“Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.”
-Leviticus 15:31
This chapter, Leviticus, chapter 15 is filled with detailed instructions regarding cleanness before the Lord, cleanness before others and as I read through it, I realize, well, one, we have to be careful when we read through these things to remember the context. These cleanness laws in the book of Leviticus had a practical purpose. I mean, the people of Israel didn’t have antibiotics like contact in this way or that way when someone has an infection.
You think about that in a camp of 2 million people, that could lead to the spread of sickness and disease that would kill thousands if not tens of thousands of people. So there’s laws for quarantining people when they have a particular sickness. I mean, God in His kindness and pastoral care for his people is practically providing for the physical care of hundreds of thousands of people. So there’s good purposes behind these laws. But as I read through them, I think, yeah.
Are we zealous to be pure? Have we grown complacent with our sin? God, make us clean and help us to live pure before You and one another.
Leviticus 15:31 Discusses the Importance of Cleanliness
Cleanness is important, but not just before each other. That’s the whole point of Leviticus. Cleanness is important before God. This is why He said, “Lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.” It was important for God’s people to realize that cleanness before Him was essential and I think about that in my life. Think about that in your life. Are we zealous to be clean, to be pure, to be holy, or do we grow content, complacent with sin, with a lack of purity in small ways here or there, a lack of holiness in this small way over there or that small way over here when Leviticus is just beckoning to say no.
We are zealous to be clean before God, obviously knowing that’s only possible through what Christ has done on the cross for us. But in Christ we want to live clean. We want to live holy. We want to live pure before God and before others around us. So we pray, God, make us clean like in Leviticus 15:31. I pray this in my life. I pray for this for those who are listening right now. Make us clean, we pray.
By the blood of Christ that covers over our sin and by the power of Christ living in us, help us to turn from sin. Help us to turn from temptation today. God, help us to walk clean and pure and holy before You. Help us to be ultrasensitive to temptation toward sin. God, help us to run from it. Help us not to flirt with it, rationalize it, or toy with it. God, help us to run from sin and temptation.
This Verse Makes Us Want Pure Hearts
Make us a people who are increasingly unstained by sin, even that which we would consider small sin and think about what you said, oh God, in Psalm 18. “The Lord dealt with me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands. He rewarded me.” Oh, God, we want clean hands and pure hearts and clean minds and pure desires and motives and actions and words, God. We want our lives to be clean before you and others. So help us by the power of Christ in us, who is totally clean, who conquered sin completely.
Please, oh, God, give us grace today to run from sin and to live in righteousness and according to the cleanness of our hands by Your grace may we experience Your reward, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
