Leviticus 15, these are God's words. And Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, speak to the children of Israel and say to them, when any man has a discharge from his body, his discharge is unclean. And this shall be his uncleanness in regard to his discharge. Whether his body runs with his discharge or his body is stopped up by his discharge, it is his uncleanness Every bed is unclean on which he who has the discharge lies, and everything on which he sits shall be unclean. And whoever touches his bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. He who sits on anything on which he who has the discharge sat shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. And he who touches the body of him who has the discharge shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening. If he who has the discharge spits on him who is clean, then he shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening. Any saddle on which he who has the discharge rides shall be unclean, whoever touches anything that was under him, shall be unclean until evening. He who carries any of those things shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. And whoever the one who has the discharge touches, and has not rinsed his hand in water, he shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. The vessel of earth that he who has the discharge touches shall be broken, and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water. And when he who has a discharge is cleansed of his discharge, then he shall count for himself seven days for his cleansing, wash his clothes, bathe his body in running water. Then he shall be clean. On the eighth day, He shall take for himself two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, and come before Yahweh to the door of the tabernacle of meeting and give them to the priest. Then the priest shall offer them, the one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering. So the priest shall make atonement for him before Yahweh because of his discharge. If any man has an emission of semen, Then he shall wash all his body in water and be unclean until evening. And any garment, any leather on which there is semen, it shall be washed with water and be unclean until evening. Also, when a woman lies with a man and there is an emission of semen, they shall bathe in water and be unclean until evening. If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days. And whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. Everything that she lies on during her impurity shall be unclean. Also everything that she sits on shall be unclean. Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening. And whoever touches anything that she sat on shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening. If anything is on her bed, or on anything on which she sits, when he touches it, he shall be unclean until evening. And if any man lies with her at all, so that her impurity is on him, he shall be unclean seven days, and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean. A woman has a discharge of blood for many days, other than at the time of her customary impurity, or if it runs beyond, her usual time of impurity. All the days of her unclean discharge shall be as the days of her customary impurity. She shall be unclean. Every bed on which she lies all the days of her discharge shall be to her as the bed of her impurity. And whatever she sits on shall be unclean as the uncleanness of her impurity. Whoever touches those things shall be unclean. He shall wash his clothes, bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. But if she is cleansed of her discharge, then she shall count for herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. And on the eighth day, she shall take for herself two turtle doves, or two young pigeons, and bring them to the priest to the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Then the priest shall offer the one as a sin offering, and the other as a burnt offering, And the priest shall make atonement for her before Yahweh for the discharge of her uncleanness. Thus he shall separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness when they defile my tabernacle that is among them. This is the law for one who has a discharge and for him who emits semen and is unclean thereby and for her who is indisposed because of her customary impurity, and for one who has a discharge, either man or woman, and for him who lies with her who is unclean. Amen. I sense this reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. The law concerning bodily discharges was less demanding upon the priest than the law concerning skin infections. A skin infection that had come upon an Israelite, you remember, the first stage was diagnosis, and this might run several weeks of various examinations. Something that had come onto the Israelite from the outside, usually, or in response to a burn, or something like that, was a response of infection from inside. There was all that diagnostic procedure. But when someone had a flow, when something was coming out of them, there was no diagnosis. And that is the The meaning of the word that is translated discharge here just means a flow something flowing out of him And Hopefully you are already beginning to think about what flows out of a believer What flows out of the one who has Christ as his life? and who has come to Christ to slake his thirst and his neediness. But Leviticus 15 is not about what flows from Christ within a believer. Leviticus 15 is about things that flow from sinners. And that's why there's no diagnostic procedure. If it's flowing out of us in the ceremonial law under Moses. Praise God, we're no longer under that administration. But you would be unclean. You would have to obey, like the sign at the gym, that if you had had diarrhea in the last seven days, you could not enter the pool. Now the people at the gym are not trying to be keepers of the ceremonial law. and I am not trying to be gross, but God has so ordained it that everything that physically flows out of a man is gross. And so that we can see that we are not so much defiled by what comes upon us or what comes into us as we are by what flows out of us. And we remembered this recently because we have been, especially when it came to washings and so forth, we have been thinking about the Pharisaical mistake of not seeing what this was teaching us about ourselves as sinners, and thinking that by accumulating washings something could be done about the internal uncleanness. Now, there's nothing wrong with washings. There are many washings here commanded. There isn't even anything wrong with washing hands. Washing hands is actually very important for stopping the spread of disease, and God has allowed us to know that in his providence. It's even commanded here. It made a difference in your uncleanness and whether you had washed your hands here in Leviticus 15. But the problem was that it wasn't what went into the mouth, as we considered when we were thinking about opening food in that case. And it's not what comes onto the skin. And it isn't even the fluids or semi-fluidic substances that come out of us But it is thefts, and fornications, and adulteries, and murder. That is what flows out of a sinner. And that is what defile us. Because out of the overflow of our hearts, our mouth speaks. And out of the overflow of our hearts, so we live. And so there was no diagnosis necessary because they already knew where the flow was coming from. It was coming from the sinner. And what flowed from the sinner defiled him. And he was then to be careful not to come to the worship of God at his tabernacle. If he came to the worship of God at his tabernacle, we read in verse 31, they would defile the tabernacle, which would be a sin against God. And defiling the tabernacle is also, therefore, a sin against one's own life, because the penalty for that, the expectation, if you did that, would be that you would die. but not only you yourself would die, it was also sin against your neighbor, because as we read throughout the whole rest of the chapter, that it's not just ourselves who are made unclean by our discharge, but anything we touch, or anything they touched, was made unclean. And anyone who touched the thing that they touched, or anyone who touched them, that we defile others by what comes out of us. Now, this is true enough to a physical extent. You may have noticed God's wise providence to us, but this morning I did not touch the elements, although I usually do that. We had one of the other elders break the bread, one of the other elders pour the cup. That was after I had sanitized, but we were just being careful. Well, dear congregation, if we are that careful with earthly uncleanness, should we not be more careful with the sin that flows out of us? lest we not only offend God by sinning freely and not addressing it with Him and being cleansed in Christ and laying hold of Christ's atonement and coming with the freshly clean conscience, lest we defile God's worship and offer Him a worship that deserves death. not now just because, or not now on account of, it even being a wrong sort of worship, like Nehemiah who offered in Leviticus 10, but coming presumptuously as those from whom have flowed all manner of sin all week long, and we have had no dealings with God, we have not availed ourselves of the cleansing and atoning remedy, and will we then come with a guilty, stained, defiled conscience, or even worse, a dead conscience that doesn't realize that we are so defiled, and give offense to God and offer worship that is deserving of death, and defile our brothers and sisters with whom also we worship. And so it's important to read and understand, especially in light of how the Lord Jesus teaches us to understand these passages. And so we consider that not only what flows from a sinner defiles him, but what flows from a sinner defiles others. And in that particular, the need for maintaining not just physical cleanliness in marriage and marriage, but spiritual regard for one's wife, if you're a husband, or one's husband, if you're a wife, or our children, because God has made in this law of concerning what flows out of a man or what flows out of a woman, he has made it so that a husband and a wife, when they know each other and when they conceive children, they do so because seed flows out of the man and in connection with becoming a parent also, blood flows out of a woman on a regular basis and then especially when she has a baby. And these are things that God has designed in his providence for our good, both that we might be thankful to him, that he is merciful and gives us cleansing, but also so that we might remember the spiritual lesson that our husband or our wife are the one who we are gonna most affect spiritually. Our children are those who we are going to most affect spiritually. And if out of concern for others, we want to keep ourselves cleansed and undefiled and come to the Lord Jesus and keep short accounts with him and keep a clear conscience and live and walk uprightly, If we want to do that for others generally in the church, generally in the assembly of God's people, how much more for those to whom we are nearest connected, for those to whom we are most intimately connected. And so God in His wisdom, even for how He has given us to be married and to become parents, He has given us a design that ought to call forth from our hearts a love for them, and a love for them that's good for us, isn't it? One of the things that many parents have discovered is that when they became a parent and they realized they have a sinner on their hands, and the reason they have a sinner on their hands is because that child's parents were sinners. Then it became a wonderfully sanctifying providence from God, because they became more consistent in attendance upon God's Word, day by day in the home, morning and evening in the home. They became very intentional about addressing sin the moment it happens. Here they are training their child, teaching their child to recognize a sin right away, to recognize why it's a sin by the word of God, to recognize against whom they are sinning. You're sinning against God in this way, and you're sinning against mommy in this way, or your sibling in that way, or we're sinning against God by not taking good care of the things that we have in the new commandment. All of those different things. And not only that, but of course, always, always immediately applying. This is why we need Jesus to be our righteousness. He never once sinned like this. This is why we rejoice that Jesus is our sacrifice. He has taken away our guilt. He is like those two turtle doves, one to and we can rise to God acceptably with all of our sin put away. Praise God, we have Jesus, and he cleanses us. Not only does his blood atone for us and take away our guilt, his blood cleanses us so that we can come back to God through Jesus Christ every time, a dozen times, and a dozen times in a day feels like a hundred when you're a parent. But certainly we have not sinned less than our children. We are more skilled at it, perhaps. And we get into this habit out of concern for others. I dare say more get to be like that as a consequence of having children, but we ought to be like that as a consequence of marrying as well. This ought to be one of the things that as you're looking forward to getting married and hoping one day to get married, that you younger ones, unmarried ones, are thinking about that you want to walk with God in such a way that it will be a sanctifying blessing to someone else to be married to you. But there's something about when you say, I do, and you actually embark on that life together, in which reality comes home. And that reality needs to come home with the realization that you are either a sanctifying blessing to your new spouse, or you are going to be in cahoots with one another in treating sin lightly, in treating uncleanness before God and a dirty conscience before God lightly, which is a dreadful thing to have even in ourself, let alone to reinforce in one another. And so there's actually much here, and I know it's gross, and you have to be careful, especially when certain things are discussed in Scripture, only to go as far as the Scripture goes and how it's described. God is wise, and so we only speak to the extent that He does. But it's important here that we realize that even His physical design for this, is designed to communicate to us something that is vital and important for life, not only in the church generally, which is the subject of the chapter as a whole, but in the whole specifically, which he highlights especially in this way. And so what flows from a sinner defiles him, and what flows from a sinner defiles others, and we ought to be especially considerate of and thinking then of what is coming out of our hearts in our marriage and in our home. But in the last place, we rejoice to know what flows from our Savior. The Lord Jesus, when we were thinking about the leprosy, one of the things that I'm pretty sure I forgot in the sermon here, but remembered when we had had the family worship in it, the amazing touching of the leper in Matthew chapter eight. Now, I had grown up, when the leper comes, he says, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. And Jesus touched him, and he said, I am willing, be clean. I had grown up in being, having the touching highlighted, but highlighted especially to the effect of, oh, this poor man, no one had ever touched him in, no one had touched him in ages, how much he needed that, how much that would have meant to him. That's all fine, and I'm sure it's true. And I am very much looking to the touch and embrace of my resurrected Redeemer, when I, with resurrected body, can do that. But Jesus touches him because Jesus is the one man in all of human history who can touch someone who is unclean, and not only not be defiled so great as Jesus is, innate cleanness. But his cleanness is so great that he actually undefiles, cleanses, the one whom he touches. That's the point of the touching in Matthew chapter 8. And there's another instance, isn't there? You remember the woman who had had the flow of blood for 12 years. And what does she do? Very bold, considering this law. She touches him. And why does she touch him? Because she knows Jesus is the one man whose power and purity can survive that touching. And not just survive it for himself, come out clean, intact. but that his cleanness is great enough to cleanse her, to heal her. What flows out of a sinner makes him unclean because it shows that he is unclean. But when you have your life from Jesus, when he has quenched your thirst for life and filled your hunger for life, When you have the life of Jesus in you by the Spirit, what flows out of you are rivers of living water. You see, the Christian can walk by the Spirit. Everything we say, everything we think, everything we do comes either from remaining flesh or from the Spirit. And what an opportunity you have as a Christian. for that which flows out of your heart, from your mind, in the words that come off of your lips, in the deeds that are done by your hands, that the things that you do be done in the Spirit, and they would be clean and good, because in Jesus you are good, and in Jesus you are good. What comes out of the sinner, what flows, flows, to use the verb that is actually throughout this chapter, defiles him and defiles others. But what flows from the Savior unto you will cleanse you and will even make that which is good to flow from you. Let's pray. How we thank you, our gracious God, for your design of all things to teach us about you as creator, to teach us about you as redeemer. We thank you for the work of your spirit, how he gives life to our hearts and light to our minds. We pray that he would now bless this portion of your word to us. that he would give us not only faith in Christ to believe rightly concerning him, but that he would stir us up to our duty so that we would keep short accounts. And the moment we realize every sin, any sin, to deal with it entirely by Christ Jesus, that we might not defile your worship, that we might not offer that which is worthy of our debt. that we might not defile one another, and especially our spouse or our children, but that what might flow out of us would be from and testify to the life of Jesus, in whose name we ask it. Amen.