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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: "This is a requirement of the law that the Lord has commanded: Tell the Israelites to bring you a red heifer without defect or blemish and that has never been under a yoke. Give it to Eleazar the priest; it is to be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. Then Eleazar the priest is to take some of its blood on his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting. While he watches, the heifer is to be burned—its hide, flesh, blood and offal. The priest is to take some cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet wool and throw them onto the burning heifer. After that, the priest must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water. He may then come into the camp, but he will be ceremonially unclean till evening. The man who burns it must also wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he too will be unclean till evening."
"A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and put them in a ceremonially clean place outside the camp. They shall be kept by the Israelite community for use in the water of cleansing; it is for purification from sin. The man who gathers up the ashes of the heifer must also wash his clothes, and he too will be unclean till evening. This will be a lasting ordinance both for the Israelites and for the aliens living among them."
"Whoever touches the dead body of anyone will be unclean for seven days. He must purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then he will be clean. But if he does not purify himself on the third and seventh days, he will not be clean. Whoever touches the dead body of anyone and fails to purify himself defiles the Lord's tabernacle. That person must be cut off from Israel. Because the water of cleansing has not been sprinkled on him, he is unclean; his uncleanness remains on him."
"This is the law that applies when a person dies in a tent: Anyone who enters the tent and anyone who is in it will be unclean for seven days, and every open container without a lid fastened on it will be unclean."
"Anyone out in the open who touches someone who has been killed with a sword or someone who has died a natural death, or anyone who touches a human bone or a grave, will be unclean for seven days."
"For the unclean person, put some ashes from the burned purification offering into a jar and pour fresh water over them. Then a man who is ceremonially clean is to take some hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle the tent and all the furnishings and the people who were there. He must also sprinkle anyone who has touched a human bone or a grave or someone who has been killed or someone who has died a natural death. The man who is clean is to sprinkle the unclean person on the third and seventh days, and on the seventh day, he is to purify him. The person being cleansed must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and that evening he will be clean. But if a person who is unclean does not purify himself, he must be cut off from the community, because he has defiled the sanctuary of the Lord. The water of cleansing has not been sprinkled on him, and he is unclean. This is a lasting ordinance for them."
"The man who sprinkles the water of cleansing must also wash his clothes, and anyone who touches the water of cleansing will be unclean until evening. Anything that an unclean person touches becomes unclean, and anyone who touches it becomes unclean until evening."
Numbers 19
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
As we move to Numbers, chapter 19, we find the matter of purification take center stage as it applied to contact with either human beings or animals that were dead. Of interest, this isn’t the first time we have seen the matter of cleanliness and purification addressed in the Old Testament. You’ll remember that God gave specific direction on how the Israelites were to handle matters of uncleanliness throughout the book of Leviticus. There we saw how the chief priest played a key role in making cleanliness determinations.
Within this chapter, we see guidance is skewed toward what to do when contact is made with anything dead and the timing wasn’t by accident. For death happened, sometimes in numbers like when more than 14,000 Israelites died from a plague sent by God after Korah’s rebellion. You’ll remember that many more would have lost their lives had it not been for Moses and Aaron interceding for them and convincing the Lord to stop His punishment.
So why was God so concerned about coming in contact with anything dead?
There were two key reasons why this gained attention…one physical and one spiritual.
First, the physical reason for anything found dead could possibly be diseased or harbor some form of infectious bacteria that could be passed onto anyone who touched or handled the body or carcass. Without isolation, a person who handled the dead could contract something and carry it into the Israelite camp, infecting others.
We need to keep in mind that there weren’t great health facilities back in the days of the Old Testament, no large hospitals to treat a breakout of some deadly, communicable disease that could potentially wipe out the entire Israelite nation. And so God’s strict guidance for dealing with uncleanliness served to help protect His people from the potential danger of a public health disaster.
From a spiritual standpoint, death was considered to be connected to sin and thus contact with anything dead was considered defilement for the person making contact. We need to know that death wasn’t a part of God’s original creation plan but after the Fall in Eden, it came into being and was an abomination to God. Therefore, anyone touching a dead body or carcass needed to be purified through the washing of not only oneself but one’s garments, both symbolic of washing away the defilement contracted by touching the dead.
There is one other very interesting matter in this particular passage, a connection we can make with Jesus as we look at the opening verses where the red heifer was sacrificed and burned with some very special items added (cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet wool). The resultant ash was then mixed with water during the cleansing process. Let’s look at the special linkage, showing us once again that the Old Testament serves to point readers toward God’s Son, the One who came from Heaven to earth to be the Savior of the world.
This association begins with the red heifer. God had mentioned sacrifices many times over before now but this was different in that He specifies color (red) and the specific type of cow (young heifer) required. The color red symbolizes blood and the fact that the cow was an unblemished heifer, a cow that had never been pregnant, represented purity and uniqueness. We need to know that it would be rare to find such an animal that was red and a heifer and without defect.
Now, consider that Jesus was pure and unblemished and it was His red blood that was poured out to pay the price for all sinners of the world and wash all sinners clean, just as the ash from the sacrificed red heifer would bring purity and cleansing when mixed in with the normal water that was sprinkled on any Israelite that made contact with the dead.
Need some scriptural reinforcement for this?
Paul gives it to us in his letter to the Hebrews where he wrote the following:
"For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 9:13-14
Indeed, Jesus brings the only chance for a sinner to gain purity and cleanliness, to be washed clean so to become justified before God at the time of judgment after death. Truly as the beautiful classic hymn proclaims:
"What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus."
Now, as if this wasn’t enough, there’s even more. For we need to go back to those other items that were placed with the heifer and burned in the fire. You’ll remember they included cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet.
Cedar wood was very resistant to disease and rot, thus making it a precious and valuable wood. The wood is symbolic of the cross that Jesus was nailed to and some believe the cross itself was made out of this type of wood.
Hyssop was used several times in the scriptures. One such place was in the Book of Exodus, chapter 12 when hyssop branches were used by the Israelites to spread the blood from the Passover lamb around the door posts before God sent his angel of death through Egypt to kill the firstborn. Later, a hyssop branch was present at the cross as the Roman guards offered Jesus a drink on it (John 19:29).
Finally, the scarlet was once again a symbolic reference to the blood of Jesus. We also see scarlet used in the veil and curtains of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:31), in the garments of the high priest (Exodus 28:5-6), the covering for the table of showbread (Numbers 4:8), the sign of Rahab’s salvation (Joshua 2:21), and the color of the mocking "king’s robe" put on Jesus at His torture by the Roman soldiers (Matthew 27:28).
Friends, God so loved the world that He didn’t wish for anyone to experience the eternal damnation in Hell after death and so He sent His one and only Son so that all who would believe in Him wouldn’t perish but have eternal life with Him in Heaven (John 3:16). For the needed atonement and cleansing from sin, Jesus became the final sacrifice ever needed for purification and anyone who places their faith and hope in Him will have their transgressions washed away by the shed blood of the Christ, the Lamb of God who indeed came to take away the sins of the world (John 1:29).
If you know and trust in Him, rejoice and give thanks for your eternal future in Heaven is secure.
If you haven’t accepted Him as your Savior, please make today the day of your salvation by believing in Him and gaining the everlasting life with God only found in and through Him, the One who is the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:8).
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.
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