Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Leviticus, chapter 13. Open up your Bibles, if you would.
[00:00:10] I want to tell you a sentence that no parent ever wants to hear.
[00:00:16] I'm sorry, but your child has headlights.
[00:00:24] Some of you are like, oh, why did he go there? So what's interesting about head lice is about 50% of people who have it start itching, but the itching doesn't happen for about six weeks. And there's also something called phantom. Itching where you just hear the word and you want to itch. And so, for what it's worth, you can do it. It's fine. I invite you. It's like a yawn. The moment you hear it, you seemingly can't not do it. Now, I have to out myself. Some of you are going to officially know that I don't just look like one of the weirdest people you know. I am probably my wife and I mostly me, but my wife and I, we started years ago a head lice remediation company. It is since closed right before COVID we shut it down because do you know what you need for headlice companies to make it? You need school to be in. So when school shut down in COVID, we shut down right before that. Praise God. So I am an expert on all things headlice trained, all that kind of stuff. You name it, it's a real thing. But do you know that we still actually have our phone number out there? And so, even though the company is closed some weeks, I can get 45678 910 calls a week to my cell phone. And I ignore most of them because, again, the business is closed. But every once in a while, I love to pick up the phone and it's almost always a mother and she is almost always panicking and freaking out and it is my delight and I'm like, hey, listen, I owned a company. We're closed. I can refer you to somebody who can help you, but let's just have a dialogue. So by the time we get done, the moms almost always tell me, oh, my gosh, this has been incredible. Thank you so much. I am so relieved. And all of our friends, they thought we were nuts until they got headlice and then we were heroes.
[00:02:22] So what happens is, when you get headlice, you go in for a treatment. Don't do the over the counter stuff. Just if you ever get it, call me, I'll help you. But don't do that, please. And so you get treatment and then you have to come back two weeks later to confirm.
[00:02:41] Every once in a while, a child, usually a child. And by the way, every single girl that I've ever cleaned out their hair, I have never not seen glitter. For what it's worth, it's from the devil. All right, so what was I talking about? I got so distracted by glitter. So every once in a while so at the two week checkup, they'd come back and there would be an adult Laos. That's how you say the singular version. And do you know what that means? It doesn't mean we didn't do our job. What it means is they didn't find the original contagion. They didn't find the original source. So we can clean you out and get you perfect and ready to go. But if you go back and you're hanging out with the person who has it, guess what? You're going to come back two weeks later. So then we would do another treatment shorter. And then we'd say, come back two weeks later. And the worst was when Moms would come back and I'd be like, you haven't found the source yet. You have to find the source. Let me tell you why this happens. I'm itching do you see this? This is a mental issue. I'm comfortable with this subject and I still itch because what happens is lice, they travel in harems and they're like acrobats. And so all it takes is hair, two people's hair, just a brush and a crew of them go over. And so it's that easy. And so you just want to make sure your hair is not brushing up against someone else's. And finally, some of you are like, this is church. I want you to feel what the people in Leviticus feel. So I'm just throwing you a bone right now, all right?
[00:04:13] But when the mother would come back, it's almost always the mom. After two weeks, here's what I would say. You're clean. It's all clean. And let me tell you, we were heroes.
[00:04:27] We were heroes. And let me tell you one of the reasons, in case you're wondering what is wrong with this guy, there's a huge familial history here that's epic. But you get somebody in a chair for 3 hours and they have to listen to you. You can talk about whatever you want. And so we hired all of our technicians, we're from village church, and all of them, I said, talk about Jesus from beginning to end. Share the gospel, talk about spiritual things. Where else are they going to go? You have the answer to their greatest fear and anxiety. And so we would just talk about Jesus. And it was an absolute delight in one of the weirdest circumstances. But I got to tell you, the emotional sigh of relief, you are clean.
[00:05:13] This series on unclean in the book of Leviticus is really all about helping the Israelites to ensure that they had proximity to the presence of God and they had protection. Now, what's interesting is that as we are going to talk about leprosy, praise God, two whole chapters are devoted to this subject because this thing, this skin disease, leprosy, could make somebody actually ceremonially unclean. And you needed to be ceremonially unclean under the Old Covenant law because, number one, it provided you proximity to the very presence of God if you were not clean. According to Old Covenant law, you could not go near the presence of God in the tabernacle. And so if you wanted access to God's presence, you had to be clean. It also provided protection. It provided protection because the things that were unclean were, generally speaking, harmful to the human body or harmful to the human condition. And so one of the things that God wanted is to make sure, not only do you have access to me, but I want an entire culture to be developed. In Israel that was about life, that was about mitigating death, mitigating suffering, and creating cultures of life and joy. What's striking about Leviticus 13 and 14 is that it's not just two chapters that are devoted to skin disorders and leprosy and contagions, but it is two of the longest chapters. So chapter twelve, which was last week, it was eight verses long. Chapters 13 and 14 are 116 verses. I am not going to read all of them. And once we get into the first few verses of chapter 13, you're going to see why. So what we're going to do is we're going to highlight a few of these things, and then we're going to run to the cross and see Christ in leprosy. Amen. You're like, how's he going to do it? Let's see. All right, chapter 13, verses one through three. This is about identifying this huge problem and diagnosing it. Verse one. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, when a person has on the skin of his body a swelling or an eruption or a spot, and it turns into a case of leprous disease on the skin of his body. Pause.
[00:07:35] You may not know this, but right now I have leprosy. You're like, some of you looked up, right?
[00:07:44] In the winter, I get eczema.
[00:07:49] So it's interesting. I know some of you are like, let down. We're hoping you were going to die. No kidding. In the Hebrew language, leprosy is a catch all for skin issues. And what you find is that there's actually two kinds of leprosy. When you kind of double click on the word and the first kind of leprosy, it's temporary or it heals on its own, or it's localized and it's not contagious. So if you end up touching my elbow in the winter, you will not get eczema from me. On the other hand, if I could, which I can't get head lice, you could get that from me. Praise God for being bald. Amen. Amen. The second kind of leprosy was permanence. It's called what we now know. It's called Hansen's disease, also called the living death.
[00:08:40] There are now in the world over 200,000 on average, new cases per year of Hansen's disease globally. It is one of the oldest diseases on the planet. It's caused by a bacteria. I'm going to read this. Mycobacterium lepre, and it primarily affects the skin and the nerves, and it is contract. This is hilarious. They believe they scientists, people smarter than myself believe it was initially contracted from Armadillos.
[00:09:13] So how contagious is it, really? Because people have this notion that it's as contagious as head lice. Praise God. It's not. It actually requires prolonged contact for extended periods of time. But here's the scary part. If you're high anxiety, I apologize on the front end for what I'm about to tell you.
[00:09:33] You might be wondering, do I have it? I don't know. Because the incubation period ranges from several months to several years. In fact, symptoms can take five to 20 years to show up, making it very hard to trace the original source. So, left unchecked, I want to share with you what Leprosy does, and I want to read to you from a description of Leprosy.
[00:10:03] When leprosy first appears in a victim's skin, it begins as small red spots. Before too long, they get bigger, start to turn white, having a shiny or scaly appearance. Soon the spots spread over the entire body and the hair begins to fall out, first from the head, then even from the eyebrows. As things get worse, the fingernails and the toenails become loose. They start to rot and eventually fall off. Then the joints of fingers and toes begin to rot and start to fall off piece by piece in the mouth. The gums start shrinking and are unable to hold teeth, so several teeth are often lost. Leprosy keeps eating away at the face until the nose is literally gone and the palate and even eyes rot out and the victim wastes away until death. One pastor who had experience with lepers said this it is a kind of terrible progressive death in which a man dies by inches.
[00:11:05] Can you see why? 116 verses are devoted to ensuring that this thing, should somebody get it, is contained and nobody else has the opportunity to have it spread. Hope so. The 1940s. A cure was finally discovered. 1940s over 60 million people since then have been treated and had the course of Hansen's disease reversed. Some people are in treatment for the rest of their life.
[00:11:32] Go back to verse two, chapter 13. Then he shall be brought to Aaron, the priest, or to one of his sons, the priest. And the priest shall examine the diseased area on the skin of his body.
[00:11:47] Verses three through eight gone to tell about how the priest is supposed to do this. It's sort of like a DSM diagnostic manual for Old Covenant priests.
[00:11:55] And if the hair in the diseased area has turned white and the disease appears to be deeper than the skin of the body, it is a case of leprous disease. When the priest has examined him, he shall pronounce him unclean.
[00:12:09] But if the spot is white in the skin of his body and appears no deeper than the skin, and the heronet has not turned white, the priest shall shut up the deceased person for seven days. You can imagine you're this person. And you're quarantined now for seven days and you are wondering what is going to happen at the end of this. Verse five goes on and the priest shall examine him on the 7th day. And if in his eyes the disease is checked and the disease is not spread in the skin, the priest shall shut him up for another seven days. So automatically you get an issue, you bring it to the priest. If it is at all a concern, you're going to have a minimum 14 day quarantine period too soon. Verse six, the priest shall examine him again on the 7th day. And if the disease area has faded and the disease has not spread in the skin, then the priest shall announce him clean. It's only an eruption. It's just an eruption. You're good. 14 days, no big deal. And he shall wash his clothes and be clean. Verse seven. But if the eruption spreads in the skin after he has shown himself to the priest for his cleansing, he shall appear again before the priest, and the priest shall look. And if the eruption has spread in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean. It is a leprous disease. I'm going to generally stop right there. If you had enough of a Leviticus 13 and 14.
[00:13:38] Here are some of the identifiers for contagious skin diseases. You have raw skin spreading disease, hair discoloration, diseases that are beneath the skin, swelling, boils, burns, new skin spots, discharges. There is like not one dermatological issue that the old covenant law does not leave addressed for the people because God loves them. Because God is trying to protect and prevent what is already a devastating condition in the world from infecting more and more people. All right, here are some highlights from chapter 13. Verse 15 says, raw flesh is unclean. Anybody else grateful for that line? I think that's great. Verse 18. If there is in the skin of one's body a boil and it heals, I just find it interesting that, wow, boils are very susceptible to disease. And so I just appreciate these. Like, okay, if you have this, here's how we're going to do it. Verse 24. Or when the body has a burn on its skin and the raw flesh of the burn becomes a spot, reddish white or white, open burns were very susceptible to skin diseases. Verse 29. When a man or woman has a disease on the head or the beard, these are called itches. Do you guys know why? Because they itch. There we go.
[00:14:55] Verse verse 40, highlight of the Book of Leviticus. She's going to say it right now. If a man's hair falls out from his head, he is bald. Thank you for that clarification. I love this. He is clean. Amen. Gentlemen. Right in verse 41, if a man's hair falls out from his forehead, he has baldness of the forehead. Guys. He is clean. Guys, I just want to celebrate with you. This is a great moment in my life. But imagine hypothetically if this was never addressed. Like, imagine you start losing your hair and you're like, well, his father lost his hair. I think it must be contagious. There must be a skin disease. And the Lord and his graciousness is like, listen, bald guys, you're not unclean. You can come near to the throne of God. And just the clarity that God brings, even these funny circumstances, I appreciate verse 45. It moves away from diagnostics and then verse 45 moves into isolation protocols. And so this is the section that I think for some American Christians, probably pokes a little bit too close for home, but this is the most challenging one. Verse 45 says, the leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, Unclean. Unclean. That's when he's going to be in the proximity of people who are clean. He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp. So here's how one author described this experience.
[00:16:46] Imagine what it must have felt like to watch that lesion growing on your skin and to experience dread and helplessness as the symptoms persist. Feel the total despair as the priest diagnoses the condition, as, quote, unclean, you say goodbye. You must assume for the last time ever to your family, to your friends, and to your loved ones.
[00:17:17] For now, you must live outside the camp, cut off from all but other lepers, removed from all of the normal aspects of daily life and becoming literally God. Forsaken from now on, you wake every morning with no reason to get up, nothing to do, unneeded and uncared for by anyone.
[00:17:45] Another author describes their total lack of options in this way.
[00:17:50] The only thing that the priest could do was to discover whether or not the disease was actual leprosy. If it were leprosy, nothing could be done other than to separate the sufferer completely from others.
[00:18:08] We get confused when we see diseases that can't be treated. We're like, we can treat anything. No, we can't, number one. But this is before science, before antibiotics, before chemotherapy, which is a version of what you have to go through in order to actually address Hanson's disease.
[00:18:30] One of the reasons that this section can poke at some people post COVID is because of the quarantine protocols. And so this is not a political statement at all. I'm just going to describe for you what is.
[00:18:42] There's a two fold burden on the nation of Israel for people who do have Hansen's disease or this kind of leprosy? The first burden is to provide spaces, usually in the home, for temporary isolation. This is going to be 14 days, and often you don't know what's going to happen at the end of the 14 days and you need to be prepared. And so that's number one, you have to create a space where somebody for 14 days can be quarantined and isolated. And then what you need to also create is a space outside of the camp where people who have contagious permanent, untreatable diseases are required to go. And somehow you need to make sure that they have resources, they have food, they have shelter, they have what they need. What's interesting is, under Old Covenant law for the nation of Israel, the burden of the community was to provide spaces, but the burden of suffering was put on the person who was sick. And somehow they would begin to get this notion that if you did get this contagious disease, it was because maybe God's judgment is on you, which nowhere in the Bible is this communicated. In fact, you could have maybe a relative come into town. You could be sitting at dinner and holding hands for an extended period of time, and you didn't do anything to get it except be in the wrong place at the wrong time with somebody who had no idea that they had it.
[00:20:10] And unfortunately for this person, if this is you, under Old Covenant law, the entire community and society did not grind to a halt, but the burden was actually put on the individual to move their life and their existence outside of the camp. And this was mandated by law so that the nation could continue moving on.
[00:20:35] Verse 47 discusses clothing that has come in contact with contagious diseases.
[00:20:43] And you got to remember, on the clothing side, this is a super important discussion because you don't go to TJ. Max or Kohl's to buy your clothes. You have to make them. They are valuable. Verse 47 says when there's a case of leprous disease in a garment, whether a woolen or a linen garment, in warp or woof of linen or wool, or in a skin, or anything made of skin, you shall burn it with fire or burn it in the fire, whether the rot is on the back or on the front. Verse 57 says, you shall burn with fire whatever has the disease. So chapter 14, this moves into laws for cleansing lepers. What if somebody does get healed or the disease goes away? I want you to go with me all the way down to verse 44, because what happens is there's actually this section that talks about what happens if there is some kind of mold or some kind of disease that's actually in the house you live in. And there's protocols for scraping it and replastering it and pulling out different bricks. And verse 44 says this the priest shall go and look. And if the disease has spread in the house, it is a persistent leprous disease in the house, it is unclean. And listen to the extreme protocols. He shall break down the house, its stones, and timber and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry them out of the city to an unclean place. Does God take this seriously? You better believe it. This is a perfect segue into our said what's? Number one, the leprosy of sin is contagious. It's dangerous and it must be dealt with.
[00:22:25] Leprosy has become almost a perfect metaphor living illustration for the nature of sin. Sin starts seemingly insignificantly.
[00:22:38] Then it spreads quickly.
[00:22:40] It affects deeper deeply. Sin ruins whatever it touches.
[00:22:46] Sin destroys sensitivity. Sin is deadly and incurable, death by the inch. And sin is only made right by God.
[00:22:57] I want you to consider something.
[00:22:59] I want you to consider the person who looks at their skin and says, I think I have leprosy. I'm afraid of what this thing is.
[00:23:14] But if I go to the priest, minimally, 14 days, this might actually be the beginning of the end of my life.
[00:23:25] The only thing that I could maybe give you an analogy would be you see a spot on your skin and you go to the doctor and they say, we need to do a biopsy. This doesn't look good.
[00:23:39] And then in that moment, your brain cycles and spirals, all the possibilities, all the what ifs, et cetera.
[00:23:47] I want you to consider this person because what would motivate this person to go to the priest, let alone right away?
[00:23:59] There's a part of me that's, like, I might wait a week or two, kind of live it up, spend some more time with my family. What would motivate this person to go straight to the priest and say, I need you to look at this love concern for what you might be subjecting other people to?
[00:24:19] What could possibly motivate a person to take the initiative to look at sin in their own life or to bring it to somebody and say, do you see this in me?
[00:24:35] I'm going to tell you that the answer is love, because not all sin is the same. All sin will send you to hell for sure. But not all sin has the same impact. In fact, the Book of Hebrews pulls out one sin. Bitterness says it basically grows its roots. And when it grows its roots, it gets deeper. And then this sin actually has the ability, like a weed squeezing out the life and joy of healthy plants, to defile other people.
[00:25:01] And so you might look at somebody and say, do you see bitterness in me? Because bitterness is one of those sins that's not just a you thing, it's a we thing.
[00:25:10] There are other sins in our life that we understand this, that the more we do them, it's not just a me thing, it's a we thing. And so what we find here is that there is a love for the people around us that make us go, I think I need someone else to look at this because I'm concerned that something else is there. And it brings me to our second. So what?
[00:25:33] Mature Christians are not afraid to be examined.
[00:25:38] In fact, I think as we grow spiritually, we begin to ask people to examine us. We open up parts of our life and say something's not right.
[00:25:52] How can I bring glory to God? Is there sin maybe in this part of my life? The most dangerous person in Old Testament Israel was the person who refused to be examined.
[00:26:04] And I think the most dangerous person in the church is the person who refuses refuses to hear that there might be a problem. This always blows my mind because what does the gospel tell us? We are all sinners who fall short of the glory of God. So when someone else comes to us and says, I think there might be an issue, we go, how dare you? And I'm, like your literal life is devoted and built on the premise of the gospel. And somebody agrees with the gospel in your life that you're a sinner and you're offended. And then here's like kind of the defense mechanism. Well, they didn't say it in the way I liked.
[00:26:37] Anybody else confronted sin or something challenging in a way that wasn't perfect? Just me. 34570 all of us good.
[00:26:47] It's a defense mechanism so that we don't actually have to look in and examine what if they didn't say it right? But what if it's true? Or what if they're poking at something that might be sort of true? The mature Christian takes these moments and examines now, we're not examined by priests in this way, but we are examined by three things in the New Testament. Number one is the Holy Spirit who searches us and knows us. Ever been convicted and convinced by the Holy Spirit that something is not right inside of you? Ever taken that little voice and quenched it with all of your might? I have. Well, there's a backup here, which is the word of God. And so we read the word of God and the word of God exposes us. You ever been reading the Bible and you're like, OOH, that's me quench.
[00:27:28] And then maybe the Holy Spirit brings up a story in your life of something you did that is showing you that, hey, something's not right. Here we are professional quenchers. But then there's the third way that we have sin revealed, which is by other people.
[00:27:43] What I found is that if we have quenched the Spirit enough, quenched the word of God enough, that the Lord will raise up other people to say, hey, you're not listening. Can we just have a conversation? And if it's not perfect, welcome to being a human. But mature Christians understand I'm going to be examined. And sometimes we even go to the people we love and say, would you examine this part of my life? So at number three, jesus alone can cleanse us from the leprous disease of sin. I want you to look with me at Matthew. Chapter eight, verses one through three says, when he came down Jesus from the mountain, great crowds followed him. And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him. Just pause just for a minute. What would it take for a leper to come near Jesus in the presence of great crowds?
[00:28:34] Like everybody would know.
[00:28:36] In fact, people were really hostile to lepers. Like if they came near them, some people would actually just throw rocks at them to get them as far away from them as humanly possible.
[00:28:45] This guy makes it through whatever chaos is going on, and he gets and he kneels before him. Everyone else in shock and awe, disgusted that Jesus would actually let this unclean person be in proximity to him and says, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.
[00:29:05] Bigger implication the moment Jesus heals this leper, how many more are going to come?
[00:29:13] Lots.
[00:29:16] Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. In verse three, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. And the crowds go, how dare he?
[00:29:26] And he said, I will be clean.
[00:29:31] And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Luke 17 actually tells us that he was in a different village and ten lepers came to him. People are hearing about the power of Jesus Christ, that unclean things don't make him unclean. He actually, by the power of God, makes unclean things clean and healed.
[00:29:52] I want to come back to what I read you earlier. Imagine what it must have felt like to watch that lesion growing in your skin and to experience dread and helplessness as the symptoms persist. Feel the total despair as the priest diagnoses the condition as unclean.
[00:30:10] And then, beyond your wildest hopes and dreams, healing comes.
[00:30:15] The disease is arrested. Imagine the joy of returning to the camp and now being restored to all the rights and privileges of being human again, to the high privilege of worshipping the living God again in the tabernacle with your friends and with your family renewed and restored. What a celebration those services of cleansing must have been.
[00:30:42] I am telling you that any human being on the planet, no matter how leprous your soul is, no matter how deep the sin has destroyed, impacted you, no matter how many people you have contaminated with your own sin, that Jesus Christ will offer forgiveness and cleansing to anybody who asks. If you go up to Him and say, will you heal me? Will you save me? He will say, I will be clean. Any person who believes in the death resurrection of Jesus Christ, any person willing to come to him and say, I am sorry, will you clean me and save me? Any person. His answer is, I will be clean. Because only Jesus has the power to do that, and only Jesus has the kindness of heart to receive anybody at any time who will come to him. And believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so I have great news for you. I don't know who you are or where you're at or what's going on in your life, but if you have never, ever been cleansed by Jesus Christ through faith, today is absolutely the best day in the planet to do it. And if you come to him and say, I am sorry, I believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. I don't even understand what it all means, but I know I believe in it. Will you forgive me and cleanse me and save me from this leprosy of my soul? The answer is always I will be clean.
[00:32:03] And Christians, if we are here and we have been saved, we're going to take communion in just a moment. And this is just such a beautiful reminder that we are cleansed not by good works. We are not cleansed by being better than the person next to us, or by going to church, or by tithing or serving or being whatever. We are cleansed the moment we personally, individually trusted in Christ and we are taken out of the leper colony of sin and brought into the house into the people of God where we have life. As we partake of communion, my encouragement to you is confess your sins to God, knowing if you're in Christ they're already washed clean. But also ask God to fill you with gratitude anew that he has pulled us out of that colony of death and brought us into life. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, we love you. I'm thankful for Christ. I am thankful for your old Covenant law. I am thankful that you so love and care for the people of Israel that you spend 116 verses on skin disorders and mold and mildew and all the stuff that affects us and harms us so that your people can be one of life. And now you have given us the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ so that we can be cleansed, not by the blood of bulls and goats that didn't do anything anyways, but through the blood of Christ, the God man. Thank you for that. God fill us with gratitude. And if there's anyone here who's listening or watching or present here, god who knows they need to trust in Christ, would you just fill them with courage to take that step, to trust in you? Because you are good, you are loving, and you are the only one who can heal us. We love you, we thank you, we pray all of this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
