A young child’s strategy is simple.  “If I can’t see you, then I can’t be seen.”  Standing in a corner with hands over their eyes.  Or out of the way with a sheet over their head.  Underneath an open table or forming a toddler-shaped lump behind the curtains.   All these seem effective to the three-year-old playing hide-and-seek.   But as we grow, we get better at concealment.  Hide-and-seek with older children often ends in a stalemate.  As darkness falls and bedtimes approach, we call them to declare the game over and their hiding victorious.

We all learn to conceal what we don’t want others to see or know.  Often this is important and appropriate.  We conceal our passwords.  We secure our valuables. We protect our health information.  We guard our thoughts, feelings, and history from those who have no right to access them.  Or who would misuse them.  And the scripture even warns us that there is a time to withhold words.  Ecclesiastes tells us there is a “time to keep silence.”  And the proverb exhorts us “answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.”  Even Jesus instructed us, “do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.”

Concealment is often right and necessary in some earthly relationships.   But concealment never has a place in our relationship with our Heavenly Father.  Attempts to ignore or conceal our sin are of course futile since we live our lives Coram Deo, before the face of God.  But more than that confession and repentance are gracious gifts provided for our healing and cleansing from the soul-crushing weight of sin that clings so easily and entangles us.  

The Proverb reminds us.

 Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper,
    but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. Prov 28:13

And the Psalmist speaks of the blessing of confession and forgiveness.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
    whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
    and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Psalm 32:1-2

We are given a great promise in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

While it is hard to conceal the sinfulness of our words and actions, the secret sins of our hidden lives, concealed from others often remain unadressed and unconfessed.  Yet we are instructed in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to take every thought captive.   How careful are you to address the sin in your life that no one sees but the Lord?   How concerned are you for holiness in your thought life and in the intimate details of your private life?

Leviticus 15 is a challenging passage.  It speaks of bodily processes that flow from the most intimate of our relationships as well as private afflictions.   Hidden actions and conditions which, though not sinful, are yet declared ritually unclean.  They are unobserved and unobservable by others.  Yet they are the most contagious forms of all the ritual impurities described in Leviticus 11-15.  Impurities no one knows about or sees.  But the Lord knows and sees.   And so ritual, washings, and sacrifices are prescribed to restore the unclean to fellowship and to celebrate the grace of God.  While these ceremonial, ritual purity laws are no longer binding instructions for believers, the Westminster Confession of Faith rightly notes their continuing value for us.

God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, His graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated under the New Testament.

– Westminster Confession of Faith 19.3

The purity laws illustrate powerfully the extent of depravity yet even more the “graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits of Christ.”  And as Pastor Andrew Bonar noted these purity laws exhibit, “the subject of sin – its existence in the world all around us… its transmission, its vileness, original sin in all its deformity and the mode of putting away this loathsome evil.”

Join us as we examine Leviticus 15 and consider the dangers of harboring secret sin. We meet on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.