I want to look at three things in particular:
1. Does God approve of His people eating pork?
2. Is our body a Temple as believers in Yeshua?
3. Does pork have any place in the Temple of God?
Leviticus 11:1-8
1 The LORD spoke again to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them, 2 “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘These are the creatures which you may eat from all the animals that are on the earth. 3 Whatever divides a hoof, thus making split hoofs, and chews the cud, among the animals, that you may eat. 4 Nevertheless, you are not to eat of these, among those which chew the cud, or among those which divide the hoof: the camel, for though it chews cud, it does not divide the hoof, it is unclean to you. 5 Likewise, the shaphan, for though it chews cud, it does not divide the hoof, it is unclean to you; 6 the rabbit also, for though it chews cud, it does not divide the hoof, it is unclean to you; 7 and the pig, for though it divides the hoof, thus making a split hoof, it does not chew cud, it is unclean to you. 8 You shall not eat of their flesh nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.
Deuteronomy 14:7-8
7 Nevertheless, you are not to eat of these among those which chew the cud, or among those that divide the hoof in two: the camel and the rabbit and the shaphan, for though they chew the cud, they do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you. 8 The pig, because it divides the hoof but does not chew the cud, it is unclean for you. You shall not eat any of their flesh nor touch their carcasses.
We see in Leviticus and again in Deuteronomy that God commands us not to eat pigs or to even touch the dead carcass of one. Who is this command given to? It was given to the “…sons of Israel” which is anyone who believes in Messiah because you are part of the commonwealth of Israel when you become a believer. We must come to grips with the fact that what God liked and desired in the Hebrew Scriptures is what He still likes and desires in the Renewed Testament. His plan has not changed. Yeshua confirms that in the gospels.
Malachi 3:5-7
5 “Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me,” says the LORD of hosts. 6 “For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
7 “From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD of hosts. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’
If Elohim changes, then maybe He changes His mind when it comes to our salvation and decides to just wipe us all out for our sin. A great many churchmen cling to the fact of God’s unchanging character except for when it comes to what He has decreed us to do and do not do. Then it is open season to doubt God’s eternal desires of what we eat and do not eat. It is hypocritical at the least and blasphemous to say that Elohim does not care about such things now. Yeshua is in agreement with the Father. God is echad, One.
Okay. God is not for eating pigs. Now how about the question of our body being a Temple?
1 Corinthians 3:16-17
16 Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 17 If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.
Paul is surprised that the Corinthians did not understand the concept of keeping the Temple holy which was their bodies now that the Spirit of God dwelled in them.
1 Corinthians 6:18-20
18 Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
Interestingly here how Paul talks about sins outside the body. When we eat, we take something within us. Yeshua proclaimed in the book of John that those who eat His body and drink His blood abide in Him (Jn. 6:56). The idea of what we take in to the Temple is seen in His proclamation. It is not necessarily the pork itself, but the disobedience that we take in when we eat of it. We choose, again, the forbidden fruit, of the garden instead of all the other trees Adam and Eve were allowed to eat of. We miss the blessing and receive the curse. How many times have we read how bad pork is for your heart?
So does YHVH allow pork in the Temple? Would He want the unclean in His temple? That is the real issue here: unclean versus clean things in our lives.
I want to take you to a story about Antiochus IV Epiphanies. He was a hated ruler of Antioch by the Jews who eventually desecrated the altar by sacrificing a pig on it along with decreeing that they could not keep Sabbath anymore or obey the Torah:
1 Maccabees 1:41-63
41-43Antiochus now issued a decree that all nations in his empire should abandon their own customs and become one people. All the Gentiles and even many of the Israelites submitted to this decree. They adopted the official pagan religion, offered sacrifices to idols, and no longer observed the Sabbath.
44 The king also sent messengers with a decree to Jerusalem and all the towns of Judea, ordering the people to follow customs that were foreign to the country.45 He ordered them not to offer burnt offerings, grain offerings, or wine offerings in the Temple, and commanded them to treat Sabbaths and festivals as ordinary work days.46 They were even ordered to defile the Temple and the holy things in it.47 They were commanded to build pagan altars, temples, and shrines, and to sacrifice pigs and other unclean animals there.48 They were forbidden to circumcise their sons and were required to make themselves ritually unclean in every way they could,49 so that they would forget the Law which the Lord had given through Moses and would disobey all its commands.50 The penalty for disobeying the king's decree was death.
51 The king not only issued the same decree throughout his whole empire, but he also appointed officials to supervise the people and commanded each town in Judea to offer pagan sacrifices.52 Many of the Jews were ready to forsake the Law and to obey these officials. They defiled the land with their evil,53 and their conduct forced all true Israelites to hide wherever they could.
54 On the fifteenth day of the month of Kislev in the year 145, King Antiochus set up
The Awful Horror on the altar of the Temple, and pagan altars were built in the towns throughout Judea.55 Pagan sacrifices were offered in front of houses and in the streets.56 Any books of the Law which were found were torn up and burned,57 and anyone who was caught with a copy of the sacred books or who obeyed the Law was put to death by order of the king.58 Month after month these wicked people used their power against the Israelites caught in the towns.
The Awful Horror on the altar of the Temple, and pagan altars were built in the towns throughout Judea.55 Pagan sacrifices were offered in front of houses and in the streets.56 Any books of the Law which were found were torn up and burned,57 and anyone who was caught with a copy of the sacred books or who obeyed the Law was put to death by order of the king.58 Month after month these wicked people used their power against the Israelites caught in the towns.
59 On the twenty-fifth of the month, these same evil people offered sacrifices on the pagan altar erected on top of the altar in the Temple.60 Mothers who had allowed their babies to be circumcised were put to death in accordance with the king's decree.61 Their babies were hung around their necks, and their families and those who had circumcised them were put to death.62 But many people in Israel firmly resisted the king's decree and refused to eat food that was ritually unclean.63 They preferred to die rather than break the holy covenant and eat unclean food—and many did die.
The prophet Daniel predicted this would happen:
Daniel 11:31
31 Forces from him will arise, desecrate the sanctuary fortress, and do away with the regular sacrifice. And they will set up the abomination of desolation.
Changing the way that God wants things done is nothing new. Rulers such as Antiochus IV have been trying to unify the people by having them all under one pagan rule for centuries. Worship on Sunday and the distaste of things “Jewish” can be attributed to Constantine. Why? If you can unify the people, then it is easier to rule over them. Not to mention, you can celebrate publicly what you like as a ruler. You can spend the people’s money on your rituals and customs because they like the same things and won’t complain to make the example more modern.
The bottom line is that we are the Temple of God, pork has always and will always be unclean, and pork has no place in the Temple of God. Pork desecrates the altar in the Temple and the altar is what makes the sacrifice holy to the Lord. This would apply to all things unclean that we may take in. Please don’t be ignorant and parrot what others have told you no matter how many seminary degrees they have. There are a great many ignorant men in seminary. I know having been there. Find out for yourself.
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