Reading
SAA Notes
The Water of Cleansing was used for numerous purposes – sprinkling the Levites when they were set apart, sprinkling someone who has had to touch a dead body, and drunk by a woman with a jealous husband. These later ones deal with death – of the body or of relationship – and thus with sin. Sin and its effects must be cleansed! John the Baptist was using this type of cleansing with his baptism of repentance – for cleansing. Christian baptism draws from this as from circumcision.
SJA Notes
* Dear God Most High, we give You thanks with our whole heart, we will recount all Your wonderful deeds. We will be glad and exult in You.
“He shall cleanse himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day, and so be clean.”
What does this mean, to be clean, here?
In Hebrews 9 we read,
“For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, …”
The sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer – These passages from Numbers are what Hebrews is referring back to.
The hearts of the Israelites were not made clean by the water of purification. It was an outward sign God wanted them to keep, the ceremonial law given through Moses, that pointed to a deeper, fuller truth (a new covenant).
We read on in Hebrews 9,
“… How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to server the living God.”
It is Jesus’ blood that purifies us!
The old covenant reveals our need for Jesus – Temporary sacrifices and repeated washings, these do not save!
It is Jesus. Always Jesus.
Because of Him we are brought out of dead works to serve a living God – Hallelujah for that!
* Father God,
Thank You for the cleansing of sin You have worked through Yourself, You in the Person of the Son come to earth.
Thank You for Jesus.
Amen.