In Case Of Mildew Call The House Doctor

"IN CASE OF MILDEW, CALL THE HOUSE DOCTOR!"

TEXT: lEVITICUS 14:33-54

INTRODUCTION:

Today we are going to talk about cleaning the House. Do you all like to clean?

Most people like for things to be reasonably clean. And they exert a reasonable amount of effort to achieve this goal. There are times however, when this reasonable effort to keep things clean, suddenly increases in intensity.

While in High school I worked in a fast food restaurant and while going to Bible College I worked in a restaurant as a waiter

for about 5 years (Wow I never realized that connection before, when ever I am in school I work at a restaurant, boy this makes me just a little afraid to begin work on my masters). Well anyhow, back to my main point here.

One thing I experienced, that really aggravated me, And I noticed it at both places was this, whenever someone high up in the restaurant’s company would plan a visit to our store, we would find out about it ahead of time, and the management would kind of fall off the deep end, they would start perspiring profusely and they would also began to move around very fast but without any real purpose, Next they would make us clean the place like our lives, and their job depended on it. They would have us wipe down and clean ridiculous things that we never knew even existed before.

And I always thought to myself "If it is important for us to keep things this clean why don’t we do it all the time? And I also thought do we really think that we are fooling anybody, This guy coming over here has to know that this place doesn’t look like this on a daily basis."

Whether we worked in a Restaurant, or went through military inspections, or had our spouse call and say that they will be home in 10 minutes and by the way "I’m bringing company or whether we at one time received a 5 minute warning of an incoming mother in law visit, ALL OF US ( in order to avoid embarrassment and not have people think that we are a pig) AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER HAVE EXPERIENCED the sudden, intense and urgent need to clean things up.

As I said earlier, TODAY we are going to talk about cleaning house. The title for today’s message is "IN CASE OF MILDEW, CALL THE HOUSE DOCTOR".

If you look at your outline you’ll see that the 2 main points are, I. The Light

II. And The Heavy

The "light and the Heavy", is a Jewish method of interpretation. The rule is stated in this way, If a principle applies in the lighter situation, it logically applies to the heavier situation.

For example: In Ex. 22:5,6 we read about that we are not to damage our neighbors property. The principle being that we are not to injure our neighbor. We are not to cause him harm. The rule of "the light and the heavy", teaches the following: If we are not injure our neighbors property (the lighter) because it is of value to him, we should logically apply this principle to other areas as well, areas that are of more value to our neighbor than merely his physical property, areas like: his character, his interests or his reputation (the heavier).

Today as we study Leviticus chapter 14 together, we will see the principle of the light and the heavy in action, and we should after this study be challenged to apply this principle to our own individual lives.

[read text Lev 14:33-53]

I. THE LIGHT (we’ll talk about the light first.

A. The problem in this text is where?, that’s right the problem is in the house.

God told Moses and the people of Israel, that He was going to give them the land of Canaan, the promise land, as their possession. And He told them that they would settle there, and that they would no longer live in tents, but that they would live in houses.

Then God talks about their houses developing a problem, a spreading mildew, or as some translations phrase it, a mark of leprosy. The phenomon that is being discrbed here is probably similar to the problem that is found in many modern European houses. In houses where there is a lot of dampness many times in the cellars or the first floors, the walls become mouldy and this mould begins to corrode and spread throughout the wall, pieces of the wall begin to flake off and over time the walls themselves can come tumbling down.

Therefore if an Israelite noticed on the walls of his house, anything that had the appearance of a destructive mildew, they had a serious problem, It was a problem that had to be dealt with, it was a problem that needed immediate treatment.