Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] It. Please be seated.
[00:00:06] As I mentioned, we are going to keep talking through the Book of Leviticus. And now we get to Leviticus 13 and 14. And I'm going to give you a word, and you tell me what comes to mind. When I say the word infection.
[00:00:23] What's the first word that comes to your mind? What's the first thing that comes to your mind?
[00:00:30] Yeah.
[00:00:32] Nasty things, right? Things growing on the skin that shouldn't be there. Disgusting things. But if you also say the word infection to somebody that loves you, it might create a different thing, like fear or worry, anxiety. Like maybe there's something happening to somebody that I love, I don't understand it. And it creates a great deal of emotions deep inside me. Worry, uneasiness. Whoa, that shouldn't be there. What the heck is that on my skin, right?
[00:01:00] I remember a couple of years ago during COVID I had to move a toilet out of my house, and I was carrying this toilet and the top of the tank fell off right on my big toe. And it smashed and created a gash in my big toe. And I thought to myself, well, that's dumb. I probably should. The first thing I thought of is I should have moved them separately, moved the tank, then moved the lid of the tank. But being a guy and wanting to get it all done easy, I chose the easy route. So this thing cracked into my toe. I end up going to the hospital. The nurse comes over and she says, okay, here's the deal. You have two choices. We can stitch it up because it needs stitches, or we can glue it.
[00:01:47] And I said, glue it.
[00:01:49] Who am I going to be impressing with my big toe these days, right? So just glue it. I don't care if there's a scar gash. It may look good, right? Maybe like Sylvester Stallone these days. You ever seen that guy? Yeah, he's got quite a bit of gashes. Anyway, so they glued it, and she said, make sure you keep it clean. Okay? So I went home, worked hard at keeping it clean. It was glued, it was fine. In about a week's time, it turned a different color, it grew into different shapes, and there was something inside of it that started to hurt. And so Beth and I were talking, and Beth said, of course you go back to the doctor. So I went back to the doctor. She said, yeah, that doesn't look good at all. So then I ended up getting stitches. So I should have got stitches. The first time she gave me an injection, it was infected, it was nasty. And I said, Doc, am I going to lose my toe? Just tell me, am I going to lose my toe? Because I know how to stand without a big toe. She said, now, it'll be fine, just keep it clean. So I kept it clean. It went away. But I got to tell you, when I looked at I still have a picture of it if you'd like to see it afterwards, but would you like to? The nurse in the congregation goes, yes, I'd like to see that picture, but it just looks so nasty. I thought, I got to take a picture of that.
[00:03:08] It worried me. It shouldn't look like that. There was infection that took place. And then you think to yourself, what is the outcome of this thing? How bad is this going to get?
[00:03:17] The Hebrew people in Leviticus, chapter 13 and 14 are given instructions for how to deal with skin infections. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, why, oh, why are we talking about this on a Sunday morning? I'm glad you asked, because as I was studying this, I thought the same thing. Why, oh, why are we going to take time to talk about pussy weird growths infected on our skin? We're going to do it because it's next in the line of things that we talk about in Leviticus, and it tells us a little something about the person of God. If you're using your Bibles and you want to follow along, or you can follow along on the screen, it'll be up there as well. But we're going to start in Leviticus 13, chapter one. Here's how it starts. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, when a person has on the skin of his body a swelling or an eruption of a spot, isn't that gross? Yeah. Think of toilet tanks hitting toes and it turns into a case of Leprous disease on the skin of his body. Then he shall be brought to Aaron and the priest, or one of the sons of the priest, and the priest shall examine the diseased area on the skin of his body. And if the hair on the I'm glad you're sitting for this. If the hair in the diseased area has turned white and the disease area appears deeper than the skin of his body, it is a case of Leprous disease. When the priest has examined him, he shall pronounce him. What church, Unclean? Just like the woman that went in and saw my toe screaming out of the room, unclean. Unclean. No, she didn't. But all of you probably would have if you had seen the thing. So this is God telling the children of Israel how to take care of skin issues.
[00:05:03] You got to understand, we don't have this going on today. We have medicine, we have doctors, we have nurses, we have knowledge that they didn't have back then. And I think it very interesting that they get rescued out of Egypt and then God gives them ways that they can approach him in worship, ways that they deal with family, ways that they think about life and ways that they think about death. All of these things that we've talked about, he invades every part of their lives and says, this is how I want you to think. This is how I want you to value this part of life. This is how I want you to be critical about what you see in this part of life. And now he's entered into the medical field, and if you read Leviticus 13 and 14, there's all kinds of medical talk in here about how they should and should not deal with skin issues, skin diseases. And we talked about last week, we talked about if only they had actually read this and done this in the Middle Ages, they could have stopped a lot of the diseases that were happening then.
[00:06:06] This is old time stuff. This is 4000 years ago. This has been in the Bible all this time. And it's not until the modern era that we realized we should have been paying attention to this a long time ago. Jesus, God in his great mercy, has this brand new organization's, brand new family called the Jewish Nation. And he says, my goal is to protect and preserve you. So let's talk about issues that you deal with every day. Don't you think that's really gracious of God? Like, it could be one thing for God to say, now you belong to me, good luck. But instead he takes all of these chapters and deals with like if the hair looks like it's deeper in the skin than it should, and it turns green or pussy underneath, there's a bigger issue. And you're going to yourself, Why? It's because he loves us. He takes care of us. He wants what's best for us.
[00:07:00] This word, you may look at it and you may go, okay, well, that's leprosy.
[00:07:05] Let me tell you a little bit about why we have the word leprosy here. All right? The word actually in Hebrew is Sarat serat. The first test, if you see a serat, a lesion in the skin, the first test is to see whether it's turned white or deeper than skin deep. We've read that already. The second test is, was there any peeling of the skin or exposed skin? There is so many verses, we don't have time to read them all. But in your free time, you're welcome to do that if you'd like to do that. But basically it goes into detail. If there's something flaking off, if it's deeper, if it's like a scab that you used to eat when you were kids, if it's something like that, then you missed that, didn't you? Then if it's a patchy condition, if it looks red, it could be any of these things. So you're probably thinking to yourself, well, okay, a skin lesion doesn't necessarily mean leprosy. And you would be right.
[00:08:05] The reason we have the term leprosy in here is because the Septuagint translated serat as lepra.
[00:08:14] The septuagint is the Greek version of the Old Testament. Hebrew. And when they translated it, they translated serat. Anytime they saw Sarat as lepra. And so when you got your English translation, all the times you have lepra, it got turned into leprosy.
[00:08:33] But all of these things are not leprosy. How do I know that? Because if it's leprosy, it's a pretty quick identifying measure, right? If it's leprosy, you're going, yeah, that's leprosy. Yeah. Stay away from that. Right? You don't need two chapters about how deep it is. If the hair is white or if it's underneath, you don't need all of that. It is very clear that's leprosy. This was a passage that doesn't only deal with leprosy. And if it were, it would be much, much shorter. And you should know, leprosy way back then was very rare as it is today.
[00:09:10] Leprosy was very rare. In fact, it isn't even mentioned in any archaeological any writings that we have found until fifth century Ad. The word leprosy.
[00:09:23] But because we translated Sarat as lepra, it got translated into leprosy, which we look at and we go, this whole passage is on leprosy. But it's not this is not only dealing with leprosy. These deal with any skin disease that seems to go deeper than skin surface. This does not anywhere, by the way, say if your limbs are falling off, which is what leprosy does. Did you know leprosy came originally from Armadillos? That's where it came from. And apparently this leprosy is only transmitted and I could be wrong on this, so if I am, I'd love for somebody to tell me, but in all the reading that I've done, only transmitted skin to skin, person to person. No, it's more than that.
[00:10:08] Oh, yeah. So I'm looking at the nurse in the audience and I'm hoping that's no, but everything that I've read, only skin to skin. So leprosy is dealt with in this passage, but not only leprosy, all of these things. There's just a vast assortment of skin diseases that we are told about. This deals with any extremity, ulcerations or growth that is going on on the skin. Let me take you a little further and you can see what I mean. Verse five. And the priest shall examine him on the 7th day. This is after he's isolated it's like COVID. And if in his eyes the disease is checked and the disease has not spread in the skin, then the priest shall shut him up for another seven days. And then the priest shall examine him again on the 7th day. And if the disease area has faded and the disease has not spread on the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him clean. It's only an eruption. Don't you love that? I love it when the Bible says it's only an eruption. Don't worry, it's only an eruption. What? Okay, so it's only an eruption. And he shall wash his clothes and he shall be clean.
[00:11:20] The consequences of finding some sort of skin problem on you would be isolation. If it doesn't clear up in seven days, you got another seven days. This isolation was to protect others, right? This is interesting because, again, if we had been doing this, we would have saved ourselves some challenges over the history of humanity. I love the thoroughness of God. Even the case of baldness is discussed. Leviticus 1340. If a man's hair falls out of his head, he is just bald, he is clean. Don't you love that, Pastor Michael? He's breathing a sigh of relief here because he can imagine, like you're taking a shower, you're going, whoa, what the heck is this? Right? So you're thinking to yourself, ah, I'm unclean. Call the priest. Call the priest. And even God takes advantage. God takes this situation. He says that's kind of a natural thing that happens to some people, and don't worry about it if it happens to you. However, sometimes baldness might be an indication losing your hair might be an indication something's wrong. So he goes on to say in Leviticus 1342, but if there is on the bald head or on the bald forehead, a reddish white diseased area, it is a leprous disease, sarat disease, breaking out on his bald head or his bald forehead. So if you're losing your hair and you see, oh boy, there's a weird thing happening up there, it's saying, there's something deeper, there's something greater here. This could be another issue. It's a serrat. It's something that you should be aware of. Why do I think that leprosy isn't just all this is talking about because of all these different verses and the fact that God goes on to explain how houses have serat, or as you read in here, houses have leprosy. Houses don't have leprosy, but houses have this disease. And so it goes on to use the same word. Look at this. In verse 33, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron said and said, when you come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for possession, and I put a case of what does it say there leprous disease in a house?
[00:13:40] Well, there's no leprous disease in the house, in the land or your possession, then he who owns the house shall come out. Tell the priest. This seems to be a case of disease in my house. Obviously, this is some sort of a mildew problem. This is some sort of a problem in a house that is turning colors on the surface like my toe did when I dropped the toilet on it. And it really should be taken seriously. This could lead to serious sickness.
[00:14:09] Mildew will turn to mold. And if you live in a house that has mold, that's not good. Can you believe that? God even helps them understand if your house has mold, you should get out.
[00:14:23] A house can't have leprosy, but God uses the same word. The same word to show the folks that there is a disease on the skin of the house that could make you sick if you come in contact with it.
[00:14:36] All right, verse 37.
[00:14:40] And they shall examine the disease. This is the priest comes in to look at the house. And if the disease is in the walls of the house with greenish or red spots can you believe look how detailed this is. If there's greenish or red spots, and if it appears to be deeper than the surface sarat something deeper than just on the surface, then the priest shall go out of the house, to the door of the house and shut up the house seven days. And the priest shall come again on the 7th day. And look. And if the disease has spread into the walls of the house, then the priest shall command that they take out the stones, which is the disease, and throw them into an unclean place outside the city.
[00:15:20] God is giving them means whereby they can keep themselves safe, protected from mold.
[00:15:28] I read all this and I think to myself, this is really interesting because not because I like talking about all this gross stuff and disgusting things, but because God seems very, very interested in helping his people understand the details of how something can make them sick.
[00:15:46] And that tells me something about God's heart. What does it tell you about God's heart?
[00:15:51] To me, it tells me that God is concerned about our health.
[00:15:55] He's concerned about our welfare. He doesn't want us to be in places where we're going to get sick. A house is to be isolated first and then maybe abandoned the bricks taken out and dumped into another location. In fact, let me just give you an overall view. In Leviticus 13, there are 21 different cases of skin disease discussed. In Leviticus 13, there are three different cases of disease garments discussed. So if you have disease garments, it tells you how you should deal with those. Disease garments would have, like, a sickness in them. Serat something that will make you sick if you wear it. And there's two different versions of what could happen in a house. When a house is diseased and has leprosy, as we have the term given to us in Leviticus 13 and 14, our merciful God introduces a regulatory process so we can determine the environmental dangers that might bring us sickness.
[00:16:56] I think that shows God's mercy. There's a statement of the symptoms. There's a priestly inspection. There's specific symptoms that this priest is supposed to look for. And then the priest diagnoses and gives treatment how this thing should be used.
[00:17:13] I want you to know the nations around Israel are not doing this. They don't have a list of, hey, look for reddish or green spots in the bricks of your house.
[00:17:25] They just have sicknesses that they come up and they don't know how to deal with it. And so the nations around them were doing magical rites. They were using potions. They were using all these different things that they could think of witchcraft to get rid of the disease, the sicknesses, the serat that was going on in a family or in a home or in garments.
[00:17:47] But God in his mercy because God is a God of science.
[00:17:52] God in his mercy gives us Leviticus 13 and 14, gives these people Leviticus 13 and 14 because he cares about them and he wants to give them medical attention. What really helps them, if the person claimed to be healed, there would be another inspection by the priest and then through various sacrifices and whatnot, that person would be clean, declared to be cleaned and allowed back into society.
[00:18:18] Remember, uncleanness isn't the same as sin.
[00:18:22] So if you have an unclean house, it doesn't mean that you're living in sin. Sometimes mold happens.
[00:18:29] If you have an unclean situation where you have lesions on your body, it doesn't mean that you're being judged for your sin. It just means sometimes bad things happen. We live in a world of sin. These things are not supposed to happen, but they do. And so God in his mercy says, when they do, here's how you can deal with it. Sometimes you just get sick by touching something that infects you. By the way, Costco just did a recall of a bunch of meat over this past week. Did you know that you should look this up because apparently there is a meat product that's done by their own organization in Costco and they're saying, please don't eat this, this pork, because it might be tainted. Well, they didn't have any of that back here. But what they had was a God who loved them and wanted to take care of them by helping them understand how to stay away from things that infected them or that had the potential of making them sick. Once you were labeled sick, once you were labeled unclean, whether it was your fault or not your fault, once you got that label, your life changed.
[00:19:38] Leviticus 13 verse 45 says this the leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and then he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, saying, Unclean, unclean. And he shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone, and his dwelling shall be outside the camp.
[00:20:10] This would be a terrifying scenario.
[00:20:15] Keep in mind, this does not mean that somebody is being judged for their sin or doing something wrong that they shouldn't be doing. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is because they disobey God's law and they touch things or they eat things, or they get involved with things that they shouldn't. Sometimes life just happens and they buy meat from Costco and they end up getting sick.
[00:20:38] It is a sick person's responsibility at this point to tear his clothes, let his hair grow down or shave it altogether, put a covering on his upper lip when anybody approaches him, he cries out, Unclean, unclean.
[00:20:53] And then to live outside the camp in isolation, this would have been life changing.
[00:21:01] Clean is about proximity and protection, proximity to God's presence. Only clean people could have access to God. The people needed to be clean in order to have a relationship with God, and it was protection from anything that harms. These people were traveling. They were moving about from place to place. They were going through different cultures and eating different kinds of foods. And any disease that they would get through all of this activity would rush through the camp and there would be no stopping it. There were no antibiotics, there were no doctors, there's no surgeries to be had. They were at the mercy of the world in which they lived.
[00:21:40] Leviticus 13 and 14 are all about how to contain contagious skin diseases. And I think about if this happened to a person, the future that they would have is that they would remain outside the camp alone until they were healed or they died, and they would live in total isolation.
[00:21:59] Isolation, in other words, isolation with the diseased.
[00:22:05] If you're inside the camp, you have a chance to worship God. If you're outside the camp, you were outside, and you were not allowed in the presence of God or your family or friends any longer.
[00:22:18] Outside the camp is where executions took place. Outside the camp is where garbage was dumped. Outside the camp is where the refuse was carried. Outside the camp is where people who had disease were and who were avoided. And I have to take a little sidebar here and say, jesus loved to walk outside the camp.
[00:22:39] I love that about Jesus. He's constantly walking outside the walls of Jerusalem. You can see this. He's hardly ever in Jerusalem. He's always outside and he's always around people who have leprosy. And the thing that amazes me with Jesus is instead of walking up to somebody and seeing somebody with some sort of a skin disease and thinking to yourself, that might be something I would catch, so I'm going to run the other way. Jesus walks right up to them, and instead of the person running away from the disease, jesus walks toward the disease and the disease runs away.
[00:23:21] Outside the camp is where executions, isolation, it's where people avoided going. It's spoken of in the Bible in different passages as being cut off, dwelling with the dead, forsaken remembered no more. In fact, shiol is compared to living outside of the camp.
[00:23:38] Shiol, we got a slide on that. Shield is another word for death, for destruction.
[00:23:48] This situation where you get cast outside of the camp is like living in it's, like living dead. God graciously helps people see their sickness, identify it, isolate it, and deal with it. So I would say this sickness is not necessarily God's judgment, but it is the sad reality of living in a fallen world.
[00:24:09] Sickness is not necessarily God's judgment, just the sad reality that we live in a fallen world.
[00:24:17] Toilet tanks, tops that fall on toes shouldn't necessarily cause infections, but they do because they're not clean.
[00:24:27] Sickness cannot and should not be ignored and God intends for us to deal with it in a healthy way.
[00:24:33] So all of that is a message.
[00:24:37] But the so whats is what really matters.
[00:24:40] And I only have two for you. And this is where I want you to just walk with me, walk this journey a little bit and discover a deeper truth in Leviticus 13 and 14 than we may not appreciate. Surface level number one physical sickness reveal a spiritual truth.
[00:24:59] Sin brought sickness into the world. Sickness is not meant to be here. Sin has brought sickness and death into the world. This means we all struggle with sickness and we all succumb to death. We all sin. We've all fallen short of the glory of God. There is none righteous. No, not one.
[00:25:17] We have a problem because we live in a world of sin. Whether it's our sin or the sin just exists in the world around us, we live with the consequences of what sin has brought into our world. This does not mean that we can get rid of sickness and disease in this world any more than it means that we get rid of sin and death. But leprosy was never meant to be an obstacle in this world.
[00:25:44] Sickness was never meant to be an obstacle in this world. Neither was cancer or cholera or COVID. None of these things were meant to be an obstacle for us in this world. All kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease live because we live in a sin filled world. Serat is all around us. Not just leprosy, but all kinds of sickness, all kinds of disease. And sometimes we get pummeled by it. Not doing anything but shopping at Costco or living in a world of COVID Sometimes we just get pummeled by it. We find out we have cancer. Something goes wrong with our body. It functions not like it was supposed to function. And sometimes we just get pummeled by the fact we live in a world that is decaying and our body decays with it. Sometimes we invite it in.
[00:26:30] Sometimes we think to ourselves sin can be played with a little bit. Surely this won't really hurt me. And you walk down that road far enough and then you realize how much you've lost. Sin will cost you more than you're willing to pay. It will keep you longer than you're willing to stay.
[00:26:48] And it will take you places that you'd never want to go.
[00:26:52] The warning by God is simply this exposing yourself to sicknesses will result in you becoming sick and church. Exposing ourselves to sin will result in us becoming sick.
[00:27:06] The leviticus warning is simple. It's physical. If you expose yourself to a situation that God warns you about, you will likely become infected.
[00:27:16] The extended truth is this if you expose yourself to sin, you will likely become infected.
[00:27:25] It's the sad truth. Sin lives to destroy.
[00:27:30] It lives to isolate.
[00:27:34] It lives to tear down. It lives to decay. It will take stuff from you.
[00:27:41] And yet we feel like sometimes in this world we can play with it, and the damage won't be that great.
[00:27:50] God never explains sin in those terms.
[00:27:53] In fact, God explains your enemy in these terms.
[00:27:57] He says, be aware. Be sober minded. Your enemy, the devil, goes around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may play with, seeking whom he may devour.
[00:28:13] Your enemy will use anything against you your own desires, your own fallenness, your own weaknesses, the people you love, the children you bear. He will use whatever thing that he can find that kink in the armor, and he will look to make it wide and great and deep and in it. There is a truth from Leviticus 13 and 14 that that infection, that infection of sin in the world around us will damage us more than we are prepared to acknowledge.
[00:28:47] Some things you just have to deal with mildew garments, psoriasis, house mold, baldness. You just got to deal with it.
[00:28:57] Sometimes cleaning can help. Sometimes getting a medical shot can help. Sometimes medicine can help. But if you neglect the mildew, what happens?
[00:29:11] It grows. If you neglect the sickness, what happens gets worse.
[00:29:18] And the same truth is about sin. Once you neglect or start hiding those small red spots spiritually, they will grow into things you never imagined.
[00:29:30] You need a professional to say how bad it is. So in this day, you would call a priest and the priest would go, yeah, that's bad. You should really get that fixed or get out of the house or get out of the town.
[00:29:44] No physical physician would ever keep their license if they went around going, yeah, that's not that bad. I just put some windex on it. You'll be fine.
[00:29:56] If a physician told you that you had a sickness but didn't give you the means whereby you could get better, you should stop going to that physician. Or if they lied to you and said, yeah, it's not that bad, you'll be fine, you might think about suing them if you end up getting very sick. And here's the truth.
[00:30:15] People in this world are not innately good.
[00:30:19] They are not innately healthy.
[00:30:23] This world is not getting morally better and better. It is getting worse and worse. It is the natural movement of sin.
[00:30:33] Sin will not make this world better. It will corrupt it more and more. And if you're thinking things are worse now than they were when you were a kid, you would be correct.
[00:30:44] We are watching the decline of the Roman civilization in America.
[00:30:49] Rome danced and toasted to their greatness while the Visgoths came over the walls and. In America. We are so high on ourselves that we fight about all of these useless little things that are going on toasting to our greatness and realizing our own idols, our own wealth and our own worth that we are losing the soul of who we are. And that vacuum will be filled by evil. It will.
[00:31:20] America will fall. Every nation does. It's just a matter of when.
[00:31:27] I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that is the trajectory of sin.
[00:31:35] And why am I telling you that? Because it's my job.
[00:31:42] It's the priest coming in and you're going, does this look that bad to you? What kind of a priest would say, no, it looks fine to me? And then you wake up in the morning and your arms laying on the floor.
[00:31:55] Well, you told me it was fine. Yeah, it'll be fine.
[00:32:01] The truth is, sin began with one piece of fruit in disobedience eaten by one person, and it spread like fire throughout the world. The ripple effect by Genesis, chapter three caused the first murder to take place. And by Genesis six, the world had gone to the toilet where God would bring a flood to correct things.
[00:32:27] Sin filled the whole earth. And if you're going to a church or a physician or a spiritual person and you're saying, how bad is it? And they're saying, It's not that bad. God will adjust to your sin. You need to look for a different physician, by the way. Somebody should really say something.
[00:32:46] Somebody should point out the devastation that sin brings. What made the priest an expert?
[00:32:52] Ever think of that? He didn't go to school for medical degree. What made the priest an expert? I'm glad you asked. I would say there's four things. One, he follows the revelation of the law of God. In scripture, God gives details. Here's what you need to look for. Not all leprosy. Some of these things are serat. They need to be identified.
[00:33:13] He's a non, partial to the situation. He doesn't have any stake in the matter. Number three, he's experienced in this area because he's done it before. He's dealt with this kind of thing before. He's seen pus filled lesions before. And four, he's called by God to do this. This is his job. Now, who does this sound like to you today?
[00:33:37] Who does this sound like to you today?
[00:33:41] Some of you might say, that sounds like a doctor. I would disagree. Maybe he does some of those things, but he's not fulfilling them all. Some of you might say, well, that sounds like a pastor. A pastor should do that. I would disagree with that too. You know who I think this sounds like?
[00:34:00] Look at the person next to you and the person next to them.
[00:34:06] Why doesn't this sound like all of us? Look at the list.
[00:34:11] This list is how Christ followers are supposed to behave. This list doesn't just apply to pastors or doctors. This list applies to priests in the Old Testament, Leviticus 13 and 14. But Church, I would say this list applies to you if you're a follower of Jesus Christ. This list is what we're called to do. We are called to live in a world and say, no, that's not right. Yes, that is right. In a world that says you've got to change your thinking, we say, that's not what God demands.
[00:34:41] That's not God's purpose. That's not God's plan. We are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.
[00:34:52] And when you come up to somebody and you see the sickness in their lives, if you just go, yeah, God loves you anyway, you are a bad physician.
[00:35:01] You're a bad priest. Why would I say that? Because James 519 says this my brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and read the next three words, would you please? Four words and someone brings him back.
[00:35:22] Are you someone?
[00:35:24] I'm someone. Wouldn't you like to be a someone too? Everybody's a someone. If someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.
[00:35:44] Leviticus 13 and 14 is talking to the priest to identify that the serat that is eating away physically for the people around them. But church, God is calling us as priests, followers of his, to be that same kind of his mouthpiece and to help people understand that thing is going to kill you. Because if we do it in love and we do it in grace, but we tell the truth, we may save that person from a multitude of sin.
[00:36:17] In God's mercy, he allows us to see the consequence of sin in a physical reality. It is precisely our need for healing that draws us to God. Anyone that ever comes to Jesus has to realize there's something wrong.
[00:36:32] There's something wrong in here.
[00:36:34] And so we don't look at them and say, no, there's nothing wrong. We look at them and say, yeah, there's something wrong. You should really get that fixed. Your arm's going to fall off. Man spiritually, you cannot do anything to heal yourself. You must come under the examination light of Jesus Christ and church. That's our calling.
[00:36:58] James 123 says this for as anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer. He's like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and he goes away and at once forgets what he was like. He looks at the law of God, he looks at the Bible, he looks at who Jesus is, and he says to himself, I know that's true, but I'm okay.
[00:37:18] And we live in a world that is doing just that.
[00:37:23] I know that's true, but I'm okay. That's your truth.
[00:37:27] But this is my truth.
[00:37:31] Listen, no one looks at Leprosy and says, oh yeah, that looks fine. You're going to be okay.
[00:37:37] You look at Leprosy and you go, dude, you should really do something about that. That's going to be a problem.
[00:37:44] We don't just dismiss sin. We make people understand the putridness of sin, what it really looks like to God and how damaging it is to us and Leviticus. They didn't know the dangers of what they were seeing.
[00:37:57] They needed help. They needed a priest to look at it and they needed to stop hiding it.
[00:38:02] They needed to expose it to the priest and say, listen, this is here. I'm not hiding it with my sleeves anymore. Can you tell me, is this going to be a problem for me? And the priest goes, Let me get my light, looks at it and goes, yeah, that's a major problem. Get out now.
[00:38:18] Jesus offers us the same light. We do not know the danger we are in. We need the light of Jesus Christ to be shined on our sin so that we can see how desperate we are in mercy. Jesus came to shine the light on our sin. John three, you know, John 316 for God so love the world that anyone who believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Good verse, right? God did not the next verse says, God did not come into the world skin then the world, but that the world through him might be saved because the world is condemned already. We're all dying, we all got spots on us. And then if you read a little further down verse 19 and this is the judgment, listen to this the light has come into the world. Think of this medical light.
[00:39:02] The light has come into the world. And people love darkness rather than light because their works were evil. Shut off the light.
[00:39:10] I don't want it to show me what's wrong with me. For everyone who does verse 20, everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come into the light lest his works should be exposed.
[00:39:24] If you've got friends that are going la la, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. That is the natural reaction of someone who wants to stay in the dark.
[00:39:36] But for those of us that know Christ, it was like, yeah, I want to come into the light. Would you show me? Would you show me where the sickness is?
[00:39:46] If you were sold a Jesus that doesn't take sin seriously, you were sold a fraud.
[00:39:52] Jesus came to show us how to overcome the sickness of our sin. God has no patience for pastors or religious teachers who do not take sin seriously. Listen to this. One of my favorite verses from Jeremiah. This is how God describes priests and prophets who don't take sin seriously. Listen to this. Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not ashamed. They did not know how to blush.
[00:40:24] We live in a world that does not know how to blush.
[00:40:30] They are not only living in sin, but they are promoting it and demanding we do the same.
[00:40:36] They don't know how to blush. But we, as followers of Jesus Christ, we do. Because we look at God's law. We look at Jesus Christ and we go, that's not right. That's a sickness and I'm not buying it.
[00:40:51] Leprosy is disgusting and so is our sin to God.
[00:40:55] So I would say this last one, jesus alone can cure the leprosy of our sin. Sin corrupts, infects and destroys. We have to deal with it. The good news, by the way, that is the term for the Gospel. This is good news. This is good news. The good news is you don't have to be destroyed by your sin any longer. Sin does not have to rule over how many songs do we sing, Beth? That deal with the fact that we are in change no longer. We are bound no longer. Sin no longer has authority over us. That is good news. That's why the Gospel is called good news.
[00:41:27] Imagine the despair of being called unclean for the very first time.
[00:41:34] Hey, priest, can you show me? What does this mean? The priest brings his light over and he looks at, he goes, oh, man, I'm sorry.
[00:41:42] You got to get out of Dodge right now. Don't even pack your stuff, just get out.
[00:41:47] Can you imagine how that must have went? The despair that must have gone through their hearts? It's like sitting, I'm sure, in a doctor's office and receiving the bad, the worst news that you could receive. And the first thing you think is, you must have made a mistake. Would you take a look again? It can't be cancer.
[00:42:06] It can't be leprosy. It can't be that bad. Just look again. Don't need to look again.
[00:42:12] Your life has changed. You need to get out of this house, get out of the camp.
[00:42:17] You need to go outside the walls and never come back. You'll never see your family again. You'll never look at your children in the eye again.
[00:42:26] By contrast, can you imagine the joy of healing if that thing got healed miraculously by God? Can you imagine the joy when you watch that thing get healed and you come back to your family and you restore it to your nation, to your clan?
[00:42:50] When John the Baptist got arrested and he's about to be beheaded, he realized he's going to die.
[00:42:58] John the Baptist was a forerunner of Jesus Christ.
[00:43:02] He's in jail. It is not a pretty thing. And he begins to think to himself, maybe it's not Jesus.
[00:43:10] And any of us would do the same.
[00:43:13] We're thinking to ourselves, I'm going to die, and I want to be sure. This Jesus is the Messiah. Is this true? Is this right? So John the Baptist calls his disciples together. And he says to them, listen, you got to go find Jesus. I'm going to die. And I just want him to tell me. Just tell me. Is he the messiah? I need to hear it from his own lips. And you coming back telling me. That's all I need to hear. And I'll gladly die for him, but I just need to be sure.
[00:43:41] And his disciples go, and they look for Jesus and they deliver the message. And you know what Jesus says? He doesn't say yes, and he doesn't say no.
[00:43:52] Instead, this is what he says in Luke seven.
[00:43:55] And he answered them. Listen to this. Go and tell John what you have seen and what you have heard. The blind receive sight, the lame walk.
[00:44:07] Read the next one.
[00:44:10] The lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised up. The poor have the good news preached to them, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me. Jesus doesn't say, Tell John. He's an idiot. Of course he knows I'm the Messiah. Don't tell him. Just don't. Go even lovingly and tell Him yes and correct. Don't do any of that. Just tell him lepers are cleansed, blind see, dead, raised. Do you know what Jesus said to him? I can fix things.
[00:44:40] I came to fix things.
[00:44:44] Where I walk, leprosy runs. I am the healer of all things. And the reason he healed the bodies of the people in the New Testament is to prove us a spiritual point. Listen, church, the only person that can heal you spiritually is Jesus Christ.
[00:45:01] Physical death physical sickness has no power over him, and neither does spiritual death and spiritual sickness. How do I know that? Because he died and he rose again. You wonder why we sing about Jesus all the time? Because we believe he can heal and fix anything.
[00:45:20] If you're not offended by Jesus, he says in this verse, he comes and he offers to examine your heart, too.
[00:45:28] A spiritual serat can be purified by the blood of Jesus Christ. A spiritual sickness can be cleaned by the blood of Jesus Christ. How does that happen? Because we're told in two Corinthians 521. For our sake. He made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. He became our putrid sickness so that we could become his holy righteousness.
[00:45:53] Be aware. Take spiritually sickness as seriously as physical sickness. Physical sickness is a reminder to us. We live in a spiritually sick world, and we need healing. We need help.
[00:46:10] Behold the man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. His dying breath has brought me life. I know that it is finished.
[00:46:33] I leave you with this great verse and church. I hope that this message has made you more bold and courageous in this dark world to shine the light of truth, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the darkest places around us and to encourage you to that end, I leave you with Isaiah 118. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like red splotches on your belly, red splotches on your skin, though your sin are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Purified. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Jesus can make you less infected and less infectious by redeeming your life.
[00:47:25] Let's pray.
