Clean Living Series

CLEAN LIVING—sel. From Leviticus 11-15

(Preacher: Begin with “Things Moms would probably not say...” on YouTube or Powerpoint…

End the list with… “Let me smell that shirt. Yeah, that’s good for another week.”

And, “Don’t bother cleaning your room. It makes the rest of the house look dirty.”

In Leviticus 11-15, there are over 30 verses that include the word “clean”, and over 70 verses that have the word “unclean.” Why? Is cleanliness next to godliness? Surely there is more to it than that!

When you don’t understand everything in a Bible passage, a good question to ask is, “What do I know for sure?” What can we understand in this passage about God, about people, and about life with God?

1. ALL OF LIFE MATTERS TO GOD

(Preacher: Project a slide with the title, “Which are talked about in Leviticus?” Everything on the slide is talked about: sacrifices, snakes, geckos, rashes, tattoos, infectious disease, etc. If it is still current, a picture of the Geico gecko might be fun.)

Leviticus tells us that everything about us is important to God, including our bodies and the health of our communities.

Read Leviticus 11:1-8. I like bacon! Yet wild hogs are carnivores, and they will eat anything, dead or alive—even human flesh. Carnivores are more likely to pass on disease, and they were prohibited. (trichinosis?) Dead animals were also prohibited; they were not roadkill (like deer hit by a truck), but likely to be diseased.

Read Leviticus 13:1-3. The rest of the chapters lists oozing sores and skin diseases that might be infectious. The priests (since there were no physicians, and no Center for Disease Control) examined the skin and performed elaborate ceremonies, with provisions to verify cleanliness. Read Leviticus 14:1-9. There were similar procedures for mildew and mold.

Leviticus 15 deals with bodily discharges, which might also be contagious. The procedures seem strange to us, but they were similar to the blood cleanup protocols that are followed today.

Some of these rules make little sense to us, but they taught the people to take God’s commands seriously.

When the rock group Van Halen toured, their standard contract required a bowl of M&Ms backstage, from which all brown M&Ms had been removed. The band was not being petty; they were testing the promoters. Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth explained in his autobiography that the band was the first to go into smaller markets. They pulled in with nine 18-wheelers, and sometimes the stage supports or electrical system would not support the demands of a heavy rock band. The stipulation of no brown M&Ms tested the promoter’s commitment to detailed preparation, to ensure the safety of the crowd.

Some of the stipulations in Leviticus might be like that. God was testing whether his people would take his commands seriously, because if they were disobedient in the small things, they would be disobedient in the big things.

Even if we don’t understand every rule in Leviticus, the clear message is that God cares about every aspect of life. He cares about our diet and our health. He cares about the health of the community, including safe housing, environmental pollution, and access to healthcare. It is safe to assume that God is concerned about broader issues of health and welfare, like drug abuse, obesity, epidemics, and (as we will see later today) maternal health.

2. ALL OF LIFE CAN BE MADE CLEAN BY GOD

In this section of Leviticus, the focus is not on sin, but on uncleanness. Sins must be forgiven; uncleanness must be healed and made whole.

If you read Leviticus 11-15, you will read some puzzling things, especially relating to sex and procreation.

Read Leviticus 15:18-24. These are natural bodily functions, which are not sinful. Proverbs 5:18 is quite graphic: “May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

If the emissions were not sinful, why were they considered to be unclean? There were some practical benefits of hygiene, and effect of these commands was to give women a break during their menstrual periods.

Yet in Leviticus, there is a bit of a sense that sex is dirty. It was not that way in the Garden of Eden; Adam and Eve were free, and full of delight in each other. After they sinned, however, things were not so perfect. God told Eve that she would have pain in childbirth, and “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

Despite the impression we might get from movies, sexual encounters are not always perfect. The uneasiness is not only physical; individuals are not perfectly cherished, loved unselfishly, and united in perfect, whole-person harmony. For too many people, there is baggage from the past: abuse, promiscuity, or insecurity. For too many, there are impure thoughts and images, or habits and addictions. Too often, there are power struggles, insensitivity, selfishness, or lack of commitment.