Washing by water and fire

You shall purify for yourselves every garment...and you shall wash your clothes on the seventh day and be clean, and afterward you may enter the camp. Numbers 31:20 & 24

The laundry is in the machine as I type this. There is one thing about clothing...it gets dirty. It is amazing how body oils and dead skin contaminate clothing, as well as dust, rubbing against things, and dropped food and stains can make clothes that were clean in the morning in need of a good washing by the end of the day. We have explored washing in a previous blog. God calls us to clean our clothes. He doesn't like dirt. He constantly tells His people to wash their clothes, their hands, their feet, and more importantly, their hearts.

This context in Numbers has us cleaning for a different reason, and there is more than one cleaning agent being used in the whole of the passage.

They have just taken their revenge on the Midianites and are coming back from war. Now we all know that war back then was not pretty. It was a bloody, ghastly scene. The clothes that they were talking about here were those worn by those who killed anyone, or had physical contact with any of the slain. And it wasn't just the clothes that were to be cleaned, but everything they had brought back from the war, including the spoils like gold and silver, tin and bronze. Whatever came back from the battle, including the men themselves, were to be purified by one of 2 means – water and fire. If it could pass through the fire to be cleansed, then it was passed through the fire, and then washed. If, like a garment, it could not pass through the fire, then water alone was used. Nothing that had not been made clean in this way could come back into the camp, their living quarters. No impure thing could come in to contaminate the women, children, and homes of the Israelites. A massive clean up operation was to take place outside the camp for 6 days, and on the seventh day they could come back home.

If you have traveled anywhere in the world, you will realize that cleanliness is not held in high regard in some cultures, and diseases spread easily, killing many needlessly. In areas where the Judao-Christian culture has set down roots, there is far less disease spread. God is a God of order and commands things for the good of the people. They didn't understand germs, but God did. They washed because they were told to, not because they understood the purpose of it. That is how a lot of God's word works...if we would just obey it, knowing it comes from the hand of a Loving Father instead of questioning it, we would find that His commands saved us from a LOT of misery...a lot of unnecessary harm.

But there were 2 methods of cleansing. The water we understand. The fire is the other. Scriptures say that our God is a consuming fire, and Revelations describes Jesus as having eyes of fire and His feet glowed like metal in a furnace. Our works are tried by fire in 1 Corinthians 3. God consumes all of the evil and impurity and sends it all to hell to be destroyed forever. If we do not choose to let the fire of His cleansing and testing purify us here, we will suffer it eternally in the world to come. The eyes of God see everything, and nothing is hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do. (Hebrews 4:13). All things are judged, and the impurities are brought out. But the hope of all this is that when the furnace rages and the impurities rise to the top, they will be dredged off by the Savior and we will be purified, like gold. (Job 23:10) The more the furnace rages, the more the impurities are separated from the true metal. They are burnt off, scraped into the scrap heap, leaving pure, costly gold worthy of great price.

But even when the gold is purified, once cooled, it is washed, polished, and used. Washing of the Water of the Word (Ephesians 5: 25) done by Christ Himself brings us to Him pure and unspotted. When we come out of the battlefield of this world, we will be cleansed from all of its pollutants, all remnants of the impurities that we were exposed to just by being in contact with the defilement of this world. The blood of the war, the oils and soils of the daily grind, and the rubbing elbows with those not of the True Camp of God's people will be washed away so that we can be presented acceptable into God's presence without bringing our contamination into the Holy Place.

So if the heat is on, the battle raging, remember that if we endure the process, we will be more purified, washed clean, and presented before the throne without spot or blemish, with nothing to hide! The fellowship with God will be sweet and pure and holy. Only He can clean us by the fire and the water to make us acceptable in His sight. And that is a good thing, for there may come out of my laundry tub an unseen, untreated stain that may defile the cloth and make it unacceptable. He never washes and leaves a stain behind...