6.25.26 – Did Yeshua Ever Become Unclean? Part 3

Let me start with a story that we can all relate to:

A student is studying with his teacher when he suddenly stops, embarrassed. He realizes that he is ritually impure and feels he has no business speaking holy words of Torah in that condition. His teacher tells him, "Open your mouth, let the words shine, because the words of Torah do not contract impurity." He proves this from Jeremiah 23:9, where Jeremiah says that God's word is like fire. Just as fire cannot be made unclean—if you take something impure and throw it into fire, the fire burns it up, the impurities are consumed, and the flame remains pure—so too, when impurity comes near the words of Torah, God's word finds nothing to take hold of.

This later becomes a matter of Jewish law regarding the Torah scroll. A scroll may be handled by a ritually impure person, a menstruating woman, and even unredeemed individuals—the point is that even very high levels of impurity do not defile the scroll. The system was designed to keep people at a distance from holy things, yet they may pick up a scroll and read from it. Are you not glad for this reality toward God's holy word, which is pure, holy, and just (Rom. 7:12)?

So we have two things: living water, which cleanses and cannot be defiled, and the word of the Lord, which cannot be contaminated by impurity. Impurity cannot take hold of either water or word. Can you make any connections in your mind right now?

Let me help by turning to the Gospel of John. As you know, it opens with a strange, mythic, almost cryptic passage: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). The Greek word logos carried deep meaning in the Jewish world of the first century, especially through the Aramaic concept of Memra—the Word. In Jewish understanding, when the Scriptures were read in the synagogue, when God acts, when God creates, when God speaks, the text repeatedly refers to this as the word of the Lord—God's own presence and action in the world. That is the category John is referencing and expanding upon when he points to Yeshua—the source of living waters and every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Are you with me, or did I lose you?

Are you not glad we have a Savior who is not contaminated with our yuckity yuck?

Shalom!!
Alan

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