Unclean Expelled

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, we get together, have a little bit of coffee, get into God's Word, and we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2024, Lord willing, we'll make it through the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Hebrews. So glad to be with you. Let's have some coffee, we'll pray, and we just got four verses to look at today.
Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for what a blessing it is to get to read your word, to hear from you. And Father, we pray that you would please help us to understand your word and have it applied to our hearts and lives. In Jesus's name, amen.
All right, so we're at Numbers chapter five, the first four verses. When we get into chapter five, kind of the census part of the book for now is over. And so now we're going to get into kind of some different laws regarding different things. So right now we're at the law for the unclean person.
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper, everyone who has a discharge, and whoever becomes defiled by a corpse. You shall put out both male and female, you shall put them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camps in the midst of which I dwell. And the children of Israel did so, and put them outside the camp, as the Lord spoke to Moses, so the children of Israel.
So what is this, A, about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do? Well, this is about people who are to be isolated. And it's not just the leper here, but it's those who are unclean. Now we've talked about this before, this idea of somebody who has, you know, comes and has leprosy, does not mean necessarily Hansen's disease like we would see today when people talk about leprosy, but we're talking about open lesions, scabs, kind of things wrong, with their dermatology or with their derma, right? So they would have to go see a dermatologist and they might have lesions or something going on, something going on like that. And so, but it's also people who have a discharge or has become defiled by a corpse, right? Those people are isolated because this is a ceremonial, unclean type thing.
So in the midst of Israel, what is to mark the people of Israel? So, God is the most holy and he's in the middle of them, right? His tabernacle, his tent, his mobile throne room is in their midst. Everyone camps around, but if somebody becomes unclean, they are now unholy and are to be put outside of the camp.
And so that's what this is getting at here. Whether it's a male or a female, right? You shall put them outside the camp. Why? Because they're not to defile the camp. So, that's what this passage is about. It's about this visible signaling that God is holy and his people are to be holy and that he's the one who set these bounds. What's the best verse to summarize this? Well, in my Bible, I have the second half of verse nine and the first half of verse three underlined. Maybe you would underline something else. Feel free to let me know down in the comments. What are we called to do, though, about this?
We don't follow the same ceremonial laws anymore. We don't follow the laws that, you know, if somebody has a bad skin rash, they're not allowed to come to worship. We don't follow those types of things anymore, right? Because Jesus Christ has fulfilled those laws in the New Covenant. But, however, I'm going to take this in a different direction, right?
All of this was not meant to be the physical washing. It was meant to point to the inward reality that we all have sin. Where there's uncleanness that we bring upon ourselves when our hearts are filled with their lusts and their desires and then we go out and we do sinful things. or we have sinful thoughts, or we speak sinful words, we make ourselves unclean. And it's clear if you go through the New Testament again and again and again. We're not to be those who are unclean morally, right? We are washed In the baptism, the waters of baptism, we are saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. We are justified, but we don't go purposely solely ourselves.
And so if we find someone even in, and this is where people are going to get really not happy, right? But even in our own congregations, if we find someone who is defiling themselves with moral filth, we're commanded in the New Testament to not treat such a person as a brother or sister in Christ. Right?
We're commanded to not just ignore that type of uncleanness in our own midst. And so this is a difficult thing to do, but it's a necessary thing to do, that we love each other. And so whether it's a male or a female, we try to love one another. And in the New Testament, when those people are put outside the church, outside the congregation, we pray, we plead with them that they would become clean again.
Right? And we're honest with ourselves, right? It's not that we're without sin, right? He who says he is without sin is a liar. He deceives himself. It makes God a liar. When we confess our sins, He is faithful and He is just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all of our transgressions.
And so we encourage them to go confess their sins and be washed and restored back to the congregation. Let's go ahead and pray. Father, we thank you so much that you have given us a way to be clean through the blood of Jesus Christ. Lord, that which the baptism that you give to us symbolizes and is a sign and a seal of. Lord, we pray that you would please care for us and teach us to walk in your ways. We pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen. Well, may the Lord bless you. May you walk in the joy and peace that Jesus Christ gives you, and may you May you seek out in your own heart how to walk in cleanness and holiness, for He has called you to be holy as He is holy. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.