And be it carefully remembered that we can never get rid of defilement in any other way. We may seek to forget, to slur over, to heal the wound slightly, to make little of the matter, to let time obliterate it from the tablet of memory. It will never do; nay, it is most dangerous work. There are few things more disastrous than trifling with conscience or the claims of holiness. And it is as foolish as it is dangerous; for God has, in His grace, made full provision for the removal of the uncleanness which His holiness detects and condemns. But the uncleanness must be removed, else communion is impossible. “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part _with_ Me.” The suspension of a believers’s communion is what answers to the cutting off of a member from the congregation of Israel. The Christian can never be cut off from Christ; but his communion can be interrupted by a single sinful thought, and that sinful thought must be judged and confessed, and the soil of it removed, ere the communion can be restored. It is well to remember this. It is a serious thing to trifle with sin. We may rest assured we cannot possibly have fellowship with God and walk in defilement. To think so, is to blaspheme the very name, the very nature, the very throne and majesty of God. No, dear reader; we must keep a clean conscience, and maintain the holiness of God, else we shall very soon make shipwreck of faith, and break down altogether. May the Lord keep us walking softly and tenderly, watchfully and prayerfully, until we have laid aside our bodies of sin and death, and entered upon that bright and blessed world above, where sin, death, and defilement are unknown.
In studying the ordinances and ceremonies of the Levitical economy, nothing is more striking than the jealous care with which the God of Israel watched over His people, in order that they might be preserved from every defiling influence. By day and by night, awake and asleep, at home and abroad, in the bosom of the family and in the solitary walk, His eyes were upon them. He looked after their food, their raiment, their domestic habits and arrangements. He carefully instructed them as to what they might and what they might not eat, what they might and what they might not wear. He even set forth distinctly His mind as to the very touching and handling of things. In short, He surrounded them with barriers amply sufficient, had they only attended to them, to resist the whole tide of defilement to which they were exposed on every side.
In all this, we read, in unmistakable characters, the holiness of God; but we read also, as distinctly, the grace of God. If divine holiness could not suffer defilement upon the people, divine grace made ample provision for the removal thereof. This provision is set forth in our chapter under two forms, namely, the blood of atonement and the water of separation. Precious provision! a provision illustrating at once the holiness and the grace of God. Did we not know the ample provisions of divine grace, the lofty claims of divine holiness would be perfectly overwhelming; but being assured of the former, we can heartily rejoice in the latter. Could we desire to see the standard of divine holiness lowered a single hair’s breadth? Far be the thought! How could we? or why should we? seeing that divine grace has fully provided what divine holiness demands. An Israelite of old might shudder as he hearkened to such words as these: “He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days;” and again, “Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel.” Such words might indeed terrify his heart. He might feel led to exclaim, What am I to do? How can I ever get on? It seems perfectly impossible for me to escape defilement. But then, what of the ashes of the burnt heifer? what of the water of separation?—what could these mean? They set forth the memorial of the sacrificial death of Christ applied to the heart by the power of the Spirit of God. “He shall purify himself with it the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean; but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean.” If we contract defilement, even though it be through negligence, that defilement must be removed ere our communion can be restored. But we cannot get rid of the soil by any effort of our own; it can only be by the use of God’s gracious provision, even the water of purification. An Israelite could no more remove, by his own efforts, the defilement caused by the touch of a dead body, than he could have broken Pharaoh’s yoke, or delivered himself from the lash of Pharaoh’s taskmasters.