Unclean

Some words just stand out. In a read through Leviticus, the word unclean is a big one. It shows up time and time again. In chapter 15, we see all sorts of things that can make you unclean. Honestly, the whole book hammers that point. Touch the wrong kind of animal, unclean. Get the wrong kind of rash, unclean. Touch something dead, unclean. Get a kind of sore, unclean. Get mold in your house, unclean. Eat the wrong kind of food, unclean.

 

Leviticus 15:31 “Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.”

 

And it looks like the whole unclean thing is a big deal. You could die in your uncleanness by defiling the tabernacle. This is a dangerous thing.

 

Looking at all this, we want to say, “Man, it looks like anything, even little things, make us unclean.” You want to say, “it looks like I am almost always unclean, always in danger of judgment.” And if you see that, you’re seeing the point.

 

One of the key reasons for the law in the Old Testament is to demonstrate to humanity just how much we need someone to rescue us. In Genesis 3, after the fall of man, God promised that he would send someone special into the world to crush the devil. In Genesis 12, God told Abram that one of his own offspring would be the one to bless the whole world. All of Genesis kept showing us God preserve that promise, keeping it alive though it was threatened. In Exodus, we saw God keep the promise alive by preserving the nation from the attacks of the Egyptians. Later we saw in Exodus that God also preserved the nation by preventing them from destroying themselves, and thus God kept the promise alive.

 

Here in Leviticus, we see how desperate the situation really is. We are  by nature an unclean people. WE do evil things that make us unclean. We live in a fallen world that makes us unclean. We touch things that make us unclean. Our own bodies make us unclean. And we see that we need atonement, or we are without hope.

 

Why are we so without hope? God is clean. God is pure. God is holy. And We have no chance at all to be clean on our own. Everything around us and everything in us seems to be conspiring to make us unclean. So if God does not make a way to make us clean, we are dead.

 

Part of the problem with the way that the world around us views religion is that we no longer have any concept of the unclean. We have, as a society, redefined sin to be the things that society disapproves of. We tend to only think of sin as things we can see hurt others in a measurable way: murder, rape, abuse, theft, bullying, racism, etc. But we have forgotten that to fail to live up to God’s standard of purity, of cleanness, that is also sin, deadly sin. And we do not, we cannot, live up to that standard. We are not good enough. WE can never be good enough.

 

What makes the Old Testament law beautiful? It points us to our need for a Savior. It shows us that God made a way of providing for our being made clean. It showed us that God would open the door for our sin to be atoned for. It, in short, points us to Jesus.

 

What makes the Bible beautiful? God promised to send someone to rescue people from all our evil, our self-destruction, our uncleanness. Then God sent Jesus, God’s own Son, to earth to do the job. Jesus lived clean—nobody else ever did. Jesus died and suffered the punishment for our sins. Jesus rose from the grave and proved that his work was done. Jesus tells us to let go of controlling our lives, to surrender to him, to turn from sin and to trust in him for life. Jesus brings us salvation by grace through faith in him. And when Jesus gives us new life, salvation, and forgiveness, he also gives to us the cleanness to enter the presence of God, a cleanness that we could never have gained on our own.

 

2 Corinthians 5:21 - For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

 

As you read Leviticus, as you see, unclean, unclean, unclean, let it lead you to two things. Let the word of God remind you that you are not clean, no matter how good you think you are, if you are left to yourself. WE are unclean by nature and by choice. Then let the word of God remind you that Jesus came to make us clean, forgiven, and acceptable to God.