Our society is fixated with germs. You want to be a good mother, make sure your child doesn’t get germs. Of course, if your child eats dirt, they will probably get immunity. But now you can get wipes for everything. You can get no touch pump packs, because germs are out to get your children. Some people, of course, are fixated with cleaning. They even might have an obsessive-compulsive personality. They might wash their hands non-stop.
Lady Macbeth was fixated with cleaning. In Shakespeare’s play, Lady MacBeth carries the guilt of murder, so she continuously washes her hands. ‘Out, damned spot… will these hands never be clean’ (MacBeth, Act 5, Scene 1). Lady MacBeth is simply expressing the link we feel between physical cleanliness and moral purity. The link is also expressed in the saying, ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’.
Now, cleanliness is NOT next to godliness. Jesus himself, though he was without sin, got dirty with the muck of our lives. Some of the most godly Christians are those who do the most dirty jobs.
But cleanliness is often the way we think about godliness. We sense that sins make us dirty in God’s sight. We sense that we are morally unclean. And we know that we must be clean to see God. And God used that way of thinking in the Old Testament Levitical laws.
So far in Leviticus, we’ve seen that God set up a system for Israel to maintain their relationship with him. It involved sacrificing farm animals, and sprinkling blood. God taught Israel that there was no forgiveness without the death of a spotless animal. And it involved a special class of person, the priests. The priests needed to enter God’s presence on behalf of Israel and to sacrifice on behalf of people.
The book of Leviticus also erected rules about cleanliness. These rules weren’t primarily about health and hygiene, although perhaps some of it had to do with health and hygiene. Rather, the cleanliness code in Leviticus was a symbolic system of ritual cleanliness.[1] The principle is found in Leviticus chapter 15 verse 31:
31 "`You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling-place, which is among them.'" (NIV)
So it is very important to be ritually clean when a person comes before God.
Everything in Israel was divided into either the ‘holy’ or the ‘common’. And the common was further divided into the ‘clean’, and the ‘unclean’ (Leviticus 10:10). Everything that was not holy was common, but the common was divided into the clean and the unclean. So, there were three effective levels. First, there was the holy. Then, there was the common and clean. And third, there were the common and unclean.
Cleanness was the normal position. Holiness and uncleanness were variations. Animals were divided into clean and unclean (Leviticus 11). Various physical conditions took people from being clean to unclean (Leviticus 12-15). Clean things could become holy, but unclean things could never become holy. That’s important to realize. Unclean things could never become holy. Holy and clean things could be defiled and become unclean.
Because God is holy, the people need to be holy if they come into his presence. It was much easier to move out of holiness to uncleanness. As far as people were concerned, only the priests were holy, and could approach the presence of God. And it was very difficult to go from unclean to clean. Chapter 15 verse 31 again:
31 "`You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling-place, which is among them.'" (NIV)
So, in this system, some things were declared clean, and some unclean. But it all served to teach the same thing that the sacrificial system taught. The sacrificial system taught that the people had sin and guilt needing forgiveness through the blood of the lamb. And the ritual cleanliness system taught that the people periodically became unclean, and needed to be cleansed, again through sacrifices, through washing, and through the priest
But the thing is, the things you think would have been unclean, weren’t necessarily unclean to the people of Israel. You probably think eating locusts and grasshoppers is pretty gross. That was fine in Israel. They were clean. And some of the things you think are fine, were actually unclean for them. You have no problem eating prawns and pork, lobster and bacon, crab and ham. But the people of Israel detested such food, and rightly so. Even though I love ham and crustaceans, and enjoy them, such food was unclean and detestable to Israel.
Now, we mustn’t think that Israel was weird for having food laws. We have food laws, too. I won’t buy those eggs because they are not free range. Meat is murder. I won’t eat whale, cat or dog. I won’t eat insects.
A Chinese saying is ‘you may eat everything that walks on all fours with it’s back to heaven.’ That is an inclusive rule. But Israel had an exclusive rule, and many Jews still observe them in their Kosher food laws, and Muslims in their Halal food laws.
Leviticus 11 establishes the foods that are kosher. The Israelites can eat only these animals. Leviticus chapter 11 verses 2 to 8:
Of all the animals that live on land, these are the ones you may eat: 3 You may eat any animal that has a split hoof completely divided and that chews the cud. 4 "`There are some that only chew the cud or only have a split hoof, but you must not eat them. The camel, though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof; it is ceremonially unclean for you. 5 The coney, though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof; it is unclean for you. 6 The rabbit, though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof; it is unclean for you. 7 And the pig, though it has a split hoof completely divided, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. 8 You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you. (NIV)
No Maltese fenech pie. No bacon and pork. No camel steaks. Seafood had a similar rule. Chapter 11 verse 12:
12 Anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be detestable to you. (NIV)
No crabs, lobsters, and prawns. And there are lists of birds and insects that can’t be eaten also (11:13) The good news was there were some insects you could eat. Verse 22:
22 Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper.
Poor Jimminy Cricket. Both Elijah and John the Baptist ate them, perhaps dipped in honey.
Now, why these rules? Why must the animal chew the cud and have a split hoof to be eaten by the Israelite? We are not told. Perhaps there were health and hygiene reasons. But these were not the main reasons, and they are certainly not given. The only reason we are given is because God is holy, and Israel must be holy. The only given rationale is holiness.
I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. (NIV)
The core idea of holiness is separation. And that is what the food laws did for Israel. These food laws separated Israel from other nations. Food always divides people. Rules about food always serves to separate people.
If you want to be a party pooper, say you can’t eat their food. ‘I’m sorry, I’m a vegan, a vegetarian, I’m on the elimination diet, I’m on weight watchers, Jenny Craig, I have an allergy, I can’t eat food from your kitchen because it is not nut free, egg free gluten free. It’s a short step from saying ‘I can’t eat your food’ to saying that ‘you and your food are unclean.’ You’re friendship won’t get very far if you keep getting that message.
Would you like to come to my place for lunch? Quite frankly, no. I can’t eat your food. Your food might be a death sentence for me. That kind of kills the friendship before it starts, doesn’t it?
That was the effect of Israel’s food laws. God wanted to keep Israel separate from all the other nations. And that way, by keeping Israel separate, the nations would not influence the Israelites in other things, like idolatry, sexual sins, or intermarriage. The Levitical food laws were a fence that kept Israel separate (Ephesians 2:14-15).
Now, we are Christians. We are also Gentiles. We eat different things to Jews. And that’s OK. Why? Because Jesus has now made it clear that the times have changed. All food is clean. Why? Because God has taken the fence down. Mark Chapter 7 verses 18 to 19:
“Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? 19For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) (NIV)
Jesus said the same thing to Peter in Acts chapters 10 and 11. In the book of Acts, the gospel of Jesus’ lordship and saving death and resurrection goes out to all the world, to the non-Jewish world. And Jesus says that the food laws that once separated Israel from the nations are no longer applicable. The risen Jesus makes this clear to Peter by a thrice repeated vision:
“Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” 14“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”15… “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” (Acts 10:13-15 NIV)
The dietary laws of Israel no longer apply to Christians, because what divided Israel from other nations has been removed. The gospel now goes to the nations. Jew and Gentile have a new basis of unity, which is the Lord Jesus Christ.
But wait, it’s not just food that makes people unclean. There’s more that can defile.
If an animal dies of natural causes, it is unclean. Anyone who touches the carcass is unclean till evening (Leviticus 11:39). He must wash his clothes.
But not only contact with death made people unclean. Contact with blood and bodily fluids also made people unclean. Many laws in Leviticus protect important bodily fluids, and most especially, blood.
In Israel, blood was reserved exclusively for atonement. So no one in Israel could not eat blood for this reason (Leviticus 17:10-11). No black pudding or rare steaks if you were a Jew. Blood had to be kept special, holy, and used only for sacrifice. And bodily fluids were also regulated, probably because they represented life and death.
Natural parts of life made a person ceremonially unclean. For a woman, childbirth made her unclean. Childbirth involves blood (Leviticus 12:1-8). That’s probably the reason why a girl baby makes the mum unclean twice as long as boy babies, because females will have to deal with a lot of blood and bodily fluids in their lives.
A boy was to be circumcised on the 8th day after his birth. And then, after 33 days, the mother would go to the tabernacle and offer a sacrifice. If she couldn’t afford a lamb, she was to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. In this way ,the priest would make atonement for her, and she would be clean.
Mary did this very thing after Jesus’ was born. She presented Jesus before the Lord (Luke 2:22ff). Because Jesus too, was born of a woman, and born under law, to redeem those under law (Galatians 4:4). Jesus took on Israel’s responsibilities under the Levitical law, to fulfill all righteousness, because Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.
Skin diseases also made a person unclean (Leviticus 13:1ff). The problem was not with pimples, friction rashes, or only skin-deep blemishes, but with the diseases that spread. You can see a health reason for this, but even so, health is not the main reason given. The regulations seem to have been mainly about keeping people clean from God’s perspective.
In the rules about rashes and skin disease, the priest can either declare the person clean, or put the person into seven day quarantine, or declare the person unclean. The good news, friends, is that a bald man was clean (Leviticus 13:40-43). Yay. That saved the priests a bit of work. The bad news is that if someone was unclean, it was a terrible sentence. So Leviticus chapter 13 verses 45 to 46 reads:
45The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out , `Unclean! Unclean!' 46 As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp. (NIV)
Uncleanness meant isolation. And Jesus saw the reality of this isolation when He came to Israel. Ten men with leprosy, isolated from their community, called out to him, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’ (Luke 17:11-17). And Jesus had mercy on them. Jesus saw them and said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests’. As they went, they were cleansed. And one came back – the Samaritan – and thanked Jesus. Jesus can meet the needs of the unclean, because Jesus Christ came to fulfill the law. Jesus is over the law, and above the law, and can fulfill the needs of the law for us. The law was written for Jesus, so that we might be pointed to Christ. And this law was written for Jesus Christ, to show that he could do what the law could not do.
Childbirth and skin disease made people unclean. So did mold and mildew. Mold and mildew was not just a health problem, though it is that. Mold and mildew made things and people unclean. And it was not fixed with a bit of bleach. You needed a priest.
Again, the priest would either declare the thing clean, or quarantine it for seven days, or declare it unclean. If the mold or mildew had spread, the article must be destroyed. Certain mildew could be washed off and declared clean. But other mold meant that the article needed to be burnt with fire. It was expensive to keep Israel clean. But God was living among them, so the expense was worth it.
Do you like the game ‘snakes and ladders’? I always find it much easier to find a snake and much harder to find a ladder. It seems always easier to go down a snake than up a ladder. It is like gravity, in that it is always easy to go down a hill, but hard to go up.
So it was with being unclean and clean under the Levitical laws. It was quite easy to get unclean. It just happened as a normal part of life. Childbirth, blood, mold, mildew, monthly period, nocturnal emission, skin conditions – all normal parts of life, all made a person unclean. It was easy to become unclean. It was much harder to get clean. Leviticus 14 tells us how a healed person gets ceremonially cleansed.
Notice, being healed is different to being cleansed. The person had to be healed BEFORE they got ritually cleansed, because healing is a physical restoration, but cleansing is a ritual restoration, a ceremonial cleansing required in addition to the physical healing.
Cleansing from these diseases, conditions and occurrences, as we have now come to expect, involved sacrifice. It involved the priest. Cleansing involved sprinkling blood, killing birds, water, washing clothes, bathing, shaving heads, more seven day quarantine, complete bodily hair removal, more bathing, more sacrifices, more blood, more sprinkling, anointing with oil, and then the person would be clean. A person might get healed, but then getting ritually clean was time consuming, expensive, and a lot of hard work.
Again, a house in Israel might need the priest’s assessment. The repairs required might be limited. It may be that only some stones would need to be ripped out, and the mold scraped off, and then the house replastered. But the situation might be much worse. If it is a spreading mold, the whole house must be torn down brick by brick and removed from the town. An Israelite might lose their house. And even if the mold does goes away, the house still needs to be ritually purified. Again, this requires killing birds, sprinkling blood, more water, and all this on top of fixing the house.
Our bible reading was on the pleasant and edifying subject of bodily discharges. I hope you’ve had your breakfast. A bodily discharge, verse 2, is unclean. This is not just weeping sores or puss. It also might be quite normal things, like a nocturnal emission. So sex made a person ritually unclean. So did nocturnal emissions, a wet dream. The conception of every Israelite involved ritual uncleanness. So, too, did a monthly period for a woman. Indeed, if the woman continues to have a flow of blood, she continues to be unclean. Chapter 15 verses 25 to 27:
25 "`When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period or has a discharge that continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge, just as in the days of her period. 26 Any bed she lies on while her discharge continues will be unclean, as is her bed during her monthly period, and anything she sits on will be unclean, as during her period. 27 Whoever touches them will be unclean; he must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. (NIV)
Here is the disgrace of a woman with a continual flow of blood. When she enters into her community, she goes around making everything and everybody unclean. She is a mobile spreader of ritual uncleanness. She defiles everything that she touches and everyone who touches her. She infects everyone ritually, and would have been a pariah. That is girl germs on steroids.
And Jesus meets just such a woman in Mark chapter 5 verse 24 and following:
A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” (NIV)
At the level of the law, what an irresponsible act by this women! If you just had the Levitical law, you could be forgiven for judging her a selfish and careless woman. Here she is, going through the crowd, touching everyone, pressing against everyone, making them all ritually unclean. They’ve all now got to go and wash because of this unclean woman. She was a spreader of religious uncleanness, indiscriminately contaminating and defiling the whole crowd. What a great social risk she took, going to find Jesus.
Moreover, according to the law, she would make Jesus unclean. She would defile Jesus by touching him. Yet that was her intent. Her intent, if you just had the law, was to defile Jesus by her contaminating touch.
But this woman didn’t believe that. She saw something different in Jesus, something that placed him above the limitations of the Levitical law. She believed that instead of making Jesus unclean, Jesus would heal her.
Normally, when the unclean touched the clean or the holy, the contamination spread. But not with Jesus. Jesus is so holy, he communicates his holiness. Jesus transmits his sanctifying power in both healing and ritual cleansing. So Mark chapter 5 verse 29 to 30:
29Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. 30At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” (NIV)
No wonder she was petrified at this question. Would this holy man, this prophet, rebuke her in front of the whole crowd for defiling him? Would she be exposed as the unclean woman she was, expelled from intimacy with God, driven far from her family and people? Would she be further humiliated and embarrassed in front of this crowd, who she had recklessly ritually defiled? No. Verses 33 and 34:
33Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” (NIV)
Jesus is bigger and better and more powerful than the law of Moses. The limitations of the ritual law do not apply to Jesus, because the law was made for Jesus. The law points us to Christ.
Why did God set up the ritual law? For Jesus Christ. The law is a school master, to lead us to Christ. And here is Christ, showing his superiority to the law.
Friends, we are the unclean, not ritually, but spiritually and morally. Our sins have made us unclean before God. And no matter how much we wash ourselves and say, ‘Out damned spot’, we cannot scrub ourselves clean. The law cannot cleanse us. Only Jesus Christ can cleanse us. And he does, when we entrust ourselves to him.
And our uncleanness does not make Jesus unclean. No, our uncleanness is healed as we reach out and touch Jesus. Faith in Jesus Christ saves us, just as faith in Christ saved the unclean woman. What the law cannot do, Jesus does. Jesus saves us. He cleans us inside and out. And that is every believer in Jesus. ‘Stained by sin, to the fountain fly. Wash me savior or I die.’
Let’s pray.
[1] This section is indebted to Peterson, Engaging With God, 40-42.