Does Leviticus Apply to Us Today?

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ChumbaCasino .com No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited by law. 18 -plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details. Have you ever been frustrated reading through the book of Leviticus?

In fact, well, if you're going through the Bible through the year, you may be in Leviticus right now.

And boy, does it seem boring. Oh, all these laws and things. Then you get to chapter 14, and it talks about all these rules with leprosy.

Well, today on The Wrap Report, you're going to get an episode where I was on another podcast called

P40 Ministries. And P40 Ministries podcast, we were going through a devotional through Leviticus and invited me on to discuss it.

Can Leviticus be exciting and fun to discuss? Is there anything we can learn that applies to us today?

Well, check that out on The Wrap Report. One, two, three. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host,

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Hello and good morning, friends and faithful listeners. This is Jen here with the P40 Ministries podcast, the podcast that brings you the

Bible consistently every single weekday to show you the relatability of the

Bible in the modern day. And we have a guest on the podcast today. And this is

Andrew Rappaport. And he's got a bunch of various ministries. I met him through his podcasting ministry that he has.

So, Andrew, I would love for you to introduce yourself. Tell everybody what you do. Tell everybody about the books that you've been writing and just all the other various things that you do.

Well, that's a problem. You said this is a short podcast. I am pastor of Grace and Truth Bible Church.

I'm also the executive director at Striving For Eternity Ministries, which has part of its ministry, the

Christian podcast community. So you can find those at strivingforeternity .org or christianpodcastcommunity .org.

I have several podcasts myself. The two main ones I do is Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report, which is a weekly one, about an hour long.

And then we do a two -hour Thursday night live show called Apologetics Live, where we answer any challenges or Bible questions.

People just go to apologeticslive .com, and there's links to join and times of when we do the show and what the main topic would be that day.

And so books, I wrote What Do They Believe, which is a systematic theology of major Western religions, and then

What Do We Believe, which is a Christian systematic theology. But most systematic theologies scare people.

This one's only about 200 pages long. It's easy to read and yet very concise, and so a lot of people like it for that reason.

It seems a lot of people use it for quick reference as well. And, you know, for in context with this episode on your show and the topic of Leviticus, as you and I talked,

I might be the only person you have on talking in Leviticus that could be a genetic expert, meaning

I'm actually a Levite. Yeah. And so I'm...

And that was so fascinating to learn about. And so my first question, obviously, was how do you know?

So please tell everybody how you know you're a Levite. Yeah, so when Jewish people actually didn't keep last names for a very long time, we were some of the latest to have last names.

And if you think about, like you think in Europe, in different places of the world, they'll have a coat of arms for people.

Jewish people typically do not have a coat of arms. My family actually does.

Somewhere back, we don't know when, but somewhere someone was given a coat of arms for Rappaport.

But the way that the rabbis would do things, and all people really, is when tribes are important to people, they keep the history record orally.

So a lot of people think like, oh, in 70 AD, all the records were destroyed. You can't go back.

I know even John MacArthur says this all the time. Well, we can't find out who would be Messiah after 70 AD because all the records were destroyed.

Well, yeah, but people knew orally their genealogy going back several generations.

Even today in Arab countries, you have people that can go back 14 generations. So all it means is they started writing it down again.

Even though some would be lost and whatnot, when we started getting last names, those last names ended up being tied to the different tribes.

So we can tell from last names which tribe people are. So I would actually be not only from Levi and Aaron, but more specifically what's called a

Kohine. A Kohine would be those who are responsible for the temple elements in the temple.

Wow, that's awesome. So you would have been kind of like Zacharias in the

New Testament, right? One of the priests that goes in and lights the incense back in those days, right?

It could have been my responsibility. And that's actually the reason the rabbis want me to convert back to Judaism because if they rebuild a temple, they need the

Kohines. Huh, how about that? I didn't know that. But that's fascinating.

Thanks for sharing that with us today. And, you know, we are actually going to talk about Leviticus.

We're going to talk about the entire chapter of Leviticus 14. And everything here is involving basically leprosy and the uncleanness of a person from the outside.

So we talked about the priests and how the priests have to be ceremonially clean. We talked about the food laws and how what you eat has to be ceremonially clean.

Now we're moving more into what makes a person unclean from the outside in a sense.

And one of these things obviously is leprosy or different kinds of plagues. So I think it just depends on, you know, what kind of leprosy that you can have.

And it even talks about how houses here can have leprosy too, which is kind of interesting. So Andrew, you know, shine some light on this.

And you gave me a list of all sorts of different things about leprosy. So I'd love for you to share that with everybody as well.

Sure. And, you know, Leviticus is one of those books that people, well, they skip over.

People say, I'm going to read through the Bible in a year. Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Psalms, right?

Yes. Or maybe they just go to Joshua. It seems like such a boring book.

And I think I sent you a talk that I've done many times where I go through Leviticus. I've done it at many churches as a

Sunday school. And I say, well, go through the book of Leviticus, the whole book in one hour, and you will enjoy it.

And everybody seems to enjoy it. And at the end of that, everybody says they are never going to read Leviticus the same way because Leviticus really is the gospel message.

So from a high level, before looking at chapter 14, a high level, what is Leviticus about? Leviticus is about the fact that we cannot be clean or pure.

We can't sanctify ourselves. God is the one who sanctifies. He makes atonement. And He is

God. It's really a gospel message that you see. A quick way to figure it is read through Leviticus and look for repetitive words.

And you'll start to see that this book is going to come alive. One of the things with Leviticus is also it's a

Jewish style of writing, which is different than our way in the Western world. We would have a point upon a point upon a point, and the climax is at the end.

That is not a Jewish way of doing it. It's more bookended. So your climax is in the middle.

So you build up to a point, and then you come down to a point. So building up to the point, which we're still doing in Leviticus 14, we're building up to the point that we cannot be clean.

We are not pure. We are not deserving holiness and righteousness. We need to make atonement for that.

It's going to build all the way up until 17, 18, 19, those chapters where you're going to eventually get to the climax is the day of atonement.

And when you get there, now you're working down chapter 18, start looking for the phrase, I am the Lord, and you're going to see it over and over and over again, because now he reached that climax, and he's talking about how

God is God. And so the climax of it all is that we're working up to right now in chapter 14 is the day of atonement.

The day that there will be the forgiveness of sin for the people. And this is now specific to, in chapter 14, to the leper.

And, you know, at Striving for Eternity, if you just do a search on leper, you'll find a document, basically what

I have is the Law of Cleansing a Leper, and it goes through the entire chapter here, and it's an eight -day process.

And maybe you as a listener, you're saying, well, why in the world would

God include all this detail? And it is detailed on what to do with a leper, especially because we don't really have leprosy too much in our culture.

What do we get out of this? Now, if you're thinking that, let me start with that answer, so that the rest of this podcast you have that answer.

God wants us to know very clearly that we are not clean, and we can't cleanse ourselves.

He's the one that's going to make atonement. And the whole process here, as labor -intensive as it is, is to show how important cleanliness, being pure, is to being in a right state with God.

That's really the goal. And so leprosy was an issue back then. How did you know if someone was healed?

If someone had leprosy, it was contagious. It was very contagious. It could be spread, so people would have to go outside the camp.

How do you know that they've been cured to let them back in the camp? And that's what this chapter is going to go over.

Now, listen, we can now appreciate this. People, Jen, couldn't appreciate this before as much.

People now know this thing called, maybe you've never heard of it, but you ever hear of COVID? Yeah, it's everywhere.

It can even get on surfaces. Oh, wait, no, not anymore. They changed that one. But remember early on in COVID, people were, like, putting their groceries.

I mean, we were doing this. We were told this is what you should do because it could get on surfaces. We'd go grocery shopping. We actually had a table.

We'd wipe everything down and then let it air dry so there would be nothing on that.

And that's what was happening. Why? Because we were told this is so contagious, it could stay on surfaces for a long time.

And so you had to wipe everything down. Well, we find out that wasn't so true, but leprosy seems to be that way.

That could even get onto a house. And so because it was so contagious, it was something that people had to be put out.

So it's important to know how can someone know that they're healed to be let back into the community so that they're not spreading it.

And one of the things with leprosy that people think of, when people think of leprosy, they think of it as a disease where all your body parts fall off.

Noses, fingers, things like that. It's actually a nerve disease. And so what it is is you don't feel.

You can stick your hand in fire and you don't feel it. So what's going to happen to your hand? It's going to burn off. You're going to rub your nose off, rub your hand off.

It's not that these things fall off. It's actually that people aren't feeling the pain. They don't realize. They knew what pain felt like.

Now they don't have it, and they're doing things that are hurting them, but they don't know it.

And so as a listener, may that encourage you every time you feel pain. That's actually a good thing.

God gave us pain as a warning. Yeah. So looking through this chapter, you have several steps to go through.

There's 30 steps to go through, about 30 steps to go through to validate if someone is healed.

There's roles that the priest has to do. There's roles that the leper has to do. On day one, you see this in verse 2, the leper is brought to the priest.

The priest is going to be the one to determine this. So the priest has to go outside the camp, inspect the leper, and one of the things the priest is going to prepare is two birds, some cedar wood, a scarlet string, and hyssop.

And this is going to be for a sacrifice. And so the priest is going to then, he's going to kill the bird over a pot of running water.

And I don't know why it has to be over a pot of running water, but dips the bird in the cedar wood, in the scarlet thread, and the hyssop in the blood of the dead bird, verse 6.

He then sprinkles that on the leper seven times. Why does it have to be seven times? Because God said so.

You know, is there something in that? I don't know. It is very interesting, and I'm actually moving forward.

Sorry for interrupting. But it says, same thing for the house. Yeah, in verses 48 through 53 of Leviticus 14, it talks about the exact same thing.

If the plague was in the house and no longer it's being spread, the priest has to come and do the exact same thing, the bird over the running water, and then flick the house seven times with the blood.

And we sit there and say, why seven times? Is there something, you know, mycenical, like this is somehow curing, or what is it about the seven times?

I think it's nothing more than God wants us to know that he is a God of detail, and he wants this to be followed to the letter of the law.

Why? To show the difficulty in recognizing cleanliness, that there's not just, oh,

I just declare you clean, you know? Yeah. I always kind of say it's one for every day of the week.

I don't know if that's true. Obviously, we have no clue why the seven times. Well, seven is a number that we see that seems to be a number of perfection in the word of God.

We see it over and over again, that a lot of things are in sevens. But there's nothing medicinal here that I know of that seven times makes a difference.

But after he sprinkles, the priest is going to pronounce that the leper has been clean. He's going to let the live bird go free into the field.

And the thought is to see whether, that many have at least, is that the one bird that goes free, maybe it's to see whether that bird gets leprosy.

But I think there's something more to here as well. Just recently, a church was preaching Mark 15 with Barabbas being released instead of Jesus.

And that reflects back to what we'll end up seeing in the law with the scapegoat, right?

The day of atonement, you're going to have one goat that's released and one that's sacrificed. And that's,

I think, an imagery that we have here, that one of these birds is going to be the scapegoat, the one that's going to—one's going to be set free and one's going to be sacrificed for the cleansing of the leper.

Right. And so, you have that imagery as well. And the idea there in that imagery of a scapegoat is that one of the two goats is a sacrifice for all the people, the other represents the forgiveness of the sin, that we're let go, that we could be forgiven.

That's what Christ did on the cross, that he was the one that was sacrificed.

Barabbas was the one that was let go. But Jesus was the one that died for all the people.

And in that, we can have the forgiveness. That's fascinating. I never even thought of that. And we just finished

Mark 15. So, thank you for bringing that to light as well about the scapegoat.

One thing that's really interesting to me, and this has no real correlation at all, but I always correlate that a little bit with the president every year on Thanksgiving releasing the turkey.

Well, that is where it comes from. And actually, I mentioned that in my sermon. Did you?

Yep, I did. Because that's where that concept comes from, is the turkey that's released, where he's saved, he gets to go free.

So, the priest has all this responsibility. In verse 8 now, what does the leper do? Well, leper has to wash his clothes, shave all the hair, bathe in water.

Now, you think, like, what's the big deal with that? Well, okay, they, in that day, didn't have indoor plumbing.

So, bathing wasn't something people typically did. You'd have to go to a place, either the wealthy would have baths or bathhouses that people could go to, but most people would go to a river and they would wash, not just themselves, but their clothes with them, because they'd go into it and wash both at the same time.

Shaving the head, or the hair, is so that you could see the scalp to see if there's any signs of leprosy.

But then the leper can enter the camp, but he has to stay outside the tent for seven days.

So, again, what you're seeing is there's a seven -day period for observation. We have, what, a two -week quarantine, which all of a sudden, by the way, can be a five -day quarantine.

Wow, it was amazing. But, I mean, that's the idea that you have here.

Okay? And so then, at day seven, the leper's going to shave all the hair again, wash the clothes, bathe in water.

Now, day eight, we see a change. And this is interesting, because here is where, in God's provision,

He makes a difference between what is going to be the laws for cleansing of a leper for those who can afford it versus the poor.

Because what you're going to have is, on day eight, a leper, for most people, the leper is going to offer two male lambs, a young lamb, three -tenths of a flying flower with oil, and a log of oil, where it's going to be different for the poor.

The poor, it's going to be one lamb, it's going to be a tenth of flour, it's going to be one log of oil, and two turtle doves or two pigeons.

So, here you see that what we see within God's plan is that He is not going to excommunicate people who can't afford things to keep them outside of the community.

A leper was no way of working, no relationships, you have to be outside in an area where it's okay for lepers to be.

That, as we see and think back to when people were all sitting at home during COVID and people were really having a hard time not seeing family, friends, not being able to go out, that's kind of the life of a leper.

It wasn't just for 15 days, it's for life until you're cured. So, you could see the importance of wanting to get back to community.

And what we see is God doesn't sit there and say, well, for the poor, sorry, you can't ever join back into community because you just can't afford it.

No, God makes provision for that. So, I do have a question, and I don't know if you know the answer to this or not, but leprosy, from my understanding, it was not something that people believed was curable, right?

They kind of believed that it was just a curse and you just had to live with it. That is until Jesus came, is that correct?

Well, let me first say that I say in my Apologetics live show, I can answer any question you have about God in the

Bible. I do think I don't know is a perfectly good answer. But in this case,

I do that on the streets when I do open air evangelism, and I start by going, I can answer any question you have about God in the

Bible. And some heckler is going to give me this really tough question. I go, I don't know. And they go, you said you could answer it.

I said, I don't know is a perfectly good answer. It gets them laughing, and then we start sharing the gospel.

But I think what we have with this one is you are correct. People did not think that leprosy could be cured.

They did see it as a curse from God, and that's why you go to the priest if you're claiming to be cleansed.

And even today, leprosy does exist. I forget the common name for it now.

It's not very common, but it is something that does exist in parts of the world.

It doesn't seem that we have the real cure for it, but people learn how to live with it.

Back in the first century, because they didn't understand nerves and things like that, they couldn't tell people how to deal with it to prevent the consequences of it.

And it's able to be contained more, so you don't have to be outside of the camp. So it was seen as a curse.

When people would have leprosy, that's what they thought God was cursing them, and therefore the only way you could be healed is from God.

And that's why, in chapter 14, we're focused on leprosy as he's getting closer to that day of atonement, working up.

This is something that's seen as only God can do. Only God can do this curing.

What is the priest doing? Is the priest actually healing the person? No. The priest is there to identify this person has been cleansed.

He's acting as a mediator between God and men, and he's just declaring what has happened, but where's the credit?

Well, it's going to God. It's God who people would see has done the healing. Exactly.

And I believe the priest, which we talked about, I think, in Leviticus 13, the priest could also tell the person that they have leprosy as well.

So that was basically the role of the priest in all of this was to show that they have leprosy and then to express that they did, in fact, get cleansed of the leprosy.

And then that would be at that point they could do the sacrifice and hopefully be done with the leprosy thing.

But yeah, I mean, through all of this, you're absolutely right. This is something that stuck out to me when you were talking was the priest doesn't have a role in healing at all.

You know, it's all up to God. And this was more, I think, to show the people, especially back in these pagan times that priests were not to be worshipped.

You know, because I think back in the old days that people would worship anything. Well, we still to this day do, but they would worship anything, you know.

And I mean, God is consistently showing the people, the priests are just like you guys.

It's me that's doing all the healing. And so I think that's something that stuck out to me when you were talking. And notice really a key is verse 19.

The priest offers a sin offering, right? And then the priest makes atonement for the leper.

Now he's acting, remember, he's the mediator between God and man. He's acting in that sense. So the idea that this must be some sin that someone had, there'd be actually in this process, a couple of sin offerings.

You'll see one in verse 13. But in verse 19, he makes a sin offering, and then it says that the priest is going to make atonement for the leper.

So this is why I say this is all building up to that. The key, you'll see in verse 20, the priest makes atonement for the leper.

So this, I think, points to, and that's the last step before he's cleansed, before he's announced, okay, you're clean, you can return to your home, everything.

It's that there's an atonement made, and that's what you're building up to in Leviticus here.

You're building up to that day of atonement that you're going to get to soon in your podcast. And there'll be,

I hope, a lot of emphasis on that because that's the pinnacle of Leviticus. And when you get there, it's like this is what it's all about, and this is what

Christ did. Christ acts as that atonement, and this is what it's pointing to. This is all showing that.

Here you have this leper who can't be cleansed on his own, and, oh, look, it's the priest who's going to do this sin offering, and then the atonement.

So you have that sacrifice for sin and atonement declared. Now, we know that this atonement, this is an atonement for the leprosy, but it pictures the atonement that'll be for our sin.

A priest doing a sacrifice doesn't actually create that atonement of sin.

It was something that was picturing something they knew would be in the future when Messiah would come, and you end up having

Christ as the Passover lamb acting as that atonement. Mm -hmm.

Yeah, so every bit of this just points to Jesus, and that's what's just so fascinating about the

Old and New Testament, which is why I always say, you know, I mean, in the church I was raised in,

I shouldn't say that, but the way I was kind of taught to believe, I suppose, from different people was that the

New Testament was really all that mattered. And so I don't believe that. I believe that the

Old Testament and the New Testament function together to show people, you know, just the entire story of Jesus and why he had to come.

And that's why I always say, like, the Old Testament is just so important, and I have such a passion, you know, for the Old Testament.

But to summarize everything, and this will be the last question I ask, is what can we take from this portion of Scripture today?

And we kind of already talked about it, but go ahead and summarize that for us. Yeah, I mean, what we can see is our own sin that we can't be cleansed from.

Only God can take that away, and he takes it away at the cross with what Christ did. And really, this is just a picture of that.

I mean, why all this detail? It seems so boring to read this. That's why so many people skip

Leviticus. And yet, what we end up seeing is here is a great picture of what

God ends up doing for us. And in the end, it is God, not a priest, who's going to declare us clean.

It's God who makes the sin offering himself. It's God who makes the atonement for us, and God who declares us clean.

That's a beautiful thing. Just think about the life of a leper. I mean, just outside of the camp.

We probably, I think, can appreciate this better ever since 2020 than ever before, because we understand with COVID what it meant to be outside and not be able to be participating with people.

Well, for some people. Some of us just gathered for church anyway. We quickly realized the science was more political.

But, I mean, a lot of people struggled with that separation.

That's the life of a leper, to be able to be restored to that. And I know that this is a case for many, many churches.

When they finally were allowed to meet again, I spoke to dozens and dozens of pastors that all had the same thing, that the fellowship in their church was so much sweeter.

People didn't want to go home anymore. Where before COVID, people would just, church service is over, they get home so that they could worship that pigskin on the

TV, the football, and you said we worship anything, right? So, after COVID, that changed.

People appreciated the fellowship because they never were without it until that period of time.

And that was a regular thing for a lot of people. Well, think about it for the leper. Now think about it even more for you and I, who were dead in our trespasses and sins, made alive through Christ.

What is that fellowship that when we get to be in his presence, how much greater that's going to be?

The rejoicing the leper had is pales in comparison to that rejoicing that we'll have. Right.

Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you so much, Andrew, for coming on the podcast and sharing that with us.

And one thing I forgot to mention. No, no, no. I think there's something we have to mention, though, before we end.

I think today, let me check, what's today? Oh, I think today is your birthday.

Oh, yeah, it is. How do you know? How do you like them apples?

Yeah, yeah, I'm officially 28 years old. So, yep.

You'll stop counting when you hit like 40, don't worry. It's funny because I've heard many people say that when you hit 27, that's when the mild aches and pains start.

Oh, no, no. Give it time. Give it time. Yeah, yeah.

No, but I'm telling you, I started getting aches and pains last year. So that that was it for me.

Well, I get I get some aches and pains. My wife says it's probably because, you know, I'm running like half marathons a day.

So maybe that has something to do with it. I don't think so. Yeah, you're a runner, right? That's something you you say you do often.

I do a lot of running. I used to do a lot of martial arts. I do some weightlifting.

Try to keep myself in good shape. Very cool. I do some swimming on occasion. I don't really like to, but I take swim lessons because I'm terrified of the water.

So I have a friend that teaches me swim. So, yeah, but that's about all I do. All right.

Well, happy birthday to you. Yeah, thank you. But thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

I really appreciate it. And I think you brought some great insight into Leviticus chapter 14. And yeah, so you know what, everybody,

I'm going to drop some links to Andrew and everything that he does in the bio of this podcast episode, as I do for all of the guests on the

Peaceful Ministry's podcast. So all of you guys listening, please go ahead and navigate over to everything

Andrew does. Take a look at some of the stuff that he's a part of his books and his ministry, of course.

But friends and faithful listeners, thanks so much for tuning in this morning. Happy listening and God bless.

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