New Thoughts (07/13/11-07/14/11)
In order to fully grasp the significance of what Jesus is driving at here, we shall need to reacquaint ourselves with a portion of the Old Testament’s strictures for life amongst God’s people. To this end, it will serve our purposes to consider Numbers 19:11 and onward. Here, instructions are being relayed as to the necessary purifications for one who has touched a corpse, as well as some explanation as to when such purifications would be required. This, by the way, plays into the setup in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37) . It is the reason behind the priest avoiding the man left for dead. If he were truly dead, then to be even in his proximity was to risk impurity not just for the day but for a week.
In the current application, the factor to have in mind is that which is relayed in Numbers 19:16. If you touch one slain in battle, or dead of natural causes out in the fields, if you touch a human bone, or even a grave, this same seven days of impurity apply. Keep that in view as you consider Luke’s description of these men as graves over which men walk unawares. They have touched it. They are made unclean thereby, and ignorance of the matter is no excuse for them. I will assuredly be returning to this point, as I consider our current passage more directly. However, for the present there are a few other items in the instructions provided in Numbers 19 that I would consider first.
One question that naturally arises in consideration of these instructions is why? Why is this even an issue? It seems, on the face of it, rather odd that God would be so upset by having His representatives care for the dead. Honestly, to touch a grave is sufficient to mark a man unfit for God’s presence for a week, and even then, only if he has properly addressed the situation? What is up with that? Well, one might consider that God is God of the living and not of the dead (Mt 22:32, Mk 12:27, Lk 20:38). He is Life. Death, we are given to understand, is the final outworking of sin (Ro 6:16, Ro 6:23, Jas 1:15). God, we also know, cannot abide the presence of sin.
This is the whole point of it all. We, being corrupted from conception by the effects of Adam’s first sin, and being so thoroughly inclined to continue in his course, are utterly sinful, utterly unfit to be in the presence of a holy God. He cannot and will not tolerate the presence of such sinfulness in His presence, certainly not in His kingdom. His holiness, His justice demand of Him that where this sin persists without remedy, punishment equal to the crime must be meted out. He being an eternal God, and sin being a crime against Himself, the offense is made eternal, and therefore the punishment must likewise be eternal if it be just. Following on this point, the temple, whether it be the tabernacle, the edifice in Jerusalem, our present day church facilities or, most importantly, our selves as the living temples of the Holy Spirit; the temple is an embassy of the kingdom of God. In our own political structures we recognize an embassy as being more than simply a representation of the nation whose embassy it is. It is deemed an extension of that nation, as being part of that nation, even though its physical locale be in the midst of a foreign land. God views His embassies no differently.
All of this is said in support of the point delivered back in Numbers 19:13: Anyone thus defiled by touching a corpse, and who has not purified himself as prescribed, defiles the tabernacle of the Lord. How so? He has brought the fully ripened fruit of sin into the very kingdom of God, setting it, as it were, before the throne of His Utmost Purity. It ought to be unthinkable. It ought to be, and yet, we who are the temple of God are forever doing that very thing. We may not be dragging physical corpses about with us and proclaiming ourselves as spokesmen for the Gospel. But, we have yet that hideous body of our own sins, which Paul so graphically describes as a corpse we carry as tied to ourselves, the clear and unmistakable mark of our crimes against God. We are no less in need of the cleansing God prescribes as that one who has carried the stench of death before His nostrils. We are the stench of death before His nostrils, except it be that the blood of Christ has cleansed us from our sins and, I dare say, except it be that we have come to truly repent of that from which we were cleansed. Are we concerned to see our feet washed day by day? Do we think to ask forgiveness for the sins of the day before we settle in for the night? Do we think to ask forgiveness for the sins of the night before we come to Him of a morning? I know I have been sorely negligent in this regard, and I think I had best set that to rights even now.
Lord, I do beg Your forgiveness that I have been so negligent of my own condition before You. What have I been thinking? Have I been thinking? No, clearly not. For, were I even half so mindful of Your presence as I ought to be, I should ever be mindful of my sins against You, ever seeking after Your forgiveness. That I would allow a night to pass without seeking to be in right relation to You ought to be unthinkable and yet I have been so unthinking. Lord, I find cause for concern! That I would come to these morning studies without so much as a thought for my fitness to contemplate Your majesty: Lord, I find cause for concern! Forgive me, Father. Yes, and I know by Your own promise that You do so, as I seek to find it in myself to repent of this laxity. Forgive me, as well, Lord, for being so swiftly offended by those who are more wholly given over to Your worship. I am at risk of finding myself in Michel’s company, which is hardly the company I should choose.
Grant me, therefore, the wisdom to know where I ought to correct those in my charge and where I ought better to be corrected by their own example. You have put me in this place, Holy One. I pray Thee that You would make of me a fit occupant of the place You have set me. This, too, I know I can trust You to achieve, for it is from You, for You and through You that I am here. You have set me in this place and You are no fool for having done so. You have deemed me fit and You shall, I am certain, make me fit, however unfit I feel myself to be. For this, and for so much else, I owe You eternal thanks. I pray Thee, then, in closing of this prayer, that You would keep me mindful even through this day of what I have prayed. Keep me mindful of You, of this temple You have established in me and what purity I ought to seek to maintain therein. Empower me, then, to do as I would, as You would.
Now, then: One last aspect of this passage from Numbers before I turn more directly to the woe Jesus has pronounced here. I come to Numbers 19:18, wherein is written, “A clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water [prepared for this purpose from the ashes of a red heifer], and sprinkle it on the dead one’s tent, his furnishings, and on all who were there, or for that one who touched bone or slain or grave.”
Let me consider this on two levels. For the first, consider it as applied to the community of believers. In this regard, what I see in these instructions is a lesson in inter-dependency. We need each other! If one is defiled, he cannot cleanse himself. There must needs be somebody who is clean that can then take up the task of cleansing the defiled brother. This is a lesson we do well to take to heart. We are inclined, I think, to seek to purify the body by ejecting the defiled brother, and there are, to be sure, occasions that warrant such action. However, we tend to exceed the warrant. We see a brother clearly beset by sin and sin’s fallout, and rather than seeking to help him be clean once more, we seek to exclude him from fellowship, lest his contagion spread. Again, there is a place for that. But, that place is reserved for the extreme case, for the one who refuses to be cleansed, who seeks to spread his defilement to others.
On the positive side of the image, though, I am moved by God’s determined efforts to help us see our need one for another, our need for fellowship. “If one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart” (Ecc 4:12). When we attempt to deal with our sin in isolation, to keep it to ourselves until we have mastered our weakness, we set ourselves up for failure. We leave ourselves open to being overpowered and all but make certain that this will be the outcome. There is a reason we are called to confess one to another: Because only then can that other contribute his prayers and insights to our problem. Our brothers cannot aid us in that of which they are kept carefully unaware. If we are always proclaiming that all is well with us when in fact we are on the verge of collapse in our efforts against the flesh, who do we suppose will come to our aid? But, God has thus arranged our fellowship, our communion, that we have many ready and willing to do just that, to come stand with us against those things which so easily beset, and with that companionship, we are able to stand and stand some more. This is most easily witnessed in the marriage relationship, but it is hardly restricted to that one case. At least, it ought not to be.
Taking it to a higher plane, this requirement for a clean person to cleanse us is a pointer to Christ, a type He fulfills once for all in His own sacrifice. He is clean. He has cleansed us by the sprinkling of His own blood on the third day, and He shall return to fulfill the seventh day cleansing. He has given Life where we walked with death. In Him and in Him alone we have hope – indeed certainty – of being made so clean as to be found suitable citizens of God’s kingdom.
I noted earlier that this same passage in Numbers brings in the business with the red heifer. Much is made about the recovery of a red heifer in Israel. Those whose leanings are towards the hyper spiritual, toward seeing prophetic significance in every last thing, make much of this fact. They have the red heifer! They have gathered once more the ingredients of God’s chosen incense. There is this great excitement over having all the materials to re-establish the order of Old Testament style worship, of re-establishing the Temple. But, why? Why would we be excited by types and shadows having already obtained the fulfillment of all types and shadows? Why would we think it a good thing to once again start up the sacrificial system, when we abide in the blessed result of the Sacrifice given once for all? It makes no sense. It’s a desire for things to inspire wonder in us, a desire to return to myths and legends, and it sounds nice, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s got this scriptural backing. See? Right there, it mentions the red heifer that is to be used to prepare the water that cleanses us from death (Nu 19:5-9). But, we have already been cleansed! We have already been taken from death into Life, and that by the only One Whose blood is as eternal as our crimes. What need, then, for a return to the temporary? What value? Indeed, what insult to the Christ we serve that we should even think to seek after such lesser and imperfect remedies, who claim to have tasted of His perfect remedy!
The reason I have spent so much time looking at Numbers in advance of looking at the passage at hand is that without that backdrop we will completely miss the point Jesus is making. It is a point that Wuest brings out in his treatment of Luke 11:42. There, speaking of the concealed tombs to which the Pharisees are compared, he writes that these tombs ‘defile the passerby who is ignorant of their whereabouts’. This is the problem. The Law as laid out in that passage from Numbers does not make any allowance for the reason contact with death was made. It matters not whether it was intentional, accidental, or even done without any knowledge that contact had occurred. The contagion is the same regardless. The impurity of death, of sin’s fullest fruit, remains. It doesn’t matter how you came to be touched by it. You need to be cleanse.
By way of understanding this, we might think of restaurant workers. When it comes to those preparing our food, we want assurance that they are clean, that they carry no germs into the food preparation area. If perchance they should indeed bring some noxious bacteria into the preparation of our meal and we are thereby made sick, it’s not going to matter much at all to us whether they did so knowingly or in ignorance. We are just as sick either way. They are just as much the cause either way.
Applied to the issue of the Pharisees, we begin to see why Jesus is so thoroughly pitiless in His attack against hypocrisy. It is a contagion. It is like the impurity of death. It is like that unmarked grave, or the whitewashed tomb in that it looks good, it looks so perfectly fine that one is not concerned to touch it. One never suspects what is there. And so, one takes upon himself the contagion unknowing, and unknowing, allows that contagion to fester and spread. One doesn’t treat the disease he doesn’t think he has, after all. We are not terribly inclined toward preventative medicine for the most part. We wouldn’t, for instance, diet on the off chance that we might possibly develop a weight problem at some future date. We diet because we’re already there, already at the point of having a weight problem. Otherwise, the incentive is not sufficient to prod us into acting against our own natures.
The great evil of hypocrisy, particularly as it concerns matters of piety and religion, is that it first deceives the practitioner into thinking he’s right with God when in fact he is not. But, this is only a personal peril. The problem is that it does not remain so. It is contagious. The newcomer, seeing the apparently pious actions of the hypocrite, assumes he has found a good role model and seeks to follow suit. He, too, becomes convinced that he is firmly on the path of salvation, but he is just as far off track as his chosen role model.
This is the leaven that Jesus warned His disciples of. “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy,” He says (Lk 12:1). What is the nature of leaven? One adds a very small amount and before you know it, the entire lump of dough is leavened. The corruption which is fermentation proceeds apace and spreads throughout. We are so easily fooled, given the limitation of our physical senses and of our benighted reasoning. We see what looks good, or at least better than our own practice, and we seek to emulate. Indeed, even if we have come to the task with an understanding of the real requirements, the fact that there is this far more achievable alternative presented to us, and its adherents practically revered for their great righteousness, we will more than likely succumb to the example, and take the easier road to a greater reputation. Electrical currents are not the only things that seek out and follow the path of least resistance, nor are our politicians uniquely susceptible to pragmatic compromising on principles.
Look again at the issue: People are poisoned by the hypocrite while totally unaware of it. Here, we have the stronger Greek negative of ouk. It is such a negation as denies all applicability of the associated concept. In this case, that concept has to do with knowing, perceiving. Their appearance looks so righteous that it is impossible that one should see and know how utterly vile the practices being observed truly are. One is defiled by the mere presence of these self-righteous frauds and cannot in any way recognize their danger. One will, having been infected with this deadly disease of hypocrisy, walk right into the very temple of God in this unclean state, defile said temple by his mere presence, and have the effrontery to stand there calling upon the very God he has so offended by the stench of his presence. True, he doesn’t know any better. He doesn’t recognize his condition. But, again, ignorance of the Law is no excuse. It is not so among men, and it is no more so before God.
Herein lies the point, then: The hypocrite is in reality contagiously lawless. The merest contact with such a one infects, leaves you unclean in spite of yourself. It’s of a piece, then, with that foot washing that Jesus held out as a lesson to His own. Yes, there is the point of serving one another which is at the forefront in that scene. But, there is also the subtext, that exchange with Peter. You have already been washed in that fully immersive sense of baptism. But, you cannot help getting the dust of the road on your feet as you travel. The feet therefore need washing. You cannot help but get the world on you. It is not so defiling as to require rebaptism, but it is sufficiently defiling as to require your attention lest the contagion spread, lest you offend the God of your temple in ignorance.
Having been made aware of this issue, it seems to me that we lose all ability to plead ignorance anyway. Having been established as temples of the Holy Spirit, and having been set under His perfect tutelage, any such ability as might have remained ours in our limited wisdom is more than offset by His perfect counsel. We may think of it as the voice of conscience, that whisper that points out our own frauds and self-deceptions to ourselves. We may hear it in the nudge that tells us we ought not to be taking part in this thing, viewing that thing. Or we might hear it in the urge to speak to another in counsel or encouragement. His voice comes to us in ways that we could easily suppose to be our own thoughts. Yet, a bit of earnest self-assessment should suffice to dispel that illusion! I, for one, am not so wise or pure of heart as such promptings would require me to be as author. I am not so smart as all that, nor so wise. I am certainly not so very aware of what others are dealing with as to sense their unspoken needs and address them. I’m not even sufficiently aware of my own to be doing such things! Yet, the thoughts come, the promptings and the warnings.
Very often, particularly as concerns the warnings, if I will examine the issue presented, I will find that hypocrisy lies in that direction. Here is a place where I have been fooling myself into thinking I’m not doing anything wrong, or even that I am doing something truly right. But, what I’m thinking is incorrect, my righteousness yet remains as filthy rags when seen with clear eyes. I am neither so far progressed as I often like to believe nor am I so painfully regressed as my darker thoughts would have it. I am where my God and King has thus far set me, and to the degree that I am walking humbly before Him as He requires, I recognize that my progress to date is His doing and the progress that remains before me is also in His hands if there is any hope of compliance. This does not, as I ever seem to reiterate, relieve me of responsibility to strive after that compliance with my own efforts. It does, however, demand that I recognize that my own efforts, however strenuous, however valorous, never have sufficed nor ever will. It’s that old Nehemiah lesson again: Pray like you can’t work at all, and work like you’ve never been bothered to pray at all.
It’s all in God’s hands and yet it’s all in mine. This is so very difficult to hold in perspective. It seems an impossible course to maintain, and it probably is. Yet, it is the walk that Christ has set before us as the Way: To work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but ever and always with the clear understanding that it is God Who is at work in us to make us both willing and able. And it is because of this clear understanding that we have a hope certain. He who began this work in us will most assuredly, necessarily prove faithful in completing it. It is, after all, His idea in the first place!
One final point I would touch on as concerns hypocrisy: We are called to worship. We come of a Sunday to worship together in the place designated for such activities. We may, perhaps, show up at other points in the week for similar communal exercises of worship. But, when it comes to being a people such as God seeks, a people who worship in spirit and in truth, this cannot be the end of it. Indeed, it cannot even be the end of it if we set aside times in our day for private worship. We can sing songs of praise in the morning. We can bend our knees in prayer before bed. We can carefully bless every meal, and we can set aside that corner of our day for contemplation of God’s Word. We can do all these things and still not have arrived at that place of worshiping Him in spirit and in truth.
We can do all these things and find ourselves still carrying the contagion of hypocrisy. Indeed, I find for my own part that this is a running skirmish, a battle that I am never quite free from. I had originally been thinking of this point in terms of what we are in church versus what we are beyond its walls. But, it’s worse than that – far worse. Who am I even so briefly as an hour after I have completed my morning studies? Who am I when my daughter does something that’s not to my liking, when my wife is asking questions that I am either disinclined or unqualified to answer? What am I like if thoughts of God are set before me when my mind is on the matters of the day? How do I react?
Let me put it in terms of other considerations: How do I pursue my tasks as father, as husband, as employee, as citizen of this country? I have all these roles to fill in the course of each day. Do I pursue those roles with the intent to do so as a godly man, or do I just go about my daily activities? See, what I am driving at here is that worship, if it be real, does not constrain itself to those parts of the day that are specifically construed for religious pursuits. Times of prayer, of praise and of study are absolutely essential. However, if these times are the sum total of our purposeful expression of God’s influence upon us, then it becomes questionable whether there is any such influence. If I am not consciously seeking to act in ways consistent with a life that seeks to please God, if I am not a doer, then I must become concerned as to whether I am truly a believer, or merely a hypocrite.
Be clear on this, though: The hypocrite that Jesus decries and rejects is not that one who has made mistakes in his efforts to follow the footsteps of our Lord. He is not the one who blows it, even those seven times seventy times in a day. He is the one whose trust remains in himself, who supposes himself sufficient and able to render himself pleasing to a perfectly holy God. He is the one who has stopped trying, who has settled into the comfortable exercises of that manual of mediocrity, that codex of the achievable, happily deluded that he is assured of a salvation that has never so much as been offered him. That’s the danger. That’s the leaven we seek constantly to eliminate from ourselves by the washing of the Word. That is the dust we must wash from ourselves daily, even hourly at times, lest we allow ourselves to be fooled into believing ourselves right even apart from Christ.
May this never be! May God be found true in us, and all men liars. God is faithful, and it is in this alone that I find cause for hope. Indeed, I find more than cause. I find that hope itself. God is faithful and has been since forever. I can easily cast my eyes back across my life and see those places where He has secured my course when all I wanted was to go as far astray as I could manage. He has always been there even through those years when I would not even admit to His existence. He has led me. He has preserved me. And, He has brought me to such place as I am today. Surely, most assuredly, He shall bring me faithfully to that place He has prepared for me. Here alone is my hope and my strength, and all praise be to Him that it is so!
May my life today reflect that which He has achieved and may it indeed hint at what He shall yet achieve.
