a number of chapters dedicated to the building of the Temple, many details describing the massive building project, where the materials came from, how it was constructed and so on. And then in 1 Kings 11 it describes how Solomon took hundreds of wives and concubines, how they turned Solomon’s heart away from the Lord, and how Solomon built high places and shrines for all of their gods (1 Kings 11:4-8). It’s mentioned almost in passing, but you really need to think about the contrast between building the Temple to the true and living God and then building hundreds of worthless, pagan shrines. Think about all that wasted energy, thought, money, materials, plus all the harm it caused Israel. What are you building? And do not despair if you have been building the wrong things. Christ died to take away the sins of men.

CONCLUSION: DO HARD THINGS

The glory of men is their strength. Men were made to do hard things. Men were made to bear heavy loads. When men work out physically, they get stronger. When men push themselves to do more, they generally get better at it. It’s trendy in our world, even our Christian world to warn one another about burnout and over-doing it, but where in the Bible are we warned about that? The Bible certainly instructs us to take a weekly Sabbath, a day of rest, but beyond that, it says we are to be known for hard, diligent work, and it warns us against sloth, laziness, and cowardice over and over. David fell into sexual sin in the springtime when kings were supposed to go out to battle. So where is the battle that God is calling you to? Is it dealing with a sin in your life? Is it leading your wife or family more intentionally? Is it starting some new venture, a new project? Does it look hard? Will it require suffering? Might you mess up along the way? You were made for this. This is your glory in Christ.

Firstfruits of the Resurrection (Easter A.D. 2022—King’s Cross)

Christ Church on April 17, 2022

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INTRODUCTION

The Bible teaches that the resurrection of Jesus is an historical fact with cosmic ramifications. The resurrection of Jesus establishes the forgiveness of human sins, the bodily resurrection of all believers, and the renewal of all things. And so the resurrection of Jesus is the ground of all Christian hope.

THE TEXT

“Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?…” (1 Cor. 15:12-26)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Paul has just reviewed the basics of the gospel, emphasizing the witnesses of the resurrection, last of all Paul himself (1 Cor. 15:1-11). From that record, Paul asks how any of the Corinthians can be saying there is no resurrection (15:12). Paul ties the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of all believers together: you cannot have one without the other (15:13). And if Christ is not risen, the problems pile up: our preaching is in vain, our faith is in vain, the apostles are false witnesses, we are still in our sins, and all who have already died are lost (15:14-18). If the Christian faith is twisted into a message that merely makes people feel better in this life, we are a most pitiful lot (15:19). But Christ is risen from the dead, and therefore He is the first fruits of those who sleep in death – so it makes sense that He would rise first and afterward all who belong to Him (15:20, 23). It should not seem impossible that God might bring resurrection through the man Jesus, since the man Adam plunged us all into death (15:21-22). Finally, Paul insists that this harvest includes all authorities, all enemies, up to and including death itself (15:24-26).

FIRSTFRUITS OF THE RESURRECTION HARVEST

In the Israelite festal calendar was the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost, a sort of harvest festival, but it began with the offering of firstfruits of the harvest (Lev. 23:10). This was kind a tithe, where Israel was required to give the Lord the firstfruits of the harvest in faith, trusting God for the entire harvest. Paul says that the resurrection of Jesus is like that: the resurrection of Jesus is the firstfruits of those who sleep (1 Cor. 15:23). When we proclaim the resurrection of Jesus, we are simultaneously confessing our sure and certain faith in the whole harvest, the resurrection of all who believe in Him, when He comes to judge the world (1 Cor. 15:23).

It may be that some were contemplating the heresy of “hyperpreterism,” which includes the notion that there is only a spiritual “resurrection” at death to heaven, and in another place, Paul specifically warns Timothy about profane and vain babblings that increase ungodliness, specifically those who say that the resurrection is past already (2 Tim. 2:18). But we know that the resurrection is not past already because one of the enemies that Christ has determined to put beneath His feet is death itself, the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:25-26). People are still dying, and therefore, that enemy has not been destroyed. But it’s not an accident that Paul calls death “sleep” throughout this text (15:6, 18, 20, 51). The clear implication is that those who sleep most certainly will wake. God is not an incompetent farmer. He does not plant and fail to get a harvest. As Job said, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh, shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me” (Job 19:25-27).

CONCLUSION: EASTER FORGIVENESS & HOPE

The Christian faith stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then the apostles and hundreds of other witnesses lied, our faith is empty, those who have died already are lost, and we are still in our sins (1 Cor. 15:13-18). This last one leaves us the most miserable and hopeless. But if Christ is risen, then the power of death has been broken. The wages of sin is death (Rom. 8:28), but if a true man, a descendant of Adam has come back from the dead, then there is a way out, a way of escape. The debt of sin has been paid in full. So we are proclaiming forgiveness when we say, “He is risen!” So, how can you hold on to any grudges against anyone?

If Christ is risen from the dead, then the harvest has begun, and we have great hope beyond this life (1 Cor. 15:19-20). This is because God is the Farmer, and His harvest is certain. Winter is ending, the Spring has begun. And our hope is specifically that Christ must reign until all of His enemies have been put beneath His feet (1 Cor. 15:25-26). Hebrews quotes this same verse from Psalm 8 and says, “We do not yet see everything put under Him. But we see Jesus… that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man… that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:8-9, 14). All of this means that Christians must be robust optimists. All things serve Him. He holds the keys of death and Hades (Rev. 1:18). Therefore, we are more than conquerors in life and in death, in prison or free, in perils, in success, in glory, in pain, and everything in between (Rom. 8:35-39).

Paul closes 1 Corinthians 15 with this exuberant celebration: “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:57-58). Earlier it says that our bodies are seeds that go into the ground (1 Cor. 15:37-44), but the implication here at the end is that our entire lives are a sort of seed, since our labor is not in vain in the Lord. Since God is the Farmer, He knows how to plant and water us and every detail of our lives perfectly so that we will yield the greatest crop. So do not grow weary in doing good. Be steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. He is risen indeed.

Jesus Our Scapegoat

Christ Church on April 3, 2022

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.

Houses & Bodies

Christ Church on March 27, 2022

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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.

Jesus & the Leprosy Laws

Christ Church on March 20, 2022

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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.