Leviticus 15 - Rachel and Bathsheba and Holy Marriage

Hello, and welcome to probably the weirdest episode of Tabernacle Talk that there will ever be. And we are going to be talking today about Leviticus 15.

And I want to say on the outside, if you normally like listen to this with your kids and just have a great time, maybe with your teenagers in listening to God's Word together, maybe consider either not or having some fun conversations with them as a

result of today. Honestly, the reason that I'm going through this chapter is because I wholeheartedly believe whatever God has for us, it has some meaning, it has some purpose.

Paul would say in 2 Timothy chapter 3 that all scripture is given by inspiration of God.

It's breathed out by God and it's profitable for doctrine, for proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness so that the man of God may be complete, completely furnished for every good work.

I don't know all of the applications of good works that we're going to take away from today, but we're going to do this.

I want you all to know, normally when I go to a section, I've done it less in Leviticus than I have in some of the other books, I'll open up God's Word and I'll say, okay, this is probably the section of scripture that we're going to go through

today, but then I don't do normally a whole bunch of preliminary research, reading, commentary stuff, because I want it to feel something like it might feel for you when you're reading the Bible, that as you're going through, you won't necessarily

have automatically had all those resources or all those things that you've known. And so as I'm going through, I'm trying to do it of, okay, if it's just me in the morning doing my devotions or me at night doing my devotions or something, I just open

up God's Word, what do I see, what do I notice? And that's what I try and give on the podcast in the Book of Leviticus, because it is a more involved book. I have done more research, so I know I have at least like three or so different passages that

I'm going to be mentioning today that make allusion to the same types of things that we're going to be reading here in this passage. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to read all the way through.

We'll minimize, Lord Willem, some discomfort in that way. And then I'll go through some of the other passages in Scripture that tie into this and what we can learn from some of those.

And then obviously the big meaning that God gives at the end of the chapter of the most important thing. The one thing I want to say on the outset, all of these are not sins. These are ceremonial uncleanness.

So these were things that had to do with, had to do with life, had to do with specifically here, the creation of life, and that God viewed that as a very important thing.

It was a sacred thing, but it was something that was separate than worship of God, which is very different than how the peoples all around Israel engaged in the creation of life.

So in any sort of sexual encounters that many of the nations had ritual temple prostitutes and different things that it was part of the worship. You want to worship the fertility goddess?

Okay, you pay a thing, you go into the temple, and there is these sexual actions that take place that are a method of worship.

But for the God of Israel, he said, no, this is something that's good, this is something that I've commanded within the bonds of marriage, but it's something that's to be kept completely separate from any sort of worship of me.

So we do it in realization that God is the one that has given this to us, and that everything that we do falls through his lens of right and wrong, but we do not engage in any sort of sexual activity.

It has nothing to do with the worship of God in the Tabernacle and then later in the temple. So I want to mention that because there are some things in here that say unclean, and that's that ceremonial uncleanness.

It's not that these things were sin, as we'll see as we go through. Leviticus 15.1. You always spoke to Moses and Aaron.

Speak to the Israelites and tell them, When any man has a discharge from his member, he is unclean. This is uncleanness of his discharge. Whether his member secretes the discharge or retains it, he is unclean.

All the days that his member secretes or retains anything because of his discharge, he is unclean. Any bed the man with the discharge lies on will be unclean, and any furniture he sits on will be unclean.

Anyone who touches his bed is to wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening.

Whoever sits on furniture that the man with the discharge was sitting on is to wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening.

Whoever touches the body of the man with the discharge is to wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening.

If the man with the discharge spits on anyone who is clean, he is to wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening. Any saddle the man with the discharge rides on will be unclean.

Whoever touches anything that was under him will be unclean until evening, and whoever carries such things is to wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening.

If the man with the discharge touches anyone without first rinsing his hands in water, the person who was touched is to wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening.

Any clay pot that the man with the discharge touches must be broken, while any wooden utensil is to be rinsed with water.

Okay, all of those things, obviously, lots of stuff going on, but I think it's interesting that God here, long before anyone knew about some of the specific benefits of washing your hands, that God instituted this.

And obviously, this type of thing, washing with hands, was at one point taken by the Pharisees to just a completely extra thing where they chied Jesus for his followers, not washing their hands ritually before they eat.

Some of the thought process in that for the Pharisees was, okay, well, what if someone who's ceremonially unclean touches a door? What if they touch a donkey and then someone else touches a donkey?

Okay, well, now they've touched it, and so just always rinse your hands, wash them with water no matter what.

And while it could be good to wash your hands with water before you eat anything, the Pharisees had taken it to a level that was then just placed on people in a judgmental way that was not just the direct safety measures that God had implemented in

His Word. So, I want to mention that, that God cares for us, and He cared and He knew long before mankind knew about germs or things like that.

He knew about the importance of even washing your hands, and that just goes to show the fact this book is not the creation merely of man, but it is God's Word that He gave through man. So, continuing in verse number 13.

When the man with the discharge has been cured of it, he is to count seven days for his cleansing, wash his clothes and bathe his body in fresh water. He will be clean.

He must take two turtle doves or two young pigeons on the eighth day, come before Yahweh at the entrance to the Tabernacle and give them to the priest. The priest is to sacrifice them. One is a sin offering and the other is a burnt offering.

In this way, the priest will make atonement for him before Yahweh because of his discharge.

So there, as we mentioned before, it's not that having some problem where there is discharge is a sin, it's that the effects of sin on our world, that everything has now been corrupted and polluted, that God is saying, hey, now everything is okay,

that even the effects of sin have been covered over and atoned for. Yeah, so there's that.

I would encourage you, if as we continue to go through the book, if you ever kind of lose sight or forget some of that, go back to the Bible Project book or the Bible Project video on the Book of Leviticus, very helpful.

Some great illustrations that kind of show what's going on or like what some of that would perhaps look like. Verse 16. When a man has an emission of semen, he is to bathe himself completely with water, and he will remain unclean until evening.

Any clothing or leather on which there is an emission of semen is to be washed with water, and it will remain unclean until evening.

If a man sleeps with a woman and has an emission of semen, both of them are to bathe with water, and they will remain unclean until evening.

So, much like I mentioned before, there is a difference between, yes, God instituted this, but God did not institute this as far as His worship was concerned.

And in fact, they were to stay away entirely from the Tabernacle or holy places or from touching holy things until that basically next day, that until evening, that it's the evening and the morning, or how the day goes. So, it's like from 6 p.m.

to 6 p.m. is their day instead of 12 to 12. Verse 19, when a woman has a discharge and it consists of blood from her body, she will be unclean because of her menstruation for seven days.

Everyone who touches her will be unclean until evening. Anything she lies on during her menstruation will become unclean, and anything she sits on will become unclean.

Everyone who touches her bed is to wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening.

Everyone who touches any furniture she was sitting on is to wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening.

If discharge is on the bed or the furniture she was sitting on, when he touches it, he will be unclean until evening.

If a man sleeps with her and blood from her menstruation gets on him, he will be unclean for seven days, and every bed he lies on will become unclean.

Here, this was something that's not often mentioned in Scripture, but it is mentioned in the first book of Genesis, and you have this daughter of Laban that Jacob is taking his wives and his kids, and he's booking it out of there.

Laban hasn't treated them well, and so Jacob's going to go and find greener pasture, and Laban comes after them because someone took his household idols, the little household gods that he would worship.

And so he's going through, and Jacob's like, listen, you can kill anyone that took these idols, because Jacob knew he hadn't taken the idols, and he hadn't thought that anyone had.

But in fact, one of his wives had, one of Laban's daughters, but she got away with it because she put the idols under, I think it was either under her saddle or between blankets and saddle, and she was sitting on the camel or the donkey, I believe it

was, and her dad was like, hey, get off the donkey or whatever, and she goes, oh, I can't, I'm on my period. And so she got away with it, which is kind of humorous then when you look at Leviticus 15, where it's like, yeah, you know, you don't touch

anything, everything's unclean, don't mess with it. But I find it interesting that the one big place that that's mentioned elsewhere in scripture is trickery being pulled on a person that pulled off a lot of tricks and a lot of no good schemes

himself. Verse 25, when a woman has a discharge of her blood for many days, though it's not the time of her menstruation, or if she has a discharge beyond her period, she will be unclean all the days of her unclean discharge as she is during the days

of her menstruation. Any bed she lies on during the days of her discharge will be like her bed during menstrual impurity. Any furniture she sits on will be unclean as in her menstrual period. Everyone who touches them will be unclean.

He must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will remain unclean until evening. When she is cured of her discharge, she is to count seven days, and after that, she will be clean.

On the eighth day, she must take two turtle calves or two young pigeons and bring them to the priest at the entrance to the Tabernacle. The priest is to sacrifice one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering.

In this way, the priest will make atonement for her before Yahweh because of her unclean discharge. I do want to mention one other instance. I just remembered the other instance in which a period is brought up in Scripture.

And it's in the story of King David and his sin with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11. And there's been some slight misunderstandings on that particular story in Scripture before.

And often the word adultery, when it's been used of the story, is used to indicate that there is 2 guilty parties in that story, when all of the context clues, all of the specific words that are used in the story, indicate that Bathsheba was taken

advantage of, that she was one that was not able to deny, that was not able to refuse. The words that are used in the passage are that she was taken. It was like to be seized, to be grabbed. It wasn't that they invited and she came, she was taken.

And even when God recounts the story through the prophet Nathan, he says that it was like a person that had a ton of sheep, a neighbor just had one little lamb that they loved, and the person killed the lamb to feed a guest.

That everything that's in there says, hey, Bathsheba was not in the wrong, David was solidly in the wrong.

And one of those context clues is the fact that she was following these exact commands from Leviticus 15 on how she conducted herself, that she knew God's law, she was following God's law, and then she was taken advantage of afterwards.

One of the other things of note is that both ancestors of Jesus Christ came from Bathsheba, the one from, if you will, Jesus's, I'm putting air quotes here for those of you listening to the audio podcast.

Fatherly lineage, so through Joseph, that Jesus was the heir to David's throne through Solomon, who was a son of David and Bathsheba.

And again, as you can read about in Luke 3, another one of Bathsheba's sons, Nathan, was the ancestor of Mary, who then, of course, gave birth to Jesus.

That on both sides, God honored Bathsheba, that every mention of her, there's no mention of wrongdoing on her part. She was one that was taken advantage of.

And one of those things that, as you read through the Bible, there can be lots of assumptions made, but you have to interpret the Bible in the light of the Bible.

So, okay, what details are being given about this person or this action, and where else do we find those details or those words in the Bible?

It's why we believe that the Bible isn't just generally true thoughts or stories overall, but that every word of God is pure, as Proverbs 30 would say.

And it's helpful even when we look at the Book of Leviticus, we go, all right, well, what benefit could this ever be to us?

Well, when we go to other parts in Scripture, it's going to reference things that are brought up in Leviticus that help us to see what's going on, because oftentimes the narrators, the writers of the accounts don't give us like a bunch of motives,

they don't give us all of the behind the scenes things other than in the words that they use and the details that they do include that are intended to point us to other portions of Scripture. So, I wanted to mention that.

If you got any more questions about that, there's a book, Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes that is an excellent read and I would encourage you read through some of that and that's very helpful in saying, all right, what does the Bible say?

What's the way in which it says it? And what did that mean for that culture? Very helpful.

Closing out the chapter in verse number 31, you must keep the Israelites from their uncleanness so that they do not die by defiling my tabernacle that is among them.

This is the law for someone with a discharge, a man who has an emission of semen, becoming unclean by it, a woman who is in her menstrual period, anyone who has a discharge, whether male or female, and a man who sleeps with a woman who is unclean.

So as we kind of close out this chapter, I want to reiterate, like God genuinely cares not just about your giving of money or sacrificing. God doesn't just care about the words that you say.

He also cares about your actions, which does include your sexual actions. And you can read about that even in the New Testament several times, where Jesus talks a lot about marriage. Paul talks a lot about marriage.

Paul, especially in a Greek and Roman culture that was just very hedonistic, very anything goes, he reminds them of God's design.

And in 1 Thessalonians 4 and verse number 4, Paul tells them, hey, this is the will of God, your sanctification, your consecration to God, that you would abstain from sexual immorality.

And though here these specific actions that are mentioned are not necessarily immoral actions, this is just how to be ceremonially clean before God, I would be remiss to not remind us, God cares about what you watch, God cares about what you listen

to, God cares about what you read, God cares about maybe the conversations that you have with people or the actions that you take with people. Remember that God has designed marriage, God has designed sexual activity to take place between one man and

one woman for life within the bounds of marriage. It's a beautiful picture because it's a picture of Christ and His Church, that He loves us, that He has, if you will, adopted us for His own. He has brought us into His family.

And when we pollute that picture, it pollutes the picture of Christ and His Church. It pollutes our view of Him, and it twists it.

It takes what's supposed to be meaningful and caring and holy and turns it into something commonplace or something that brings shame or something that brings guilt. And that's not how God designed it.

So, as the Apostle Paul would say in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which both belong to God. Thanks for tuning in. Again, I know it's interesting.

It's a different chapter in God's Word. And so, I thank you for joining for this time.

Tomorrow, we have a very, if you will, a very normal episode in Leviticus, looking at the Day of Atonement and so many wonderful pictures of Christ that we'll see in those chapters 16 and 17. Thanks for tuning in. Have a wonderful day.