Day 48: Leviticus 14-15

Welcome to 5 -Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today's February the 17th and we'll be looking at Leviticus 14 -15.

Now today's reading continues the theme of purity, but now the focus shifts from diagnosis to restoration.

Leviticus 13 told us how uncleanness is identified and quarantined by the priest, but Leviticus 14 -15 is now going to show us how the unclean are brought back into right standing with God.

And these chapters answer a crucial question, once impurity has separated someone from the community and from worship, how does that separation end?

How are they brought back? And that's what these chapters are going to discuss. In Leviticus 14, it opens with one of the most detailed restoration rituals in the entire

Bible. When someone is healed from a skin disease, the priest will go outside the camp to examine them and notice that the priest does not wait in the sanctuary.

He steps out into the place of exclusion and if the disease is gone, a ritual begins.

Two birds are taken. One is killed over running water and the other is dipped in the blood of the first and then released alive into the open field.

Blood is shed and life is released and the healed person washes and shaves and then waits seven days and then brings their sacrifices.

Blood and oil are placed on the ear and the thumb and the toe, echoing the priestly consecration.

And the formerly unclean person is not merely allowed back. They are symbolically reintroduced to life with God.

The chapter then addresses houses that are affected with spreading mildew. The stones are removed, the walls are scraped, and if the decay spreads and the house is torn down entirely again, the message is consistent.

Corruption spreads unless it is confronted decisively. Leviticus 15 then turns to bodily discharges, both male and female.

These include ongoing conditions and normal cycles of life. And the issue is not really moral guilt.

It is ritual uncleanness connected to bodily fluids associated with mortality and the loss of life.

In a world where death entered through the fall, even natural processes carry reminders that humanity is fragile.

And the pattern remains the same, washing and waiting and sacrifice and declaration. Separation is not permanent, but restoration is structured.

And all of these things have to do with death and life, order and chaos, clean and unclean.

Those are the categories that Leviticus is dealing with. Now, as you read today, I want you to ask the following question.

How does God bring the separated back into his presence? Leviticus 14 through 15 shows that restoration is not casual, but it is careful.

It's costly and it's declared by God's appointed mediator. Now the central pattern in these chapters is restoration after the exclusion has happened.

Uncleanness isolates you from both God and the community. The diseased live outside of the camp.

The person with the discharge waits until evening. The infected house is emptied. Separation is both visible and serious.

But it's not the final word. God does not abandon the unclean to permanent exile.

He provides a pathway back. The priest examines the sacrifices are offered. The blood is applied, the oil is poured, and the cleansing is announced.

And there's something profoundly humane about this system because it acknowledges that we live in bodies that are decaying.

It acknowledges that decay and disorder really do exist, but it refuses to leave you there.

It refuses to leave you in despair. And this intersects directly with our daily life today because sin and brokenness still isolate us.

Shame pushes us outward and we either minimize that impurity or we assume that we're never going to come back from it.

But Leviticus would remind us of a better way. Impurity is certainly serious and it does isolate us.

But restoration is also possible. And return from that isolation always requires mediation, mediation from the true high priest.

And that points us directly to Jesus Christ in breathtaking and astounding ways.

You see, under Leviticus, the priest goes outside of the camp in order to examine the healed.

Well, in the gospel, Jesus goes outside of the city in order to bear the uncleanness himself.

Under Leviticus, a bird dies and another one flies away free, stained with blood, but a symbol of life.

At the cross, Christ dies so that sinners can walk away free, stained with blood, a symbol of life.

Under Leviticus, the unclean must avoid contact. But in the gospels, lepers touch

Jesus. A woman with a chronic discharge touches his garment. Instead of becoming unclean and isolated,

Jesus makes them clean and draws them near. And this is the reversal of the old pattern, because under the old covenant, impurity spreads.

Under Christ and the new covenant, holiness spreads. And the rituals of washing and waiting and sacrifice, all of that anticipate a greater cleansing that's coming through Jesus.

Because Christ doesn't merely declare people clean. He makes them clean. And the cleansing that he gives isn't temporary or symbolic, and it's not something that can be lost, but it reaches down past the skin and the dermis layers, all the way down to the conscience, the heart, and to the deepest roots of our alienation.

You see, as you read Leviticus 14 through 15, you have to pay attention to the movement from outside of the camp to inside of the camp through restoration, through a priest literally going out and bringing them in.

Now, tomorrow, we're going to come to the very center of the book of Leviticus, the day of atonement, where God addresses not just the isolated impurity, but the unknown sin that exists inside every single person in the nation.

And that is going to dramatically point to Jesus Christ as well. But with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally and joyfully, and may the

Lord use his word to sanctify you completely, and we will continue our journey tomorrow.