“TRUTH is not proved by the happiness it brings at the moment of being tested. The real test of truth is obedience to the will of God, whether that obedience involves an experience of hardness or of comfort. The happiness of the Christian is not found in exemption from hard tasks or disagreeable duties, but in the acceptance of these, if it be so, as part of God’s will.”
These are good and true words. “He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” What is true abides. The apostle John has a remarkable word which he uses to express truth, not merely of the intellect, but truth brought to the test of experience and found to be divine reality. It means “real,” rather than “true,” although true is implied also. It occurs frequently, twenty-three times in all, in John’s writings, and only five or six times besides. The great passage is in the twentieth verse of the fifth chapter of the First Epistle of John. There the true God, the real God in contrast with the unreality in the world, is found to be the Son of God who came down to do the will of God, and give us an understanding that we might recognize the real One in Him.
For us He is the real God and eternal life, for the everyday of this life with its needs, and for the day of eternity; in both alike he that does the will of God abides forever, In the portion of Leviticus for study this month we have an illustration of the fact that doing the will of God often involves doing unpleasant things, for the duties of the priest in connection with leprosy were both difficult and unpleasant. There were three main forms in which leprosy had to be dealt with:
1. Leprosy in a man or woman.
2. Leprosy in a garment.
3. Leprosy in a house.
The most important of these, or rather that to which the Word of God devotes most attention, is the first. It would be impossible to go into details, and our object is to get the outlines of these things. Taking, then, these two long chapters as a whole we find that, first of all, as in Leviticus 11, the directions are intended to teach the priests how to discern between what is leprosy and what is, not, how to know when a man is clean and when he is unclean. This is important. While there was need of discernment, and discernment does not arise in a day, this discernment was formed by the law of the Lord. The priest did not depend upon his own knowledge and skill, but had to go by what was written, and thus only could he learn to distinguish what was leprosy from what was not.
It is a great thing “not to think beyond what is written.” Next we find that in the development and exercise of this discernment there arises the need for much patience. There was not to be haste in judging every appearance of a spot or scab to be leprosy. If all the signs written down for the priests’ instruction did not appear at the first examination, there was to be a waiting of seven days, and if at the end of that time a decision according to what was written was still not possible, the time of waiting was extended over another seven days.
Hence the priest’s work called for no little exercise of patience, and the patience might often be rewarded by the discovery, under the test of what was written, that the suspicious marks were the scars of some old boil or inflammation that had left its traces in the poor body of clay. Alas! how often may not the want of patience and subjection to what is written have caused that a scar needing tenderness and love should be condemned as leprosy.
The three great signs of leprosy were―that it changed the color of the hair on the spot affected, it was deeper than the skin, and it showed the unmistakable sign of raw flesh. So the priest was not left to invent imaginary signs. But a remarkable direction was, that when the leprosy covered a man from head to foot, “wherever the eyes of the priest look,” so that no part appeared free from leprosy, he was to be pronounced clean. This is God’s way. The man who has nothing concealed, and says, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” goes down to his house justified. But when once the question of a man’s leprosy is settled, the sorrowful duty of the priest is to see that the directions of chap. 13:45, 46, are also carried out. Sin, whether in a believer or an unbeliever, working in the flesh affects the whole life and habits and associations, produces what is contrary to God. Hence the one in whom sin is working unjudged cannot be where God is. The leper is unclean, and his place is outside the camp all the days that the sore is in him.
This is not the end of his history. But before taking up the next part, the happy part of his cleansing, we find the interesting question of the leprosy in garments taken up. The same patience was needed here. If the case was hopeless, the garment was burnt. If there was hope, after washing, the sore was to be rent out from the garment, leaving a torn garment, even if clean. But if the sore still spread, the torn garment was to be burnt. A remarkable picture of Israel’s history, and God’s ways with them. The plague of idolatry had been rent out in the Babylonish captivity, leaving a sadly torn garment. The Lord did not propose to patch up this torn garment, and make the rent worse.
Then we come to the beautiful picture of the leper’s cleansing. But we do not learn here how a leper might be healed. The priest could tell when the man was healed, and knew that Jehovah had done it, but the priest could not heal, he could only cleanse. The testimony to the priests who had “erred in judgment” in the Lord’s time, was that Jehovah was there. The Lord could heal the leper at His will, and send him on to priests who had forgotten in the mere observance of their ritual that God was behind it all, as a witness of the wonderful fact that God was there, the kingdom of God was among them.
The general details of the chapter are well known.
We may observe:
1. A direction that is more honored in the breach than the observance, viz., that the priest was to go out of the camp to the leper. Thus may be seen the activity of a love that longs for the return of the poor outcast, even a love that was seen in its fullness in the blessed Saviour.
2. It is the result of the finished work of Christ that is applied in the case of restoring a believer, just as it is the finished work of Christ that first brings a sinner to God, cleansed and made meet. The administration of this cleansing is the priest’s work, but it all depends upon Christ’s work.
It is often forgotten in restoring those who have sinned that the forgiveness which is administered rests upon the same ground and is the very same forgiveness that we depend upon ourselves. The sense of this would surely save us from a judicial spirit.
3. The last point I want to draw attention to is that there are three stages in the cleansing. First there is the cleansing done outside the camp, which enables the man to enter the camp (14:8). Then there is the cleansing which enables him to enter his tent after seven days (14:9). Lastly, on the same day, the eighth day, the final cleansing, which enables him to take his place as a worshipper in God’s presence, is completed (14:20).
We have lastly the case of leprosy in the house, and here we find the remarkable expression, “when I put a leprous plague in a house of the land of your possession.” This raises fresh questions. Rebecca’s question recurs, “If it be so, why am I thus?” It is the finger of God put upon the whole economy, to raise the question of why God has done so. The city and not the camp is the scene. “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate,” stands to us as a monument of the ways of God to which we do well to take heed.
Answers to Questions―
1. The cases of leprosy in Scripture in the O.T. are―Moses’ hand, Exod. 4:66And the Lord said furthermore unto him, Put now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom: and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous as snow. (Exodus 4:6); lepers put out of the camp, Num. 5:22Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead: (Numbers 5:2); Miriam, Num, 12. reminder of Miriam’s case in Deut. 24:88Take heed in the plague of leprosy, that thou observe diligently, and do according to all that the priests the Levites shall teach you: as I commanded them, so ye shall observe to do. (Deuteronomy 24:8); Naaman, 2 Kings 5; Gehazi, 2 Kings 5:2727The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever. And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow. (2 Kings 5:27); the four lepers at the gate of Samaria, 2 Kings 7; Uzziah, 2 Kings 15:55And the Lord smote the king, so that he was a leper unto the day of his death, and dwelt in a several house. And Jotham the king's son was over the house, judging the people of the land. (2 Kings 15:5), 2 Chron. 26:2020And Azariah the chief priest, and all the priests, looked upon him, and, behold, he was leprous in his forehead, and they thrust him out from thence; yea, himself hasted also to go out, because the Lord had smitten him. (2 Chronicles 26:20).
2 and 3. Answered above.
Subject for October.
― The Day of Atonement, Leviticus 16.
The following questions may be searched out:
2. What place has the mercy-seat in the atonement made on the day of atonement?
3. What references are there in the Epistle to the Hebrews to the work of the day of atonement?
B. S. ED.