Sat’s Devo - Cleansing

Read: Leviticus 15:1-16:28; Mark 7:1-23; Psalm 40:22-27; Proverbs 10:13-14 *** Moses was to speak to the children of Israel about any discharges from their body. This issue makes the person unclean and anything of anybody his discharge happened to touch. Everything that he has touched must be cleansed and when he stops having the discharge he must wash himself and count seven days from after being clean and then he is clean. On the eighth day, he is to take two turtledoves or two your pigeons and bring them to the door of the tabernacle and given to the the priest. One would be the sin offering and the other the burnt offering. *** The same ritual must happen after a man has an emission of semen or a woman has an emission of blood. These laws were laws that kept the people from spreading diseases and kept them clean. *** After Aaron’s sons offered unholy fire and died, God told Moses to tell Aaron that they priest were not to come just any time into the Holy of Holies inside the veil where the ark was or they would die. There would be one special day where the high priest could enter and that day would be the Day of Atonement. *** On that day, Aaron would dress in his priestly garments and bring a bull and two goats to the tabernacle. The ram would be his own sin offering which he would offer first to cleanse himself. Then he would take the two goats to the door of the tabernacle and cast lots for them. One would be for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat. The one that fell for the Lord would be sacrificed and a censer full of burning coals from the altar would be brought inside the veil. There the priest would put incense on it and that a cloud of incense would fill the tabernacle. Blood from the bull would be sprinkled on the mercy seat seven times. Then the goat would be killed for the sin offering for the people. It would also be sprinkled on the ark seven times. Then he shall come out and offer the blood of the bull and the goat on the horns of the burnt offering seven times *** The live goat would then be brought before the people and Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess all the iniquities, transgressions and sins of the children of Israel. This goat would be led into the wilderness by the hand of a fit man. “Fit” means “timely”. This man, Jesus, came at just the right time to carry our sins from us. This fit man would release the goat in the wilderness to show that our sins are removed from us as far as the east is from the west. *** Aaron was then to come out and take off his garments and wash his body in water in the laver and put on garments and offer the burnt offering for himself and the people making atonement for them. *** The fit man would come and wash himself before he could come into the camp. The rest of the bull and the goat was to be taken outside the camp and burned. The person who burned it would have to wash himself before he came back into the camp. *** This ceremony represented the repentance to be made for the nation once a year. This was the most holy day of their year. *** In Mark, the Pharisees complained that Jesus’ disciples didn’t follow their traditions of washing their hands in their ritualistic manner. Jesus called them hypocrites because they put aside God’s commandments to follow their own. He also nailed them for not honoring their faith and mother by not taking care of their elderly parents but giving it to the priests instead. Jesus explained that it was the heart that would be judged not their rituals. Sin or righteousness comes from the heart. *** Lord, may we learn from your Word what you require of us not what man requires of us. You say that we are to love mercy and justice and walk humbly before you. May we do that today.