Crystal Writes A Blog

Cleaning Up the Church

Church Cleaning by Flickr User Judy Baxter, CC License = Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike
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When I was younger and a member of a small congregation, I took my turns with church cleaning duty because I believed it was a necessary sacrifice. It was odd to go to a larger church where they had a paid cleaning crew. Even though I’m not one of those who really likes to clean, I like the feeling of doing my part and being a part of everything.

In today’s reading from Leviticus 15:29 through Leviticus 15:33 (the end of the chapter), we finish the portion on being clean and unclean from leprosy and bodily discharges. The one thing I noticed that was different is the following statement from verse 31…

“In this way you will separate the people of Israel from their uncleanness, so that they will not die in a state of uncleanness for defiling my tabernacle which is there with them.”

I’m big on looking for the purpose in God’s laws because I am convinced that He never does anything without some reason that will ultimately benefit His creation. I loved reading this verse and seeing that His purpose in keeping Israel clean was to keep them from dying in a state of uncleanness and to keep the tabernacle pure. God is merciful, and He knows the end results of impurity. The biggest result of purity and cleanness though is being able to draw nearer to God because He will not dwell in the presence of sin.

I wonder sometimes if the people back then really understood why God wanted them to stay pure since so many of us now question why God wants us to do or not do certain things. As I’ve been reading all these rules since we’ve been in Leviticus, I’ve imagined both the frustration of the people when they didn’t understand the “why” of it all, and I’ve thought about the great mercy of God and how much He just wanted the people to trust Him. It’s not easy to just blindly trust, but that is the goal of putting our faith in Him–trusting that He always knows what’s best for keeping the church body clean and close to Him.

April 4, 2014 - Posted by Crystal A Murray (aka CrystalWriter) | Bible Study, Nonfiction, Torah Commentary | Adonai, Almighty, Bible, Bible Gateway, Bible reading, Bible study, church, clean, Complete Jewish Bible, Creator, crystalwriter, God, Holy Bible, Israel, Leviticus, Lord, Old Covenant, Old Testament, Parashah, Portions, purity, Scripture, The Complete Jewish Bible, Torah, Torah commentary, Torah Portions, Torah Reading, unclean, Word, Word of God, Word of the Lord, www.biblegateway.com, Yahveh, Yahweh