Mining the Minors: Haggai (5)

Exactly three months after the returned exiles of Judah obediently began to rebuild the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem following a hiatus of at least seventeen years, the prophet Haggai delivered yet another message from the Lord to his people. Unlike the previous two, which were messages of undiluted encouragement, this one did not seem designed to spare anyone’s feelings.

Sometimes we need an accurate assessment of our spiritual state in order to move forward.

Who Does the Washing?

“If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”

A very simple thought this morning, but perhaps an important one.

It is helpful to recognize what is being symbolized in our Lord’s marvelous display of love and humility at the very beginning of John 13. When Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, the spiritual issue being addressed is not their eternal salvation. Judas had his feet washed right along with the rest of the disciples, and subsequently went to “his own place”. So the “share” at stake in allowing the Lord to wash our feet is not our “heavenly portion”. Salvation is settled separately, as Jesus told Peter: “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.”

One man had his feet washed who had never consented to take a bath: Judas. His footwashing did not help him in any way, shape or form. He went right out and betrayed the Lord only moments later. If anything, the footwashing he had received testified against him.

Third Row from the Back

You’ve all met Joe, right?

Joe’s been coming to your church forever. He and his wife sit at the end of the third row from the back, a holdover from when their kids were small and he or Cheryl might have had occasion to escort one or the other out discreetly mid-service.

It’s fifteen years later now; the boy is off to college and the daughter is about to be. And Joe and Cheryl still sit in the third row from the back.

More importantly, to all appearances fifteen years have changed nothing substantial in Joe’s relationship with the Lord, and definitely nothing about how he relates to the Lord’s people.

Communicable Defilement

Yesterday I shared some thoughts about the Levitical laws having to do with uncleanness and ritual defilement, and I applied them to the subject of mankind’s relationship to its Creator.

Since nothing happened to Israel in a vacuum and precious few of their laws are without some practical application to the Christian life, today I’d like to look at the issue of ongoing defilement and uncleanness in the era beyond the Law of Moses.

But before we do that, we need to take one last look back at Leviticus.

The Twelve-Year Illustration

The first two gospels tell the story of an unnamed woman who suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years.

Believing even the briefest, most ephemeral contact with Jesus would heal her of her condition, she crept up behind the Lord to touch the fringe of his robe. And we all know the rest of the story, including the “your faith has made you well” part.

Mark records that the woman had “suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse”. Having spent some time in the care of doctors, I can relate. I can more or less imagine what that might have meant for her medically.

The part of the story I never really thought about before is what it meant for a Jewish woman socially and religiously to be declared ritually “unclean”.