Leviticus 11-13 could be summed up in one phrase: Distinguish cleanness from uncleanness. Remember, God’s purpose in Israel was to establish a holy nation, a kingdom “set apart” to Himself and for His purposes. That distinct nation would be different in every area of life, as we see in these chapters. In Leviticus 11, Moses tells the Israelites about clean and unclean animals or food. As always, the list is long an extensive concerning what animals one could eat and could not eat. We might not understand the reasons, and perhaps no one has ever understood the reasons. I have read many articles by scholars in different fields that demonstrate and defraud the idea that God chose the clean animals based on what would be good for the Israelites nutritionally and from a health standpoint. As with every debate regard what we should or should not eat, dividing fact from opinion is impossible. Some discount the list because it includes meat at all. Others, show the “unclean” animals have health benefits. These points are all moot on two counts: 1) God’s instruction always supersedes human opinion, and 2) Jesus pronounced all foods ceremonially clean in a debate with the Jewish religious leaders. For our purposes here, it is most helpful to remember God was establishing a holy people, and the concern of how that would get lived out included what the people were and were not to eat.
Leviticus 12 is a brief chapter concerning the purification of women after they bore children. Again, our “enlightened” sensibilities might be offended at the distinction between the times involved based on whether the child was a male or female, but God’s purpose was simple: providing for the purity of His people.
In Leviticus 13 we move on to the category of skin diseases. This will continue into tomorrow’s reading, but once again we see God was concerned with the “cleanness” of His people. Separating out people with contagious diseases, might not have been part of the original plan, but it would have been part of the impact. Given that God is all-knowing, it would be unlikely that this benefit of separating unclean people from the rest of the population during their times of healing was not part of the plan.
As we return to Mark 14, we’re reminded of the many incredibly difficult aspects of Jesus last moments leading up to His crucifixion. When He was anointed at Bethany, some argued at the “waste” of money, because the anointing oil was so expensive. Jesus understood the both the love of Mary, and the underlying purpose, of which she was unaware, of the anointing: preparing Him for burial. During the Last Supper, when Jesus announced one of the twelve would betray Him, each of them asked, “Me?” We would think at least one of them would have been certain… Oh, that’s right. Peter was certain he wouldn’t turn against Jesus, yet that’s exactly what Peter did. He stood up when Jesus was arrested and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, but when it came down to standing up for Jesus, he denied every knowing Him. Sandwiched between Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial and the actual denial, were Jesus’ agonizing prayer time in Gethsemane, His arrest and His trial before the Sanhedrin–the Jewish religious leaders. If the account of Jesus’ life ended here, what a sad tale it would be. Even if it ended in chapter 15, with the crucifixion, the account would never have transformed history. Thankfully, we know the account continues through Jesus’ resurrection! That is why we keep reading day-after-day, and why we’re sure our lives can be changed by learning this truth and living it out in the power of the Holy Spirit.