Joy in the Messiah

 חֻקַּת
Chukat   / Decree
Numbers 19:1-22:1
HafTorah Judges 11:1-33
Brit Chadasha John 3:10-21     
     Chukat can be called decrees or ordinances of. It begins with the ordinances of the red heifer and waters; living water, cleansing water, and water from the rock. How profound, coming on the heels of Korach, that Torah brings in the importance of cleansing water – which is Yeshua.  After an encounter with death, we need to embrace the Living Water.  
     In Chukat, Moshe strikes the rock, there is the death of Aaron and Miriam, the journeys, the bronze snake, the defeat of Sihon and Og, and Chukat ends with Numbers 22:1 ‘Then the Israelites traveled to the plains of Moab and camped along the Jordan across from Jericho.’
     Chukat continues the theme of holiness. To grasp the concept that holiness and uncleanness can be transferred from a person to an object, from an object to another object, and from person to person, and by physical contact, or that holiness can be dangerous, is difficult.  Or that only some people are authorized to have holiness, and that those who are not are subject to grave consequences if they go ahead and contract holiness anyway. These are hard and confusing teachings.  But this is what Scripture teaches, pure and unequivocal.  Holiness is asserted as fact in the Brit Chadasha, but it is primarily in the Torah where it is explained and defined.
     Numbers 19 begins with the mystery of the red heifer; anyone who has anything to do with its preparation, death, burning up, and gathering of its ashes becomes unclean. They begin in a clean state but wind up becoming ritually impure. The unclean person (from touching a corpse) is made clean from these ashes of the Red Heifer. But the clean persons who perform the ritual and apply the ashes are made unclean; the same ashes that purify the defiled also defile the pure. 
     This is all about holiness.  Holy is a transliteration from the Hebrew word kodesh or kadosh. This word is better translated as ‘set-apart’ for God. So, the Red Heifer isn’t so much holy as it is kadosh, set apart. But it is not set apart for service to God, but rather for death.  This death is used by God to make His people clean or pure again.  It and the people are to be set apart.  
     The Torah refers to this sacrifice as Hata’at. This Hebrew word is mostly translated as sin offerings, but better translated as a purification offering.  The sin leads to the need for this Hata’at , the effect of the Hata’at is to decontaminate, to purify. Waters of cleansing end the ordeal of the red heifer. 
     A pure red heifer, which has never known a yoke, is reduced to ashes. These ashes are dissolved into the living water, and from the living water comes new life. Numbers 19:9-13.
     In Numbers 20, we read about the sustaining waters that come from the rock. 
     Living water, mayim-ḥayyîm is throughout Scripture. 
     The prophets reference water as Living and flowing. Jeremiah 17:13, Zechariah 14:8-9, Psalm 104:10-11, Isaiah 43:20, Nehemiah 9:20.
     Yeshua speaks of Himself as the source of The Living Water.  In John 4:4-26, He dialogues with the Samaritan woman by Jacob's Well.  In John 7:37-39, at the end of Sukkot, He references Himself as the Living Water. In Revelation 7:13-17, ‘…have washed their robes and made them white…’  In Revelation 22:1-2, there is a river flowing with the water of life. 
     When Yeshua was crucified, to verify His death, the Roman soldier reached up with a spear and pierced His side.  Blood and water flowed. We would expect blood, but water? As in Chukat, blood atones, and water purifies, and both actions are needed. Blood removes sin, water removes uncleanness. Two different things, two different spiritual elements, but Yeshua was and is sufficient for both. The purification mixture in Numbers chapter 19 was blood and water.        
     A strange event occurs in Numbers 21:4-9, the lifting of the bronze serpent.  The people once again murmur, complain, and gossip against Moshe and God, about the food, lack of water, and the worthless bread; this was venom that caused death. God sent fiery snakes that bit the people, causing their deaths due to the venom of the snakes. Moshe cries out for their lives, whereupon God instructs Moshe to make and raise a bronze serpent for the people to look upon to be healed. This was to be an act of repentance, obedience, and faith; to look upon the very thing that caused their deaths – a snake -  now would heal. But it was not the snakes that caused their deaths – it was the act of complaining and gossiping.  It was not the snake on the pole that caused the healing, but rather the faith to obey.   They were to look to the Healer, not to the healing. They were to look to the One that fed them, whom they had murmured against by obedience and faith. 
     The bronze serpent was to point them to healing by the Healer. Eventually, the bronze serpent, called Nehushtan, became an idol, until King Hezekiah destroyed it in 2 Kings 18:4. They forgot the Healer and worshiped the healing. 
    Yeshua, as He dialogues with Nicodemus in John 3:1-21, references the bronze serpent. Nicodemus cannot rationalize the heavenly realm, even though he admits to Yeshua that He is from the Kingdom. Yeshua rebukes Nicodemus, ‘Yeshua answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? ¹¹ Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. ¹² If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?’ John 3:10-12.
     In John 3:13-17, Yeshua likens Himself and His mission to that of the bronze serpent, requiring obedience and faith. ‘No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. ¹⁴ And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. ¹⁷ For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.’
     The snake wasn’t the healer, but the lifting up of the snake and the process of obedience and faith to look upon it was. Just as faith in Yeshua, as He is lifted up, is our healing from earthly death. 
     Numbers 21 continues with water as the LORD gives the people life-sustaining water, Numbers 21:17-18; 'Then Israel sang this song: “Spring up, O well!  Sing about it, about the well that the princes dug, that the nobles of the people sang—the nobles with scepters and staffs.’
 

חֻקַּת
Chukat   / Decree
Numbers 19:1-22:1
HafTorah Judges 11:1-33
Brit Chadasha John 3:10-21

     This parasha begins with the detailed ritual for the red heifer sacrifice and is called the ‘strange ritual’. The failure of people to understand the truth does not make the truth less true. The purpose of this command was to reconcile man back to God after contact with the dead and to purify those who had come in contact with death. 
     Unlike most other sin offerings, the red heifer was not male, but female.  A message in this metaphor might be: would the female sacrifice suggest that the ritual is life-giving? Through women we are born and gain mortal life; through Messiah, we become spiritually reborn and gain eternal life. Yeshua taught this principle when He said, "I am come that they might have life.”  “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.” John 10:11. 
      Numbers 19:1-19 contain the exact instructions of the red heifer; the slaughtering, the blood, how it is to be burned, and the bathing of the priest.  In Numbers 19:9-10 we are given a revelation: 'A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and put them in a ceremonially clean place, outside the camp. They shall be kept by the Israelite community for use in the water of cleansing, it is for purification from sin.' 
    The ashes are gathered up by someone clean, not unclean, pure not impure. The ashes are to go into a clean place and be kept by the community for use in the water of cleansing for the purification of sin.
       Chukat continues with Moses striking the rock after The LORD specifically commanded him to speak to the rock in Numbers 20:1-13. Moses is denied entry into the land, for not honoring God as holy before the people.  In Numbers 20:9-11 Moshe alludes to a misguided statement that he too is part of the solution, bringing water from the rock. When in fact, it was God and God alone. ‘So Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, just as he commanded him. ¹⁰ He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” ¹¹ Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.’  Notice the ‘we’.
     The LORD once again gives the people life-sustaining water in Numbers 21:17-18 ‘Then Israel sang this song: “Spring up, O well!  Sing about it, about the well that the princes dug, that the nobles of the people sang—the nobles with scepters and staffs.” Numbers 21 continues with Israel conquering the Amorites and the surrounding settlements.
   Chukat ends with Numbers 22:1 ‘Then the Israelites traveled to the plains of Moab and camped along the Jordan across from Jericho.’
     We may not understand the purpose of the red heifer, but what we do know is that we follow the commands of Adonai to the best of our ability.