Leviticus 15:1-16:28, Mark 7:1-23, Psalms 40:11-17, Proverbs 10:13-14
Today is the 24th day of February welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is a joy and a privilege and an honor to be here with you today as we continue this journey that we got ourselves into on the 1st of January and what a journey it’s…it’s been so far. So glad that we can come together around this Global Campfire, just be together with…with…with one intention, to allow the Scriptures to speak into our lives and transform us and to be in community while we’re doing it praying for one another and loving each other. So, let’s dive in. we’re reading from the book of Leviticus today. Chapter 15 verse 1 through 16 verse 28. And just reminding us, this is the law being given and the law that will govern this newly forming people out in the wilderness as they continue their journey toward the land of promise.
Commentary:
Okay. As odd as it might be because of what we just read in the book of Leviticus we need to talk about what we read in the book of Leviticus. Odd because maybe we don’t normally talk about discharge…you know….bodily discharges, especially…especially sexually reproductive bodily oriented discharges and rules and laws that govern such things. So, let’s first just simply consider the context. Let’s consider the reality. We gotta go back thousands and thousands of years in human development and technology and culture. We gotta go back, way back, but we also have to go into the wilderness and become more nomadic. If you are a culture and the Bible tells us there’s like a million people, so you are moving around like that, like a moving, touring city, almost, but you’re moving around the wilderness, and you also have livestock, you have all of the support systems of this culture and you are moving around and you…you have no way to get something called an antibiotic because it hasn’t been invented yet, you can’t get a tetanus shot, you can’t get some sort of vaccine or some sort of treatment for whatever ails you, then you much more begin to understand you are interconnected with everybody else in your culture and you are depending upon each other because if plague breaks out in some sort of way it could affect everybody. So, in terms of some of the body bodily discharges we read about today…like we can…like sexually transmitted diseases…like…we…that’s in the world today, but if that were able to spread without any sort of treatment then you have a compounding problem. So, even today if you come into contact with somebody else’s blood and you don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know the origin, you know, you could get sick. It…it…it would be considered a biohazard if you were at the doctor. Like everybody protects themselves from each other’s blood in that kind of a scenario. So, we can understand the practicalities that are going on here. And it should be pretty immediate to us because what is a sneeze, if not a bodily discharge? And haven’t we spent the last year understanding that a sneeze can theoretically be a deadly thing based on the climate that we’re in with all of our technology, with all of the advancements of the last several thousand years. So, we should be able to see the practicalities of what is being laid out here. This is pulling a culture forward because underneath all of it is something very important - clean and unclean. This a very important distinction that God is placing inside of this culture. There is clean and there is unclean and it’s all aspects of your existence. You can have an unclean mind, even though you just took a shower, and your body is clean. So, what’s being rooted in here is that there is clean and there is unclean in body and mind and attitude and motivation in spirit in every way. And what is God doing? Certainly, He’s protecting people from spreading diseases to each other that will kill them, but He’s teaching them how to be clean, clean, not dirty, not unclean, clean, in every aspect of their lives. It’s really not that different friends. It’s really not that different for us because clean and unclean exist and we know that. We’ve already mentioned this, but this is the territory that we are moving through in the Bible and it’s important that we embrace these concepts. It’s important that we…we understand like if we become ceremonially unclean, we don’t have to sacrifice a turtledove or something like that but there is clean and there is unclean and unclean leads to dis-ease, right? Disease, whether us in spirit, or whether in body. And God is basically saying, “I am holy and so you’re going to be holy as well. Be clean.”
Prayer:
Holy Spirit come into this. It's…it’s been a few days that we’ve kind of been settling or hovering here in this…this territory that we’re moving through in the Bible here…but what it’s bringing up. And, so, we are inviting You because this is what the Scriptures are bringing up, to help us grasp and hold tight to the fact that there is clean and there is unclean and it’s basically a choice. We have the freedom to be either one, but to be clean before You, this is our desire. So, come again Holy Spirit, show us the areas, the ways in which we need to let go of uncleanness so that we might be clean. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.