Why Did God Alienate Disabled Persons in the Old Testament? It's a really good question today from a listener named Gina. "Hello Pastor John, I'm reading through Leviticus in my Bible reading and one thing that has confused me is why God would not allow people with physical defects to approach the altar, specifically in Leviticus 21, 16-21.

The tone changes drastically in the Gospels, there Jesus welcomes the blind, the lame, and the diseased right into his own very presence. So why would God in the Old Testament not allow them near the altar? Seems sad to me. Those people would have certainly felt even worse for it and likely experienced heightened social alienation too.

I'm thankful for the New Testament because there are so many of us with physical defects. But why the discontinuity? To what purpose?" Good, good, good, good, good question. Leviticus 21, 16-24 deals with whether priests, it's about priests, but her question is still really valid, whether priests who have physical disabilities or deformities can enter the holy place to do the work of a priest.

And I think Gina is probably right that in reality when priests with facial defects or crushed genitals or injured feet or a hunchback or scabby skin were forbidden from parts of the priestly service, not all of them, but some of them, probably they would have felt sad and discouraged at times and maybe even resentful.

That would be a normal human response, at least in our culture, we sure feel that. And my guess is it's pretty basic to human nature. So Gina asks, "Why does God in the Old Testament apply such external restrictions for the priesthood? And in the New Testament, we don't have that same kind of restriction.

They don't assume the same kind of excluding effect." So let me try to give an answer that I think honors the intention of both the Old Testament and the New Testament, because I think both are the inspired Word of God, and what God did when He did it was right to do when He did it, and He had reasons for doing it.

And it may not be right for us to do it today because such profound things have changed. But let's look at the key passage, and there's a ground clause that helps us really crystallize the issues. Here's Leviticus 21, 16 to 24 with just a few verses left out. I'll collapse it down so you can see the clause.

No man of the offspring of Aaron, the priest, who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord's food offerings. Since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God. He shall not go through the veil or approach the altar because, and our ears should perk up, because he has a blemish, in order that he may not profane my sanctuaries, for I am Yahweh the Lord who sanctifies them.

In other words, God says, "I am the one who sets priests apart for my service. I sanctify them. I have ordained, I have decreed or instituted or decided that a blemished priest will not blemish or profane my sanctuary." In other words, God wants to make the perfections of the sanctuary so symbolically and visibly clear that he establishes a correlation between the deforming of the physical body and the deforming of the sanctuary.

Or to say it another way, he insists that there be a correlation between the perfections of those who approach the sanctuary and the perfection of the sanctuary itself, which is a reflection of his own perfection. So it's entirely possible that the most godly and the most humble, deformed priests would not be offended by this divine order of things, but would gladly acknowledge that it is fitting for those who approach a perfect God to be free from outward and inward imperfections.

So I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with God's Old Testament ordinances in this regard. The question is, what's the ultimate meaning of it, especially in relation to New Testament changes? My answer goes like this. In the Bible as a whole, there are two dimensions to God's nature that shape the way he deals with mankind.

One is unapproachable holiness. That's one massive truth throughout the Bible. God is holy. Sinners can't approach him. Nothing imperfect can approach him. Nothing evil can approach God without being destroyed. And so it's fitting that in the presence of God, there can only be perfection, both moral and spiritual and physical, which of course means no one qualifies.

It's not like some of these priests were perfect. The other dimension of his nature is his overflowing mercy and grace. So those are the two. Unapproachable holiness and overflowing mercy and grace, which reaches out to the physically, morally, spiritually imperfect and finds a way in Jesus Christ to declare them to be perfect.

But the resolution of these two dimensions of God's nature is not that the first one is replaced by the second one, like holiness is kind of blunted and decreased in its importance because mercy is going to be the main thing now. That's not what happens. As though the doctrine of justification by faith alone would be sufficient to create the new heavens and the new earth where God is present among justified sinners without his holiness being compromised.

That's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. No. God also undertakes by sanctification and then by the recreation of everything that's broken, physical dimensions of the world and moral dimensions of the world, and he's going to make everything in his presence perfect forever. Not just justified sinners are going to be in God's presence, but no sin is going to be in God's presence.

There won't be any people who sin in God's presence. There will be no defects morally. There will be no defects physically in the presence of God in the age to come. So I think God highlighted the demands for perfection in the Old Testament in an outward way so as to make really clear that no form of imperfection would ever stand in God's presence permanently.

That's how holy he is. He would one day not only justify the ungodly and be willing to touch lepers, reach out and actually touch lepers, God himself touching lepers in the flesh, but he would also utterly transform the ungodly into sinless godly people and take away every leprosy and every disease and every disability and every deformity.

So the Old Testament and the New Testament make both of these dimensions of God's character plain, it seems to me, by putting the emphasis in different places. So the Old Testament is, as it were, standing on tiptoes, looking over the horizon of the future, waiting and wondering how God could ever create a people all of whom could come boldly into his presence, and God had put such amazing limits in the Old Testament.

So the Old Testament rightly makes this seem extremely difficult. I think that was the point. He wanted it to look like this can never happen. You can never have anybody with an imperfection walking in here. Just not going to happen. God has put such amazing restrictions on it. And then, in the New Testament, the glorious reality dawns that God has provided a way by Jesus Christ, the very perfection, that we must have to approach him now, and he has provided by his Spirit the sanctification and resurrection and perfection of bodily and spiritually newness in the age to come so that we can be in his presence forever.

So my bottom line conclusion is we need the Old Testament to sober us about how holy God is, and we need the New Testament lest we despair of any hope that we could survive in the presence of such a holy God, let alone enjoy him forever. Amen. That's really helpful.

Thank you, Pastor John. Well, there's a horrifying story out of Colorado that has grabbed headlines since it happened in August, a story of a man who killed his entire family, his wife of six years, their unborn child, along with their two really young daughters. It is sickening. And just a few months later, he is now in prison for the rest of his life, and he has also recently claimed to have found God.

Can such a malicious animal be saved, and how should we Christians process that possibility? It's a raw and honest question, and it's up next time on Wednesday. I'm your host Tony Reinke, and we will see you then. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.