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February 25th
The bible reading is in Numbers chapters 5,6.
The people of Israel are a little over one year into their journey to the land of promise. God has already organized and ordered the congregation of 2,000,000 people.
He has “organized” them into clans. And He has also “ordered” them in a particular place for camping and for traveling. Now God is zeroing in on making Israel into a Promised Land people...which means, a purified people....pure in body and soul.
Our reading begins with instructions from God for how to deal with lepers and how to deal with dead bodies. Those lepers with sores that had discharges were to be kept away from the Tabernacle and the rest of the community...until declared by a priest to be clean.
And anyone, especially a priest, who touched a dead body, were considered unclean and must be separated from the Tabernacle and community until ceremonial cleansing could be offered.
“Separate them from the camp...put them outside the camp.”
Some have suggested this may be the first inkling of a hospital and specialized care for infectious disease...that would come from open sores of the leper and from the decayed bodies of the dead.
Could this have also been a way for God to teach the people of the magnitude and gravity of sin’s effect...even upon God’s treasured people...disease and death...all the way from Adam’s fall to Israel’s rebellions?
The wages of sin and sinning has always been and still is death and you can add disease and fear and unbelief and more sinning and on and on.
Even the best of Abraham’s and Israel’s descendants could not overcome death and disease...because they couldn't overcome their nature...the nature they inherited from Adam and Eve....the nature of sin and sinning...which was illustrated at every funeral and every cleansing ceremony and every daily burnt offering sacrificed.
So some impatient Levite hollars...” get them out of the camp...lepers and dead bodies and those that touched them. Get them out of here. I don't want to see them when I come back.
The separation of the clean and the unclean was serious. Why?...
Short answer...“God lived in the camp”. God and anything unholy could not share Holy Ground.
Remember now...God is preparing a Promised Land people. And what kind of thinking/living people would that be?
Remember when God told Moses to take off his shoes?
The ground he was standing on near the burning bush was holy ground...and Moses needed to start thinking that way.
There is something way better....better than having God live in the camp of His people...
How about God living in the heart of His people... That’s where Jesus comes in.
Have a good day
