“Seven days you shall make atonement for the alter and consecrate it, and the altar shall be most holy. Whatever touches the altar shall become holy.” - Exodus 29:37

While doing a study on Exodus this week, I read this scripture and it made me think of the woman with bleeding. Her story is told in Luke chapter 8, beginning in verse 43. This woman had been bleeding for 12 years and therefore had been ceremonially unclean and an outcast that whole time. She had been to every doctor in the area, to no avail. This brave woman believed that if she could just touch Jesus, she would be healed.

She finally got close enough. She reached out and touched Him. In the Jewish religion, culture, and customs that should have made Jesus unclean. But, instead, healing power came from Him and rather than Jesus becoming contaminated, she was healed and made clean. She came unclean and hurting and left clean and healed. Anything that touched Jesus became clean. Similar to the way the temple/tabernacle alter is described in this passage.

We will never be as holy (consecrated and set apart) as Jesus. We are more like the ordinary, earthly materials used to make the altar. Yet, like the alter, we are intended to be set apart and consecrated for the Lord’s service.

May it be our desire and our prayer to be so set apart and so humbly consecrated to the Lord’s service that, like the alter of sacrifice, when we come into contact with the uncleanness of this world, rather than us becoming unclean, the world around us and the people we meet are left “cleaner” by having come into contact with Jesus through us.

Now that’s a good word!