"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.
2. The treatment to restore the house
The treatment of the problem consisted of essentially four steps.
a. The first thing that the owner of the house had to do in order to treat this problem was to confess his problem of spreading mildew to the expert, to the priest. He was not to attempt to hide, cover up or ignore the problem, Rather he was
to admit that he had a problem
b. The second thing that he had to do was to empty from his house and remove from the house anything that would encourage the growth of this spreading mildew. He also had to remove these things from the house, so that they would not hide the potential problem from the priest. If these items were left in the way it would make it difficult, if not impossible for the priest to get a good look at the problem.
he had to confess the problem
AND he had to remove /he had to empty items from the house.
c. The third thing that was done to treat this problem was repair and replacement.
If the priest found that the Mildew had spread on the walls after his inspection. He ordered that the contaminated stones be tore down and taken to a spot outside of town. THEN he ordered the walls of the house to be scraped clean and the scrapings were to be taken outside of town. After this was done, new stones were to be put in place and the walls of the house needed to have new clay and plaster put on them.
d. The final step in the treatment was for the house to be purified. This is the same treatment that is mentioned earlier in chapter 14, for the purifying of a Leper. It is interesting to note here that the Hebrew word translated purify, literally means "to purify from sin". In the eyes and mind of God, Uncleanness was equivalent to sin, and whoever was unclean was contaminated, and was thereby prevented from attaining fellowship with God.
The Purification was accomplished by a ceremony preformed by the priests. It consisted of taking 2 birds. The first bird was killed over a pot of fresh water, allowing the blood to drip into the pot. Then the live bird, along with some cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet yarn was immersed into the blood and water. And "Then the live bird s released in the open fields outside the town. In this way the man made atonement for the house and it would now be clean.
Now aren’t you glad that we are under the New Covenant And that today we don’t have to go through all of that stuff to cleanse our house from mildew. So the next time you grab you Tilex (mildew cleaner) you probably won’t think that you have it so tough any more.
that was the light
II. NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT THE HEAVY
In the Bible many times the word "house" is used to describe things other than a mere physical house.
The word house is sometimes used to describe a nation; "The House of Israel"(I SAm.7:3) or the "The House of Judah"(Ezk4:6).
The word house is at times also used to describe a family;
Thus we read of "the house of Cornilius" (Acts 10:2) and of Noah saving "his house" (Hebrews 11:7)
The church is also at times referred to as a house. In I Timothy 3:14,15, we read that the church is the household of the living God. [READ I TIM 3:14,15]
And in Hebrews chapter 10, the Hebrew writer writes that Christ is our Great High Priest, and that He is over the "house of God".
And in I Peter chapter 2, the term house is used to describe
Christians. "As you come to Him the living stone-rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him-you also, like living stones, are being built into a SPIRITUAL HOUSE to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."
The rule of the "Light and the Heavy", teaches us this extremely important and essential truth. Hear me, If God in His Word tells us, and He does in Leviticus 14, that He is concerned with the cleanliness and purity of a mere Physical house, made of walls, plaster and clay, (the lighter)
If God is concerned with the lighter. If God requires a house to be purified from uncleanliness. How much more, is God concerned, about, the Heavier situations. How much more, is God concerned, with cleanliness and purity, In the Nation In the Family In the Church And in the Lives of individual Christians.
Friends there is a serious and destructive problem in the house. The house is unclean, and within the house is a destructive contamination, that is spreading throughout the house.
The walls are becoming mouldy, the stones are corroding, and the plaster is falling off the walls. And If left untreated the walls will come crashing down.
And it doesn’t really matter which house we are referring to, Our: Nation, Families, Churches or ourselves, because the problem is present in each of them, and God is concerned, and we better be concerned.
You know, I had the name for this sermon planned before the Republic Convention. "In case of Mildew...." Now I think perhaps a better name would be, CLEAN THE HOUSE.
This is the slogan of the Republicans, who feel that the problem with the nation is because there has been a democratically controlled house for over 40 years. So they believe that the way to solve the problem, is to clean the house. And many times throughout the convention they would chant their battle cry:
CLEAN THE HOUSE............
This battle cry clean the house needs to be our battle cry. We need to clean the house.
It is readily apparent that the: Nation, Family and Churches have a serious problem, and that problem is SIN, and even though it is only barely visible to the naked eye, NEVERTHELESS it is a malignant cancer that is spreading and devouring these house inch by inch.
Time will not permit me to speak on each of these houses. But what we will speak about, is the house of each individual Christians life.
And really if we think about it, if we clean up ourselves, this will also spread, this will in turn have a positive effect and will help clean the Church, Nation and Family.
Friends you need to clean your house, And I need to clean my house. Because the problem is in the/our house.
We all look pretty good today don’t we. Clean clothes, clean and combed hair, our faces are clean, we are even clean behind the ears-we all look just spiffy.
I can say with confidence that not one of us here today would even consider, would ever dare to come into this physical building on Sunday morning w/grease and mud on our face, w/our hair matted together with clumps of motor oil, with yesterday’s Pizza still caked to our chin and stuck between our teeth and dressed in clothes that have not been washed in over 3 years.
NO!! We would never do that, each of us here took a certain amount of time to clean ourselves up to get ready for church.
We make look squeaky clean on the outside , but what about the inside. How clean are we on the inside.
Listen, Do you hear the battle cry: Clean the House, Clean the house......
2. Let’s talk about the treatment
a. The first thing we need to do is confess our problem to our house doctor, to the expert, to our high priest, we need to confess our problem to Jesus.
Brothers and sisters please listen to me
please hear this
If we are going to be able to clean our house, we must at this time take a honest, deep and truthful look at ourselves (not at our neighbors). We are called to be HOLY, and our model is Jesus, and none of us have arrived yet! Right now will you open you open your heart, will you open your soul and lay it before Jesus.
[prayer] Lord I know that there are things in our lives that are not right, Lord I know that they are unclean, I know that they are sin. Help us Lord to see what we need to do to clean our house.
b. The 2nd thing we need to do is remove somethings from our house. There are 2 types of things we need to remove.
1) Things that promote the spread of uncleanliness/sin. These are the things in our life that sin feeds on. Open the front door to your spiritual house and walk around, And if you see; bitterness, envy, jealousy, unforgiveness,
greed, selfishness, anger, hatred, sexual immorality. If you see any of these there walk over to them and pick them up (be sure to bend your knees because they are heavy) and throw them outside.
2) while your in your house walking around there is something else you need to throw outside. These are things that get in the way and prevent you from seeing and dealing with you sin problem. (like pulling you washing machine away from the wall).
They are not to hard to find they are about the biggest item in our house, do you see them over there, that’s them:PRIDE AND SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS. aND WRITTEN ON TOP OF THEM IS THE FOLLOWING, "the problem is not with me, it’s with everyone else, I’m really something special, and my feelings are the only one that counts."
Friends let’s throw those items outside, now they are extremely heavy, and like many of the other items remember bend you knees and you may need some help carrying it out. Jesus is always ready to give you a hand. You can also ask a brother.
c. Third we need after we have removed this items we need to replace them with other things.
Paul has a great suggestion in Gal. Ch 5, let’s furnish our house with: love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
d. And lastly we need to be purified from our sin.
It is significant as we have discussed earlier that purifying a house or a leper from sin involved immersion in water and blood.
Because, Christians have been washed in water at their baptism. And as Paul says in Romans 6 we are baptized into the death of Christ. Christ shed His blood at His death and we contact His blood in baptism/immersion. Baptism is where God’s grace meets man’s faith and where the blood of Jesus washes away our sins.
And once we are washed and have our sins forgiven. we still need to be purified from our sins.
The Apostle John teaches us that if we confess our sins (say the same thing) That God is faithful and just, and will purify us from all sin and unrighteousness, through the blood of Jesus Christ.
We need We need to clean our house
We need to confess to Christ that we have a problem
We need to remove things from our life that promote the spreading of sin and keep us from seeing our problem.
We need to be purified though the blood of Christ.
CONCLUSION
[READ 43-45]
Jesus is coming back, and we need to get ready, We need to clean our house before he comes, we need to deal with the sin in our life.
Jesus, our house doctor is coming and the houses that are unclean will be torn down and cast out.
Now is the time to make a decision.
Are you,going to clean your house before the Lord comes????
