Today we begin Leviticus Chapter 12.
For the Complete Jewish Bible, click here.
For the King James Bible, click here.
In the next several chapters, we’re going to be going even deeper in examining the many facets of CLEAN and UNCLEAN.
Why is this important?
Because understanding the governing principles behind CLEAN and UNCLEAN is of great importance in explaining holiness and enables us to see the entire God-ordained pattern of holiness.
Let’s quickly take stock of where we are at the moment.
The reason we’ve spent more than a few months in those chapters of Leviticus dealing with the various kinds of sacrifices is because each kind dealt with a different facet of sin and purity.
There were sacrifices that addressed the reality that our very natures are infused with sin.
There were sacrifices that dealt with specific acts of disobedience against YHVH.
There were sacrifices that dealt with specific trespasses against one’s neighbor.
So we saw that sin is classified in a number of different ways and that the Christian notion that all sins are equal in God’s eyes simply does not hold water.
On a common sense level, intuitively we also know this is true.
Trust me, committing murder is not the same thing as swiping a Snicker’s bar from your local grocery store.
The biggest takeaways I want you to get from our study on ritual purity so far is that there are many facets to CLEAN and UNCLEAN and PURE and IMPURE.
It’s also important to understand that UNCLEANNESS and IMPURITY are not the same thing as sin.
In His Word, the Lord is spending a lot of time teaching this to us, so these things must be important.
I think one of the more challenging aspects of this topic I’ve presented so far is that someone or something is NOT unclean due to some inherent physical or biological abnormality.
For example, pigs and lobsters aren’t inherently defective or have evil spirits residing inside them.
And it’s not like pigs and lobsters are inherently unhealthy for you either.
There are people with the longest and healthiest life spans who on a regular basis eat the most unclean food imaginable.
As Paul said, “There is nothing unclean itself”, things are clean and unclean because God has declared it so.
CLEAN and UNCLEAN are distinctions God has made for the ultimate purpose of teaching His People important spiritual principles.
It is his way of teaching us the spiritual or heavenly truths that are normally invisible to man in a way we finite human beings can see and comprehend them.
And as I’ve said before, in many cases, I don’t know the reason why God chose specific animals and foods to be unclean.
And the Bible really doesn’t make an effort to give us a reason.
We have to accept that these laws are as they are because they conform to the pattern of holiness the Lord has already established in the heavens.
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