Leviticus 11-14 Recap | OT Ep 14

In this episode, Austin and Ashley recap Leviticus chapters 11 through 14, exploring the distinctions between moral and ceremonial laws and the fulfillment of these laws through Jesus. The discussion also covers the ceremonial laws regarding childbirth and leprosy, emphasizing God's wisdom in these regulations and their relevance to both physical and spiritual health.

Reading Plan - Old Testament in One Year
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tSmSv3JOd-gCJS6VSFMtu-iv14NZ45_M/view?usp=sharing

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Moral and Ceremonial Laws
• 1:28 Dietary Restrictions
• 5:24 Women and Blood
• 8:03 Laws on Leprosy and Modern Implications

Transcript

Hey everyone,

My name is Austin. And my name is Ashley. Welcome to the Clean Slate Podcast. Where we're finding Jesus in the Old Testament.

Welcome back friends to episode 14. we're going to be recapping Leviticus chapters 11 through 14.

Before we jump into the intro for today, I want to introduce a helpful classification of the laws we see in the Torah or the first five books of the Old Testament.

One of those classifications is called the moral law and the other is called the ceremonial law.

To be sure, the exact definitions I've just offered aren't found in Scripture, but then neither is the word or term, Trinity, and we all know that God is triune.

The moral law are laws like, but not limited to the Ten Commandments. These are laws that have to do with God's character, and since we are made in His image, they should be reflected in our character as well. Since God is perfect, He does not change, and His moral laws don't change either.

The ceremonial laws are laws that consecrated the nation of Israel and set the of the Messiah apart from the rest of the world.

they have to do with things like the dietary restrictions we see in Chapter 11.

What I'd like to do is talk about the ceremonial loss by using the dietary restrictions as a backdrop for our discussion.

As you read through chapter 11, we see all sorts of things that the Israelites are told they can't eat. The two that we might discuss the most in our day and time would be pork and shellfish. It is important to know that God never really explains why He chooses the creatures on this list to be on the list.

What is clear is the purpose for which God is telling the Israelites to abstain from these foods.

In verse 44, God tells them to consecrate yourselves and be holy for I am holy.

We've discussed this in past episodes, but when we talk about the idea of God being holy, it is to mean that there's none like Him. There is a connotation in the Hebrew for this word that means to cut. It's like you're cutting vegetables and separating them out. It is to be totally separate and not like anything else.

Forgot to give these ceremonial laws, and all the other ceremonial laws for that matter, it is for the purpose of making the nation of Israel stand out from every other people, group, or nation.

As I mentioned a moment ago, the reason God wanted them to stand out is to call attention to what He was doing in and through the people of Israel, which ultimately was bringing about the Messiah. You may wonder then, are we to follow these ceremonial laws today?

This takes careful consideration, but it isn't a new question the church has faced.

There's a ton of literature out there on this. And as with all things, some is more helpful than others.

But let's zero in on the dietary restrictions for our example.

In Matthew 5, Jesus tells us that he has come to fulfill the law and he does that on our behalf because he knew we couldn't do it. also says in Mark 7 that it isn't what goes into our stomachs that makes it sinful, but what comes out of our heart that makes it sinful. At a cursory glance, this may seem like a contradiction, but really it's a clarification from the Lord on what the purpose of these laws were.

What Jesus was communicating is that the ceremonial laws were never intended to save,

and that He was the very purpose for why they were created in the first place. We see later in Acts 10 that the Apostle Peter was struggling with this and Jesus gave him a dream and told him, rise Peter, kill and eat. What God has made clean, do not call common.

In both of these passages, Jesus is communicating that continuing to uphold the ceremonial parts of the law after Jesus has fulfilled it is a bit like hanging up a concert advertisement after that concert has already left town.

Paul goes into this later in the New Testament and basically if you want to uphold the dietary laws, you just need to understand that it doesn't have anything to do with your salvation.

Another thing from this chapter I think worth mentioning is that every contact with a carcass, was clean or an unclean animal, rendered the individual unclean overnight.

would the Old Testament believer,

learned by being declared ritually unclean after every contact with death. Let's visit the book of Romans. Chapter 6 verse 23, it says, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Contact with death would represent a state of separation from God and signifies a need for purification and cleansing. They did the physical ritual cleansing for the flesh.

as a type and shadow for a later spiritual reality that would come in our purification and cleansing by the Lord Jesus.

When we get to chapter 12, we are given the ceremonial laws regarding childbirth. They have to do with how long a mother who had given birth would be ritualistically unclean. Ash, I know you had something you wanted to say regarding this.

Yes I did, thank you.

Since we have started Leviticus, we mentioned that declaring something clean or unclean does not mean good or evil or not sinful or sinful. So a woman who is menstruating or who has just given birth is considered ceremonially unclean, not sinful. Now we know that the Lord has given the command to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth.

He loves to have more image-bearers. So no, childbirth or menstruation is not sinful. The loss of blood signifies that one is incomplete. I personally have a theory that in the tabernacle, the only blood to be shed was the death of the animal sacrifice, and it was to be shed in a specific place for a specific reason.

So ladies menstruating or bleeding after childbirth were shedding blood that gave life or the potential to give life. And that was not ceremonially what the bloodshed in the tabernacle was to be for. Now, you probably also noticed that the time of purification for the mother is twice as long if she gives birth to a female rather than a male. This can cause us to tilt our head a little, right?

While the reason is not clearly explained, there is absolutely no implication whatsoever that the reason for the distinction is any kind of presumed inferiority of women. So if you hear that line of thinking, you should probably turn off whatever you're listening to. God made provisions and protection for women when society had none. He created man and woman in his image.

so they are equal in image-bearing weight. But their bodies do not function the same reproductively, and therefore need some instruction on what to do when their bodies do what God designed them to do.

From a medical standpoint, the mother's hormones that the baby was exposed to in the womb withdraw and the female newborns can have what we would call false menses and actually bleed for a few days.

So my theory is that the hormonal implications of a female child that could potentially also be bleeding needs to be accounted for in that timeframe. There is no telling what all diseases the Lord could have been protecting women and babies from. I'm certain there's some sort of immune system timing in all of this as well, although I don't have the studies to prove that, so I will not go off on that rabbit trail today. Speaking of diseases,

Chapters 13 and 14 deal with laws about leprosy and cleansing lepers. But it's very relevant to note that today's modern day disease we know as leprosy or Hansen's disease is not the same skin disease we began talking about here.

Yeah, Ash, so there's a translation difference here. And how that came about is in the original Hebrew, the word for leprosy was tsara'at

How it got to the word leprosy is because when the Old Testament that was in Hebrew was translated into the Greek Septuagint,

The word that was used in Greek was lepra, which meant rough or scaly. Later English translations made the connection from lepra to leprosy. But in ancient Greece, what we now call leprosy is known

So we are in fact talking about completely different types of diseases.

You know, truly with common bathing and hygiene practices, it's likely that this tsara'at disease talked about here has been completely wiped out.

Now we see in chapters 13 and 14 that God says if you have situation A, do ritual A. If you have situation B, do ritual B, and so on. Each of these scenarios are perfectly hygienic.

far more advanced than the hygiene of the time. God was the infectious disease doctor here writing a textbook for the priest to diagnose people with.

If the rash looks like X, then that person needs the appropriate treatment for them and for the camp. These people are in tents, y'all, not homes with rooms they can just shut the door in. As modern day American Christians, we get a little funny when it says these diseased people should live outside the camp or live outside the tent. we can quickly jump to the thought that God was

excluding them from the love of the community or that this kind of uncleanness was synonymous with God's condemnation. And that's not the case at all. The purpose of this law is to prevent what is unclean from coming into contact with what is holy and to protect the disease from spreading throughout the entire camp.

We see in several cases the prescription God gives includes cedar wood and scarlet yarn and hyssop in the ritual. These are all believed to have physical cleansing properties. God has been so gracious to us to give us the means within creation to heal so many diseases and ailments that affect us physically. How much more gracious is he to give us the blood of Jesus, which cleanses those who believe in him and trust in his name from

all unrighteousness. So whether he chooses to heal our physical ailments in this life or not, all ailments, both physical and spiritual, will be healed in the life to come.

Later in chapter 14, verse 33, we see laws geared toward an anticipatory time when Israel will settle in the promised land and the people will actually be living in houses. Houses may become infected with disease. This latter term is a general word that may refer to things like mold, mildew, and fungus.

These are not only unclean, but also dangerous and therefore must be eradicated. Or in some cases, the home is beyond repair and it must be completely broken down and taken outside the city.

I think it's pretty plain to see when we slow down and we look at these passages, we have the right lens on. We're reading it in context. We remember that this wasn't written to us, but it was written for us. I think we can see a couple things. One, that God is wiser than men, and He's pragmatic in certain situations where He's doing things in these ritualistic laws that help keep the people safe.

but at the same time, He's doing things like we've said that point us to Jesus. And for that, I am thankful.

Until next time, friends, may His grace abound to you and to me as we study to find Jesus in the Old Testament.