Sun.’s Devo - Being Made Clean

Read: Leviticus 15:1-16:28; Mark 7:1-23; Psalm 40:11-17; Proverbs 10:13-14
We read today about issues of dead seed from the body and how it makes you unclean. This dead seed could be gossip, complaining, cursing, adultery, slander, fornication. - any act that doesn’t produce fruit that has an addiction over your life. Ephesians 4:29-32 says it better.
“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”
Those affected by this were to bring their offering to the Lord and repent.
In Chapter 16, God gave the priests the order for the Day of Atonement. It was to be the holiest day of the year and the only time the high priest could enter into the Holy of Holies. He was to take two goats as a sin offering and a ram as a burnt offering. He was to dress in his holy garments and then offer the ram for his own sins, taking its blood and sprinkling it on the ark in the Holy of Holies. Then he was to draw lots for the two goats - which one would be the Azazel and the other would be the Adonai. The Adonai would be killed and the Azazel would be sent away as the scapegoat. The Adonai was killed and his blood sprinkled on the ark in the Holy of Holies. His blood was to atone for all the sins of the priests and the people. No one was to be present in the tent of meeting from the time he entered the Holy Place till he came out. When he was finished, he was to come out and place his hands on the head of the goat transferring the sins of the people into the goat. This goat was then led by a designated person out of the camp into the desert. Aaron then changed his clothes and finished the sacrifice.
The man who led the goat out to the desert was to wash before he reentered the camp. This ordinance would atone for the nation for one year and was to be done every year on the 10th day of the seventh month.
Spiritually, both of the goats stood for Jesus. He died and took our sins out of our lives. Traditionally, they would tie a red scarf to the neck of the scapegoat and by the time it had reached its destination it would have turned white by the sun to show that “though ours sins be as scarlet, they will be white as snow.”
The Day of Atonement will be fulfilled when Jesus ends this world and the gates of salvation are closed. All who chose him will have their sins forgiven and those who refused will be judged and sentenced to hell.
Jesus taught the same thing we read about in Leviticus. The priests had made up rules about washing their hands. Jesus told him that they were hypocrites because they majored on their own laws and minored on God’s. They wanted their actions were to be seen by man but their hearts were far from God.
Lord, may our hearts lead our actions and may what we love and do be what you love and do.