You see down later in verse 7, “She shall offer it before the Lord and make atonement for her… She shall be clean from the flow of her blood.” So it is explicitly about the flow of blood. Verse 2 uses that language, verse 4, verse 5.
You notice several times in this passage it is called the blood of her purifying. Well, it’s not because there is some sin involved because of the child, but it is, as we see here hinted at, because of the loss of blood. The Bible celebrates children, considered a great gift. Why childbirth? Childbirth is a good thing. We’re not talking about sin but about ritual uncleanness. So immediately we ask the question, “Why are women considered unclean after childbirth?” Remember we’re talking about ritual uncleanness, about whether or not you can approach the holy things, the holy altar and festivals, and participate in all of the holy worship. And she shall continue in the blood of her purifying for sixty-six days.” But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her menstruation. She shall not touch anything holy, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying are completed. Then she shall continue for thirty-three days in the blood of her purifying. And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. As at the time of her menstruation, she shall be unclean. “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If a woman conceives and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days. So we’re going to look at 12 and 15 and then 13 and 14.Ĭhapter 12 is the shortest and you can the heading in the ESV, “Purification After Childbirth.” Let’s look at the first paragraph. I said last week that chapters 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 go together and there’s kind of a rhythm about 11 things that go in you, 12 things that come out of you, 13 and 14 things that are on you, and then chapter 15 is things that come out of you. So I want you to brace yourself for about 15 or 20 minutes to walk through the text, reading some of it, explaining what’s in here, and then the second half, maybe it’ll be more than the first half, but the second half then we are going to look, what does Jesus say about all this? What does Jesus have to do? These chapters are about fluids and sores and discharges and mildew and scabs and mold and blood and pus and disease. I thought about entitling the sermon, “EIt’s in the Bible and it’s all breathed out and profitable. You could almost get the impression based on these instructions for childbirth that girls are somehow more impure than boys, or that lepers are treated unfairly as outcasts, or that sex is considered filthy, or that women have to be confined to their homes all the time because they’re unclean.Īnd let’s face it, these chapters, what’s the word we should use? They’re just kind of gross. In fact, on the face of it, they may seem offensive, as we’ll see in just a moment. Now we come to chapters 12 through 15, and I have to tell you, they are even longer and more tedious. Hopefully you learned something and there was more there than meets the eye.
We looked at Leviticus 11 last week, which animals you can eat, which animals you can or can’t touch. How do we become unclean and then how do we become clean and how are we restored then to God’s people?
SERMON ON CLEAN ME AND I SHALL BE WHITER THAN SNOW MANUAL
It would take almost the whole sermon to read through all of it.Īs I introduced last week from chapter 11, Leviticus 11 through 15 you can think of as the cleanliness manual of the Bible. We’ll walk through and explain what’s in this text. I invite you to turn in your Bibles to that great Palm Sunday text that is Leviticus 12, 13, 14, and 15. Father, now as we come to Your Word, give me just the right words to say, that this strange text would make some sense to us, and more than that, that we would know Christ in it and know His love for us who believe.
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