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Come and study the Holy Scriptures with us as Fr. Stephen DeYoung teaches verse-by-verse on the podcast The Whole Counsel of God. Fr. Stephen holds a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies and is an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Chapter 19 Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, So we're getting this whole other ritual, which we haven't seen before, okay? Notice some of the things that are being done, though. So that might be unusual. So first of all, it's identifying this as not just a heifer, but one that is red in color. which we haven't seen a lot about color right before notice it's also taken and slaughtered outside the camp so this is not something that's happening in the tabernacle right which means at least at this phase that we've read so this is not a sacrifice per se because it's not being done in the tabernacle because not only is it killed out there it's burnt out there right the whole thing's being burnt well the reason it says and it's dung there at the end is that's what they're probably using to burn it. They're probably setting the dung on fire to kindle the fire. Right, and then using that to burn the animal. So, now some of the blood is taken, but notice the blood is sprinkled, and it's sprinkled seven times, but it's sprinkled in front of the Tabernacle of Testimony. So, the blood isn't even taken into the Tabernacle. right? It's just sprinkled in front of it. And then he takes cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet, right? And we've seen those used for sprinkling things in the past, remember with the birds and stuff? But those are taken, right? And thrown into the fire that's burning the heather. After this, the priest shall wash his clothes, bathe his body in water, and come into the camp. the priest shall be unclean until evening. One more pause, one thing I forgot to note. Notice this is Eliezer who's doing it, not Aaron. So it's not the current high priest, it's the current senior priest. So this is Aaron's eldest surviving son, Eliezer, who's going to be the next high priest who is doing it, not Aaron himself. So he's unclean until evening because he's done all this outside the camp, right? That's why he's unclean. Also, the ones who burns it shall wash his clothes

in water, bathe his body in water, and be unclean until evening. Then a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the red heifer and put them away outside the camp in a clean place, and then she'll be kept in reserve for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of sprinkling and is for purification. Then the one who gathers the ashes of the red heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening it shall be an eternal ordinance to the children of israel and to the resident alien who dwells among them so all of this is so that those ashes could be collected so they could be put into water to make holy water i like how we do it better it's a lot easier that's right but so you can also see how once you have these ashes right you notice they're saying they're doing this once they're not saying whenever you need some holy water do this so the ashes are like this substrate you can keep adding water to it and now you have this water that could be used for purification you need to keep adding more water this is also how holy water works with us right you could add more water right and that water is holy water when you refill and so this is how you're going to make water and that water is going to be sprinkled on things to purify them from uncleanness and the sprinkling link of the blood is to connect this water to blood blood is what's normally used to purify right we've seen that over and over again the sacrificial blood being used to purify everything even though that's counterintuitive to us right because we're like oh look blood splattered all over it now it's clean right that was the idea but so this water is now connected to the blood that's connected to the tabernacle You

And that's what now will give it this, these purificatory effects. So yes, some of our dispensationalist friends have lit upon this passage and gotten very excited about it because this is their way of thinking. They have decided for various reasons that we'll talk about more, actually, when we get into the book of Ezekiel in the future, but they've decided for various reasons that they think a third Jewish temple is going to be built in Jerusalem and that is a good thing which is an odd thing to decide but like I said we'll talk about it more in Ezekiel odd if you know any church history or anything but so they sort of have worked backward from that well okay well if that happened if they built another one in Jerusalem or anywhere else for that matter well we'd have to dedicate it they're like oh yeah yeah that's true we'd have to dedicate it so that means we'd have to do like the sacrifices like when they dedicated the temple and the tabernacle they have to sacrifice all these animals and throw the blood everywhere oh yeah that's true but then you got to back up past that right because oh we'd have to like cleanse stuff before we could use it to do the dedication oh okay well so you back up before that that means we need this holy water to cleanse stuff with and therefore they're trying to breed a red heifer so that when the time comes they can kill it burn it make holy water with it use that to purify stuff that they can then use to do sacrifices that they can then use to dedicate this theoretical building. They could go to any Roman Catholic or Orthodox church and just ask for some holy water, unless they told them what they were going to do with it. Then we'd probably say no. So, yeah, there's a number of different efforts, and every time they successfully give birth to a red heifer, which has happened several times just in the past few years, because it's not that hard with our modern understanding of genetics to get a red heifer if you want one right like people get all excited that it's a sign of some apocalyptic something or other because hey we could make jewish holy water but that's that's what it's all about christian church has had holy water for 2 000 years make it once a year on theophany since at least the beginning of the second century so i mean but i guess if you're cut off from that trying to rebuild things they said reading the torah in english you want to yeah breed and burn a cow yes we're gonna see some of its uses now in the rest of the rest of this chapter but yes that is where the whole red heifer thing comes from is from what we just read

and you know step one i guess is make jewish holy water step five prophet but other things in between. He who touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days. He shall cleanse himself on the third day and on the seventh day. Then he will be clean, but if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not be clean. Whoever touches the dead body of any person who has died and does not purify himself defiles the tabernacle of the Lord. That soul shall be destroyed from Israel. He shall be unclean because the water of sprinkling was not sprinkled on him. his uncleanness is still on him right so here's one of the things you touch a dead body you're unclean as we've talked about before so on the third day and the seventh day as you're preparing to re-enter uh society um you get sprinkled with the water now this is the law if a man dies in a house everyone who comes into the house and whoever is in the house shall be unclean seven days, and every open vessel which has no cover fastened on it is unclean. Whoever in the open field touches one who is slain by a sword, or who has died a natural death, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. So for the unclean they shall take some of the ashes of the burnt offering of purification, put them in a vessel, and pour running water on them. Then a clean man shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the house, and upon all the vessels and the souls who were there and upon the one who touched the human bone or the one slain by the sword or the one who died a natural death or the grave. So this is giving us more detail on the procedure and who all is unclean, right? Connected to someone's death. So if it's someone who dies out somewhere, it's the person who finds them, right? Who touches them or is involved in burying them. If it's someone who dies in a house, it's the other people in the household, right? And we've talked about how part of the function of these unclean periods.

periods, you're cut off from the community for a time to prepare to reconcile to the community. When you find a dead body, right, when someone in your family dies, the action is not cutting you off from the community. Oh, now the community is going to shun you for a week. That experience cuts you off from other people. Mourning cuts you off from other people. The solemn duties of taking and burying someone you love removes you from the general run of community life right and so the idea is there's this period of time then that you're given to remain separate and then there's a process a public process given of being now reintegrated at the end of that time beginning to come back into right the life of the community right we talked about this with childbirth too and how people misunderstand churching in the church, right? It still does this. But we saw this also with people who go to war. There's this time, right? You don't ask any veteran, like, what you experienced has removed you from the Normal Resuracy. You need a period of time, and then you need to be reintegrated. Same thing when someone has died, right? That's the idea here. The clean shall sprinkle the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day, and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and he shall be unclean until evening. So the person who's doing this work of reconciling these people and bringing people back into, he himself has this period of reflection, right, at the end of that process. for himself as well. But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself, that soul shall be utterly destroyed from among the congregation because he defiled the holy things of the Lord and the water of purification was not sprinkled on him. He is unclean. This shall be an eternal ordinance for you. He who sprinkles the water of purification shall wash his clothes and he who touches the water of purification shall be unclean until evening. And whatever the unclean one touches shall be unclean and the soul who touches it shall be unclean until evening so the person who's in trouble here is not the person who becomes unclean it's the person who refuses to go through the process of being reintegrated into the community it's the person who cuts themselves off and remains cut off so this is a direct stubborn action right right this is a refusal

right when it uses the language of his soul shall utterly be destroyed is that just kind of like another euphemism for like death or exile well exile yeah being cut off from the community right

meaning they have cut themselves off from the community already and so this is telling the community, you can't act like nothing's wrong. Think about where St. Paul applies this in Corinthians, the guy who's sleeping with either his stepmother or his mother-in-law. It's not totally clear. The problem St. Paul has, right, obviously that's wrong, but everyone in the community would agree with him that that's not right. But his problem is with the community trying to pretend that nothing's wrong. This man by his actions and his life has cut himself off from the rest of the community, but the rest of the community still has him there on Sunday receiving the Eucharist and is just pretending that nothing's wrong, right? So God is saying the community can't pretend nothing's wrong. They've cut themselves off, they're cut off, and they have to be treated as cut off until they come and go through this process, right, of being reconciled and reintegrated, you know, just pretend nothing's wrong. And that's a big temptation for us. Most reconciliations that happen between modern people are not real reconciliations. They're, we will never speak of what happened again. We will just pretend, we'll put out of our mind whatever happened between us in the past. And we'll just go forward and act like it never happened and act like nothing's wrong. And never really deal with it. And God, because he created us, knows how we work better than that. And he knows that when we try to do that, it's not real. There's all kinds of hurt and resentment and stuff going on in me and going on in the other person. And as much as we want to play and pretend when we're around each other, if it's not really dealt with, it's not really dealt with. It's not really healed. It's not really repented of. And what God wants and what God knows we need is the actual healing.

the actual repentance but to do that there's a certain level of uncomfortableness and confrontation and even ugliness sometimes involved and honesty involved that's hard for us and that we're kind of scared of and so we don't do it we'd rather just all play pretend everything's fine no at least as long as we're together let's just as long as we're in the same room everything's fine right that's and it's not fine and so god is prohibiting us from doing that so you're not allowed to do that not allowed to pretend it's about it's about being honest with each other and having honest conversations with each other so there's a service we need to do more right like if there's somebody who hasn't been to church in years and they come back to church we're happy which is good that we're happy there's actually a service you're supposed to do for the lapsed that acknowledges that like hey if you haven't been here in seven years you kind of haven't been a christian for seven years right you haven't been going to church you haven't been worshiping you haven't been you know and so well one of the things is if you miss if you miss three uh or more you're supposed to come to confession right and that but that's part of it because you the reason you come to confession is not as like a punishment or like a hoop you have to jump through it's hey i bet some stuff has happened during that time that you should probably talk about with god and someone else so that's part of it right is is being that's part of that reintegration right if it's been past a certain period of time if it's been a really long time we have a service for the lapse like i said to to reintegrate people but even between people i mean i'm talking about just basic stuff between people people say really horrible things to each other sometimes and most often they never come back and actually deal with what they said they just sort of feel bad about it and they feel awkward around the person for a couple of weeks and then we all just move on with our lives and pretend like nobody ever said anything but really inside both people they remember exactly what was said and all that is still there just waiting to come back up again what god wants us to do is those two people sit down and talk i exactly and we don't want to do it that's why he has to order us to do it because we don't want to right because we don't want to but it's what we need it's what we need right we need to be healed from that we need to let go of that really move on from it not just pretend and so god has to order us to do it he has to make it right say you have to do this or you're cut off right because otherwise we won't and we'll suffer

for it god's not going to suffer for it right and so that's that's what this is about these things have to be dealt with we have to be real about it paying your local bishop 500 bucks and getting an annulment you still got divorced you still have all the feelings all the hurt all the pain all that is still there right getting a piece of paper that's called an annulment instead of a divorce doesn't change that that's why the orthodox church doesn't mess with any of that nonsense It's just nonsense. Okay? The Orthodox Church doesn't mess with that. We don't grant people divorces, but we acknowledge when somebody got divorced, we say, hey, you got divorced. That's reality. And now what can we do to help you find some healing from what you just went through? Both people. And reintegrate both of you into the community. And, hey, is there any way we can save this marriage? Okay, there's not. Well, then we still need to try and find some healing for both of you. Dealing with reality. that's how God deals with things in scripture. He doesn't invent legal fictions to try to banish them away. Sorry, Roman Catholics. Not sorry on this one. The reason I'm not sorry is Roman Catholics are really arrogant about this when they talk to Orthodox people. We don't have divorces. Pardon me, ancient faith, but BS. You don't have divorces. Adding bribery and the word annulment does not make it not a divorce. and then you do not provide pastoral care for the divorced people and you brag about it so get out of here with that roman catholics sorry not sorry that's that's frankly abusive to people and so i don't apologize for criticizing especially when you're going to be smug about it to me uh on the other side of it so there we go that'll be a popular section of this bible stuff. Father Stephen is usually so right on, but this time he is completely off pace. Yeah, I hit everybody. I hit the dispensationalists. I hit the Roman Catholics. I hit everybody today.

So, okay, just because of where we are, this is a good place because we're about to get into a narrative section again. We're about to shift again here in chapter 20. So we'll go ahead and end here for tonight on that super happy note. Good night, and thank you, everybody.

Listen next time as Father Stephen DeYoung continues his study of the scriptures on the whole counsel of God. Father Stephen's email address is wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com. That's wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com.