Leviticus 13

Leviticus 13 deals with two issues, skin diseases and mildew on clothing and leather.

In both of these we can look from the our position and say no kidding in dealing with the treatment of such things as mildew and skin conditions. We have modern science that tells us that skin conditions can be contagious and that mildew on things is unhealthy. They did not have that luxury back then. They simply were unsure of what to do with those things and so God set out a law to protect the people from things that would harm them or kill them.

When you consider mildew there are some mold that for some people just breathing it in let alone touching it can cause such breathing problems that it can kill them. There are skin diseases such as mrsa that is spread easily and can be very deadly. This is not about exclusion as much as it is about staying clean and holy to the Lord, even physically.

The Application

How do we apply this today. I see two very important applications one being the physical aspect of good hygiene and being careful around skin disease and mold. God not only wants us spiritually holy but physically well too. Often we ask for healing when we could have prevented the disease through careful medical care and not holding on to mildewed things. We instead are careless or think the thing is more important than our physical well being.

The other application is spiritual. There are spiritual skin disease and mildew that we need to remove from our midst. We need to stay away from it and declare it unclean and remove it. We think that we can play with sin a little and be okay with it. It is okay if I flirt with this woman, yet in doing so it slowly eats away at your marriage. Or it is okay if I have a little sex outside of marriage or multiple partners and yet it eats away at your soul and at times your physical body because of the disease that come from doing so.

Our bodies are a temple and we should maintain them that way spiritually and physically.