Welcome to chapter by chapter, four year journey through the greatest book given to the human race, the word of God, the Bible. And we get to go through it chapter by chapter. Seven minutes a day, seven days a week. Join us each day and share it with others so they can join this journey that will be life-changing. We'll stop at unexpected places on the journey and be challenged. Some verses will create awe and wonder. We'll have chapters that will be instructive and others will find joy and comfort. We will occasionally be convicted and want to change and all in all, the journey will be worth it. Once in a while we may take a detour on the journey and hear from some of God's servants on their favorite passages from a chapter of scripture and let them give you their insight. Every journey needs a small detour occasionally. The best way to get the most from this podcast is to read the chapter we were discussing before or after. It's his word that transforms. You will find more and see more than I can ever articulate. Welcome to chapter by chapter and today's chapter is Leviticus 13, mistakenly declared dead. Imagine the awful inconvenience of being declared dead by the United States government when you're still alive and doing just fine. This is a true story. Susan and Darby Nye of Arlington, Virginia have been married for 30 years and were looking forward to many more years of marriage now that both were retired. However, Susan started receiving condolences from various federal agencies regarding the death of her husband. There was one huge problem. Darby was alive and doing great. It started when Darby went to purchase a prescription at a pharmacy and was declined. He called his insurance to find out why and they said, well, Social Security has informed us that you are dead. The Social Security Administration uses the death data to terminate benefit payments and report deaths to other agencies. But one typo can mistakenly declare someone dead and digging their grave that varies them along with their benefits. This is not an anomaly to Darby. It is estimated that every year some 12,000 US citizens are declared dead by Social Security due to key stroke errors. Those affected become like the walking dead unable to secure a job, make financial transactions, file taxes, visit a doctor or for months on end must endure the nightmare of convincing a large bureaucracy that they're still alive. Leviticus 13 and 14 is the introduction of a disease that does this very thing legally. The next two chapters is about the heinous disease leprosy. And if you are a leper, you are dead. Historically, individuals diagnosed with leprosy were often considered dead by society, the church and the law long before their actual physical death. Due to the fear of contagion, the severe physical disfigurement and the lack of a cure leprosy was referred to as the living death or death before death by the community. Without having read about one leper for thousands of years before this is written, the Leviticus law speaks about a disease we will become very familiar with throughout the scriptures. We will know the names attached to it and its stigma and seclusion that it demands. Based on the frequency and significance of miraculous healings recorded in the Bible, blindness and leprosy are the two conditions most prominently healed by Jesus. But leprosy wins if you add the Old Testament. Leprosy was the Bible's number one mentioned disease. Leprosy occurs 68 times in the Bible, 55 times in the Old Testament, 13 times in the New Testament. But there is more underneath this disease than the disease itself. I don't think it's any accident when you read Leviticus 13. One of the key phrases used is this, deeper than the skin. The priest would look for a mark and have to see this first stage is deeper than the mark on the skin. Listen to Leviticus 13. 3. The priest shall look at the mark on the skin of the body. And if the hair in the infection has turned white and the infection appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is an infection of leprosy. When the priest has looked at him, he shall pronounce him unclean. The priest needed to look beyond the symptoms for something deeper and more serious. It speaks about deeper than the skin in verses 3, 4, 20. It's in verses 21, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32, and 34. 10 times we are told that this is a disease that hides under the skin. If you google leprosy, your search results would lead you to a condition called Hansen's disease. There are around 200,000 cases a year. Hansen's disease is a slow moving infection that attacks the mitochondria inside the cell. Over time, it damages the nerves, which becomes swollen under the skin. This leads to skin discoloration, sores, and loss of feeling. The loss of feeling is what is horrific. It was the work of Dr. Paul Brand, the late world-renowned orthopedic surgeon and leprosy physician that illustrated the value of sensing pain in the world. Leprosy destroys nerve endings that carry pain signals. Therefore, patients with advanced leprosy experience a total loss of physical pain. When these people cannot sense touch or pain, they tend to injure themselves or be unaware of injury caused by an outside agent. Dr. Brand was in India for 17 years working with lepers. It looked like leprosy destroyed fingers, toes, and noses, but as he observed lepers in India, he discovered that rats would nibble their fingers, toes, and noses while they slept because leprosy had destroyed their nerve endings, rendering them unable to feel any pain. I know this is hard to hear, but there is something deeper than the skin to take note of. In the Old Testament and throughout the Bible, leprosy is frequently used as a metaphor for sin. Because both cause inward corruption, progressive destruction, and isolation from the community, and ultimately spiritual or physical death. It was viewed as a defiling condition that separated individuals from God and the community. Similar to how sin separates humans from God. Leprosy affects to the physical life, mirrored what sin did to the spiritual life. Leprosy starts small and insignificant, then it spreads deeply. Once contracted, it's the state of living death. Finally, it can't be healed without a miracle. Leprosy needs divine intervention. Leprosy was incurable by man unless God showed up. The leper would die in pain and he would die alone. Thank God he showed up or there would be no hope. Man's only answer to this horrendous disease was Leviticus 1345. Anyone who's discovered to have leprosy must tear his clothes, let his hair grow in wild disarray, and cover his upper lip, and call out as he goes, I am a leper, I am a leper. As long as the disease lasts, he is defiled, and he must live outside the camp. That was their only answer for healing. Live till it's gone, and it never leaves. Leprosy needs God to show up. Sin is the same way. Sin never goes away. It needs divine intervention. Leprosy in the Old Testament was no respecter of persons. It affected a king, Uzziah, a successful army general, Naaman, a leader's family member, Moses' sister Miriam, and the assistant of a prophet, Gehazi. No one was exempt. The only difference between the metaphor of sin and leprosy is who contracted the disease. Everyone is born a spiritual leper in the sight of God. Sin has infected the entire human population. The planet is a leper colony. Everyone is pronounced dead, though life still goes on. But the good news is that the healer has come, and whoever wants to be healed, deeper than the skin, God has made a way. God goes deeper than the skin. He heals the heart. That's the epicenter of this spiritual disease. I remember reading the words from a book that speaks about a society that doesn't want to go deeper than the skin. We would rather fix the skin than go deeper. He said this, we fix everything but the heart. Nowhere is our escape from reality more visible than in the cosmetic industry across this world, which tries to hide so many things. The cosmetic industry has exploded into a multi-billion-dollar business, turning out products to make us look better, smell better, or feel younger, and a dozen other innocent forms of disfigurement. So creams are invented to smooth the wrinkles and patch up the cracks. Colors and dyes are created to reverse the gray in our hair. Oils are massaged into our skin to make it feel softer, and advertisements with their blatant bunks scream at us that we can knock off 10 years of our apparent age if we eat, drink, sniff, or rub their product into our systems. Then what the cosmetic industry cannot do, the surgeons say they can. They stretch our skins to make us look more youthful, implant more hair to make us look more bushy-haired, graft on skin in plastic surgery, and put the dimples in the right places, narrow the nose and chin down to what we wish we would look like. Alas, the surgeon can only transplant only so much, and the heart is still in the same condition. Finally, it's cancer or a heart attack that lands us in a coffin. So what do we do? We make one more final outlandish effort to slap on enough cream and dip into the mortician's cosmetic bag so that everyone passes by in that ultimate death-denying compliment. He looks good, doesn't he? Wow! We live in a time that won't go deeper than the skin. We must remember from Leviticus 13, it's not skin but sin when we read this. Go deeper. This time, the death report is real, even though you're walking around doing life each day. Thank you for joining chapter by chapter. Every chapter from the greatest book of the Bible, the Word of God, seven minutes a day, seven days a week. We'll see you tomorrow.
