With this installment, we will close our examination of Leviticus 14.
We pick up in v. 33:
The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “When you come into the land of Canaan, which I give you for a possession, and I put a case of leprous disease in a house in the land of your possession, then he who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, ‘There seems to me to be some case of disease in my house.’ Then the priest shall command that they empty the house before the priest goes to examine the disease, lest all that is in the house be declared unclean. And afterward the priest shall go in to see the house. And he shall examine the disease. And if the disease is in the walls of the house with greenish or reddish spots, and if it appears to be deeper than the surface, then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house and shut up the house seven days.
Leviticus 14:33-38
This command concerns cases of “leprosy” in the stone houses that the people of Israel would build in the promised land. This may have included mold or other such corruptions.
The owner of the house would come to the priest and the priest would make an examination and quarantine the house. Once again, the health of Israel is guarded by these specific instructions from God.
Removing the Corruption
And the priest shall come again on the seventh day, and look. If the disease has spread in the walls of the house, then the priest shall command that they take out the stones in which is the disease and throw them into an unclean place outside the city. And he shall have the inside of the house scraped all around, and the plaster that they scrape off they shall pour out in an unclean place outside the city. Then they shall take other stones and put them in the place of those stones, and he shall take other plaster and plaster the house.
Leviticus 14:39-42
After the seven-day quarantine, the priest would once again examine the house and make an evaluation. If the disease had spread then the priest would see to the removal of the corrupted stones. These would then be disposed of outside the city. Thus the holiness of the city would be maintained. The replacement stones would be plastered over and the house would be restored.
If the disease returned however, there was evidence of a long-term problem.
If the disease breaks out again in the house, after he has taken out the stones and scraped the house and plastered it, then the priest shall go and look. And if the disease has spread in the house, it is a persistent leprous disease in the house; it is unclean. And he shall break down the house, its stones and timber and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry them out of the city to an unclean place. Moreover, whoever enters the house while it is shut up shall be unclean until the evening, and whoever sleeps in the house shall wash his clothes, and whoever eats in the house shall wash his clothes.
Leviticus 14:43-47
In this case, the whole house would be torn down and disposed of.
Christ Cleansing His Father’s House
Of course, on one level, these rituals were enacted for the health and wellbeing of the people of Israel. But on another level, we see the foreshadowing of Christ’s cleansing of the house of God.
There are a few striking elements of Christ’s ministry and cleansing of the Jewish temple that warrant our attention in light of Leviticus 14:
And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Mark 11:11
In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.
John 2:14-15
And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
Matthew 21:12
First, we note that it is striking that Jesus “cleansed” the temple not once, but twice. The first time is recorded at the beginning of His public ministry in John 2 and the second is recorded at the end of His public ministry (Mark 11, Matthew 21, and Luke 19). We see that Jesus is following the procedure laid out in Leviticus for cleansing a house, His Father’s house.
The temple was certainly corrupted. Just as leprosy represents sin, we see here too that sin had crept into the house of God. Ezekiel 8 speaks of God’s house being defiled by the abominations of sinful practices. In Ezekiel 34 we read of God’s displeasure towards the leaders who were supposed to shepherd the flock of God but were instead gratifying themselves. This aptly describes the Pharisees’ self-satisfying and irresponsible mismanagement of the stewardship God had entrusted to them.
Jesus declares this explicitly in a lengthy series of teachings that run from Matthew 21-25. In a key point in the narrative, Jesus pronounces woes on the Pharisees that culminates with “See, your house is left to you desolate.” (Matt. 23:38) In Matthew 24:2 Jesus establishes His final verdict on the corrupted house: “But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
(It is also worth noting that these words of Jesus were uttered between His leaving the temple and ascending the Mount of Olives. The glory of the Lord departs from the temple in Ezekiel 10 in exactly the same direction.)
We must note here too that Jesus’ prophetic woes came to pass. The temple in Jerusalem was torn down completely in 70 A.D. by the Romans.
Christ Cleansing The New Temple of God
But this passage of Leviticus doesn’t just correspond to sobering judgment in the Gospels. It also holds an amazing promise for us as Christians today.
But if the priest comes and looks, and if the disease has not spread in the house after the house was plastered, then the priest shall pronounce the house clean, for the disease is healed. And for the cleansing of the house he shall take two small birds, with cedarwood and scarlet yarn and hyssop, and shall kill one of the birds in an earthenware vessel over fresh water and shall take the cedarwood and the hyssop and the scarlet yarn, along with the live bird, and dip them in the blood of the bird that was killed and in the fresh water and sprinkle the house seven times. Thus he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird and with the fresh water and with the live bird and with the cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet yarn. And he shall let the live bird go out of the city into the open country. So he shall make atonement for the house, and it shall be clean.
Leviticus 14:48-53
While it is true that since 70 A.D. no Jewish temple has stood in Jerusalem we have no cause for despair. Christ was clear in saying that this was all part of God’s plan for redeeming Israel and the whole world. In John 2, the Apostle records that the Jews challenged Jesus’ authority for driving out the corrupting influences from His Father’s house. Jesus replies that He will destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. To this claim, they scoff. “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” John adds a note that Jesus was referring to the temple of His body (John 2:18-21).
Christ is the new temple. He is the new dwelling place of God with man (John 1:14). And in a glorious grace, we are too. The Apostle Peter writes, “As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Pet. 2:4-5)
In 2 Samuel 7 God makes a covenant with David. He promises him that David’s son will reign over his kingdom forever. He also tells David that “He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” (2 Sam. 7:13) This was imminently fulfilled in Solomon, who built the grand temple of God. But it also finds fulfillment in Christ who builds a house for God’s name, in His own body, and reigns now as King forever.
This means that we indeed share in His kingdom and in His temple priesthood (1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 1:6, 5:10, 20:6). He has cleansed us with His blood and resurrection, foreshadowed by Leviticus 14 in the same ritual as the cleansing for a leprous individual.
The life of faith is not an individual activity. It is by nature a communal one. We come to Him, Peter says, as a living stone, but we are joined together and built as living stones into a spiritual house for God. We come to Him as individuals but through the beauty of Gospel grace, He joins us together into one body (Rom. 12:4-5, Eph. 4:16, 1 Cor. 12:27).
Christ has cleansed us and is building us into a house for His name, a bride without spot or blemish, a royal priesthood. In each of our lives, and in each congregation that gathers weekly to worship the Lord Jesus, He is also removing the corruption from the walls. He is re-plastering and rearranging the house. He is building up the stones, Himself being the chief cornerstone.
What a glorious work!