Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 13, 2022 | Leviticus - Holiness and Decay

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March 13, 2022 | Leviticus - Holiness and Decay · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to see everybody.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: You have made the 8 a.m.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: service, so good work.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Glad to see everybody this morning.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't been with us, we are currently going through a series in the book of Leviticus, third book in the Bible, the book often called the One of Holiness, that tells us more about God's holiness, a component of his character that lets us know that he is set apart, he is different, he is, I mean, God.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we worship him, is because he's holy.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And as we've been going through this book of Leviticus, we've been trying to take the lessons that are often, hmm, the word could be obtuse, maybe, but difficult to understand.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And taking these things and seeing that what God was doing with his people was giving them these eternal truths that they could then apply to their lives.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And even though we are people of a new covenant, that we have Jesus Christ with us as our Savior, that has changed a lot of things, but it hasn't changed the fact that the Old Testament can still be used to help us draw deeper into our relationship with God and understand his character.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so last week we looked at food.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: We said that God had some specific rules about certain clean and unclean animals, and that theme of clean and unclean even more is something that is carrying forward through, well, all of the book of Leviticus, but especially chapters 11 through 15.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning, we're hitting on, I'm laughing because I just can't believe that we're talking about this.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about skin diseases this morning, and I'm looking forward to it because I think that I think that there's a lot of wonderful things that we can draw out of this as well.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're in chapters 13 and 14 this morning, if you have your Bibles with you, and we'll kind of be going back and forth.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: But at the very end of chapter 14 is where we find this phrase.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is the law for any skin disease or mildew, for a scaly outbreak, for mildew in clothing or on a house, and for a swelling scab or spot to determine when something is unclean or clean.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is the law regarding skin diseases and mildew.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is the bulk of chapters 13 and 14, and they run parallel to each other.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: There are two sort of different things that are affected.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: The um one is that uh humans, humanity, experiences disease, but also there's a similarity to the objects that were around the Israelites, in this case, their houses and their clothing, and how it could also be affected, not necessarily with disease, but with mold and mildew.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the effects of those two things were seen as similar to each other.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so in 13 and 14, these things are discussed.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then after that is the process, like we've seen for everything so far.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, once something is declared unclean, right?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you remember, um, whether it's objects, animals, plants, people, it can be holy, clean, or unclean.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the job of Aaron the priest was to teach the people to distinguish between these things, so that they could then enter into God's presence in his tabernacle and later on in his temple.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So whether it was, you know, you had a specific skin disease, a lesion, or something like that, and chapter 13 has a lot of different examples, if you'd like to read that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or it was something that affected your house, you had to go and sort of walk through this ritual or this sacrifice.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And no matter what it was, um, no matter what the outbreak is or the mildew, it followed the exact same pattern.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: When you were handling disease, there was a statement of the symptoms, then there was a priestly inspection, then there was an evidence of the diagnosis, and then there were typically consequences.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, the statement of symptoms.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: The God had given the Israelites all of these different examples for like skin lesions.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So in chapter 13, it would say, there are multiple examples, like I said, but it would say something like, you know, if um there is a white spot, then you're going to watch that spot for a week.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if it grows or if it changes, then you are unclean, but if not, then you are clean, and so on and so forth.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: There were these symptoms.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, something that's interesting that might be in your Bibles is that it would say um that this is leprosy or that they had a disease of leprosy, and that's not entirely true.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really matter for the application of this whole passage, but the word leprosy as we think of it in our modern context is not what is under examination in chapters 13 and 14.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's coming, make a long story short, it's coming from the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and they used the word leper to lepra to to describe these skin diseases, and all of our English people were like, we're just gonna take that word and make it, that's how we're gonna translate it.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna take lepra and make it leprosy.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: In reality, we're talking about something different, like shingles or scaly skin diseases.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anyhow, so um there would be a statement of these symptoms, right?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then there would be a priestly inspection, and so the priest sort of um fulfilled one of his duties as being kind of like the medical personnel there.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's really important to note that um both now and then later on this morning, because we'll talk about it, that the focus was not that this person was then given some kind of like ointment or balm or that they were healed of their skin disease.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: The focus of the priest was that they would be holy.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: So they weren't focused as much on healing the person as they were on making sure that they were fit to enter God's presence.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the third thing would be the evidence of the diagnosis.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is the bulk of chapter 13, where it describes sort of the processes for the priest to what he should be looking for, right?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: If if we're gonna make pronouncements about somebody's status as clean or unclean, we want to make sure we have all of the evidence.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure we have everything in order so that, because some of the consequences were pretty severe, we know we're on the right track.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then fourth is that there were typically consequences.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, like other things that we've looked at with clean and unclean, this doesn't always mean that they were, you know, necessarily sinful, right?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because they'd gotten a skin lesion.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, their cleanliness, their interaction with the world had taken them away from God's presence, and that had to be rectified.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Funny enough, there are a few examples where God was like, hey, this is a close call, but you're actually good to go.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: If a man loses the hair of his head, he is bald, but he is clean.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty sure this is where we get Mr.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Clean from.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know a better time I could have referenced Mr.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Clean.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there were certain situations where they would say, okay, well, this ended up not being, you know, what we thought it was, and so you're good to go, you're clean.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: But in a lot of the situations, they were unclean, and they had to be separated from the community.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: In Leviticus 13, verses 45 and 46, it says the person who has a case of serious skin disease, which is which is all of them that were listed, is to have his clothes torn and his hair hanging loose, and he must cover his mouth and cry out, unclean, unclean.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: He will remain unclean as long as he has the disease.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: He is unclean.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: He must live alone in a place outside the camp.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So these things up here are evidence of mourning, right?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: That they were they were grieved by the fact that they had been marked as unclean, and they were letting other people know that they were unclean, because remember, if something is unclean, you can't touch it, or else then you become unclean.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they're protecting the rest of the community by doing this, but they had to live in isolation.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a pretty extreme consequence, but we actually have great precedent that it was carried out to the highest level.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: In 2 Chronicles chapter 26, and then this is kind of a longer passage, there's a king named Uziah.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uziah.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was 16 years old when he became king, and he reigned 52 years in Jerusalem.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: His mother's name was Jehaiah, she was from Jerusalem.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: He did what was right in the Lord's sight, just as his father Amaziah had done.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: He sought God throughout the lifetime of Zechariah, the teacher of the fear of God.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: During the time that he sought the Lord, God gave him success.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so this king, he is a king over the southern kingdom of Judah.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So this is further on in our Bible, once the kingdom of Israel has split into two, and for the most part, he was a pretty good king.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: But when he became strong, he grew arrogant, and it led to his own destruction.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: He acted unfaithfully against the Lord his God by going into the Lord's sanctuary, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this is uh we've moved past the tabernacle, we're in the temple period now.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So he's in the temple to burn incense on the incense altar.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: The priest Azariah, along with eighty brave priests of the Lord, went in after him.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: They took their stand against King Uziah and said, Uzia, you have no right to offer incense to the Lord.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Only the consecrated priests, the descendants of Aaron, something we should be familiar with from Leviticus, have the right to offer incense.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Leave the sanctuary, for you have acted unfaithfully.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You will not receive honor from the Lord God.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we move on, something to note here.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: What he was doing is basically trying to become like all of the other kings around Israel, which had sort of occupied this duality of priest-king.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: They were the leader of the religion as well as the leader of the nation.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this was something that God very clearly said was not going to be the case.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, he didn't want Israel to have a king, but even then he said they will not be a priest as well.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Later on in the New Testament, in the book of Hebrews, we read that Jesus actually has become the one and only priestly king.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, Uziah was trying to usurp the priests' duties.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: He had gone into the temple, into a place where only the priests were supposed to be, only the consecrated individuals.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then he was confronted by eighty priests.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: That gives you an idea of the level of authority that he had in doing this.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: What's his reaction?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: With a firepan in his hand to offer incense, I mean, he's caught mid-act, he was enraged.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: But when he became enraged with the priests, in the presence of the priests in the Lord's temple, a lot of witnesses, beside the altar of incense, a skin disease broke out on his forehead.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: The Nazariah, the chief priest, and all the priests turned to him and saw that he was diseased on his forehead.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: They rushed him out of there.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: He himself also hurried to get out because the Lord had afflicted him.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: So King Uzia was diseased to the time of his death.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: He lived in quarantine with a serious skin disease and was excluded from access to the Lord's temple, while his son Jotham was over the king's household, governing the people of the land.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he had to work from home, right?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of us are doing that.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: But what's going on here, though?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, notice just for a second some of the details about how important it was that the unclean was not in the God's presence, right?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: The priests, they see this lesion break out on his head.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that's detailed in Leviticus 13.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so very clearly they are aware right off the bat that he has something that has made him unclean.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so they rushed him out of there.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're confronting each other and they're in a fight.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And while he is gripped with anger, this lesion breaks out, and they're like, We need to get you out of here.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: You should not be here.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he himself recognizes the importance.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: He also hurried to get out because the Lord had afflicted him.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so you get a sense that this was this was a really big deal.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is something that carries on into the New Testament as well, in the Jewish community, that their aversion to people with skin diseases, it ended up developing into something that was pretty harmful.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that in a second.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, this was a serious um this was a serious thing.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you had one of these skin diseases, just like if you had transgressed against the Lord in another way, you could not be in his presence.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there were two paths that this followed.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Either, if you got a skin disease or a lesion, either it stayed with you and you had to stay in quarantine, or more often, it eventually resolved itself and you were able to come back into the community of believers in the camp.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're able to come back into the Israelite community, and to do so, you then offered some sacrifices, some things that I'm going to kind of breeze over because if you've been with us the last few weeks, hopefully we're kind of familiar with some of these.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: But out of the five main sacrifices, you would offer a burnt sacrifice, a grain, a purification or sin sacrifice, and a guilt sacrifice.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: The only one that wasn't listed is the peace offering.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but once more, that one is voluntary and is given out of appreciation for being made right with God.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so most likely they ended up doing all five of these.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that these four are listed in Leviticus 14.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: In various sort of circumstances, they would bring these things to the priest.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, though, there was an additional component to this sacrifice, brought back into the community, that wasn't included in these.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's that they were to bring two birds, two doves or two turtle doves.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this is kind of graphic, but uh they would take these two doves, and one of them would be killed, and its blood would go out into a bowl, and then they would take the other dove, and they would also, um they had scarlet yarn and hyssop, which is a type of sort of spongy uh flower, and cedar wood, and they would take all of these things and they would dip it in the blood, and then the priest would take the blood, he would sprinkle it on the individual who had the skin disease because they were the ones being purified, not as we've looked at elsewhere, not the land or anything like that, but the individual themselves.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: He declared the person clean, and then they would release the second bird covered in the blood of the first.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you know the rest of the Bible, it's not very hard to make the jump into what this is representing.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not very hard to see our own Savior, Jesus Christ, in his blood that now covers us so that we can be free.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, though the Israelites did not know about Jesus as of yet, they would still understand that it was God, excuse me, it was God who was saving them.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was God who had protected them, it was God who had rescued them.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And as they see this bird flying off covered in blood, they wouldn't understand that a sacrifice had to be made for it, just as we understand, hopefully, that a sacrifice has to be made for our own sins.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here we come to um I think a difficult point in the message this morning, because um we have to, well, we need to endeavor to figure out what is the eternal truth that God is trying to communicate through this lesson, the law, the Mosaic Law about skin diseases and mildew.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of hard because the overwhelming majority of uh scholars are going to say that the eternal lesson that is to be learned here is that skin diseases represent sin.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm gonna let you know what they're saying, but then also let you know that I disagree with that.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna kind of wrestle with that together.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, do the skin diseases, chapters 13 and 14, and what happens in the homes, does that represent sin?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what happens is they look often will look at um the different details about how the priest is supposed to look at the skin, and they'll draw conclusions from that about sin in our world today, that it's often hidden from view.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um this these are the verses I have listed next to it.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that it must be revealed fully, not partially, that there's a danger of old or hidden sin spreading in our lives, that if it goes unchecked, it will spread as well, that it makes us unclean before God and it harms our relationships.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now I think all of these things are true about sin.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't disagree with any of those items.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I've got three reasons why I don't think that the skin diseases are trying to teach the Israelites about sin.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want to share those three reasons with you, and then I want to tell you what I actually think God is trying to communicate to his people.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, rather briefly, the three reasons why I don't actually think that this is the case, and I want to be careful because there are a whole lot of people, way smarter than me, who do think this is the case.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the first is for something we'd call hermeneutics, which is basically another word for how we're interpreting the Bible.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: The difficulty for getting this list is that you have to read through chapter 13 and draw out something like danger of older hidden sin spreading from a command about watching the color of hair that's coming out of a scab.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this list that we're looking at in chapter 13, it really seems to look like the other kinds of lists in Leviticus where God has just been further explaining his command, where he said, sort of like last week with the food, hey, here are here's these general rules for the animals, okay, here's some specific examples.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: It seems to be that's what we're getting again here, not that every single different skin lesion or type of disease is a new teaching on sin.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: That would be allegory, that would be allegorizing it, and I don't think that's a strong way to draw these conclusions.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: The second would be that if disease is supposed to represent sin, then there's a sort of parallel nature happening here, and you would expect the things about disease in almost all respects to reflect the way that we handle sin today.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: But we get to a problem when we see that there are individuals who are sometimes never healed of their skin diseases and are always left outside the camp, like King Uzia.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: What are we supposed to do with that?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how sin works.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: If people don't accept Christ, then they will be left out of God's kingdom.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, the people with the skin diseases had no choice, and we know that we do have a choice to trust in Christ.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so it seems to, in my opinion, break apart there.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the third reason is that it seems, both here in Leviticus and elsewhere in the Bible, that God is not as concerned with the disease itself as he is with the response to the disease.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if it represented sin, then we would think that he was most concerned about the disease.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: What do I mean?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in John 9, the disciples in Jesus encounter an individual.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: As he was passing by, he saw a man, this is Jesus, blind from birth.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Neither this man nor his parents sinned, Jesus answered.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: This came about so that God's works might be displayed in him.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: We must do the works of him who sent me while it is day.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Night is coming when no one can work.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, yes, this is not a skin disease, this is blindness.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: But in the culture there, every sort of physical deformity or disability or disease was seen as something that was afflicted by God.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so, whether it was skin disease or here we're talking about blindness, it was viewed in the same light that there was something that they had done to transgress against God.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see how the sort of the Levitical code over hundreds and hundreds of years transformed into this attitude where anybody, they're passing by somebody who's paralyzed, who's blind, who's broken, who has got a skin disease, is a leper, that those people, their hearts are hardened towards them, right?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is why Jesus was so concerned about these kinds of people and cared for them, because it was not that they had sinned, per se, but rather that there was something else, there was something bigger happening.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: That it wasn't about the disease, it was about what God was doing with the disease and how the person was going to respond.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even back in Leviticus, this is true.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: In Leviticus 14, they're talking now about the home.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it says the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, When you enter the land of Canaan, the promised land where they're heading, that I am giving you as a possession, and I place a mildew contamination in a house in the land you possess.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: The owner of the house is to come and tell the priest something like mildew contamination has appeared in my house.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see here why, if this is sin, if it's supposed to represent sin, it's not creating a full picture.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because God does not cause us to sin.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's a choice that we make.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: We rebel against God.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so the fact that God is placing these things in the community, seeking for them to respond to it, seems to be pointing in another direction.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that the eternal truth that God is trying to communicate through the laws of disease and mildew is that it is representative of the fall.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Disease was and is a reminder of living in a fallen world where death and decay should be expected.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about the fallen man, what are we talking about?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: We go back to Genesis, we go back to the beginning, and we see that Adam and Eve sinned against God, and through that sin, specifically through Adam, sin entered into the whole world.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a curse that was placed because of that, and we call that the fall.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the curse affected a whole lot of things.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: It affected you and I, but it also affected the whole world around us.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that as we find Paul saying later in Romans, that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not only that, we also groan within ourselves.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reality that is around us, which is that we live in a fallen world, and that fallen world is often the extent that we consider it is to just say that bad things happen, like there's evil in the world.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's fallen.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: But there's another component to it that is even more pervasive, which is that death and decay now reign and rule because of the fall.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was not part of God's original design.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: So disease and decay, these the skin lesions and mildew in the homes, those are all indicative of living in a fallen world.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those things are reminding everybody that they live in a place where death and decay are things that should be expected.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: It should not surprise them.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I think if I were a doctor, I would have a very poor bedside manner.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I also think that I would be able to tell the truth.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And here is the hard thing: is that we are all heading towards death.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: We are all heading towards those things.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And our expectations, this is why it's so hard to grasp, is because our expectations are that God is going to make our life easy and that we will not experience death and decay, or that rather when we do, it just makes us angry at Him.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Missed expectations can be harmful and hurtful.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: They can also be just disappointing.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: This past week, I uh Hannah, my wife Hannah, uh, we found like$70 round trip tickets to California.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can't like drive to KC for that much right now.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so we took a little quick trip, Monday through Friday.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: We went to San Francisco, and this is Alcatraz.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we visited Alcatraz, and I had never been there before.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what's my expectation?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: My expectation is to learn about the prisoners like Al Capone and hear about.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'd watched that Mythbusters episode where the guys try and escape from prison, and so I want to go and I want to see this and I want to hear these things.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you something.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: They do not talk about it very much.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: When you go to Alcatraz, all of the rangers that, right, because it was a federal prison and now it's a national park, and all the park rangers there, they're very tired of people showing up wanting to hear about Al Capone.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was very obvious and apparent.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: They even said they're like, I bet you're here to hear about Al Capone, and you're like, Yeah.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty much.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Also prison escapes.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, Well, did you know that Alcatraz Island is one of the best places on the West Coast for migratory birds to nest?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you all about our bird sanctuaries on Alcatraz Island.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I do not care about your bird sanctuaries.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know about Al Capone.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we have expectations that are missed, right, it can be slightly disappointing because we weren't prepared for that.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: If we're prepared heading into something, we can better handle it when it arrives.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem that we have is our expectation is that death and decay won't affect us, that death and decay won't be a part of our lives, and that if it is, that God is going to automatically handle it.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a problem because it's something that is inevitable.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: The deeper that we can understand the truth about death and decay, the more we will appreciate things like Lazarus being brought back from the dead.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: When you read that text, if we don't understand how how because we know the rest of the Bible, you know, we're we we understand it, we're biblically literate, if we don't understand the theme of death and what an obstacle that is, even from the beginning of Genesis, if we don't get that, then it looks like what Jesus is doing for Mary and Martha is a huge favor.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: That they're like, man, Lazarus died.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, Jesus, can you sort of fix this thing?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: But in actuality, when you get in deeper into the text, it says that Jesus is angry because he understands, God understands that death is this final obstacle.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so for Mary and Martha, he is going to literally reverse the natural order.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: He is going to undo whatever kind of disease it was that took Lazarus' life, and he is going to literally reverse the course of three days of decay that were in Lazarus' body.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like Jesus is taking these things and he is upending the natural order.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: That should defy our expectations.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't look at that and say, well, why can't God just do that today?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't God just fix all of these things?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why isn't he doing that?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: This theme is picked up later on in the Bible by Paul, who lived a very difficult life.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember his conversion experience on the Damascus Road, God even says, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: You do not want God to say that about you.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he showed Paul.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul explains it.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: He experienced a whole lot of really, really difficult things in life.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Beatings, lashings, shipwrecks, stonings that he survived.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul picks up on this theme.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: He does it in Romans, but an even stronger defense of it is in 2 Corinthians 4.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Therefore, we do not give up.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we do not focus on what is seen but what is unseen.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, up to this point, before 1 Corinthians 4, verse 16, Paul is talking about, he uses words like, we are jars of clay.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: He says we are experiencing destruction.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: He says our bodies, our mortal bodies, are exchanging death for faith and hope in Christ.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: He says that we are all, we are, unless basically, if you have graduated college, we are all on this journey towards death and decay.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's hard.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's painful to accept.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And for anybody who has experienced that, anybody who is sick, who has a disease, the last thing they would say about it is that it is a momentary light affliction.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: But what helped Paul to be able to say that was he was comparing it not to other people's struggles, but to what was coming in the future.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: He was comparing it to something that was greater.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And for the individuals in Israel, right, who had these skin diseases, they would have understood a component of this.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: God was communicating to them about the fall.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: That there were individuals who were healed by no work of their own, that God rescued them from their disease, and that they were able to re-enter into the community.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: But there were other people, and this is why I think this is a stronger definition or idea behind the diseases than sin.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: What about the people who were left out of the camp?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: What about the people whose disease never went away?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: What about the people who never got healed?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was a reminder of the fact that this is what we're heading towards.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was a reminder of the final obstacle.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was a reminder of the fact that death and disease is the last hurdle that we jump over before we go to be with God.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And by seeing these individuals who are no longer allowed to enter into the camp, it is the same way we see somebody today who has terminal cancer.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: That we understand that God might not heal them.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And even if he doesn't, he is still a good God.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And our expectation is that death and decay is part of our lives.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that when by God's grace he does heal us, that we understand that that is, it should defy our expectations, not meet them, because he's not a genie, he's our savior.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: When we focus on the beauty of eternity, our temporary struggles become easier to bear.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: When we focus on what Paul says, the fact that in the future there will be none of these things, it becomes easier, not easy, it becomes easier to handle what we're dealing with now.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a certain beauty in the Leviticus 13 and 14 about these skin diseases.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: That if no disease, nothing that took away from the wholeness of a person was allowed to be in the presence of God, then for those who trust in Christ and are going to be in the presence of God, there will be none of those things there.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: If there's no disease that can enter into the tabernacle, then certainly in heaven there's no disease there either.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's no mental illness, there's no physical deformity, there's no blindness or paralyzing nature.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing there, because those are things that are representative of the fall.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was not God being cruel, saying that they couldn't have fellowship with them.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, he was reminding the Israelites that they are living in a world that is not their home.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: We are living in a world that is not our home.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the way things should be.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if we keep trying to turn this world, or rather expecting that this world is going to be like heaven, then we're going to be disappointed because it is never going to be that way.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: But what can we do now?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: What can we do and how can we take these things?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And until we get to the beauty of eternity, make things easier to bear.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: What can we do?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the last sort of um passage I want to share with you here to finish out our time, I think helps us to understand how we should view these things.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: In Luke 17, verses 11 through 14, uh, Jesus, while traveling to Jerusalem, he passed between Samaria and Galilee, kind of this no man's land.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: As he entered a village, ten men with leprosy, and this is the same word it from Leviticus, ten men with leprosy met him.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: They stood at a distance and raised their voices, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: When he saw them, he told them, Go and show yourselves to the priests.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: And while they were going, they were cleansed.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus still fulfilling the law here.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: But one of them, seeing that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice gave glory to God.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: He fell face down at his feet, thanking him, and he was a Samaritan, somebody who should not have been expected to do that.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus said, Were not ten cleansed?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where are the nine?
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't any return to give glory to God except this foreigner?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he told him, Get up and go on your way, your faith has saved you.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Nine individuals had their incorrect expectations met.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: That they thought that the only reason, the only solution, the only good thing that could come out of this, out of their interaction with God, was that they were healed.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: One out of the ten understood that what had happened was not normal, and rather what had happened was he had been saved, falling down at his feet, thanking the one who had gone against the natural order and gave glory to him.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is how we are to walk through life together.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: As we endure these, as Paul says, momentary battles, but yet what feel like lifelong journeys, as we all get nicked and bruised, and as we all head towards this point where death is going, unless Jesus returns first, where death is going to take us, we must look to God, not as our genie, but as our savior.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: That the most important thing is not that this life is filled with ease, but rather that we give glory to him.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Not that we get healed of our disease, but rather in our response to it, that we walk towards him.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: You think back to that story in John about the blind man, and Jesus says, This man was blind so that my name might be proclaimed.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Through the difficulties of our life, how can Jesus be proclaimed even greater?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: In what way can we turn Satan's greatest weapon, which is death and disease, how can we turn his greatest weapon against him?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: How can we take that which he throws at us the hardest and throw it back at him, saying, you know what?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is true, but I know something that is even greater.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking towards something that is even greater.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And no part of this can take me down.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, I'm going to use it to draw closer to Jesus, to tell other people about Jesus, and to know that ultimately, where I'm going, I don't have to deal with this anymore.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, that's a long way away.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: The last thing I want to leave you with is just a little anecdote.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Every Tuesday we have a staff meeting here at the church, and at that staff meeting, we get a front and back piece of paper with prayer requests on it for people who are going through all of these kinds of things.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: What I want to let you know is that without fail, almost every single one of those names in the span of a month is often off the list, or their great obstacle that we were praying for is resolved.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: God is still in the business of healing.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: God is still in the business of resolving the pain of this life.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: God is still in the business of doing things like raising Lazarus and reversing the natural order.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is not a message about despair saying, don't pray to God.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go to Him and your needs.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is not some sort of dour thought.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, God still wants to know your prayers.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: God still answers prayers, and he does it a lot.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, ultimately, those people, including myself, are heading towards a future that our sin has created, which is death.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And beyond that is God.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so let's take this greatest weapon that the enemy has and turn it against him.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not allow it to defeat us, but let us use it to draw closer to Jesus.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: And God, my my the burden that I have this morning is for those who have disease right now, for those who are sick right now, or know someone who is sick.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: And God, I I pray that what I I've communicated is not some sort of negative outlook, but rather one that helps us, Lord, to understand you better, to have a deeper relationship with you, to see things as they truly are, and to be better prepared to walk through one of the hardest times of our lives with our eyes focused on you.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: God, I ask for strength for individuals who are struggling in this area who are sick.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that those who are sick that you would heal them.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: I pray, because I know you can and I know you do.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: I see it so often.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, I also pray that we would understand that the greater thing is not being healed, but it's in having a savior so that we might be able to be with you where there are none of these things any longer.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Where the incomparable glory of heaven is fully upon us, and we look back on these things with hindsight being perfect and saying, yeah, compared to this, that was a light and momentary affliction.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I can't imagine what that future holds.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I pray that until that time you would help us to see your glory in the world around us.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: Before you go, one last slide I just wanted to finish with.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I know it's not on the TV, but this is uh the the commentary that I've been using a lot to go through Leviticus, and I I just wanted to quote this.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's until Jesus returns, we must endure this life with its frailties and see every recovery and restoration to wholeness as a preview of our glorification.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: If that is our expectation, I think we will be better off.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.