Sermon Tone Analysis

TEXT: Numbers 19

TOPIC: THE TRAGEDY OF AN UNCLEAN CHRISTIAN

BIBLE SURVIVOR SERIES, Message 14

Pastor Bobby Earls, First Baptist Icard, December 9, 2001

Grateful acknowledgement is given to Dr. Adrian Rogers for the bulk of the text of this message.

As we continue our Bible Survivor series this morning through the pages and the history of the Old Testament, I want us first to look at a parallel passage found in the New Testament.

Open your bibles to 1 Corinthians 10.

I am reading from the New Living Translation, 1 Corinthians chapter ten, beginning in verse 1.

I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, what happened to our ancestors in the wilderness long ago.

God guided all of them by sending a cloud that moved along ahead of them, and he brought them all safely through the waters of the sea on dry ground.

2 As followers of Moses, they were all baptized in the cloud and the sea. 3 And all of them ate the same miraculous food, 4 and all of them drank the same miraculous water.

For they all drank from the miraculous rock that traveled with them, and that rock was Christ.

5 Yet after all this, God was not pleased with most of them, and he destroyed them in the wilderness.

6 These events happened as a warning to us, so that we would not crave evil things as they did 7 or worship idols as some of them did.

For the Scriptures say, “The people celebrated with feasting and drinking, and they indulged themselves in pagan revelry.”

8 And we must not engage in sexual immorality as some of them did, causing 23,000 of them to die in one day.

9 Nor should we put Christ to the test, as some of them did and then died from snakebites. 10 And don’t grumble as some of them did, for that is why God sent his angel of death to destroy them.

11 All these events happened to them as examples for us.

They were written down to warn us, who live at the time when this age is drawing to a close. 1 Corinthians 10:1-11, NLT

Now turn to the next book in the bible called appropriately 2 Corinthians and look at chapter six.

What we are going to be talking about this morning is The Tragedy of an Unclean Christian.

In the past several months our nation has been riveted by terrorism and acts of insanity.

The most recent scares have been the anthrax threats.

People everywhere are afraid of being contaminated with the anthrax virus.

What I want to tell us today is that many of us are contaminated and we may not know it.

But I am not talking about anthrax, but a far more serious and a far more dangerous contamination called sin.

And because we are contaminated, we contaminate everything that we touch.

Many of us are polluted and we pollute other things in a spiritual sense.

Now keep that in mind as I begin reading here in verse 14.

God says, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:" That can mean many things, but it primarily means that a saved person should never marry an unsaved person.

"For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?

and what communion hath light with darkness?

And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?

For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them and I will be their God and they shall be my people.

Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you and will be a Father unto you and ye shall be my sons and daughters saith the Lord Almighty."

Verse 17 gives us this injunction, "Touch not the unclean thing."

Now what is He talking about.

Turn back in your Bible please to Numbers chapter nineteen.

Look in Numbers chapter 19.

I want you to notice as we read portions of Numbers 19 that the word unclean is used fifteen times.

1 Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 2“This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord has commanded, saying: ‘Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come.

3‘You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, that he may take it outside the camp, and it shall be slaughtered before him; 4‘and Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger, and sprinkle some of its blood seven times directly in front of the tabernacle of meeting.

5‘Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight: its hide, its flesh, its blood, and its offal shall be burned.

6‘And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet, and cast them into the midst of the fire burning the heifer.

7‘Then the priest shall wash his clothes, he shall bathe in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp; the priest shall be unclean until evening.

8‘And the one who burns it shall wash his clothes in water, bathe in water, and shall be unclean until evening.

9‘Then a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and store them outside the camp in a clean place; and they shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for the water of purification; it is for purifying from sin. 10‘And the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until evening.

It shall be a statute forever to the children of Israel and to the stranger who dwells among them.

11‘He who touches the dead body of anyone shall be unclean seven days.

12‘He shall purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then he will be clean.

But if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not be clean.

13‘Whoever touches the body of anyone who has died, and does not purify himself, defiles the tabernacle of the Lord.

That person shall be cut off from Israel.

He shall be unclean, because the water of purification was not sprinkled on him; his uncleanness is still on him.

14‘This is the law when a man dies in a tent: All who come into the tent and all who are in the tent shall be unclean seven days; 15‘and every open vessel, which has no cover fastened on it, is unclean.

16‘Whoever in the open field touches one who is slain by a sword or who has died, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.

17‘And for an unclean person they shall take some of the ashes of the heifer burnt for purification from sin, and running water shall be put on them in a vessel.

18‘A clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water, sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who were there, or on the one who touched a bone, the slain, the dead, or a grave.

19‘The clean person shall sprinkle the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day; and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, wash his clothes, and bathe in water; and at evening he shall be clean.

20‘But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself, that person shall be cut off from among the assembly, because he has defiled the sanctuary of the Lord.

The water of purification has not been sprinkled on him; he is unclean.

21‘It shall be a perpetual statute for them.

He who sprinkles the water of purification shall wash his clothes; and he who touches the water of purification shall be unclean until evening.

22‘Whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean; and the person who touches it shall be unclean until evening.’

” Numbers 19:1-22, NKJV

Now you can understand why Paul said in the New Testament, "Touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you."

You say pastor, I really don't understand very much, as a matter of fact, I'm quite confused after that.

Well I want you to turn to one other verse found in Hebrews chapter 9.

And I want you to see how these verses all will come together in a moment.

Hebrews chapter nine and I want you to read with me beginning in verse 13.

For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Hebrews 9:13-14, NKJV

Now go back with me to Numbers chapter nineteen and let's explain what this red heifer is all about.

Let's explain what we are talking about when we are talking about the tragedy of an unclean Christian.

I. THE CONTAMINATION THAT SIN BRINGS

In the Old Testament, God had a law that you were not to touch a dead person.

Now obviously if you touched the dead person, you'd need to be cleaned.

Or you'd need to wait until any infection, or defilement, any microbes would die and you would no longer be a danger to others.

This was all about sanitation here, and quarantine for one’s and others on safety and health.

But it goes far beyond sanitation.

God is teaching an object lesson, and the object lesson is that death and sin are inseparably linked together.

Sin causes death and therefore death is the visible sign of sin.

The bible teaches that the wages of sin is death.

So when God said, don't touch a dead body, He was giving more than a lesson on hygiene.

He was giving an object lesson saying do not pollute yourself with sin.

And when Paul, in the New Testament, said "Touch not the unclean thing," he was not talking about dead bodies, he was talking about sin.

Now what kind of sin is it?

Well, let's look in chapter 19 and I want to mention four kinds of sin.

1. CALCULATED SIN, 19:11

First of all is what I want to call presumptuous sin or calculated sin.

Numbers 19:11 ‘He who touches the dead body of anyone shall be unclean seven days.

When a man, presumptuously walks up and lays his hand upon a corpse, upon a dead body, God says he is unclean.

He did it willingly.

He did it knowingly.

He touched an unclean thing, and that's what I call calculated sin, or presumptuous sin.

Now my dear friend, the most dangerous sin in the world is that sin that you sin with your eyes wide open, saying I know that it is a deadly thing that I am doing, but I will do it anyway.

David prayed in Psalm nineteen and verse thirteen, "keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins, and let them not have dominion over me."

Now when we sin willingly, deliberately, definitely, knowing that it is sin, we are placing ourselves in the worst kind of satanic bondage.

Now many of us have been touching an unclean thing, we know that it is a deadly thing.

We’re playing with fire and the bible says, “how can a man take fire into his bosom and not be burned.”