Wed.’s Devo - The Ceremony for Leprosy

Read: Leviticus 14:1-57; Mark 6:30-56; Psalm 40:1-10; Proverbs 10:11-12 Yesterday we read what constituted leprosy and today we will read about the ceremony of cleansing for leprosy. It is the same for sin. If the person was declared healed of leprosy by the priest, then he would perform a purification ceremony where he would take two live birds, a stick of cedar, some scarlet yarn and a hyssop branch. The priest would order that one bird be slaughtered over a clay pot filled with fresh water. He would take the live bird, the cedar stick, the scarlet yarn and the hyssop branch and dip them into the blood of the bird that was slaughtered over the fresh water. The priest would sprinkle that blood of the dead bird seven times on the person being purified and then release the live bird in the open field to fly away. The bird chosen to be slaughtered was Jesus. He came in a the flesh (a clay pot) and was filled with fresh water (filled with the Holy Spirit.) The cedar stick represented the cross, the scarlet yarn was the blood and the hyssop branch was offered to numb the pain but Jesus refused it. Jesus blood is sprinkled over us making us clean from sin. The person being cleansed must wash their clothes, shave off their hair and bathe themselves in water and then they would be ceremonially clean. They had to remain outside the camp for seven days and on the seventh day they would shave again all their hair and wash their clothes and bathe themselves in water. Then they will be ceremonially clean. Once we are saved, we then get baptized washing off the sin we committed before we got saved. We live outside of heaven the rest of our lives but when we die, we are washed again of all the sin we committed after we were saved. Then we enter heaven inside the camp. This is also referring to the end of the ages when we will all appear before the judgment seat and be declared righteous or unrighteous. On the eighth day which means after the judgment we will purify the earth and all the people who were declared righteous on judgment day. We as God’s priests will not only be cleansed but anointed with oil. The oil was placed on the right lobe, the right thumb and the right big toe of the priest being anointed for service. That means that our hearing will be anointed, the things we do will be anointed and our walk and foundation will be anointed. God then gave Moses and Aaron instructions of how to cleanse the houses they lived in in Canaan in case they had mildew. We will come back to this earth after the judgment day and live a thousand years with Jesus as the King. We will live in houses we didn’t build and some of them would have been used for sinful acts. If we happen to live in one of those houses and find that it is full of spirits from its past we will need to cleanse the house. If it is filled with materials that are evil, they will need to be brought out of the house and destroyed. The insides of the house will need to be scraped and dumped and built with other stones. This reminds me of what they have to do with crack houses. If the mildew returns, the house will be declared defiled and must be torn down to the ground. There is nothing worth saving. If the mildew doesn’t return then the same ceremony with the birds has to be done for the house. In Mark, Jesus fed the crowd of 5,000 with two fish and five loaves and then put his disciples in their boat and sent them back to the place where he had delivered the demoniac not so long ago. Again, they were faced with a storm but this time Jesus was not with them. It was a test to see if they would do what Jesus told taught them to do. They didn’t have the faith yet so Jesus had to come and save them again. When they got to Gennesaret, the very place that the people had thrown him out of the first time, the people lined the shores. They had seen the miracle of the demoniac as he went from town to town sharing his testimony and now they were ready to receive Jesus. Lord, expand our faith to believe you and to walk in the power that you walked in because you are in us.