Okay, those who love washing their hands, clothes, bedding, and houses, and who love the fresh smell of clean, these are your two chapters! Today’s reading is all about Holy Hygiene! So, what is God doing in these chapters? God is showing Israel how easy it is to become unclean through everyday living. With the Tabernacle and a Holy God among them, if they approached God unclean, they would die. Ultimately, God shows them how they can draw near to Himself. God wants to be close to His people!
While thinking about this, an incident in the New Testament came to mind.
Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. (Mark 7:5–6, KJV)
By Jesus’s time, Israel had lost sight of God. They were focused on ceremonies and traditions. The meaning behind the ceremonies was lost. It became about dos and don’ts, outward actions and appearance, and judging others by what they did or didn’t do. Observing ceremonies and traditions was the endgame, not a relationship with God. They were religious; they were good at it, but their hearts were far from God. Notice what Jesus said straight to the face of the most “right”—looking people of His day.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. (Matthew 23:27, KJV)
Believer, focusing on looking right and performing the right things is easy. It is easy to judge others by how right we look and by what we do. It is easy to think we are closest to God and that God must be more pleased with us than with others. Jesus calls that hypocrisy! Jesus says, “Your heart is far from me.”
This morning, remember that God wants a heart-to-heart relationship with you. This relationship has nothing to do with dos and don’ts; it has everything to do with what Jesus did.
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. (Romans 5:8–11, KJV)
Thank you for joining me as I read and journal through the Bible chronologically.
Today’s reflection: Leviticus 14-15 (Day 48).
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