Going Old School: To Your Health!

While Leviticus might just seem like a big, loooooooong book of “do’s and don’ts” as we dig deeper into it, we see that God does have a point to all this.  Leviticus 12-15 deals with disease, boils, mold, and other gross bodily discharges.  If it seems to you that we’re flying through four chapters, we kind of are, but how detailed do you want to get about afterbirth, puss, and mold infestation?
In Leviticus 12, God gives instruction about the time surrounding childbirth.  Why would a woman be considered “ceremonially unclean” after the miracle (both of creating a child and surviving the birth) of bearing a child?  As we mentioned previously, these next few chapters involve bodily discharges (among other things) and a woman does have some bodily emissions and secretions during and after having a baby.  Plus, back then, a woman’s temporary status of “unclean” would free her from some of her normal duties and allow her to spend more time with her new child and to recover, which no doubt made the early days with the new baby much easier!
Leviticus 13-14 deal with leprosy, rashes, and other skin diseases that the people my contract.  If you’re in the medical field at all and read through these chapters, you will likely be impressed by the level of detail God gives the people on how to identify and treat skin abnormalities and how to tell which ones were temporary and which ones were symptomatic of something much more serious.  Quarantine was a major piece of disease treatment, and if the lesion or rash did not heal or go away, the person would be exiled from camp.  This is not because God had cursed them or did not love them, but it was to protect the other members of the community from a contagion.  For example, if someone goes to an ED today and is suspected of having swine flu, they are given a mask to wear until they are treated to help prevent them from infecting the other patients.  It is in Leviticus 13 that the tradition of calling out “unclean!” comes from.  Leviticus 14:1-30 goes into detail about what a person must do to be pronounced “clean” (or healed) by the priest and be able to rejoin the community.  This included bathing and shaving all the hair from one’s head (and face, for men) as well as other sacrifices and ritual cleansing.  Jesus held the lepers He healed to this same ritual cleansing so that the community would accept them, even though He knew they were healed (Luke 17:11-19).
For those of us who live in a tropical environment we are used to combating mold.  You’ve doubtless heard of people being forced to move out of their homes while mold is professionally cleaned out by men in gas masks because the mold is so toxic.  The Israelites also had to deal with this kind of mold infestation, although they didn’t have all the fancy chemicals and mold killers and deterrents we’re blessed with today.  In Leviticus 14:33-57 God gives the people instructions on how to identify a mold/mildew problem and how to deal with it.  Mildew spreads quickly and can take over everything in a matter of days (if you live in Florida, you always have that bottle of spray bleach handy).  If the mold gets so bad that in modern times it would require fumigation, God calls for the entire house to be destroyed and all the materials in the house be taken far out of town.  Why?  Because mold/mildew can be toxic, and people living in it will become ill and die.  God is pointing out that it is better to have to rebuild your house than to die to keep the old one.
Leviticus 15 takes us from mold and fungus back to bodily discharges, this time from the men.  If someone had a skin lesion and it oozed pus or liquid of any kind, the people weren’t to touch them or anything they had touched.  The priests quarantined the effected person until the boil/lesion either healed or it didn’t.  If it healed, the man would wait seven days and then ritually purify himself.  This was to make sure no trace of the disease remained.
God also addresses cleanliness and sex (Lev. 15:19-24), covering intercourse itself, the discharge of semen, and a woman’s menstrual cycle.  These verses do NOT say that sex is dirty or disgusting or unclean.  After all, God created sex for

1. The enjoyment of married couples
2. Procreation (Gen. 1:27-28 does tell us to “Be fruitful and multiply”)
3. The preservation of the marriage covenant

We have to remember that sex is not separate from God and spirituality.  God gave us sex as something to enjoy, but He also does not want us to worship one over the other.  For example, many people (including in the Israelites day with fertility goddesses) worship sex and the gratification of self without turning an eye to the Creator.  Conversely, other people worship God and view sex (His creation!) as something that is evil and that should be done for procreation only.  While our natural inclination might be to separate the two, God is the Lord over our WHOLE selves, our public and private selves.  I’ll stop there for now because we’ll revisit this topic in a later chapter.
Before we close, I wanted to draw your attention to Leviticus 15:25-30.  The reason is not to gross you out, but to draw a parallel.  If a woman’s menstrual bleeding did not stop, she was considered ceremonially unclean (just like a leper).  She couldn’t become clean again until the bleeding stopped for seven days and then on the eighth day she offered a sacrifice at the temple.  Anything she touched became unclean, and anyone who touched her or anything she had touched also became unclean.
Let’s take a look at just such a woman when she had an encounter with Jesus:

²⁵ A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. ²⁶ She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. ²⁷ She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. ²⁸ For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” ²⁹ Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.
³⁰ Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”
³¹ His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
³² But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. ³³ Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. ³⁴ And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”  Mark 5:25-34 (also Matt. 9:20-22 & Luke 8:43-18)

Now go back and read Leviticus 15:25-30 again.  Looking at the Gospel story, do you now begin to really understand how desperate this woman was?  She had such faith that if she could just touch Jesus' robe (even at the risk of making Him unclean!) that she would be healed.  And her faith was answered!  I’m sure she joyfully took her sacrifice to the priests eight days later, priests who hadn’t wanted to go anywhere near her for YEARS!  To be able to worship with her friends, spend time with her relatives, and be healed!
THAT is what God is showing us in Leviticus!  He gives us ways that we can protect ourselves, but through everything the focus is to be on Him!  Life won’t always be easy, and we’ll have our share of illnesses and bad things that happen to us, but we are NOT alone.  If we just focus on God, we will be spiritually (and sometimes physically) healed!  Look at the faith of the woman who came to Jesus!  While we might have modern medicines and explanations and ways to keep ourselves clean that don’t involve keeping all the rules in Leviticus, that doesn’t mean we should be any less dependent on God or any less focused on Him in everything that we do!
Encounter: Do you trust God to take care of you, even in the hardest times?