Leviticus 12-15- "Cleaning up the mess"

Leviticus 13:45-46

Mark 1:40-45

Cleaning up the mess

We live in a messy world.

And when I say messy, I am not just talking about messy relationships, messy situations, but I am talking about messy, dirty, filthy, unclean.

For those of you, who had to go without running water for a while, you know first-hand how quickly messy things can get.

Taking a shovel and bog roll out to the back, muddy, slushy paddock was messy.

If you read all of Leviticus chapters 12-15, which we are not going to today, but if you do, you will see and hear about fluids, sores, discharges, mildew, scabs, mould, blood, pus, disease and many more disgusting things- dirty things.

I remember the most disgusting job I had to do, since I am a big wuss, was to clean the toilet blocks at a campsite in Cornwall. There I was, a fresh faced 18 year old, enjoying another long summer, as students do, and I was living the dream at the Cornwall campsite…….cleaning toilets.

I thought my level of filth had peaked when I had to don the rubber gloves and pick the excrement out of the toilet which wouldn’t flush down. But that I learnt wasn’t the peak of filth, it actually peaked when I first cleaned out the drain at the bottom of the shower. Amongst the hair and gew and whatever else was down there, I dreaded that job the most- It was dirty- it was disgusting.

And so now that we are all disgusted, we may now be prepared for Leviticus  chapters 12-15.

In chapters 12-15, God gave the Israelites instructions of what made a person either clean or unclean. Now if a person was declared clean they were able to worship with God’s people, but more importantly, they were able to approach the tabernacle- the very place where God’s presence dwelt.  And so a clean person, was able to be nearer to God.

If a person was declared unclean, they were not able to join in community worship and they were stay away from the tabernacle. An unclean person was far away from God’s presence.

And so when God instructed Moses and how to define people either clean or unclean, it was a constant reminder that God was Holy and His people weren’t. It was a constant reminder that things were not as they should be. It was a reminder that the perfect relationship between God and Hid people had been tainted by sin.

God gave instructions about child birth, about skin disease, about sexual disease and sex itself.

Isn’t it amazing to think that God cares about all our lives, he cares about what we eat, where we live, our health, every aspect of our life- He cares about every part of our lives.

Now, what is really important to know is that when God distinguished between clean and unclean here, he was not referring to whether a person had sinned or not, although in the New Testament the distinction does often mean the distinction between sinful and righteous, but here, it doesn’t.

For example, God declared a woman who had just given birth as unclean for a period of time.  Now, giving birth is not sinful: in fact giving birth is a wonderful gift from God.

It was the loss of blood during birth, which made the woman unclean. And remember God declared that there was life in the blood, and so as the woman gave birth and there was a loss of blood, it was symbolic of loss of life, it was symbolic of death, which as we know was and is the ultimate consequence of sin.

For those who have witnessed the amazing act of childbirth- we know it isn’t sweet smelling roses- it is messy!

The pain and loss of blood in child birth is a constant reminder that we live in a fallen world which has been stained by sin. Pain in childbirth was the consequence of Adam and Eve’s disobedience.

God also declared that those who had skin diseases were unclean, but being sick isn’t a sin, it is just a consequence of living in a sinful, fallen world.

So it begs the question…..If God made these laws to declare people clean or unclean, and it wasn’t to describe whether a person had committed a sin or not, what were they for?

Well, firstly, they operated a little like the food laws in chapter 11, which instead of making distinctions between two sets of animals clean or unclean animals, it made distinctions between two sets of people, clean and unclean people.

The ultimate purpose was to remind people that God was Holy and they were not, God could simply not mix with an unclean person.

When a person was declared unclean, it was a reminder to God’s people that things were not as they should be, the uncleanliness and mess of the world had spoilt that perfect relationship with God.

The real tragedy of someone being decaled unclean, was that they couldn’t approach the tabernacle- the place where God’s presence rested: an unclean person couldn’t go near to the presence of God.

A person who had a skin disease and declared unclean by the priest, not only couldn’t approach God at the tabernacle, but they were to be separated from the camp or community, for the sake of the whole community. If they continued mixing with the community, they were in danger of spreading the disease to others.

This is symptomatic of the fall, when the consequences of sin not only affect our relationship with God but also one another. Sin dirties all relationships, whether vertical or horizontal.

In Leviticus 13 it talks specifically about what happened if somebody had this leprous skin disease.

As you read through chapter 13 you will notice that a person who had a skin disease and was eventually separated from the camp, which must have been like going onto death row, this sick person was only thrown out of the camp, after a long and thorough investigation. A person wasn’t just thrown out of the camp at a whim.

Notice that the priests, were the people who had to check the people for skin diseases and declare them either clean or unclean. The priests really did have a dirty job- I assume there were no rubber gloves in those days.

The priests would check the infected area of skin and either declare the person clean or unclean. If the infection was not under the skin, then the priest would cover the area and check again in seven days. Meanwhile, the person would just have to wait. As far as we know, there was no cure for these skin diseases. The priests were not doctors who gave medicine, they were just health inspectors.

After another seven days the priest would check again and then perhaps he would check again in another 7 days, the person meanwhile, just had to wait and wait and wait, waiting to hear the words from the priest, either “clean” or “unclean”.

We have probably all had that horrible time of waiting for doctors results, there is nothing we can do, just wait.

Or waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for the waters to fall- there is nothing we can do but just wait.

The real tragedy of the leper’s fate is found in the verses we read today, just look at those verses again….

“The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ 46 He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.

The leprous person was sick, he was unclean, he was alone. All this leper could do was sit and wait outside the camp, sit and wait and hope that God would heal him. And yet even in these verses there was a glimmer of hope, as it says this isolation would only continue as long as he had the disease, in other words, there was a chance the leprosy could have gone.

It is a tragedy when God sometimes brings us outside the camp, to a place of isolation and sorrow, in order to bring us to a place where we have to just wait on Him, because we haven’t been waiting upon him when we were inside the camp and things seemed to be going well.

Sadly it often takes a tragedy for us to sit and wait upon him, it takes a health scare, the death of a loved one, a loss of income, loss of a job, a flood of one in a five hundred years to bring us to a place where we just wait on Him, seek Him, plead that he will help us.

Friends, God wants us to wait on Him all the time.

When we wait upon God, we are showing God that we are trusting Him to work.

How often do we bulldoze ahead with our ways, without first waiting upon the Lord?

I am sure we all remember the story of Mary and Martha.

Jesus came to visit Mary and Martha.

Martha was busy, busy, busy, busy, serving and…. Mary……Mary just sat at the feet of Jesus, listening to his teaching.

Jesus said to Martha, that Mary had chosen the better portion.

Martha was worried and anxious and so just kept herself busy, whereas Mary sat and waited upon Jesus.

Mary chose the better portion.

Just listen to these words of comfort and strength from Isaiah 40:28-31

Have you not known? Have you not heard?The Lord is the everlasting God,    the Creator of the ends of the earth.He does not faint or grow weary;    his understanding is unsearchable.29 He gives power to the faint,    and to him who has no might he increases strength.30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,    and young men shall fall exhausted;31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;they shall run and not be weary;    they shall walk and not faint.

Friends when we wait upon the Lord, we are waiting for Him to do something, and so as we wait, we pray, we ask, we ask God to help us, to work in our situation, to work in our hearts, to work in the hearts of those around us, to work for His Glory in our situation.

The Leper who knelt down before Jesus that day, which Mark recorded for us in his gospel account, (the first reading we had) was waiting on Jesus, he was expecting Jesus to do something, he was pleading with Jesus to work in his situation. Just like the leper who was thrown out of the camp in the days of Moses, this leper would have been lonely, people would have kept their distance. He too would have put his hand above his top lip and shouted “unclean”

But praise be to God, Jesus did not keep his distance with this leper, Jesus had pity on him and did what was absolutely unthinkable and some would even say foolish- Jesus reached out and touched this diseased man, - Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.  The clean touched the unclean and instead of the clean becoming unclean, the unclean became clean.

Instead of Jesus being effected by the consequences of sin, Jesus overcame the consequence of sin- He healed him.

Jesus reached out to this man, who knew he was unclean, in fact everyone knew this man was unclean and Jesus made him clean. Jesus spoke, Jesus touched him and he was clean.

And what Jesus did next was brilliant…. He told the man to keep the law which was given to Moses back in the desert. The one in Leviticus. He told him to take his sacrifice to the priest, so the priest could declare him clean and so the man could be allowed to participate again in the temple worship.

But the man who was healed, didn’t bother to go the priest or the temple…why?

Well probably because he was so overjoyed by what Jesus had done for him that he just couldn’t keep it to himself but he just had to tell people about the man- Jesus who had made him clean.

But more importantly, the man no longer needed to go to the preist, the things that the healed man was going to do at the temple, were all going to be superseded through Jesus death and resurrection anyway.

No longer would the man need to go to a priest to declare him clean and able to worship God, since Jesus was going to be his high priest who would declare him clean once and for all. No longer would this man need to take a sacrifice to the temple, since Jesus became his sacrifice once and for all his sins. No longer would the man need to go to the temple to worship God, since through the death and resurrection of Jesus, he could worship God anywhere through His Holy Spirit. 

Friends, I said early that it often takes a tragedy to bring us to a place where wait upon God.

Well, it takes something even more than a tragedy, something miraculous to bring people to a place where they acknowledge that they are unclean without Jesus, acknowledge they are dirty without Jesus, recognise that they are sinners, and that miracle is the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts.

Perhaps the Holy Spirit is working in your heart now, and if He is, convicting you of sin, be comforted my friend, that Jesus is willing and able to make you clean, in fact through the cross and his blood shed for you, he has already made you clean. You don’t have to sacrifice any animals, you don’t have to go to a priest, you don’t have to go to a certain city or temple, you just accept that Jesus is your high priest, Jesus is your sacrifice, Jesus is the one who has made you clean, made you right with God.

And just like he was willing and able to cleanse that leper that day, he is willing and able to forgive you of your sins, make you clean and bring you into his family.

Let us pray.