Leviticus 14

The picture is powerful.

One more, then we'll finish up, Leviticus 14.

Leviticus 14 also shows an example of the resurrection.

You see, in Bible days, if you had leprosy, that brutal disease that would eat away your fingers and knock off your nose and destroy your body in a horrible way, and if you were miraculously healed, cleansed, you would go to the priest and to celebrate your cleansing, The priest, Leviticus 14 says, would take two birds and he would take one bird and he would place the bird in an earthen jar with cedar wood and scarlet and hyssop.

He would then break the neck of that bird and allow running water to be flowing over that bird.

Then he would take blood from the bird and sprinkle it upon a second bird of the same sort.

And would you cleanse me? My outward appearance, I feel like a leper.

Would you cleanse me? So it was Leviticus 14, if you're looking it up, not four, that's that whole passage.

In Leviticus 14, by the way, there's also stories of the blood of the lamb that would bring about forgiveness of sins.

There's a whole chapter on it and it seems quite crazy.

Another reason David talks about hyssop at this time is because his whole life as a shepherd boy, growing up as a Jewish boy, he would have celebrated a festival called the Passover every year.

He's most concerned that this cleansing, this miracle, stand the test of an official examination.

Leviticus 14, 1 to 57, tells you exactly what is involved.

And you wouldn't believe the details they went through.

William Hendrickson sort of summarizes it.

But leprosy was everywhere.

In fact, it was such a pathetic, dreaded disease that when God gave the law to Moses, he included an extensive section of the book of Leviticus to address how one would know he has the disease, and then followed by 57 verses, count them out of Leviticus 14, on how to deal with it when you think you have been cleansed from leprosy.

For example, listen to the words that Moses recorded out of Leviticus.

As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn and the hair of his head shall be uncovered.