Infectious Diseases & Mildew

As I have continued on in the book of Leviticus, again I am in awe of God's word. The whole bible, not just the new testament. When you dig into the old testament and ask the Lord to show you amazing things, he does. I just finished reading through Leviticus 13 & 14 where God gives instructions on how to handle infectious skin diseases and mildew. There is an awesome picture of the gospel and the Holy Spirit in these 2 old testament chapters.

First we'll look at infectious diseases. If you read in chapter 13 when a person comes to the priest with red skin, burns, or boils he will examine them for a few things. First how deep are they, and secondly has the hair turned white. When I first read through this I was kind of like, what does this have to do with anything; but God showed me what in a mighty way. These different symptoms are just like the symptoms of sin in our life. When looking at how deep the spot was; that is like looking at how deep the sin is in our lives. For believers I think this is at the time of repentance. If the sin has not gotten "beneath the skin" per say and we have repented all is good. We recognizes the sin before it was destructive.

Now, if the spot has gotten below the skin that is the same as sin in our lives that has taken a deeper root, at the point we reach repentance. Same thing goes for the white hair (which I think means a dead hair). That sort of sin has already started to choke the life out of us. We see that when the priest would see these sort of areas he would have the person come back the next day to check for spreading. If it had not spread the person would be placed in isolation for 7 days. I think this is exactly how we should approach this type of major rooted sin in our lives. We need to isolate ourselves from the world and it's temptations and spend time with the Lord. I believe that the Holy Spirit is kind of like that priest in Leviticus, helping us realize the infectious disease that is sin in our lives.

Now for the unclean. I haven't read what happens to the unclean, maybe it is coming or maybe not but here is what I think about that. When the person comes back and their spots are spreading and getting worse that person is unclean. I think this represents those who claim to know Jesus but have habitual rooted sin in their lives. For those people that the sin continues to grow to new areas of their life they are unclean. They have not been washed by the blood of the lamb, they are not followers of Christ.

Now for the mildew, it has almost the same thought process for me, only this time it refers to a house. I think this is extremely important, especially for the men in our culture. The way I see it this mildew is like sin, only it is a man's sin that is beginning to damage his house. If we come to the point of repentance and take the bad stones (influences) out an scrape the mildew off we have a chance to save the house. I see this scraping of the mildew off as that point when a husband confesses to God and his spouse. It's like scraping the mildew off. It's painful and makes him extremely vulnerable. Likewise, if we don't come to the point of repentance, and the son begins to infect our families it will ultimately lead to the destruction of the household.

Thank You Jesus for making us clean from the infectious disease that is sin!