Wednesday Bible Blurb Unclean 11 5 2025
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
No one! Job 14:4 (NKJV)
Not long ago on a cross-country trip we stopped at a restaurant for some dinner at the world’s largest buffet located in Pennsylvania. The food looked great and smelled wonderful to my growling rumbling stomach. When I picked up my spoon to begin eating, I realized the spoon was unclean, smeared with prior use goobers. Either the wash cycle had not completely washed it, or it was never washed at all. Suddenly, my dinner did not look so appetizing.
What is unclean to God? Does He sometimes look at us as if we are sin smeared, goober covered humans? “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one! (Job 14:4). God is perfect, He is not covered in sin and ugly goobers. In His perfect wisdom He explains “unclean” to us.
Moses explained to Israel that they “shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.” (Deut. 4:2). Later, Moses tells Israel what will happen if they add to His words. “When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, 11 or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. 12 For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you.” (Deut. 18:9-12). Wow, adding to the words to create your own false beliefs has terrible consequences. God calls it an “abomination.” To God, sin is simply unclean.
What about the food we eat? Can man make what God calls “unclean” and an “abomination” clean? According to Job the answer is no. God gives His food laws of what we should and should not eat in Leviticus 11 (Repeated in Deut. 14). In these 46 verses of Leviticus 11, God calls certain foods “unclean” 32 times. Strong’s Concordance (2930) show the meaning of unclean to be “to be unclean, defiled, to be made unclean, become defiled, impure, desecrate, ceremonial impure, immoral in action.” (2931) “defiled, impure, ceremonial impurity or active immorality.” In these same 46 verses of Leviticus 11 God calls these foods an “abomination” ten separate times. Strong’s concordance defines this as (8262) “to detest, abhor, defile, abomination, utterly detest, abhorred and (8263) “detestable thing, abomination.” We should not eat what God calls unclean and an abomination.
Unclean can either be our immoral sinful actions or what we eat. Cleaning off our spoon will not make what God calls “unclean” foods clean. For our sinful life we can only be clean by repentance and baptism and then by the grace of God through our faith He makes us clean.
