Leviticus 14:8-16
After washing his clothes, the leper who was to be cleansed was to shave off all his hair. This was a humiliating thing to him, undoubtedly, but we need to put self, and all that springs from self, under the sharp edge of the Word of God, for “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” 1 Peter 5:5. Then the man was to wash himself in water. First, there was the washing of the clothes, then the shaving off the hair, and now, in type, the Word of God is applied to the whole man in every minute detail. Yes, God’s Word is to be the believer’s chart, and every step in life should be taken in obedience to it.
After doing all this, the cleansed man was to remain outside of his own tent seven days. Then on the seventh day these three things, just mentioned, were to be done over again. Seven is the perfect number, and his own tent would speak of personal communion and enjoyment; and so we can see in this, and in what follows, that even though one is cleansed, as the leper had already been, the enjoyment of Christian privileges is dependent upon the continual application of the Word to our associations of life and upon ourselves personally. Then, too, the sentence of death must always be put upon that which is of nature in the things of God. This has to be done over and over again in order to maintain communion.
We then learn in what took place on the eighth day what the true ground of our enjoyment really is, and this the soul needs to lay hold of. How often we meet souls whom we feel are like the cleansed leper, and truly under the shelter of the blood, but their souls have not fully laid hold of the ground of it all in a personal way. This need is dealt with most beautifully, in a figure active way, by what follows.
First there was the trespass offering Often the hindrance to real settled peace is that there has not been a realization of what our guilt is before God and what it cost the Lord Jesus, our blessed Trespass Offering, to put it away. The awfulness of our guilt is shown in the suffering which the Lori Jesus endured at Calvary. There is great deal of shallow work in these days, and it is necessary that the enormity of sin be realized before Gay. The blood of the trespass offering was therefore put upon the tip of the right ear, the thumb of the right hand, and the great toe of the right foot of the cleansed man. The realization in power of this, as well as the claims of God upon all that we hear, upon everything we do, and every place we go, is to be acknowledged. Oh, dear young believer, have you and I entered into this? Have we stood before the Lord as the cleansed leper at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, realizing these things in His presence?
After this a log of oil was taken and the oil was sprinkled seven times bore the Lord. It is by the Spirit, of which the oil is a type, that we can now have communion with God, perfectly and without hindrance, because of Christ’s finished work. Then the oil was put over the blood on the right ear, the right thumb, and the great toe of the right foot. This tells us of the claims of that love that has redeemed us, upon all that we hear, everything we do, and every place we go. We are no longer to walk as in the flesh, but as in the Spirit through this wilderness scene.
ML 02/04/1951