40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 118 (Leviticus 12:1-14:57)

Episode Date: May 4, 2018

It's all about being unclean this week. Bodily discharge, childbearing, and leprosy are discussed. Why are men and women treated differently? Why does which sex your child is result in longer uncleanness? Why is Daniel so triggered by leprosy? What do Pastors have to do with any of this?And how does all of it point us to Jesus? Chad and Daniel discuss it all. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network CHF North Dakota  

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 podcast network podcast. I'm Daniel Henry Price, joined by Chad Bird. Chad, the 1517 Podcast Network released a new podcast recently that I think our listeners may find interesting. I bet they will. I saw that. What is it? Banned Books with Donovan Riley and Christopher Gillespie. Oh, nice. I love that title.

Yeah, they're going over, they're looking at books that, well, a lot of people have historically told you not to read. that's one way to get people to read books yeah you know it's funny because Donovan was sending me a list of a list of authors that they were going to do episodes on and

what was funny is after he sent me the list he was kind of asking if there was anybody anybody else that I thought would be good I gave him a couple names he's like oh okay yeah I'll add those to the list and I was like oh and then of course Chad Bird

yeah yeah you gotta get you gotta put bird on the list i know a few people who have privately banned his books yeah that's right so chad where are we at in leviticus well we are uh we wrapped up uh pretty much wrapped up chapter 11 last time so we're going to we're going to skate right through chapter 12 because it uh it's only eight verses that won't take us but uh but a few minutes and then drum roll the chapters that actually everybody's been waiting on since we started the podcast i mean these chapter 13 to 14 of leviticus people have been emailing me about that calling me tweeting me uh for i don't know

for months now, when are we going to get to Leviticus 13 and 14? Because it just completely captivates their attention. I'll bet it does. Yeah, because these chapters are about leprosy. And there's no more pressing issue in our day than leprosy. That's how you know they had different problems back then. Yeah. They have two chapters devoted to leprosy.

and uh right right now if you say leprosy people are like uh what is that exactly yeah yeah this actually uh i hope that you'll be pleasantly surprised once we get there because uh as it as it turns out and we see this in a lot of other parts of leviticus too if you if you if you look at the kind of the meta issue the bigger broader overarching issues and situations that are kind of within the orbit of uh of skin disease and how it's dealt with in these in these couple chapters you you'll be you'll be surprised i think about how applicable it is to uh to our life today so anyway we'll we'll see hang tight and uh and and hopefully you will be uh emailing and tweeting and calling me, telling me how much you learned

about your own life in Leviticus 13 and 14. We shall see. It's a good challenge anyway, right? Yeah. So before we get there, let's talk about chapter 12. As I mentioned, it's only eight verses, and it's all about basically the purification for women after childbirth. So you got, of course, you got two possibilities.

So either mother has a boy or she has a girl, and both of those are dealt with in this chapter. So just to quickly run through it, the situation with each one. So if a mom, a Venezuelan mom, has a boy, then she is going to be considered ritually unclean for the first seven days after she has her baby. uh on the eighth day the the boy is going to be circumcised and then for 33 more days uh she will would kind of be in a uh in in in sort of a ritual limbo i guess you could say she's not considered unclean but she's not completely purified so at the end of that at the end of that time so it'd be 40 days after the birth of her baby boy then she would go through a ritual of a purification which involves uh the sacrifice

of of a lamb or if she can't afford a lamb the sacrifice of a young pigeon or or a dove so that's the situation if she has a boy if she has a girl basically you take those same things and you double them so instead of being unclean for seven days she's unclean for 14 days and then instead of being kind of in limbo for another 33 more days she's actually limbo for 66 more days which is going to be a total of 80 days so if she has a boy after 40 days she goes to the tabernacle she goes to the ritual of purification and everything is back to where to kind of the the ritual purity ritual cleanness that she ordinarily is in but if she has a girl it's a total of 80 days before uh before that happens and we're not told or it's not even

hinted at as to why there's a difference between a male offspring and and a female offspring so we could we could conjecture as to why that's the case but we're what we're really not told that just that just the way just the way it is now one thing that uh that is important to kind of draw out of this chapter, and this is actually going to be somewhat of a segue into the next couple chapters, is what's the issue here? Anyway, what is it about childbirth that would render a woman ritually unclean? Well, it parallels actually, and the text discusses this actually, it parallels the uncleanness that a woman also is in, the ritual unclean that she's in during her menstrual cycle. So during a woman's monthly menstrual cycle, she is ritually unclean, which means that

she can't go to the sanctuary, which means that she can't consume the meat from the peace offering or anything like that. She's in this state of uncleanness until that time is over, and then after that, she goes through a purification process, and then she's ritually clean once more. well what what's going on here it does it's the same with her menstrual cycle it's the same with with the birth of a child basically in both cases the uh the problem is that of blood of course when baby's born there's there's uh there's blood and during a menstrual cycle there's blood and the thing about blood in the whole kind of israelite mindset in the whole ritual life of ancient israel is that blood is a huge deal we already know that in the case of the of the

sacrifices the sacrifices are this very positive employment of blood for the purpose of sanctification right the blood is poured on the altar the blood is sprinkled toward the the curtain between the holy place and the holy of holies the blood is placed on the ear on the thumb and on the big toe of the priest when he's ordained. So you have blood being used all over the place as a ritual agent by which God sanctifies his people, atones for the sins of his people, sets him apart, gives them his blessings, all that good stuff that comes by means of blood. It's the medium that God uses to convey his forgiveness and peace and life to his people. But you've got a whole other flip side to blood that's more of a negative ritual side.

And we see that in cases like this, in childbirth as well as during a woman's menstrual cycle, as well as if there is bloodshed. So basically, if you want to narrow it down to one issue, it's whenever blood leaves the body, there's going to be some kind of ritual problem created and then also a ritual solution that's proposed. And it really has to do with this understanding of the body as kind of a, I don't know the best word to describe it, but it's this idea of if anything leaves the body that shouldn't leave the body, especially in the case of bloodshed, then there's some kind of ritual that is given by God, by which purification is achieved once more. Sometimes it's just a recurring thing, such as a woman's menstrual cycle. Sometimes it's a case of violence or even manslaughter, an accidental death of a person where their blood is shed. In that case, there is a means of atonement, there's a means of cleansing, so that the person who's been pushed into the state of ritual uncleanness is brought back into a state of of cleanness

so we we see this uh we see this over and over in the life of israel and uh we're going to see it certainly uh discussed at length in the next couple chapters with leprosy this idea that when things are not things about the body are not the way they were originally created to be God provides a means whereby this person is cleansed and is restored to fellowship, to sacred fellowship with him and allowed back to his altar. Now, in this particular case, Leviticus 12, with the regulations about childbirth and circumcision, I might mention, you probably already thought it was actually, that this has a direct impact upon one of the earliest stories we have from the life of Jesus. In the Gospel of Luke, we're told that Mary and Joseph and Jesus fulfilled Leviticus 12 to the letter. so when uh when the time for mary's purification came then she and mary mary and joseph and jesus

came to the temple and uh the the sacrifice was offered for her uh in that case she didn't offer a lamb she offered a uh uh the uh the birds instead which was an indication of the family's poverty uh but that was that was the the sacrifice that was allowable for her and it's in that context that we have simeon coming up to jesus and taking the taking the child in his arms and proclaiming him to be the the hope of israel the one for whom he had been waiting his his whole life so leviticus 12 actually kind of gives us a background of that early event from from from the life of jesus so i that's i don't know if you want to add anything about chapter 12 dan that's really all that uh uh that i wanted to say at this point it's sort of a segue into what we're

to be talking about with uh with leprosy but you can jump in there if there's something that you want to add obviously you know when you read when you talk about stuff like this and you're not giving an answer you are a little bit you know you're like what the heck's going on here like why is that why does there seem to be a different rules for men and women here uh especially when it comes to something like oh yeah you're unclean longer if you have a a girl rather than a boy uh But part of this, I think, and again, this is not spelled out, but I think part of this is that you are giving birth to somebody who will also have to undergo purification rituals in their life as well. And while we think about that, we would never have our wife or daughter leave the house or go through some kind of purification ritual because they were on their period. And there's a flip side to this, too, where childbearing as we know it is part of the curse.

I would go so far as to say that menstrual cycles as we know them are part of the curse as well. Now, what that looks like apart from the curse, I mean, if Adam and Eve are just kicking it and eating and being fruitful and multiply, I'm not sure how exactly that works. it didn't happen and so we're not we're not told but certainly this um i don't know for the for if you're a woman you already know this if you're a guy that's married uh you probably uh know this you should be aware you know menstrual cycles aren't they no woman is like that's my favorite time of the month like that's i'm just counting down the days can't wait yeah uh it's not it's not pleasant i mean so i think that you have to wrap your head around and i don't think it's that

difficult to do the idea that this isn't a good thing and it's not a good thing it's part of the it's part of the curse it's part of uh what all all of womankind is uh has to endure as part of the fall that's men have to you know especially back then had to fight with the land uh to produce crops and that sort of thing that's not the way it's supposed to be that was supposed to be much much easier uh and so you you if you look at then the menstrual cycle as part of the curse this is why it's it's an unclean thing because it's not it's not part of the original creation that god called good it's it's uh actually a distortion of it however and that's on the so while we might look at that and think man there's some rampant sexism going on

here uh you have to remember also uh as paul says later that women are saved through childbearing which i think simply means that everyone is saved through this act of painful childbearing that that even though this is a this is not a thing that anyone thinks is good uh menstrual cycles and pain and childbirth is good it is exactly the way in which christ will come it is a vehicle that will be used to for women to i mean paul doesn't mind using this language that women then play um this role that men do not play in the salvation of the world uh that the christ is not brought forth for men uh he he has a he has a stepfather uh he is brought but women play a very a very important role i mean he is he is there's a lineage there and this is brought forth through

childbearing but uh that lineage like coming down to mary that's what you really have going on because jesus is going to it doesn't say like jesus we don't confess in the apostles creed uh born into the house of joseph uh we say born of the virgin mary and so well you can look at this on one hand and say man it seems like women are getting the raw deal uh that raw deal is the way in which god will come and that part of that is absorbing that curse yeah yeah so i don't know if that's helpful at all but that's how i look at those things oh i think yeah i think it is on multiple levels um especially pointing out that these these activities of the body are not the way that god originally designed women to be and we we're gonna uh we're gonna see i believe it's

chapter yeah we're gonna say chapter 15 uh which we'll probably get to next time uh it's not exactly the same but there's chapter 15 is be talking about uh discharges from a man that uh are not what they're what they're supposed to be and so both of these i mean this level you might think why is Leviticus dealing with all this kind of gross body stuff? Well, the reason it is, is because our bodies are intensely theological. Our bodies are really icons of the fall in many ways. If you look at what happens to our bodies, beginning at an early age, I mean, beginning already, we'll say when a woman, a young woman begins her period, we begin to see how the body bears the effects of sin. And we certainly see this the older that we get. I get more and more

gray in my beard. It's hard for me to recover from injuries. I take longer to get over sicknesses. And I'm 47 years old. It's just going to get worse. I mean, I know that. And it's the same with men and women. So our bodies are intensely theological in that they tell us a lot about who we are as god's creatures and who we are as as sinners so if you if you if you pay attention to what's going on with your body you're going to you're really going to get a kind of a a window into into the bigger picture what's wrong with the world i guess you could say that our bodies are kind of a microcosm of creation and that if you look at what happens to our bodies the bad things that happens to our bodies the unnatural things that happen to our bodies all all the stuff

all the post-Eden, post-fall stuff that happens to our bodies, is an indication of how messed up creation is, how messed up our own bodies are. And this material in Leviticus, even though it is really dealing with just kind of the raw body kind of stuff, is intensely theological and creational because it really gets us to the heart of fallen humanity and of our need on every single level, not just on the level of soul, but on the level of body, how much we need redemption and an ultimate resurrection. So even though the theology is kind of implicit in Leviticus 12 and 13 and 14 and 15 and all these chapters that have to do with bodily ailments, the theology is still there. it basically screams out that what we need is a new creation what we need is a resurrection what

we need is for god to once more step in and to and to make things right in creation uh just like they just like they were at the beginning only only better this time yeah i mean this is it's not it's it's the same thing with leprosy and it's all of these things are you were not meant to originally get old and die it's not how that's not how this is supposed to work and so what leviticus does in these chapters whether it has whether it's menstrual cycles or leprosy or whatever it is is it's just putting a magnifying glass on the condition that you were born into this isn't about so this is what you have to understand i think this is important like this is not about sins that women have committed or sins that lepers have committed it's putting

under the microscope um the sin that we are born into the brokenness of the world that we all have to exist in now um so this isn't about uh well they've sinned worse or this person is it's not it's not that like this is this is the the sin that as david calls the sin that you're conceived in uh and this is just magnifying that and saying you see how busted up all this stuff is um and it's contrasting it with the holiness of god yeah yeah that's exactly right and that's a great uh great point to jump into the next chapter uh because when we're talking about leprosy in 13 to 14 what we're really we're talking about here is not something that is Yeah, like a punishment for something that these people have done.

Not everything that's wrong with us is sin. I mean, yeah, everything that's wrong with us is the result of sin in the world, but it's not as if if I steal something, then I'm going to get sick. Or if I cuss somebody out, I'm going to—some kind of health problem is going to come my way. I mean, there's not like some line between A and B. Everything that's wrong with us, yes, is a result of sin in the world, but not everything that's wrong with us is sin. And we see an example of that here with what we're going to talk about next. Now, I have to preface this discussion of 13 and 14 with the discussion of actually what we've been talking about with regard to leprosy. Now, this is, it's kind of confusing because most of the time, in fact, 99% of the time when we talk about Leviticus 13 and 14, as well as other parts of the Bible, we use the word leprosy. But the Hebrew term, which is what's used here, really doesn't refer to medically what we think, what we know is leprosy today, or which is often called Hansen's disease.

So when you're reading through Leviticus 13 and 14 and really all of the Old Testament and you come across the word leper or you come across the word leprosy, just keep in mind, it's fine if you want to use that language. And I probably will here just because that's what people are accustomed to. But this is not technically speaking what we know now as leprosy. It's some sort of weird skin disease that, I mean, weird in the sense that it's not just a skin disease, because as we're going to see in these chapters, it can even appear on clothing, which leprosy doesn't. It can appear on houses, which leprosy doesn't. So technically speaking, this is not the kind of leprosy that we are medically referring to today, but this is some sort of ancient skin, scaly problem disease that would sometimes pop up in the nation of Israel. man leprosy used to just like scare the hell out of me uh when i was when i was little uh we i don't i don't know if you're sure i'm sure you've seen this but the movie ben hurm we used

to watch that like every easter yeah and like that dude's like whole family he gets leprosy or whatever and i it's just to freak me out man like this highly contagious thing and you gotta go live in this colony and uh i think that nobody told me that that had been like essentially eradicated so i was always like oh my gosh like how do you not get that like what do i what do you what what steps do i need to take to make sure it doesn't happen to me this looks like the worst i was i literally had like this leprosy phobia i was scared to death of contracting leprosy and then i heard that armadillos had leprosy so like i would i would see an armadillo and just totally panic the state animal of texas the only animal that can get leprosy we it's we pick it as our

state i would no bad like i like i would see an armadillo and be like how are we not like how's the government not just getting rid of these things all over the place yeah that's a true indication of a child who was raised in a in a thoroughly bible saturated environment right you hear all these stories about lepers yeah man you know a scab on somebody you think oh there's a leper well what's funny about that i know there's a total aside but it is funny what's funny about that too is that so i grew up in a town called eureka springs and there is uh they have the largest outdoor drama in the world there and it's called the passion play and it's the the passion week of christ life it's a massive amphitheater big

outdoor players camels and horses and big huge cast thousands of people come out and watch this i worked there as a cast member for three years from the ages of 15 to 18 now at the end by the end of it i was playing the apostle john because i always wanted someone really tall and young to play john but not that's not the way i started when i started i i went there and the first role i got was the role of a leper that got what you got healed like i was so triggered it's like your your worst childhood nightmare come true yeah i had to put on these like ratty clothes and then like walk through this the dirt streets of this amphitheater crying out unclean i mean it was it was literally like a pretty traumatic thing for me

i mean i had sort of come to grips that leprosy wasn't an issue but not that long ago but at that point i had i was petrified of it so it was it was actually a pretty tough thing to be like whoa wait a minute i'm a leopard wow is there anything else can i be anything else uh you faced your fears head on yeah why do you why did you give me that role do i look like i have leprosy you moved up the ladder quickly though i mean from a leopard to an apostle that's good that's right, that's grace for you yeah, that's grace

so there you go, that's an aside funny story, okay, leprosy let's go, I'll try not to get too triggered here I'll try not to scare anybody either as we talk about this we are not I know this is going to disappoint you, but we are not going to

delve into the extremely intricate process by which the priests were able to determine whether a person had this skin disease uh still had it had it in a like a perpetual way or whether it was whether it was maybe receding uh and and all those details if you if you really want to to delve into that then spend some time in leviticus 13 and 14, especially chapter 13. And you will see that when it came to diagnosing

tisada'at, this Hebrew word that we usually translate as leprosy, then the priests were given quite a long list of things to look at, everything from the color of the skin to the depth of the sore on the skin to the color of the hair around this particular breakout on the skin. And also, it would depend on whether it was on the head. I mean, if it was on your head, then you were in big trouble, because that was when you really had to appear as someone in mourning and cover your upper lip and go around like Dan did in the Passion play, yelling, unclean, unclean. So there's all sorts of ways in which the priests were required to check out people who might have had this to see, number one, if they had it, number two, if they maybe had it, and number three, if they did have it, how bad they had it and where they had it, and then eventually whether it was better or not. So, like I say, if you want to spend some time in chapter 13 looking at all that, then go for it. I mean, it's interesting in some ways.

It's confusing in other ways. But what I want to do in the time we have left is talk about this in kind of a broad thematic sort of way and see what we can learn about this. and and and then how it applies to the rest of the biblical witness as well as as well as to to us today so so broadly speaking uh if if somebody thinks that they has they have this then the first thing they have to do is they don't go to a doctor or they may they may go to a doctor where it's not told but the main the main actor or actors in this particular chapter are the person who thinks that they have it and the priest so this is this is uh this is a duty of the priesthood that evidently was pretty important i mean there's no other illness

in the whole bible that gets that gets even half the amount of coverage as as leprosy does or as the skin disease does i mean not even not even close so this is this was a significant issue for for ancient israel evidently for this much time to be to be spent on it so if you think you have it you see a priest the priest sees you and uh if if it seems like that you that you you do have it then the first thing that happens is you enter into uh just like in chapter 12 just like we talked about with the the woman the mother who gave birth to her child you enter into a state of uncleanness of of impurity and you uh you move outside the camp so and and that brings us to another another part of this this drama so you've got really three different spaces that are involved

with chapter 13 and 14 so the first space is the tabernacle which of course is holy sacred space second space is the camp where most of the people would have lived and then the third space is this area that is referred to as outside outside the camp so you can kind of think of those as three concentric circles you got the tabernacle that's a sacred sphere you get the camp which is around the tabernacle and then you have outside the camp so you've got the leper you have the priest you have these three areas that are involved in what takes place here. And to simplify this to some extent, what would happen would be the leper would move outside the camp, and he might spend a week there, and the priest would be coming out to inspect him. He might spend two weeks there,

or he might spend a whole lot more time there. But what was happening, what I find particularly fascinating here is that you have a constant interaction that goes on between God's chosen representative and this person who is suffering from a bodily ailment that has made him or her unclean. I really, as I was thinking about this chapter and some other, reading some other material about it, you really get the impression from chapter 13 to 14 that there's actually a lot about this particular section that speaks to pastoral care. I don't know how many pastors we have out there listening to the podcast, but I do think there's something to be said. If you look at this as an example of a paradigm for how God uses pastors, and not just pastors, but anyone

who's caring for other Christians, because, you know, we have a lot of situations that happen in life where we basically end up in a situation that's parallel to the leper. That is, we are outside the camp, whatever the reason might be. I mean, we might be in a hospital, and we're outside the camp in a way that we are cut off from our regular way of life. We're cut off from our regular living space. We're cut off from the place that we call home. And so we're outside the camp. I think this applies to people who serve in the military. They often feel like they're outside of the regular boundaries, especially when they come home. They don't really feel like they fit in the way that they uh that the way they want to or maybe the way that they used to

there's there's also and it could also apply to people who for for one reason or another have uh have moved outside the church maybe they didn't feel welcome anymore maybe they did something and they they felt excluded and so they're they're living a life that feels like it's outside the camp there's all sorts of situations in life in other words where we are going through phase. It's very similar in broad ways to what was happening here with the leper. We're no longer able to live and to operate and to enjoy life in the place that we are, that we used to consider home. And that could be for any number, any number of reasons. And what happens here is that God doesn't simply write these people off he doesn't say well you're you have this skin disease and

you're you're excluded and and that's it in this story and so what god does is he establishes he establishes a means by which these people are cared for so he uses his appointed priest to go out to them to to go after them outside the camp and to spend time with them uh in this case they're they're checking their bodies they're talking with them they're inspecting the the spot on their skin but in other words they're caring for them they're they're they are the representative of yahweh who goes outside the camp to spend some time with this person who is who is not where he or she is accustomed to be and the whole goal of that is to bring them back and that's what takes place in the in really delineated for us in chapter 14 the process

while they're brought back where there's the sacrifices offered for them there's cleansing agents that are applied to their bodies and then they are fully restored to to the fellowship of God's people. So what I like about these chapters and where I think it has such great application to us today is that anytime something happens to God's people, whether it's physical or spiritual, whereby they are or feel that they are outside the camp, then God establishes a means by which he brings them home. So in this case, he sends out a priest to care for them, to cleanse them, to purify them, and to sanctify them through the sacrifices that are offered. In our own particular context, he uses pastors, he uses regular Christians to go to those outside the

camp to care for them, to love them, to forgive them, and with the goal of then bringing them back to the fellowship of of god's house so yeah the i mean the the particular details of this chapter might seem like they have no application to us but in the broader picture they they do because this is this is god acting to restore his his people i think that that's exactly right is that in all of these things it's easy to focus on the on the oh you're you have to be placed outside uh but part of this i mean especially in the case especially in the case of disease or leprosy i mean this is also so that you know the whole the community doesn't come down with leprosy i mean i mean this is this is like a it's a quarantining of sorts but it's not as if they

just shove these people out there and then be like well you guys are your own thing now and just fend for yourselves uh they have to bring them food they have to they have someone in there to give the medical attention to try to bring them back to health so that you're right so that they can rejoin the broader community um and so for the for in the case of leprosy for the sake of the community you have to be separated but the community then will work to try to bring you back in uh and so that's that's absolutely what uh has pastoral care implications yeah and there's a uh there's more uh that i want to get to uh i want to get to next week that has to do with with the means by which god brings these people back into into the fellowship we'll just spend a

little bit of time with that uh when we when we talk about uh when we get together next time and then we'll jump into into the next chapter so i think we're i think we're just about at our 40 minutes we are we are at 40 minutes guys you are running out of time if you live in north dakota the time is upon you uh to come and hang out with me and chad and a whole bunch of other people in north dakota at the city event we're going to be talking about the psalms chad i have the digital proofs for the book 60 Days in the Psalms, the Sinner Saint devotional.

It looks amazing. It's going to be incredible. You're going to be able to get that book there for next to nothing if you come out. So, hey, if you're not able to come out, you should still order that book. It'll be available for pre-order very shortly. Pay attention to social media. We'll throw it out there

when it is. But if you live anywhere near North Dakota, you should come hang out with us and you can grab a copy of that at a conference rate that is dirt dirt cheap and uh and i've as one who's as maybe the only one uh that's read the entire thing i will tell you that it's it's pretty great so check that out go over to christ fast.org go to the events page you can get all the information chad we will see you next week all right we'll see you then dan thanks

Thanks for watching!