Leviticus 11:46,47

Final Summary (Leviticus 11:46).

This could well be a colophon to a tablet depicting what was contained on it. It outlines what the chapter has been all about.

Leviticus 11:46

“This is the law of the beast, and of the bird, and of every living creature that moves in the waters, and of every creature that creeps on the earth, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean, and between the living thing that may be eaten and the living thing that may not be eaten.”

The questions it dealt with were His people's attitude towards His creation. They are to distinguish between what can rightly be eaten, and what should not be eaten, what is positive and what is negative, what is desirable and what is not desirable, what is tainting and what is not tainting, what is honouring to God before men, and what is not honouring to God, between cleanliness and uncleanliness, between life and death.

The final message that it leaves with us is the question as to what should be our attitude to life? Each of us is called to choose the way we walk and what shall be important to us, and whether we will avoid what is sinful and degrading, or not. We each have to choose our road, just as the Israelites did in the light of this teaching. We are called upon to keep to our proper sphere.

To quote loosely the words of the poet,

“To every man appeareth, a high way, and a way.

And the high souls choose the high way and the low souls choose the low,

And in between on the misty flats the rest move to and fro,

And every man decideth, which way his soul will go.”

That is the message of holiness, and lesser holiness, and unholiness, of clean and unclean, and abominable. The question is this. On what will we set our aim? Are we to set our minds on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, recognising that we and all our sin are dead, and our lives are hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:1). Are we to recognise that it is not we who live, but Christ Who lives in us (Galatians 2:20). That is our proper sphere. Or will we join the creeping things in the dirt and dust, letting them into our lives and revealing ourselves as simply like them in all our ways? Or will we just wander in the middle so that no one really knows which we are. The clean or the unclean. The choice is ours.