When the Tastiest Foods Were Forbidden

Let us pray. Jesus, the key of David, I have tried to open the gates of heaven by clever reason.

I have pounded them by my own strength. My efforts always end with a frustrated mind and a battered conscience.

Open to me your word. Take away my burdens of body and soul, and bear me,

Father, light over the threshold of heaven. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so we are, we've been working our way through the book of Leviticus, and last time we've got our way through the

Nadab and Abihu's strange fire offering, and now we're going to get into a section of Leviticus that, as I've already just said, it makes me very happy that I'm a

New Covenant pastor and not a Old Covenant Levite priest, okay?

And you're going to, it's going to become very clear very early on. Now remember, Old Testament is type and shadow.

Old Testament is symbol. New Testament is reality. So we're going to get, we're going to start first giving, getting into the reasoning behind, and then the distinctions that are made between clean and unclean animals.

This has a very important function in the teaching, in the catechesis of Israel as a whole.

In fact, that's the whole point of these distinctions. So here's what it says. Yahweh spoke to Moses, this is

Leviticus 11, and Aaron, saying to them, speak to the people of Israel, saying, these are the living things that you may eat among all the animals that are on earth.

Whatever parts the hoof and is cloven -footed and chews the cud among the animals you may eat.

Nevertheless, among those that chew the cud or part the hoof, you shall not eat these. The camel, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you.

The rock badger, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you.

And the hare, because it chews the cud and does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven -footed but does not chew the cud, oh bummer for us, it's unclean to you.

Actually bummer for them because we can eat bacon but they couldn't. So you shall not eat any of their flesh and you shall not touch their carcasses, they are unclean to you.

And so what God is doing here is starting to make distinctions, and he wants us to learn how to think of things that are clean or unclean, things that are holy as opposed to those that are unholy.

And so the distinctions then would bear out regarding teaching, regarding false teachers, those who are engaging in idolatry.

It widens out, but these distinctions regarding food teach the children of Israel to make distinctions like this so that they do not give up, give in to things that are unholy and unsanctified.

That's kind of the thinking. Now quick, a question came in, do you think that Hebrews 4 passage and the message of Christ's temptation and compassion is good evangelism verse to folks outside the good folks' reach?

So okay, this is a little bit of a question as it relates to, I would say that scripture itself is good for evangelism, and what we do is we make a proper distinction between law and gospel.

And so what I read out in the sermon in Hebrews 4, 15 and 16, that would be a critical text, especially when somebody is feeling the pangs of guilt because of their sin.

I mean, this happens because we have the law written on our hearts. We all know what's right, we all know what's wrong. And as a result of that, we fear

God's wrath. So Hebrews 4, 15 would be a great place to start with, let me tell you about Jesus here and why it's so important that he kept

God's law, and that he did not give in to any temptation. And then note the resolve in the next verse that now we can draw with confidence towards the throne of grace to receive mercy and help in time of need.

And see, that requires you to pull on other passages, but it's a good center text if you want to share the good news with other people.

So, okay, now real quick, I want to check something in chapter 10.

Okay, I'm going to... Okay, back to 11. I just wanted to make sure I didn't pass over a particular text that I have in mind.

Good. Okay, coming back then to the distinctions. So these you may eat of all that are in the waters, everything in the waters that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or the rivers you may eat, but anything in the seas or the rivers that does not have fins and scales of the swarming creatures in the waters of the living creatures that are in the waters, it's detestable to you.

Now, notice it doesn't say it's just detestable, but to them who are in covenant with Yahweh, it's going to be detestable because God is teaching them something through this.

You shall regard them as detestable. Not that they are. You are to regard them as detestable because you're in covenant.

You shall not eat any of their flesh and you shall detest their carcasses. Everything in the waters that does not have fins and scales is detestable.

And here's the words to you. Now, these you shall detest among the birds.

They shall not be eaten. They are detestable. The eagle, the bearded vulture, the black vulture, the kite, the falcon, or any kind of any kind, every raven of any kind, the ostrich, the night hawk, the seagull, who would want to eat a seagull?

Anyway, the hawk of any kind, the little owl, the coromant, the short -eared owl, the barn owl, the tawny owl, the carrion vulture, the stork, the heron, or any of any kind, and the hoopoe and the bat.

Again, I ask the question, who would want to eat a bat? But when you're hungry and super hungry, that may cause you to do all kinds of weird things.

Then we get to my favorite group. All winged insects that go on all fours are detestable to you.

I'm going to just say this. All winged insects are detestable, period.

But God is making a distinction here. If you really have a hankering for a grasshopper, you can.

Yet among the winged insects that go on all fours, you may eat those that have jointed legs above their feet with which to hop on the ground.

Of them, you may eat the locust of any kind. Yuck. The bald locust of any kind. The cricket?

No. Of any kind. The grasshopper of any kind. But all other winged insects that have four feet, they are detestable to you.

I will make my point again. All insects of every kind, when it comes to the food category, are detestable to me.

I will not be doing that John the Baptist fast. That's not happening. And by these you shall become unclean.

Whoever touches the carcass, their carcass shall be unclean until the evening. Whoever carries any part of their carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean into the evening.

Now this is kind of fascinating here. Touching a carcass, God requires you to clean your clothes. Now this is long before anybody understood anything about microbes or bacteria and things like this, but God knew all about that.

Dwayne, I'm in Leviticus chapter 11, verse 25. Um, so whoever carries any part of their carcass shall wash his clothes and they'll be unclean until the evening.

God, you know, has them cleaning their clothes, which I think is a, just a grace on his part because this is going to keep them, they're going to have better hygiene as a result of this.

So every animal that parts the hoof, but is not cloven footed or does not chew the cut is unclean to you.

Everyone who touches them shall be unclean. And all that walk on their paws among the animals that go on the, on all fours are unclean to you.

Whoever touches their carcass shall be unclean until the evening. And he who carries their carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening.

They are unclean to you. These are unclean to you among the swarming things that swarm on the ground, the mole rat, the mouse, the great lizard of any kind, the gecko, the monitor lizard, the lizard, the sand lizard, the chameleon.

These are unclean to you among all that swarm. Whoever touches them when they are dead shall be unclean until the evening.

Anything on which any of them falls when they are dead shall be unclean.

Whether it is an article of wood or a garment or of skin or of sack, any article that is used for any purpose, it must be put into water and it shall be unclean until the evening.

And then it shall be clean. Note here that there's a little bit of a baptism going on here when it comes to these items that have touched unclean things, the washing away of the uncleanness, just a tiny wisp of a hint at baptism itself.

So if any of them falls into any earthenware vessel, all that is in it shall be unclean and you shall break it.

Any food in it that could be eaten on which water comes shall be unclean and all drink that could be drunk from every such vessel shall be unclean and everything on which any part of their carcass falls shall be unclean.

In other words, you think of the earthenware vessels of the ancient world, they often had open mouths and in different things.

And if a mouse gets in there and dies, yeah, everything in that pot's gone.

You know, it's unclean. You can't, it's not salvageable is what God is saying. So whether oven or stove, it shall be broken in pieces.

They are unclean and shall remain unclean for you. Nevertheless, a spring or a cistern holding water shall be clean, but whoever touches a carcass in them shall be unclean.

And if any part of their carcass falls upon any seed grain that is to be sown, it is clean.

But if water is put on the seed and any part of their carcass falls on it, it's unclean to you.

Okay. Scientifically, bats are mammals and insects have six feet. I'm not going to argue with you on that.

Yeah, I'm just not arguing with you on that. Bats are mammals for sure. God's classifying them, not by whether or not they're mammal or reptile or things like that.

He's kind of putting them in bigger groups than that, you know, at least wider. So, all right.

Every swarming thing that swarms on the ground is detestable. It shall not be eaten.

Whatever goes on its belly, whatever goes on all fours or whatever has many feet and swarming things that swarms on the ground, you shall not eat.

They are detestable. You shall not make yourself detestable with any swarming thing that swarms, and you shall not defile yourself with them and become unclean through them.

So, you're going to note here, this is kind of fascinating, it'll be a little bit confusing because Christ really undoes this, but all of this is type and shadow.

And again, coming into the words detestable to you, detestable to you, not in and of yourself, but this is to catechize them to begin thinking in categories of clean, unclean, holy, unholy, you know, something that is common and something that is set apart for holy purposes.

This is where the Lord is going with this. I am the Lord your God, consecrate yourselves, therefore be holy, for I am holy.

You shall not defile yourself with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground, for I am Yahweh who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your

God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. This is the law about the beasts and the birds and every living creature that moves through the waters and every creature that swarms on the ground to make a distinction, and see this is where we can see this, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean, between the living creature that they may be eaten and the living creature that may not be eaten.

So God is training them. You got to think in terms of, you know, to make these distinctions.

Okay, chapter 12. All right, we're going to get into a section of Leviticus that has to do with biology, human biology, and things like that.

It's just really earthy, is the best way I can put it. So I need some more coffee before we dive into this.

It's earthy, just saying. All right, so the

Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel saying, if a woman conceives and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean for seven days, as at the time of her menstruation she shall be unclean.

And on the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. So circumcision takes place on the eighth day.

Important that it happens on the eighth day, because little infant boys do not produce vitamin K until the eighth day.

So if you circumcise them prior to that, they'll bleed out. You know, they don't have any way to clot the blood.

And so, you know, doctors today, when they circumcise a male child, male infant, newborn, they give them a shot of vitamin

K, you know, that fixes it right up. So then she shall continue for 33 days in the blood of her purifying.

She shall not touch anything holy or come into the sanctuary until the days of her purifying are completed.

But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean for two weeks as in her menstruation, and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying for 66 days.

Interesting that it makes that distinction. When the days of her purifying are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting a lamb, a year old for a burnt offering, a pigeon, a turtle dove for a sin offering, and he shall offer it before Yahweh to make atonement for her.

Isn't that fascinating? She needs to have atonement made for the childbearing. Then she shall be clean from the flow of her blood.

This is the law for her who bears a child, either male or female. And if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtle doves or two pigeons.

And you'll note this was Mary's offering for her purification, which means she couldn't afford nothing.

One for the burnt offering, the other for a sin offering, the priest shall make atonement for her and she shall be clean.

Chapter 13. I need more coffee for this one.

Okay, now we are fully into the portion of Leviticus that makes me go, I am so happy I am not a

Levitical priest. Okay, because there was a part of their job that just like, you know, that's all

I gotta say at the moment is it is the wow. Okay, so I grew up in a medical family.

My dad was an ER doctor. My mother, a nursing, an RN. She was a nurse for many years, became a nursing professor.

I always like to tell people that I was the only kid in seventh grade who knew what a cricoid therotomy was, because I would sit at the table and they would, at dinner time, they would say, so what happened at work today?

And my dad, an ER doc, would talk about gunshot wounds and stabbings and vomits and stuff like this.

And then my mom would talk about the things that she was doing as an RN. And my meals would always seem less appealing while listening to them talking.

So I go into this section of Leviticus knowing that I could have a full -blown

PTSD moment here, because it just takes me back to my childhood.

Of course, my stepfather, he wanted me to be a doctor. He really did. And his great solution for trying to encourage me to become a physician was he decided that he would share with me his

ER medical journals, which has photographs of medical procedures and things like that.

I'm scarred to this day. So this portion of Leviticus just gives me the heebie -jeebies.

Anyway, here we go. So Yahweh 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 a leprous disease on the skin of his body, then he shall be brought to Aaron and the priest, or to one of the sons of the priest, and the priest shall examine the diseased area on the skin of his body.

Oh, no. Yeah. Could you, I mean, seriously, could you imagine someone coming up to me after service at Kongsvinger and said,

Pastor, you know, I've got this swelling here, you know, and it's broken out into a rash.

Could you take a look at that? No, I will not. Anyway, but the priest had to do this.

All right. So they had to examine the person's body. So if the hair of the diseased area has turned white, and the diseased area appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a case of a leprous disease.

Now, leprous disease is going to be a wide category. When we think of leprosy, we think of a very specific ailment, nerve disease that, you know, but that's, leprosy, leprous diseases could be quite broader, you know.

So when the priest has examined him, he shall pronounce him unclean.

And people who are unclean are forbidden from participating in the worship life of Israel. It's really, it's quite awful.

But if the spot is white in the skin of his body and appears no deeper than the skin, and the hair in it has not turned white, the priest shall shut up the diseased person for seven days.

He goes into quarantine. Isn't that fascinating? Okay. So a leprous disease could be like the measles, the mumps.

It could be chicken pox or something that would qualify as a potential leprous disease. And God has the person who is ill with these things quarantined, you know.

Now, I got to say, that's kind of cool, okay. Because in Israel, that means that people who have infectious diseases like this are not just living among the population, they're required to actually undergo an examination.

If they are unclean, they are quarantined, which means that, you know, that these kinds of communicable diseases wouldn't have the same quick spreading action that you would get, you know, otherwise.

So if the spot is white in the skin of his body and appears no deeper than the skin, the hair in it has not turned white, the priest shall shut up the diseased person for seven days.

The priest shall examine him on the seventh day. And if in his eyes the disease is checked, that's, it's not going any further, the disease has not spread in the skin, then the priest shall shut him up for another seven days.

So two -week mandatory quarantine, you know, with one, you know, with one examination in the middle of it, if things are going in the right direction, all right, shut him up for another seven days.

The priest shall examine him again on the seventh day. And if the diseased area has faded and the disease has not spread in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him clean.

It is only an eruption, yay. And he shall wash his clothes, notice that, wash his clothes and be clean.

Okay, a little bit of symbol of baptism again, but this one's fascinating because you, when you consider how the

Lord in these commandments were governing Israel in a way that they were practicing good hygiene before anybody knew anything about how diseases are spread.

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's a leprous disease.

Okay, and that can go on for a long time. When a man is afflicted with a leprous disease, he shall be brought to the priest and the priest shall look.

And if there is a white swelling in the skin that has turned the hair white and there is raw flesh in the swelling, it's a chronic leprous disease in the skin of his body.

And the priest shall pronounce him unclean. He shall not shut him up for he is unclean.

And if the leprous disease breaks out in the skin so that the leprous disease covers all the skin of the diseased person from head to foot, so far as the priest can see, then the priest shall look.

And if the leprous disease has covered all his body, he shall pronounce him clean of the disease.

It has all turned white and he is clean. But when raw flesh appears on him, he shall be unclean.

And the priest shall examine the raw flesh and pronounce him unclean. Raw flesh is unclean for it is a leprous disease.

But if the raw flesh recovers and turns white again, then he shall come to the priest and the priest shall examine him.

And if the disease has turned white, then the priest shall pronounce the diseased person clean.

He is clean. All right, real quick here.

Let me find something in my New Testament. All right,

I need to look in the Gospels. There we go. Yeah, just a quick survey of the

Old Testament. Lepers are a regular feature in the Gospels. Matthew 8, when

Jesus came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. Behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him and said, saying,

Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean. And this is one of the best ones ever.

Okay, I want you to consider this. So watch what the text says. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said, saying,

I will, that's my desire, be clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Now, keep in mind, touching a leper makes you unclean.

So here you got a leper, a bonafide leper. He desires to be clean. And he's kneeling before the

Lord. And the Lord reaches out his hand to touch him. And you can just see the disciples going, no, no, you can't do that.

Don't touch him, Jesus. And so there he touches this leper. And you're thinking, oh, no, Jesus is unclean.

But is he? I was pointing out, so he makes him clean. So over and again, so the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers. The lame walk, the lepers are cleansed.

Over and again, the lepers are cleansed. So what happens is that those who have these diseases, their physicality of their disease symbolizes sin.

Right? And so the unclean, the uncleanliness of sin. And what I think is a good practice then in that light is that when you think of a leper, or something like that, when you read about them, that think of sin itself in your own life, all the different ways in which you break

God's commands and you rebel against him, that this makes you unclean and that you are like that leper.

You need to be cleansed. And then you talk about the dead flesh and all that kind of stuff.

That's a great picture of the impact of Adam's sin as it comes down to us, all of us dead and trespasses and sins.

We're the walking dead. We're like zombies with these awful diseases and pieces and chunks of our flesh coming off of us.

But Christ, he cleanses the lepers. Over and again, you hear that that's the case. So that's the right picture then.

All right, now we get to some more of this medical jargon, the bio passages of Leviticus.

They're so fun. If there is in the skin of one's body a boil and it heals, and in the place of the boil, there comes a white swelling or a reddish white spot, then it shall be shown to the priest and the priest shall look.

And if it appears deeper than the skin and its hair has turned white, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean.

If it is a case of a leprous disease that is broken out in the boil, but if the priest examines it and there is no white hair in it, and it is not deeper than the skin but has faded, then the priest shall shut him up for seven days.

Here we go again with quarantine. If it spreads in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean. It is a disease.

But if the spot remains in one place and does not spread, it is the scar of the boil and the priest shall pronounce him clean.

Okay, I'm not sharing my screen. Ah, okay.

We're in Leviticus. That explains the issue. Got it. Leviticus 13, 24.

When the body has a burn on its skin and the raw flesh of the burn becomes a spot, reddish white or white, the priest shall examine it.

And if the hair in the spot has turned white and it appears deeper than the skin, then it is a leprous disease.

It's broken out in the burn and the priest shall pronounce him unclean. It is a case of a leprous disease.

But if the priest examines it and there is no white hair in the spot, it is no deeper than the skin but has faded, the priest shall shut him up for seven days.

Quarantine again. And the priest shall examine him on the seventh day. If it is spreading in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean.

It is a case of a leprous disease. But if the spot remains in one place and does not spread in the skin but has faded, it is a swelling from the burn and the priest shall pronounce him clean for it is a scar of the burn.

When a man or a woman has a disease on the head or the beard, the priest shall examine the disease.

If it appears deeper than the skin and the hair in it is yellow and thin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean.

It is an itch, a leprous disease of the head or the beard. And if the priest examines the itching disease and it appears no deeper than the skin and there is no black hair in it, then the priest shall shut up the person with the itching disease for seven days.

On the seventh day, the priest shall examine the disease. If the itch has not spread and there is in it no yellow hair and the itch appears to be no deeper than the skin, then he shall shave himself.

But the itch he shall not shave, and the priest shall shut up the person with the itching disease for another seven days.

And on the seventh day, the priest shall examine the itch. And if the itch has not spread in the skin and it appears to be no deeper than the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him clean, and he shall wash his clothes and be clean.

But if the itch spreads in the skin after his cleansing, then the priest shall examine him.

And if the itch has spread in the skin and the priest need not seek for the yellow hair, he is unclean.

But if in his eyes the itch is unchanged and the black hair has grown in it, the itch is clean, is healed, and he is clean, and the priest shall pronounce him clean.

These are the kinds of passages that, you know, why is it that nobody in the megachurches teaches this stuff?

I cannot picture, like, Rick Warren working his way through this passage of scripture. I need some more coffee.

All right, hang on a second here. All right,

I love these bio passages. So when a man or a woman has spots on the skin of the body, white spots, the priest shall look.

If the spots on the skin of the body are of a dull white, it's leukoderma that has broken out in the skin.

He is clean. If a man's hair falls out from his head and he's bald, good news, he's still clean.

So those of you suffering from male pattern baldness, you're good, you're good. Okay. If a man's hair falls out of his forehead, he has baldness of the forehead, he's still clean.

But if there is on the bald head of the bald forehead a reddish white diseased area, it's a leprous disease breaking out in his bald head or his bald forehead, then the priest shall examine him.

And if the diseased swelling is reddish white on his bald head or on his bald forehead, like the appearance of leprous disease, in the skin of the body, he is a leprous man.

He is unclean. The priest must pronounce him unclean. His disease is on his head.

The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes. And now this is kind of an interesting thing.

So we worked our way through a lot of these biotexts. We still have more to go.

But the person who is declared to be unclean and they have an incurable leprous disease, this then becomes their fate as far as the rest of their life.

They are not allowed to participate in the worship community of Israel until such a time as they are cleansed, if that ever happens.

And here's how they have to conduct themselves. The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes, let the hair of his head hang loose, he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, so he does this, unclean, unclean.

And you get a note here is that by making him cover his mouth, it's making it so he's not able, if the disease is actually spreadable through air contact and stuff like this, this is making it so that he's not spreading that disease.

Isn't that fascinating? You think of all these people who are really concerned about catching something when they're at the mall or at an airport on an airplane and they wear those surgical masks over their face the whole time.

Here you've got the very first idea of a surgical mask and it's this.

Acne, by the way, does not count as a leprous disease. If you work through the descriptions, it wouldn't qualify as that kind of a disease.

So he shall cry out, unclean, he shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease, he's unclean, he shall live alone, his dwelling shall be outside the camp.

Now in this particular case, now if you've ever heard of the phrase, you know, a leper colony, a leper colony.

So what a leper colony was in the ancient world, in ancient Egypt then, is those who were no longer permitted to live inside the camp or within the walls of a village, they went to live outside the walls, outside the village, and when you had multiple people from the same town or village that were suffering from these leprous diseases and they were unclean, they would hang out together.

I mean, an unclean person can't make another unclean person more unclean.

So the lepers then would hang out together and that was their common practice.

Now in Jesus's day, where, let me see if I can, okay, so the text

I want to look at is Luke 17, and you can kind of see this then in play in Luke 17.

Okay, all right, great text, Luke 17 11, on the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.

So he's literally like riding the border, I mean, he's walking the border between Samaria and Galilee. He's in no man's land, really, he's neither in Samaria nor in Galilee, he's right on the border, right in between.

So as he entered a village, he was met by 10 lepers. Why 10? Well, in this particular case, because these guys are all hanging out together.

So lepers form their own community and they care for each other, they've got their own way of doing things.

So he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance, which they should have, they would have said, unclean, unclean, we're lepers, right?

And they stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying, Jesus master, have mercy on us.

And when he saw them, he said to them, and listen to this thing, go and show yourself to the priests.

And as they went, they were cleansed. Now we learn here that one of these 10 fellows also happened to be a

Samaritan, all right? So Samaritans, they can't present themselves in Jerusalem to priests.

They're not welcome. They're considered to be apostates, rogues. Samaritans, their temple complex was on Mount Gerizim, which is that part of Israel today that's on the

West Bank. It's not

Jerusalem. So this guy's got a problem. He's been cleansed and Jesus says, go show yourself to the priest. Well, he's cleansed.

Who's he going to show himself to, right? So one of them, when he saw that he was healed, he turned back praising

God with a loud voice and he fell on his face at Jesus's feet, giving him thanks.

Now he was a Samaritan. And then Jesus said, well, we're not the 10 cleansed.

Where are the nine? His expectations, they'd turn right around and present themselves to him.

I mean, he's our great high priest, right? Um, was no one found to return to give praise to God except for this foreigner?

So he said to them, rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well.

Notice that Jesus, his high priest, pronounces him clean and says, your faith has made you well.

You're clean. The end. It's a Samaritan who, who gets that little bit of it.

But here you get, you got 10 lepers hanging out together. Why? Because, uh, that, that's, lepers could only really hang out with lepers.

That's how that worked. So when there's a case of a leprous disease in a garment, and, uh, and so you think of it, you know, you know, when clothes or, or, or a wall, you know, or things like that, they can get these, you know, the mold growing in it and stuff like that.

That's what this is kind of talking about. So it's in a garment, whether a woolen or a linen garment in it, or the warp, warp or woof of linen or wool, or in a skin or in anything made of skin.

If the disease is greenish or reddish in the garment or in the skin or in the warp or woof of any of the kind of article made of the skin, it is a case of a leprous disease and it should be shown to the priest.

Priest shall examine the disease. Now, now we're examining the disease on like a garment, you know, so you got to bring your clothes to the priest, right?

And the priest shall examine the disease, shut up that which has the disease for seven days. Then he shall examine the disease on the seventh day.

If the disease has spread in the garment, in the warp or the woof, warp or woof, or in the skin, whatever it be, whatever be the use of the skin, the disease is a persistent leprous disease.

It's unclean. And he shall burn the garment or the warp or the woof of the wool or the linen or any article made of skin that is diseased for it is a persistent leprous disease.

It shall be burned in the fire. Again, note the attention to detail when it comes to good hygiene.

You know, if you got clothes that are molding and stuff like that, you should not be wearing those things because that's going to, it's going to get you sick.

In this particular case, God has commanded those things get burned. Now, if the priest examines, and if the disease has not spread in the garment, in the warp of the woof or any of the article of skin, then the priest shall command that they wash the thing in which is the disease, and he shall shut it up for another seven days.

The priest shall examine the disease thing after it has been washed. And if the appearance of the diseased area has not changed, though the disease has not spread, it is unclean.

You shall burn it in the fire, whether the rot is on the back or the front. But if the priest examines, and if the diseased area has faded after it has been washed, he shall tear it out of the garment of the skin or the warp of the woof.

And if it appears again in the garment, in the warp of the woof or at any article made of skin, it is spreading, you shall burn it with fire, whatever has the disease.

But the garment or the warp of the woof or any article made of the skin from which the disease departs, when you have washed it, shall be washed a second time, and then it shall be clean.

Wash, examine. If it's getting better, wash it again, and then it's going to be okay. This is the law for case of a leper's disease in a garment of wool or linen, either in the warp of the woof or in any article made of skin to determine whether it is clean or unclean.

Again, the minutiae detail is oh so fascinating. Now, now remember those, those nine lepers then, those nine lepers that went there, they kept going to Jerusalem to present themselves to the priest.

This is what they would have been required to do in order to be declared clean. So Yahweh spoke to Moses saying, this shall be the law of the leper's person for the day of his cleansing.

He shall be brought to the priest, the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall look. Then if the case of the leper's disease is healed in the leper's person, the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two live clean birds and cedar wood and scarlet yarn and hyssop, and the priest shall command them to kill one of the birds in an earthenware vessel over fresh water, and he shall take the live bird with the cedar wood and the scarlet yarn and the hyssop and dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the fresh water, and he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed of the leper of the leper's disease.

So notice, blood and water mixed together, sprinkled on the person for them being declared clean.

Again, another little type and shadow, you know, that it just screams baptism, right?

So then he shall pronounce him clean and shall let the living bird go in the open field, and he who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and bathe himself in water, and he shall be clean.

So again, notice the baptismal imagery here. And after that, he may come into the camp and live outside his tent for seven days, and on the seventh day he shall shave off all the hair from his head, his beard, and his eyebrows.

Oh, that's a bummer. People look weird without eyebrows. Anyways, and he shall shave off all of his hair, and then he shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and then he shall be clean.

And on the eighth day he shall take two male lambs without blemish, and one ewe lamb a year old without blemish, and a grain offering of three -tenths of an ephah, a fine flower mixed with oil, and one log of oil, and the priest who cleanses him shall set the man who is to be cleansed and these things before Yahweh at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and the priest shall take one of the male lambs and offer it for the guilt offering, along with the log of oil, and waive them for a waive offering before the

Lord, and then he shall kill the lamb in the place where they kill the sin offering and the burnt offering in the place of the sanctuary.

So you get a note here. Sin offering needs to be made in order for the leper who's been cleansed to receive the final, you know, your sins are forgiven and you're totally cleansed, verdict.

You say, well, what sin did the guy commit? I mean, he caught a leprous disease. Is it sinful to catch a disease?

Yeah, it is. The reason why you catch a disease like this is because you're a sinner.

Remember, you sin because you're a sinner. The reason why you catch diseases like this is because you're a sinner.

And so what's necessary for your cleansing then is appropriate is a sin offering. For the guilt offering, like the sin offering belongs to the priest, it is most holy.

The priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering and the priest shall put it on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot.

All right. So right ear, thumb, big toe. Okay. Then the priest shall take some of the log of oil, pour it into the palm of his own left hand and dip his right finger in the oil that is in the left hand and sprinkle some of the oil with the finger seven times before Yahweh.

Some of the oil that remains in his hand and the priest shall put on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot on top of the blood of the guilt offering and the rest of the oil that is in the priest's hand he shall put on the head of him who is to be cleansed.

So you know, he gets an anointing now, a bona fide anointing.

And then the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord. The priest shall offer the sin offering to make atonement for him who is to be cleansed for his uncleanness and afterwards he shall kill the burnt offering and the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the grain offering on the altar.

Thus the priest shall make atonement for him and then he shall be clean. Final verdict on that is that he's clean.

So you'll note the nine who headed back to Jerusalem to present themselves to the priest, this is what they would have been walked through.

And this is a multi -day long, very kind of long affair with lots of blood and different ceremonial rites that go along with it.

And you'll note then the Samaritan kind of got to skip all of that because he just is declared clean by Jesus directly, right?

The old covenant is giving way now and falling away as the new covenant is coming into place.

Now regarding the leper who's poor, so you got a poor leper here who cannot afford so much.

Then he shall take one male lamb for a guilt offering to be waved to make atonement for him and a tenth of an ephah fine flour mixed with oil for grain offering and a log of oil.

Also two turtle doves or two pigeons, whichever he can afford. And one shall be a sin offering, the other a burnt offering, and on the eighth day he shall bring them for his cleansing to the priest to the entrance of the tent of meeting before Yahweh and the priest shall take the lamb of the guilt offering and the log of oil and the priest shall wave them for a wave offering before the

Lord. Now a little bit of a note here. If lepers are not permitted to be inside the camp, most likely they're going to be poor.

The only way they can make any money is like if anyone has pity on them and gives them alms. Marilyn, can we say the nine lepers had less faith than the

Samaritans since they followed the law of the day? Not exactly, Marilyn. I think that's really not the point.

Jesus is being kind of subversive here, and you got to admit, those nine guys, they did exactly what

Jesus told them to do. What they didn't recognize was the reality of who

Jesus was as their high priest, and they knew he could cleanse them and they believed that, but it was only the fellow who wasn't still bound by the

Mosaic covenant that had the freedom, and I mean literally the freedom to receive his cleansing directly from Jesus.

So I would say those nine guys, if they heard Jesus was like, shocked you didn't come back, they would go, what?

We did exactly what Jesus told us to do. He told us to go present ourselves to the priest, and we did. But there's a subversive kind of subtext to this then, that the old covenant's fallen away, and the new covenant is going to include

Gentiles and Samaritans and people like this, and they don't have to go through the whole rigmarole of that Mosaic covenant.

So it's not a matter of faith, it's a matter of the fact that this is kind of a precursor to the soon -to -be -dawning new era of the new covenant, which hasn't had, you know, the old covenant hadn't quite fallen away yet, and Jesus has to follow to Urah.

So those guys were doing exactly what they should have done, and Jesus told them to do what they should have done, but it's that Samaritan who is the outlier, it's like, yeah, you can kind of see how that's working out for him.

So I have a study that said only the Samaritan had true saving faith. I do not agree.

I agree, that's correct. I would, again, the Nine did exactly what Jesus told them to do, and what the

Mosaic covenant required them to do, all right? There's a subversive piece to the text, and I would even say that the fact that Jesus, the text is saying that Jesus is in no -man's land between Samaria and Galilee is giving you a hint as to what's going on theologically in the significance of that text.

All right, coming back then, he shall kill the lamb of the guilt offering, the priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering, put it on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot, and the priest shall pour some of the oil into the palm of his left hand, and shall sprinkle with his right finger some of the oil that is in his left hand seven times before the

Lord, and the priest shall put some of the oil that is in the hand of the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand, on the big toe of his right foot, and in the place where the blood of the guilt offering was put, and the rest of the oil that is in the priest's hand he shall put on the head of him who is to be cleansed, and to make atonement for him before the

Lord, and then he shall offer the turtle doves or the pigeons, whichever he can afford. Yeah.

Is there, Barb asked the question, is there a relation to the seven sprinkles of oil and Naaman the leper being dipped seven times in the

Jordan? Yeah, clearly there is. Because you'll note when Naaman, the story of Naaman the

Syrian, when he was cleansed, he had to dip himself seven times, and you'll note that there's a seven -fold anointing going on here, and so that does correlate.

I would say that the two numbers have everything in common, all right? All right, so one is a sin offering, the other is for a burnt offering, along with a grain offering, the priest shall make atonement before the

Lord for him who is being cleansed. This is the law for him who, in whom is a case of leper's disease, who cannot afford the offerings for his cleansing.

Okay, now we're gonna stop there, and I'm gonna make a little bit of a highlight so I can remember that we're at verse 33.

Hang on a second here, highlights, and I'm going to highlight that as green, and that will tell me there.

Okay, very good. All right, any other questions before we wrap up for the day?

So I always find it fascinating when we have snow days like this, and we have to do our services online in our

Sunday school online, you know, somebody will inevitably say, how'd you like having the day off? It's kind of funny.

Anyway, okay, well, seeing no questions, any further questions, then we will end there, and Lord willing, we will have some weather where we will be able to regather at Kongsvinger next

Sunday. Catechism, well, Wednesday, we gather on Wednesday for midweek Lenten services.

Come at 6 .30 for supper, and then 7 .30

we'll have the service, and then of course Sunday we'll regather again, weather permitting.