Ritual Laws

Prayer

Unclean? I want to start a little different this morning, with a story from the New Testament, from the book of Acts. It takes place in the very early days of those first followers of Jesus, and Peter is in the town of Joppa, staying with another believer, Simon, and Peter goes to the rooftop to pray.

Acts 10:9-17...About noon the following day…Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11 He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. 13 Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” 14 “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” 15 The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” 16 This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven. 17 While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision...

So, Peter is up on the rooftop of this house, praying, and he falls into a trance. The Bible tells us that he’s hungry. God gives him a vision, in this vision, heaven opens up and a large sheet comes floating down to earth, full of all sorts of animals - four-footed ones, reptiles and birds. And the command comes from God to Peter, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

Peter’s response is very instructive here… “Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure and unclean.” Lord, don’t ask me to do this, I can’t even imagine eating some of the animals here - they are impure, unclean. Then God’s response, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Just to make sure that Peter gets the point, this is repeated three times - he’s not just imagining this! This leaves him absolutely confused - this part of the story ends with Peter trying to figure out what’s going on.

And that’s the question we’re asking - what’s going on in this story? I mean, this is a strange story - sheets filled with animals, command to eat ‘em all, despite Peter’s protestations. As it turns out, it has everything to do with what we want to look at this morning in the book of Leviticus.

Before we jump into that, I want you to note the how strongly Peter resists this command, “Surely not, Lord! I’ve never done this before.” And he resists it three times - note that at the end, he never says, “yes, Lord.” He’s left wondering about it.

It speaks to how deeply ingrained it was for Peter, as a faithful Jew, to not eat certain types of animals. It was unthinkable for him to consider doing it - this was part of the Torah, God’s commands, these animals are unclean. And here God is telling him, nope, eat up. Eat it all. I am declaring these clean. They are no longer unclean.

In order to understand what’s going on here, we have to go back to our journey through the Old Testament, the book of Leviticus. Because it’s here we find God’s instructions for how the Jews are to order their lives in order to be his holy, covenant people. These instructions include laws of purity.

It’s important to recognize that there are two types of these purity laws. The first type, the ones we’re going to focus on this morning, are the ritual, or ceremonial, laws. The other type of laws are the moral laws, which we’ll be looking at next week.

Though these two types of purity laws - ritual and the moral, have some essential differences, they do share a common purpose. God is giving them to his people as part of his formation process, to shape them into his people, his royal priesthood, his holy nation. Remember, the whole purpose of God forming this nation (promise he made to Abraham), is to be a blessing to all other nations.

So far we’ve talked about God’s instructions for the offerings and sacrifices (grain, burnt, freewill, sin and guilt offerings), and then last week, the sacrifices for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for all the people, and how those sacrifices pointed to the once-and-for all sacrifice Jesus would make for us.

Ritual Laws

Today we’re in the part of Leviticus where God lays out these ritual laws - as we’ve seen so far in Leviticus, it’s a lot of detail, these laws go on for several chapters (11 through 15) so I want to give you a sampling of the types of things God commands his people to do - and not do.

Leviticus 11:1-8...The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 2 “Say to the Israelites: ‘Of all the animals that live on land, these are the ones you may eat: 3 You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud. 4 “‘There are some that only chew the cud or only have a divided hoof, but you must not eat them. The camel, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is ceremonially unclean for you. 5 The hyrax, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is unclean for you. 6 The rabbit, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is unclean for you. 7 And the pig, though it has a divided hoof, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. 8 You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.

And that’s just the beginning - goes on to describe what kind of sea creatures (essentially, fish with scales and fins are the only ones considered clean), then a list of birds they can’t eat, then what types of insects (crickets and grasshoppers and locusts are all ok, the rest of them, not so much. Reptiles, things that crawl along the ground are basically unclean. On the list of forbidden foods. And also, if you touch the carcass of a dead animal, you’re considered unclean. You have to wash your clothes and then you’re unclean until evening (beginning of a new day).

And all that’s just chaper 11! In Leviticus 12, God gives instructions for purification after childbirth, the amount of time a woman would be considered unclean after giving birth, that she must wait to be purified after her bleeding. Here again, very specific, the amount of days varied if the woman gave birth to a boy or girl, and then she had to bring an offering to the priest so he could make atonement for her through a burnt offering.

Leviticus 13, regulations about defiling skin diseases, elaborate set of instructions of what to do if you had a swelling or rash or shiny spot, and how you were to go to the priest and let him examine the condition of the infection. You would be declared unclean for a period of time, had to be isolated. If it was determined to be an infectious skin disease, what’s described as a defiling skin disease, you had to live in isolation, outside of the camp.

Leviticus 13 also includes instructions about what to do if you find mildew in your house or on something you own (clothing for example). If it was an object, you were to bring it to the priest for examination, let it sit for seven days - did it spread? Based on what the mildew did, you could reuse the object or it had to be destroyed.

Leviticus 14 had to do with the cleansing of infectious skin diseases, mildew. Chapter 15 covers bodily discharges of all sorts.

So this covers a lot of ground - what foods to eat, bodily discharges, mildew, etc. They are all talked about in terms of clean and unclean. Pure and impure. The question is why, what’s this all about? Why does God give his people such explicit, specific instructions, some of which seem very random and unnecessary and burdensome. And which we just ignore today, not part of the Bible we try to live it out.

You can explain some of these laws for health reasons - there’s a reason why you’d want to isolate people with an infectious skin disease in a time and age when you didn’t have antibiotics or other medications, or why it’d be worth it to determine if the mildew in your house is the kind that would spread and cause harm (if you think about it, we have similar regulations in place for homes today).

But that doesn’t explain all of them. Many of the animals God deems unclean are animals that have been eaten by lots of other people throughout history. And there’s no health benefit for a woman to have to go through such a lengthy purification process following childbirth. There has to be something else going on.

Pervasive Holiness

Here was the key - God’s holiness, the thing he wanted them to share in, why he set them apart, was to effect every area of their lives. Remember, they were to be God’s holy people, set apart for his sake. Question is, what would it take for them to see themselves in this way?

There’s a TV show called The Bear, about a brother taking over his deceased brother’s restaurant. He sends a family member who’s slack about working there, doesn’t take it seriously - sends him to work at an upscale restaurant in another city. At that restaurant, he’s assigned the job of cleaning the utensils. They keep telling him to re-clean them because some of them still have some streaks on them. It drives him nuts. He can’t figure out why they’re so particular about the utensils. They keep making him redo them. Finally, he catches on, this is a place that is different. He starts putting in the time and effort. He starts dressing better for work.

This is the idea - these aren’t moral laws, they are laws that are more ceremonial, ritual, but they serve a purpose of formation, activities you engage in on a day-to-day basis that begin to inform who you are in the whole of life.

We do these sorts of things in our lives all the time - we create rules for ourselves, for our families, because we want to live in a particular sort of way. Jordan Peterson’s “Twelve Rules for Life” - make your bed. Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Always pet a cat. I might realize - I’m wasting too much time watching TV or on my phone - so I create a rule to limit my use of those things. I want to be a person who is a lifelong learner - so I make a rule to read half an hour every day. And it’s not just the act of reading, but what I choose to read - I want to read things that are of higher value, that will teach me, give me wisdom. They are “clean” in that sense - over reading some things that are just fluff, forgettable, you might think of them as “unclean.”

This is what’s happening here, God is giving the Israelites these rules so they would see themselves as distinct from all the other peoples around them. That would remind them throughout every day life, I belong to God. I’m part of his holy people. We live differently.

Listen to Leviticus 11:43-45, the chapter on what animals they may eat - Do not defile yourselves by any of these creatures. Do not make yourselves unclean by means of them or be made unclean by them. 44 I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves along the ground. 45 I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.

It’s important to remember that there wasn’t anything inherently wrong, morally wrong, with eating these “unclean” animals or having bodily discharges or having a skin disease - those aren’t moral acts like stealing or lying or idolatry, which are inherently wrong, or evil.

These things were practices that would force the Jews throughout their day-to-day lives to be mindful of their distinctive identity as God’s holy, set apart people. They would eat differently from their Canaanite neighbors. Many of these laws had to do things that represented death - skin diseases, touching dead bodies, mildew - all these things that would make you unclean. These laws would make you mindful of that, avoid things of death. And if you came into contact with them, you would be unclean until that evening.

But here’s the thing - these things did not make God’s people holy in and of themselves. In some ways, it gave them a false sense of superiority, they considered Gentiles “unclean”, wouldn’t associate with them.

This is why God had to speak to Peter in such a profound way on that rooftop - God certainly got his attention with that vision, sheet full of animals - Kill and eat! Peter is so ingrained in Jewish laws that he can’t imagine eating unclean animals. But how does God respond? “Do not call anything unclean that I have made clean.” This story in Acts is huge, God is declaring to Peter that the rules he had given the Jews under the old covenant have changed. These ceremonial laws were for God’s people in that time. They were never intended to be laws for all people at all times.

But now, in Jesus, he is doing something new - and that something new includes the Gentiles. Those outsiders, those others nations the Jews were to be separate from - are now to be included, brought into his flock, to be part of his holy nation. So all those things that separated the Jews from the Gentiles, the foods they ate, this whole sense of clean and unclean, no more. God has now made them clean.

Holiness, set apart, cleanliness - would no longer be defined through a ritual set of practices, but through the dwelling of the Holy Spirit inside of us. This would become clincher for Peter and the early Jewish Christians - when they see Gentiles who trust in Jesus receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, they know it’s a whole new ballgame. They, too, are now part of God’s royal priesthood, his holy nation.

This is why we no longer abide by these practices - they were part of the Old Covenant, for God’s people, the Israelites, at this time and in that place. Why we can enjoy bacon and pork and ham, shrimp - all these “unclean” foods that God has now declared clean. Why we don’t isolate ourselves after bodily discharges or skin diseases or any number of ritual laws we find here.

Now, there are laws of morality in book of Leviticus that very much do apply to us today, we’ll look at these next week.

So what does this mean for us today? I’ve just spent most of this message explaining what these ritual laws are and how why don’t apply to us anymore? What can we learn from these laws? It seems to be the bigger question revolves around what it means for us to know ourselves as God’s holy, set-apart people.

In John 17, Jesus is praying to the Father, and he reflects on the fact that we, as his followers, are not of this world. But then he acknowledges that just like the Father sent him, he is sending us into the world. So this is the tension - we are being sent into the world, but we are not of the world. In the world, but not of it.

And it’s an incredibly hard thing to maintain (just ask the Israelites). Like them, we fail in one of two directions - either we are too much in the world (and the world then, is too much in us). Nothing distinctive about way we live.

Or, we separate ourselves too much, often with a sense of moral superiority. We create our own little Christian subcultures, just listen to Christian music, only hang out with other Christians. There were times when Christians wouldn’t go to see movies, play cards, dance - separation from the world.

Pursue holiness, to be holy, as God is holy - so that we can be salt of the earth, light to the world

Happen because of our love - for each other, for our families (our marriages, raise our children), how we engage others relationally, how we treat our neighbors. Nurturing true inner goodness in us. By following Jesus, hearing what he teaches and putting it into practice.

There is nothing more radically different than to be a person who lives out the Great Commandments.

Spiritual Disciplines - how essential this is, otherwise, we will be just like the world. Cultivate life in Christ, to be his holy people.

Developing a Rule of Life (Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life), think through the whole of your life as someone who wants a life centered in Jesus, rooted in his life, becoming a person who loves...