If you have ever read Leviticus 13 and 14 you have learned a lot about leprosy. Too much, in fact. The Law goes on and on and on in tremendous detail about how to spot skin disease--shutting people up here and pulling down the stones of houses there. It's mind numbing actually.
When a person at that time had any kind of skin lesion or eruption or boil they had to go to the priest repeatedly to have it inspected. The priest would have to check to see if the hair in the eruption was black, white, or yellow. Depending on what was happening they would have to come back and back.
If someone actually got healed from leprosy the many sacrifices and rituals they had to go through are amazing. And even after they are clean they can come back into the camp but not into their tent for a week. What if it got cold?
So then I got to thinking about what leprosy often represents: sin. According to Romans 5:12 sin, like a leprous disease, spread to us all through Adam's rebellion against God in the Garden of Eden. Not only do we have the disease but it erupts on our lives as we act on what we are and do evil.
And sin, like leprosy, is very difficult to get rid of. It seems like we clean up our act in one area and then, poof, sin crops up in another. You know the old saying, "A leopard can't change his spots," well we can't change who we are: leprous. The only way out of sin is to die. You can wash your life all you want but sin will not go away on its own.
So as Paul said "who can deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:24-25).
Today let's rejoice that even though we were stricken with a hard to get rid of disease - we also have a cure: dieing and living again through Jesus Christ, whose blood is the only cure for the leprosy of sin.
Pastor Tom
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3 comments:
Excellent Tom. what is interesting is that there is no cure for leprosy; yet God provided a sacrifice for the leper in the day of his cleansing. Why? Because from eternity He planned on healing the leper, just as Jesus, our Healer, provided cleansing for us from eternity, 1 Peter 1:20-21: "He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God."
You are so right. I can't recall any record of someone actually getting healed from leprosy until Jesus did it in Mark 1. And yet there is provision for what to do in the case of a healing in the Law.
Part of that ceremony involves two birds, one is killed and the other set free. The bird that is set free is dipped in the blood of the bird that is killed. Then oil is used which is applied to the bird set free.
Then the blood and the oil is applied to the ear, thumb, and big toe of the person healed.
It's a great picture of Jesus dieing for us, we get to be set free and then anointed with God's Spirit.
The best study I ever heard on the subject was one by Chuck in the 1980's. The way he described it was like you were witnessing it first hand. A wonderful testimony from the Law...
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