“Don’t Touch The Unclean Thing!”

“10 On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Haggai: 11 ‘This is what the Lord of Armies says: Ask the priests for a ruling. 12 If a man is carrying consecrated meat in the fold of his garment, and it touches bread, stew, wine, oil, or any other food, does it become holy?’ The priests answered, ‘No.’ 13 Then Haggai asked, ‘If someone defiled by contact with a corpse touches any of these, does it become defiled?’ The priests answered, ‘It becomes defiled.’ 14 Then Haggai replied, ‘So is this people, and so is this nation before me—this is the Lord’s declaration. And so is every work of their hands; even what they offer there is defiled.’”

— Haggai 2:10–14

One thing we all can recognize, especially if you have spent time around little children, is that when one kid is sick, chances are it’s coming to you next! Sickness, by its design, spreads. In the Old Testament, “uncleanliness” is much like this. In fact, if you turn back to the book of Leviticus, you will see many rules meant to govern the cleanliness and uncleanliness of Israel (Lev. 11–15). Many who read these chapters wonder, “Why is this such a major theme throughout Scripture?”

While some of the rules prove God’s great wisdom over health and science—for example, it is widely known that Israel was kept from the major plagues that swept through Europe due to their cleanliness laws—indeed, it was the source of much anger toward Israel from nations who were ravaged with disease.

However, there is a greater theme here that warrants thought, a way in which cleanliness and uncleanliness actually speaks to something deeper within ourselves, and will speak to a beautiful picture we saw in our text from Sunday.

Cleanliness is, in the Old Testament, a picture of righteousness and sinfulness. Often in Scripture, those things which were evil were called unclean. Consider this text:

Isaiah 52:11 — “Leave, leave, go out from there! Do not touch anything unclean; go out from her, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the Lord.”

In context, God is calling His people to reject the influence of the nations and return to Him. Their influence—the desire to go backwards into idolatry and unrighteousness—is described as “unclean.” They’re encouraged to avoid the “unclean thing” as a rejection of worldly influence. Why? This leads us to the text I alluded to at the beginning of this blog.

After the exile, as the new temple is being built, the prophet Haggai brings a word from God to indicate the place in which Israel finds itself as they return to the promised land.

God points out that cleanliness is not spreadable. You are not able to turn an unclean thing clean just by touching it to a clean thing, but the reverse is horrifically true: whenever something clean touches something unclean, it also becomes unclean. In other words, sin spreads, and outside of radical intervention, cleanliness cannot reverse that spread; it can only be overtaken. Haggai is calling the people to push forward into cleanliness and righteousness while being incredibly careful not to allow the influence of the world, which leads us to part of the text we read on Sunday.

“12 While he was in one of the towns, a man was there who had leprosy all over him. He saw Jesus, fell facedown, and begged him, ‘Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.’ 13 Reaching out his hand, Jesus touched him, saying, ‘I am willing; be made clean,’ and immediately the leprosy left him. 14 Then he ordered him to tell no one: ‘But go and show yourself to the priest, and offer what Moses commanded for your cleansing as a testimony to them.’”

— Luke 5:12–14

In the cleanliness laws of the Old Testament, leprosy was a very serious thing. Leviticus 13–14 detail the process of diagnosing, treating, and separating from one who has a confirmed case of leprosy. In other words, this highly contagious disease is the perfect picture of how sin spreads and how we can so easily be contaminated with it.

In other words, as we see this man with leprosy in Luke’s Gospel, we should see ourselves. The sin in our hearts so easily spreads throughout our entire life to the point at which we must be separated from the holy God. We had no hope except to call out to God for Him to make us clean. Anything else would be insufficient due to the extent of our uncleanliness.

Yet here is Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the holiest being in all of the universe, the creator of everything, the one who cannot even be approached by unclean things. Here is the Holy One of God coming to one who is unclean and making him clean. What a beautiful picture of the Gospel! Without the grace and mercy of God, we were doomed to remain separated from God due to our sin, yet God has come to reach out to the unclean in order to make them clean as a testimony to His greatness and mercy.

We can praise God this week for His mercy and grace, that He would take us, though stained as red as scarlet, and make us white as snow