Sat.’s Devo - Infectious Diseases

Read: Leviticus 12-14:32
I’m going to be honest and say that I have no insight about the purification after childbirth but it you do, I would love to hear it. So I’m going to skip to the part about contagious diseases. Everything is a picture of a greater truth and contagious diseases have to do with sin and offenses. In the New Testament, Galatians 5:19-21 gives us a list of sins of the flesh: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Sin of the flesh is depicted as skin diseases in the Old Testament. If they were only on the surface it took going to the Priest and presenting yourself for him to examine. This is the same as letting the Holy Spirit examine your heart. If the disease is healing then you had to go through a process of cleansing. If your skin disease was under the skin and oozing then you were pronounced unclean and set outside the camp for a designated time to allow the skin to heal and not contaminate others. We really see this process in big-name preachers who have slipped into sin. God will expose them to keep them from contaminating the others in the church. They will have to leave the ministry for a season to heal. For most of us it looks more like this: we entertain a sin and if we don’t address it we will notice things being taken from us like our influence in ministry, our peace and our joy. We will eventually put in “time out” of all our ministry if we continue.
When a person is finally healed of their skin disease they would bring a sacrifice to the priest and he would do a ceremony with two birds. The first bird is the one who dies for their sins and whose blood is sprinkled on the person making them clean. Note that all the props : the scarlet yarn, the hyssop and the cedar stick stand for instruments used when Jesus died. The other bird is let free to carry the disease away and show that they are free from disease. When we repent of our sin, we bring it to the cross and the blood is applied to cover our sins. Then it is removed as far as the east is from the west on wings of a dove. We are now free.
Lord, help us to repent before our sin gets under our skin. Help us to forgive and repent quickly.