Thursday

Bible Reading: Matthew 15. 10-20
DISCUSSION   
Isn’t it just awesome how God has strategically placed things within the Scriptures to give us a progression of how He was going to do things in the future? Just take for instance the similarities of the offering of Isaac that God had asked of Abraham, and Jesus. Both were led by their father to the place of the sacrifice, both involved their only son, the mountain on which they were to do the offering in the same in the OT is called Mount Moriah and in the NT it was called Calvary, both carried wood to their place of service and both were bound to wood. In both sacrifices the son lived, and the list continues. All throughout the Bible God places these types and antitypes, so that not only can we see and understand their true meaning, but also those that will follow us. One of those types is leprosy. There was no way that the men and women of the Old Testament could understand just how ugly sin was, so God used a disease to give them a vivid description. In Leviticus 13.3 we read that “…leprosy was a disease that ‘appears to be deeper than the skin of his body: “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person” (Matthew 15.18). Leprosy was a disease that defiled and isolated the person. “The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let their hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp” (Leviticus 13. 45-46). His disease had driven a wedge between him and his people; he could no longer have access to them. In like manner Isaiah 59.2 tells us that our sins have separated us from God. Leprosy was a disease that numbed the pain cells in the extremities like the fingers, toes, nose and ears. When they could not feel the pains from small cuts, infections set in with decay and later death. Sin works the same way; we don’t always have those feelings to warn us because our conscience has been seared with a hot iron (I Timothy 4.2). Before we know it, we are consumed with the disease of sin and it has rotted away at our soul. Sin is ugly, it is painful and it is what caused Christ to have to die for us. Let’s make sure we avoid it like the plague…like leprosy.

  

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