Day 192: Bodily Uncleanness 2

July 11
Today's Connected Passages: 

• Isaiah 64:1-7; 
• Ezekiel 36:16-38 [Zechariah 13:1-6] 
• Haggai 2:10-14 
• Matthew 9:20-22 
• Luke 8:43-48 
• Mark 5:25-34 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Canon Connected, where we read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections of the Bible. I am very glad you decided to join us here on day number 192 of the Canon Connected, and today we finish up a six-day study of three different parts of two days each on what the Old Testament considered to be clean versus unclean, representing God's desire for not only Him to show Himself as pure and holy, and even in very mundane and physical ways that, again, may be odd to us all these years later, but also that his people would understand the importance for them to be pure, for them to be ritualistically clean, at least for a time, to show the understanding of how God wants us to be that way spiritually, ultimately culminating in the in the in the in the New Testament, especially in the book of Ephesians, with the church being the spotless, you know, clean, purified body of Christ. And as I mentioned it several days ago, even in Ephesians, it talks about how reading God's word for the church can be like taking a spiritual shower. It cleanses us, you know, from filth. And so even things that are not sinfully, you know, unclean to us, okay, you know, or for them, especially in the Old Testament, or even for us today, even things that were not, you know, the result of sin being, you know, uncleanliness to a to a person's personal behavior, all right, but more of just the fall of man, there were still, you know, times in which, you know, God and ways in which God asked his people to, you know, purify themselves from even those forms of uncleanliness that were not a direct result of a man's personal sin or a woman's personal sin. But we see how, you know, in the Old Testament yesterday, a lot of this is sanitary issues, you know, being clean because, you know, God wants this people to understand that without running water and soap and you know and modern conveniences that we have on cleanliness, that they needed to do things to maintain, you know, sanitary and health, you know, reasons for for the people, for the good of the people, but also because he wanted them to be distinct from the people around them, uh, in a in a sense of pointing to ultimate, you know, spiritual holiness, physical reminders for spiritual realities. As I said yesterday, things like circumcision were not just so that they would be different from the people around them, but they were supposed to represent, you know, a physical reminder of a spiritual reality that, you know, God wanted them to tear away the, the cut away the sin from their heart, um, just as was done physically to males, you know, eight after eight days in Israel. And so today from the prophets of the Old Testament, we can see these ideas of even bodily cleanliness and uncleanliness, the things that we've been talking about, you know, over the last several days, but especially yesterday, how God inspired Old Testament prophets to use these illusions and these illustrations, you know, even when somebody is not, you know, sinful as a result of their uncleanliness, but he still used these ideas to communicate spiritual uncleanliness. And Isaiah 64 is perhaps the most famous. I would say it is. Um, I was pretty old whenever I realized this, what he's talking about here exactly, but he says, You welcome those who gladly do good who follow godly ways, but you have been very angry with us, for we are not godly. We are constant sinners. How can people like us be saved? We are all infected and impure with sin. Okay, so I think that is a reflection of what we talked about, but it gets more, it gets clearer than that. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. And as I alluded to yesterday, sometimes the Bible is very plain when it talks about things that could be considered vulgar to our ears. Other times it uses euphemisms, and here is a euphemism, at least as it's expressed in English, but the idea again comes from what we read yesterday. The the the word for filthy really literally comes from bodily discharge, you know, passages we rested we read yesterday in regards to women. And so God is using that as a means. God will use just about anything as an illustration, even when things that things that make us uncomfortable. Again, the body and the bread, I mean, the body is the bread and the blood is the wine, are supposed to represent Roman crucifixion as gory and as unsettling and as offensive as it is, what happened to Jesus, beaten until you couldn't tell he was a man anymore. That's what you know, communion is supposed to communicate in the same way here. Our righteousness is compared to something that was considered in the Old Testament to be unclean, even though it was natural as a result of the fall of man, natural in the in the in the sinful world, not in the Garden of Eden world. But this kind of idea is continued, you know, throughout. You can read, you know, the the very same ideas, you know, in Ezekiel 36, allusion to cleanliness and uncleanliness based on sin, Zechariah 13. But Haggai is the one I'm going to skip to because it definitely connects these dots for us. Going back in part to what we read several days ago, then Haggai asked, if someone becomes ceremonially unclean by touching a dead body and then touches any of these foods, will the food be defiled? We're definitely connecting the first four days to this today. And the priest answered, yes. Then Haggai responded, Then how is it that with this people in this nation, says the Lord, everything they do and everything they offer is defiled by their sin? So we can see again, God didn't waste any of these things. They had their temporary purpose for sure, to be distinct, you know, physical reminders of spiritual realities, you know, sanitary reasons, you know, health reasons, those kind of things, but also God can take something again as, you know, hard to talk about, as uncomfortable to talk about, as awkward to talk about, and make it into a spiritual application. Okay? Bodily uncleanliness can be used, you know, um, skin disease can be used, touching dead bodies can be ceremonial uncleanliness, can be used, food even can be used to teach us about how we are supposed to purify ourselves from sin. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Jesus connected that again to the Pharisees. They've cleaned the outside of the cup, the inside of the cup was dirty because they were not pure. Um it's not just a cleanliness as far as dirt and things like that. It is absolutely a cleanliness of heart, which is often translated better as pure or purified, purity, very strongly connected to holiness, being distinct, being set apart, um, by our moral code, by our God first and foremost, but by our moral code in response to him. And then I definitely included this woman, this poor woman, you know, this told in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, those three Gospels about this woman who had constant bleeding. Because I think as a result of this, she could not again become be a part of God's people because of what she was experiencing, because this is being ceremonially unclean, even up to Jesus' day. And as we saw with the people who had leprosy, it's like Jesus' response to this isn't, well, you need to follow the law to the letter, you know, you need to what because this woman couldn't do anything to control that, just as the people with leprosy in the old test and the new testament couldn't heal themselves. Okay, they had to wait. And this poor woman had been to doctors and had waited her whole life, not her whole life, but for years, twelve years. And Jesus heals her in a moment because he wants her to be clean physically, you know, according to the law, so that she can be a part of God's people. Um, as unfair again as it is, it seems to us that she would be a victim of this, and just like the lepers as well, who had to be outside of the camp. God still shows his heart that he wants to, it's important enough to him to establish a ceremonial law to communicate all these truths we've been talking about. It's important enough to him, but there are times that seem like things are unfair. But Jesus comes along and he wipes out the unfairness. Jesus cares so much about mercy, justice, and healing. We should as well. So even as something as crazy as bodily uncleanliness, we get that from Jesus, and that reminds me that the people around me who are struggling with things that are unjust and unfair, and who are ostracized as a result, even if it's not technically like this, we try to help them, even if it makes us uncomfortable. And so I think this will ultimately what Jesus is teaching. So cu tough couple of days, I would say, on a on a Bible topic. The whole six days is definitely different for us, but these two especially were when I s when I saw them on the reading plan, I was like, I'm not I I put them in a reading plan years ago, thinking you know, people can read it on their own, God can teach them whatever. I don't have to be a part of their time with God, and then we decided to do the podcast, and I'm like, I'm gonna have to make some comments about this. But I think again, as as we've talked about it, I hope that God has been glorified. I hope the interpretation is sound. I definitely am open to questions, comments, and even you know, criticism. But the idea of bodily uncleanliness was definitely something God used, and he's still using, I think, because his word is eternal, at least until Jesus comes back. So I hope it's been edifying, and I hope that we can understand God's nature as pure and our response to being pure, you know, as a result of the very specific physical and uncomfortable things that he communicated in his law in the Old Testament and spiritually through the prophets in the Old Testament as well. So we're gonna change the subject now completely to several days worth of um sin confrontation. We've alluded to some of these ideas already. We're definitely gonna be repeating a few things, but we have uh just uh just an insane amount of passages. Again, I have one, two, it's three days worth, but there's like uh probably twenty-five passages or more in those three days. And so we're gonna talk about as uncomfortable it is and as a countercultural as it is. I think this is something that's poorly practiced in a lot of churches, if practiced at all. I'm gonna have my special guest Dustin come on with me one day. The man who did the very first preview episode with me, one of my uh proteges for a long time, more of a cohort now, I would say. Definitely more than a friend. He's definitely family to me, and he's he studied this and knows a lot about it. So on the second day, I'm gonna have him come on and talk about it with me because he understands it quite well, and we're gonna delve into that topic as again as difficult as it is. So come back and be with us tomorrow. It's big being day one of three on sin confrontation, and we will continue to read, see, and study the connections. Thank you.