Uncleanness

Leviticus 12-15

            What do childbirth, skin disease, mold and mildew, and bodily discharges have in common? They all, in the Israelite mind, have some echo of death. A woman is unclean after childbirth not because of the birth, but because of the loss of blood and bodily fluids that attends that birth. A skin disease and an outbreak of mildew reminds one of rot and decay. A discharge of fluids represents a loss of vitality. Anything that looks of death makes one unclean because the Lord is the God of life. That seems to be the underlying thinking.

            Now, if you want an explanation of the details, I feel like we’re groping in the dark. Why is a woman unclean for 7 days for a bearing a boy, but 14 days for bearing a girl? My study Bible suggests that’s because she has to present the boy for circumcision on the 8^th day. Well and good, but that doesn’t explain why she has to stay away a total of 80 days for a girl and only 40 days for a boy. What’s the deal with the color of hair within an area of blighted skin? On that page in my study Bible there are exactly zero notes. What’s going on with the strange rite for purification from a skin disease? Kill a bird over a pot of water, dip a live bird, some yarn and some leaves in that water, sprinkle the defiled person and set the bird free. That seems weird. (We can probably explain that one a little: the first bird is a form of sacrifice, the cedar wood, hyssop, and yarn make some kind of tool for sprinkling the water, and the live bird flies off, symbolically carrying the uncleanness with them.)

            These are definitely chapters where most readers will be best served by trying to see the forest for the trees, by taking the broad view and seeing that uncleanness often has some association with death, a condition that excludes one from the presence of the God of life.

            Why is it in the Bible? What does it have to do with us? The book of Hebrews mentions that the blood of Jesus is sprinkled on us to cleanse us from a guilty conscience. So, perhaps the take away from Leviticus is as simple as rejoicing in the once for all sacrifice of Jesus that makes us holy and clean and gives us uninterrupted access to the Father.

Be Holy

Leviticus 10-11

            These two chapters are tied together by the notion that Israel is holy to the Lord, set apart from the nations for God’s purposes. Consider, for example, Moses’ rather unfeeling statement to Aaron immediately after the latter’s sons died: “This is what the Lord spoke of when he said: ‘Among those who approach me I will be proved holy.’” Nadab and Abihu, priests for the people, carried the first responsibility of being holy to the Lord. Not only were they Israelites, they were priests. They were doubly holy, doubly set apart. Their carelessness or willful disobedience, whichever it was, dishonored the God who had set them apart. I mentioned this a few days ago, that leaders among God’s people carry an outsized influence on the people. Their sin is not just personal, rather it has a devastating effect on those entrusted to their care. This responsibility in further demonstrated in the way that Aaron and his remaining sons are forbidden from grieving or from taking time off. The work they do on behalf of the Lord and of His people trumps everything else. The Lord is just that important.

            Holiness is also at the heart of chapter 11, the so-called kosher laws. Why are so many animals excluded from Israel’s diet? The short answer is in verses 44-45, “I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy… I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt; therefore be holy, because I am holy.” The cleanness or uncleanness of animals may or may not have some kind of deep rationale, but one thing is absolutely certain: the Lord excluded them. My study Bible notes, “Some hold that certain animal life was considered unclean for health considerations, but it is difficult to substantiate this idea.” No, the Lord simply said, “No.” I’m remined of something Martin Luther once said. Some of his opponents, who did not value the Lord’s Supper were mocking the idea that eating bread and drinking wine could bring the forgiveness of sins and Luther said the if God told us to eat straw, we’d eat straw for no other reason than that God told us to. The point of the kosher laws, then, is that Israel is uniquely dedicated to the Lord and to His commands. Some of the excluded foods are, in a word, delicious. Many of us love bacon or shellfish, for example, but the Lord said, “No.” So, Israel, God’s holy people, where consciously careful about what they put in their mouths.

            Peter says that we Christians are also holy to the Lord. “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). The old King James version translated this as “a peculiar people.” Maybe it pays considering, as we struggle with seemingly random exclusions for Israel, the ways in which we, too, are called to live “peculiarly” for the Lord. That’s a whole other topic, but if we were to spend some time in the epistles of Paul, for instance, we would that some of our peculiarity, our uniqueness, is to be found in rightly ordered sexual conduct, rightly ordered ways of speaking, a rightly ordered relationship with power, and a rightly ordered relationship with God’s creation. I don’t have time this morning to delve deeper. Let us just ponder that we, too, are called to live a unique life, a life that to the world may or may not make much sense, but for us, it is the life God has called us to. 

The Tabernacle Enters Service

Leviticus 7-9

            In Leviticus 7, we learn the purpose of the fellowship offering. It is offered either in thanksgiving, in fulfillment of a vow, or as a freewill offering, presumably without a specific occasion. It’s larger purpose is to share one’s joy both with the Lord and with others in a holy meal. That is, unlike the other offerings, this offering is eaten by regular people, not just priests and offerers.

            I’m reminded that meals are more than just a moment for fueling the body. They are, at their best, social occasions as well. Sharing a table is a profound act of fellowship. That’s why restaurant remain important social places; it’s why we should reconsider the importance of hospitality in our homes. It touches something deep within our humanity and binds us together in important ways that go beyond food.

            In Leviticus 8-9 we see the tabernacle officially coming into service. Moses, God’s man, offers the first sacrifices on behalf of Aaron and his sons, then, Aaron and his sons begin their ministry on behalf of the people. We’ve seen it already in the instructions about sacrifice, but it stood out for me again today how very bloody the whole thing was. Later on, in Leviticus 17, we’ll read that the life is in the blood of a creature. Animal sacrifice was about blood because it was about life: the wages of sin is death, Paul will say in Romans 6, so something has to die to pay the price of sin. The book of Hebrews will tell us that all of these sacrifices looked forward to the one sacrifice that matters, that endures, that covers all sins, the death of Jesus on the cross. I’m working on a sermon about Jesus’ beating in Pilate’s palace, and I’ve been seeing in my mind’s eye scenes from Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ all week. It’s a horrifying, but accurate, portrayal of the bloody mess that is the cross. The wages of sin is a mess. Thanks be to God, we are freed from enduring that mess for ourselves!

More Sacrifices

Leviticus 4-6

            I have struggled with today’s reading. I’m writing this after an hour’s study. So, let me start by repeating myself: don’t worry if you don’t understand everything in the Bible, and don’t worry if some of these regulations in Leviticus make your head swim. Maybe someday you’ll come back to it and on a second or third or fourth reading, it will make more sense to you.

            Today, I want only to highlight one detail in the so-called sin offering and to reflect on a phenomenon common to the sin and to the guilt offerings.

            The detail? It’s this: the sin offering is conducted differently depending on who it’s for. If it’s a priest or the whole community, some of the blood was sprinkled inside the tabernacle. If it’s for an individual, all the blood remains outside the tabernacle. I think this makes an important point: from a human point of view, not all sin is equal. Some sin is more damaging in its human effects than others. Consider: if a regular, man-in-the-pew Christian commits adultery, that’s bad. He has damaged his marriage, perhaps irreparably, and he has brought dishonor onto the church (1 Corinthians 6:12:20). But if a pastor commits adultery, all that is true and the damage to the faith of his people is extraordinary, so much so that some might even abandon the faith altogether, thinking, “How can a man of God fall so horribly.” I think that’s worth considering, and it’s worth two things: 1) holding our leaders accountable, especially in the church, 2) being aware of the unique temptations that Satan places on them because of the consequences of their fall.

            The other thing I’ve been struggling with this morning is the emphasis in Leviticus 4-5 on unintentional sin. (The word “unintentional” is used six times in these two chapters.) What’s been bothering me is that, at first glance, there doesn’t seem to be any way out for someone who intentionally sins. I suppose part of the point is to demonstrate that sin is an affront to God and that to purposely insult Him is disastrous. But, still, doesn’t God forgive all sins? I have two thoughts. First, when we sin against better knowledge, that poses a terrible risk to faith. Intentional sin is a bit like Pharaoh hardening his heart; it runs the risk of driving out the Holy Spirit and thereby killing one’s faith. Care is needed: there is intentional sin and there are sins of weakness and they sometimes feel similar. I think of a person with an addiction: they don’t want to do it again; they know they shouldn’t; but they do. That’s a little different than just saying, “I don’t care what God says; I want to do this.”

            That leads to my second thought. How can deliberate sin be forgiven? Commentator Victor Hamilton drew my attention to Numbers 5:6-8, about which he notes, “What is novel and crucial in the passage in Numbers is that confession is essential in the case of a deliberate sin. It must succeed conviction and precede restitution. Thus the sin moves into the category of inadvertent sins and may be expiated” (Hamilton, 261). Confession, repentance, contrition—these things are essential. They are essential for any sin we commit, as Luther notes in the Small Catechism, “Before God we should plead guilty of all sins, even those we are not aware of, as we do in the Lord’s Prayer.” They are even more essential in the case of deliberate, faith-endangering sin. If such a sin is like a hardening of one’s heart, repentance is like the breaking of that heart into pieces, following which the Holy Spirit can re-enter that heart and make it alive again. There’s so much to say here, because repentance is also a work of the Holy Spirit. He is the one, working through God’s Word of Law, that convicts us of sin, casts down our faulty foundations. So, we don’t want to leave the impression that we somehow prepare ourselves for salvation through our repentance, yet we have to emphasize the importance of repentance in our restoration.

Introduction to Leviticus

Leviticus 1-3

            Again this week, this post covers both Friday’s and Saturday’s readings. Today we begin reading Leviticus, and we should spend a little bit of time introducing this book, perhaps the book which seems most foreign and maybe even irrelevant in our modern sensibility. The title, Leviticus, comes to us from the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament dating from about two centuries before Jesus, a translation which had a huge influence on the New Testament. Leviticus means something along the lines of “concerning the Levites,” because so much of the content of the book concerns the services and regulations of the tabernacle, which the priests and Levites were responsible for. The book divides into five sections: chapters 1-7 detailing sacrifices; chapters 8-10 about the priesthood; chapters 11-16 distinguishing ceremonially clean from unclean and culminating in the Day of Atonement; chapters 17-26, which scholars dub the “holiness code;” and, finally, chapter 27 about vows taken to the Lord. Victor Hamilton notes, “More than any other Old Testament book…Leviticus summons Israel to a holy life” (Hamilton, Handbook on the Pentateuch, 246.) Said another way, Leviticus reminds Israel that she is holy to the Lord and details the many ways in which she lives distinctively among the nations.

            We start with the section on sacrifices, chapters 1-7. Israel has five basic offerings: a whole burnt offering, a grain offering, a fellowship offering (in some translations, a peace offering), a sin offering, and guilt offering. These offerings are further explained in later chapters. The three that occupy us today (whole burnt offering, grain offering, and fellowship offering) are different than the last two in that no specific occasion is given for them. In fact, my study Bible simply calls each of them a “voluntary act of worship.” They are given specifically as a gift to the Lord for His pleasure. Note how the phrase “an aroma pleasing to the Lord is repeated eight times in three chapters.

            The whole burnt offering is an animal sacrifice, and the entire animal is burned up, an act that might seem wasteful to us. Imagine bringing a nice, crisp $100 bill into church and, instead of placing it in the offering plate, you set it on fire. Seems irresponsible. The whole burnt offering can seem like that, but it is offered only to honor the Lord. While whole burnt offerings could be offered by individuals, they were most commonly corporate gifts, the occasions of which are described other places in the Bible.

            The grain offering and the fellowship offering are different in that a portion of both is reserved for human use. A portion of a grain offering was reserved for the priests, and the majority of the fellowship offering (again, an animal sacrifice) was eaten (see chapter 7). We may ask why the fat of the fellowship offering was the portion given to the Lord, and the answer is that the fatty portions were considered the best portions. (In our era, we’ve become really sensitive to the dangers of a high fat diet, but I remember my dad loving a well-marbled, that is, fatty, steak. He judged that the flavor was in the fat.)

            Next week, we’ll look at two sacrifices for specific occasions and read more regulations about all five sacrifices. For today, though, we just have a reminder that one of the purposes of our offerings is simply that they please the Lord, just as anyone of us would be pleased when a loved one brought us a spontaneous gift, motivated simply out of love and for the joy of the recipient. 

Setting Up the Tabernacle

Exodus 39-40

            Finally, the tabernacle is completed to the Lord’s specifications. Moses finds it just as the Lord had commanded and sets it up for the first time. Note the time stamp: the tabernacle is set up two weeks shy of the anniversary of the Passover. Israel has been at Mt. Sinai for almost a year. It took them six weeks to get from Egypt to Sinai. According to 24:18, Moses spent 40 days on the mountain, so the golden calf incident happened about 3 ½ months out from Egypt. If my math is correct, it took the Israelites about eight months to prepare the tabernacle. I don’t know that that information is particularly important, but according to Numbers 10:11 the Israelites spent just short of a year at Mt. Sinai. I think it’s helpful to think of this as the time in which the Lord deprogrammed them from thinking like slaves and helped them learn to think of themselves as a peculiar people, holy to Him. It takes some time to learn to think differently!

            Much more important is the end of chapter 40, in which the cloud settles on tabernacle, an indication that the Lord has taken up residence among His people. The cloud is the means by which the Lord hides His glory so that He can be in the presence of His people without endangering them. (The holiness of God is incompatible with the sinfulness of humans.) Yet, at this moment, even the cloud cannot fully conceal the Lord’s glory. A very similar thing occurs when the temple is dedicated in Solomon’s day (about 500 years after Sinai). 1 Kings 8:11 says, “And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple.”

            Three things: first, we see again the significance of the tabernacle, namely, it was the place where the Lord was graciously present. Not just omnipresently present, but present specifically to bless. Second, in the history of Israel, Solomon’s temple was destroyed in 586 BC. It was rebuilt at the end of Israel’s Babylonian exile in 516 BC, but the Bible never talks about the glory filling that second temple. Third, the overpowering glory of the Lord makes our Christian experience all the more remarkable. Consider Ephesians 2:18, “For through him [that is, Jesus] we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” Access to the Father—unmediated by priests, unafraid to be in His presence—because Jesus did what the sacrifices of the tabernacle were ultimately looking forward to. What scholars call “temple ideology” is huge in understanding the fullness of Biblical theology.

Tabernacle Furnishings

Exodus 37-38

            Today’s reading details the actual construction of the ark of the covenant, the table of the bread, the lampstand, the incense altar, the altar of burnt offering, and the basin. They are arranged in that order from inside out, but let’s look at them from outside in. The significance of the altar of burnt offering is probably pretty obvious: no one comes into God’s presence without atonement, and atonement is made through blood sacrifice. We will read about the various sacrifices and offerings the people made beginning on Friday. In Christian terms, there is no access to God without the cross of Jesus on which the one sacrifice that counted once for all was made. The basin’s purpose is always obvious: a priest had to clean up somewhere after the messy work of sacrifice. For the Christian, two images come to mind. First, there’s the imagery of “having been washed in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14). On the surface, what a ridiculous notion! Blood is red; washing in it would make you messier not cleaner! But the point is that only by the blood of Jesus’ sacrifice is sin taken away. Second, there’s the image of Baptism, which unites us with Jesus. In Romans 6, Paul says that in Baptism we are united with Jesus in His death and resurrection. The basin in the tabernacle, with its connection to the altar of burnt offering looks forward to that experience.

            Now we come into the Holy Place. The tabernacle was rectangular, three times as long as it was wide. The first two-thirds was called the Holy Place, and only priests were allowed there, typically only twice per day. The last third was called the Most Holy Place. It contained the ark of the covenant, and only the high priest entered there, usually only once per year on the Day of Atonement. In the Holy Place were three pieces of furniture: the table of the bread, the lampstand, the incense altar. On the table of the bread were kept 12 loaves, reminding people that the tribes of Israel were always in the Lord’s presence. Bread, of course, figures prominently in Christian worship through the Lord’s Supper. Now, we typically emphasize the presence of Jesus in the bread, but Paul makes a point about the bread and the church: “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf” (1 Corinthians 10:17). We also are a people who live in the presence of our God. Functionally, the lampstand provided light in the tabernacle, but light is a common image for God, “who lives in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16). Jesus famously declares Himself the light of the world (John 8:12). And God’s people are the ones who will be light for the nations (Acts 13:47). Finally, there is an altar for burning incense, the big takeaway of which is that the prayers of God’s people go up before Him like incense (Psalm 141:2, Revelation 5:8).

            Finally, we have the ark of the covenant, placed in the Most Holy Place. The ark was considered the Lord’s throne on earth. He sat between the cherubim. Again, we see the importance of atonement to be in the presence of God, since the lid of the ark was called the atonement cover (in other translations called the mercy seat). We see a similar thing in most churches (at least in liturgical, sacramental traditions) in which the altar is the visual focal point, the place where God still sits among His people.

            So, the tabernacle was arranged to emphasize the holy presence of God among His people. As we consider these arrangements we see that the tabernacle looked forward to the work of Jesus in many ways. This foreshadowing makes the tabernacle well worth our time to understand.