So Clean

Leviticus 15 to 18

There are bits and pieces

and multiple thoughts in these chapters. 

Sometimes it hops and skips like that.  

Mostly when I read the infectious disease and discharge sections, I get itchy and little nauseous.  But it brings the story down to a real, organic, and earthy level.  Yum. These were just regular people, with regular bodies, and routines, in some unusual nomadic circumstances.  But other than that, not so different from you and from me. 

I appreciate that about this story. 

The very act of spitting on someone takes on a whole new meaning. Being spit on could make you ceremonially unclean and make you unfit for worship.  It’s amazing that one small act could be so offensive and so laden with meaning. I really get it now. When I read it, I feel like there is so much letter to the law, and I wonder how it translates to the spirit of the law.  It’s easy to see how to follow all the rules with your mind, and not let it settle into your heart.

Ch 15:31 sums up God’s reason for all these rules and regulations:

“You must keep the Israelites

Separate from things

That make them unclean

So they will not die in their uncleanness

Defiling my dwelling place

With is among them.”

Consecration. 

Cleanness and uncleanness

affected their worship and how they lived as community. 

And once a year Atonement was made for the whole people. 

On the 10^th day of the 7^th month.  

A whole lot of blood shedding. 

Ch 17:11 talks about the blood shedding

“for the life of the creature is in the blood.

It is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.”

Jesus’ Blood.

My heart His dwelling place.

That really gets me today.

Chapter 18 has lots of interesting “interpersonal” instructions. 

But I love the NIV study notes about the first few verses.  

I don’t have to paraphrase what they say so succinctly.

Ch 18:1 to 5

“The Lord said to Moses,

2“Speak to the Israelites and say to them:

‘I am the Lord your God.

3You must not do as they do in Egypt,

where you used to live,

and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan,

where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices.

4You must obey my laws

and be careful to follow my decrees.

I am the Lord your God.

5Keep my decrees and laws,

 for the person who obeys them

will LIVE by them.

I am the Lord.”

Notes: “Here God’s people are given instructions concerning interpersonal relations and a mortality reflecting God’s holiness.  Israel was thereby prepared for a life different from the Canaanites, whose life-style was deplorably immoral.”

Chapter 18 concludes with the result of immoral living.  Where if you defile the land….it will vomit you out.   This is ever so vivid.   Is it not?  

And the notes on verse 5…. I love this part about the word “LIVE”….

“…With God’s full blessing. 

The law

was the way of life

for the redeemed

not

a way of salvation

for the lost.  “

Those kinds of notes change the whole reading context for me. 

Following God’s Way

And reading This Story

is for living life

in the here and now, today.  

And the following of all the rules

That is only a piece of it

But not the whole. 

That part won’t save you.