All right. So I want to start by sharing a passage in Deuteronomy 23, 13, 14. It says, "Because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you." So God made it very clear that he not only wanted the individuals in the camp to be holy, but the camp itself to be holy.

So again, we see the same thing in the New Testament where God is rebuking the Corinthians church and saying, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God?" And whatever you do to defile the temple, it says that it is like you're defiling God himself. It's blasphemy against God.

That's how sacred God sees the church, and that's how God saw the sacred assembly of the Israelites. The reason why I share all of this is because leprosy was a disease that not only affected that individual, but it affected the community. So everything about how to deal with this skin disease was to protect not only that person or to heal that person, but the community itself.

And ultimately, it's going to point to something very meaningful in the gospel. So my approach today in chapter 13 is not to go into intricate details of the medical facts and what it points to. Is this really this disease of leprosy, the Hansen disease, or is this pointing to something else?

We can get into all of these arguments, but in the end, I think that's an unfruitful discussion. We can know all of that and then just say, "Oh, okay, that's what it means." But what does this ultimately point to? The Hebrew word that's translated leprosy in Leviticus 13-15, it's not specifically just limited to what we know today about the disease of leprosy.

It definitely includes that disease, but it's not limited to that. So it points to all kinds of various skin diseases. Now if you're from the medical community and you know all the facts and all the biological things that happens in leprosy, you may read all these things and maybe it would make more sense to you.

But for most of us, all of these things are going to bleed in and we're not going to be able to tell the difference. So just for our benefit, so that it would help us, I'm just going to be referring it to leprosy, but the term leprosy doesn't really cover all of the things that they're mentioning.

Just in case there's any medical people in here saying, "Hey, that's not true." So they already acknowledge that it covers more than that. But for our study, I'm just going to be referring to all of it as just leprosy. So among the 61 defilements of ancient Jewish law that is mentioned in the Old Testament, leprosy was second only to the dead body in seriousness.

And you could clearly see that in chapter 13 and 14. The way that they dealt with leprosy. So if there's any one particular disease that really stood out among other diseases, like if you caught this, it was the end to your life. Like today, I think when you hear the word cancer, that's the word that most people are afraid of.

You go to the doctor and they say it could be cancerous and automatically your heart drops because it leads to death. Well at that particular time, leprosy was cancerous and it was much more serious than cancer because of all the ramifications before it led to the death. So it was pretty much the worst thing, worst news that you can get.

And leper wasn't allowed to come within six feet of any other human being. They weren't allowed to be near any human. So imagine what that does to an individual, that if you get leprosy, you're not allowed to have any contact with other human beings, including your own family members, because the moment you came into contact with them, they became unclean.

So it forced complete isolation. This disease was considered so revolting that the leper wasn't permitted to come within 150 feet of anyone when the wind was blowing, just in case it was infectious. So if there was any kind of wind, normally not even six feet, even among your family members, but if there was any kind of wind blowing, you couldn't be anywhere near them, where you couldn't even hear them.

The Jewish custom said that you should not even greet a leper. Actually this is not in scripture, but the Jewish community automatically equated that with sin. So if somebody has leprosy, it must be because they've been cursed by God, so they were treated accordingly. Not only, they weren't treated with any kind of compassion.

So not only were they completely isolated, they were considered to be unclean, and they deserved it. And one rabbi actually bragged that he would not even buy an egg on a street where he saw a leper, and another boasted that he threw rocks at lepers to keep them far from him.

So it just kind of gives you the prejudice and the kind of life a leper lived. So think about all the situations in the New Testament where Jesus is healing a leper, or a leper is coming and crying out to God, that the cultural circumstance behind that particular individual and what he was experiencing.

So it gives us kind of a better understanding of Jesus' interaction with the leper, and why that was so shocking, right? Everybody was so concerned that Jesus was hanging around with prostitutes and tax collectors, but a leper among all of them would have been considered the filthiest. So if they were shocked that Jesus was hanging around with tax collectors, imagine the shock when Jesus actually encountered lepers, what they must have been thinking.

Lepers lived in a community with other lepers until they either got better or died, one or the other. This was the only way that people knew to contain the spread of contagious forms of leprosy. So they were so afraid of leprosy. They put them in isolation, and again, the only remedy that they had, there was no medicine, there was nothing else they could do other than put them in isolation and see if this is eventually going to lead them to die, which in most cases it did.

So the disease in itself was a horrible, horrible disease, where you would have all kinds of boils and we're going to just lightly touch upon some of the things that chapter 13 says, but beyond just that, there was absolutely no compassion. Imagine if today, if somebody was diagnosed with cancer and the first thing that they do is they ship you out of the house.

They clean up your bed, they pack up all your stuff, they burn everything that you owned, and then you were thrown out and then you couldn't have contact with your family members. That was the first thing that happened to a leper. So it wasn't simply that they had to go through this physical ailment, this difficulty of even just surviving and breathing, like socially.

Not only that socially, spiritually, they just automatically assumed you must have done something to deserve this. So it was like the worst condemnation, worst news that you can possibly get. In chapter 13, God gives specific orders for the priests basically to function as doctors. They don't have the cure, but they are called to be the people who diagnose whether they had this or not.

So they function like a public health officer. And it wasn't on a whim. It wasn't just something that they looked and you determined for yourself. That's why in chapter 13, there's detailed information. So I'm guessing that if you were diligent that you read through it, or even if you did read through it, you probably just remember portions of it, but I'm guessing that you didn't dissect and exposit this text.

But you just kind of knew enough to actually, wow, this is horrendous. The chapter is divided into two large portions. The first portion is about diagnosing the abnormalities in the human skin, which is verse 1 through 46. And like I told you, my goal today is not to comb through the details of what God told them to look for, but what it ultimately points to.

The second part of it is diagnostic against abnormalities in the clothing and similar articles, which we would probably today call it molding. But they were concerned about anything that was rotting and it was unclean, and if it had any touch or came anywhere near leopard, they were so afraid of it, they said the only way to deal with that is to completely burn it.

So that's how the chapter 13 is divided. When we get to chapter 14, he's going to be talking about how to cleanse it, how does a leper come back into society, right? But today it's mostly about how to diagnose it and how to determine and what to do with them once that is determined.

If a person who had these symptoms, leprous symptoms, and they weren't exactly sure if they were clean, immediately they were isolated. So even if you looked like you might have it, even if it wasn't full blown, that they were concerned that they saw some kind of abnormality in your skin or some kind of boil or whiteness on the tip of your hair, whatever it might be, immediately you went into isolation.

So the person being examined could be isolated for as long as two weeks, just because they might, they were afraid, right? And I know that, again, today if somebody has a cold and we have a rule in our church, if your child is sick, not to bring them into the nursery because you don't want this spreading.

But usually it's until you have medicine or you get better and they come back. But they were so afraid of this disease. Again, even God said if there was even a chance that you might have it, they went immediately into isolation, up to two weeks, to make sure that you didn't have it.

And if you did have it, then the full blown thing of what God tells them to do. Now again, as I mentioned to you, I'm not going to be going through like verse 1 through 8, God says to look at this leprosy in this way and then, you know, that's not what I'm going to be doing today.

I'm going to be looking at the broad picture of what this ultimately points to. The Bible clearly points to this leprosy as an illustration of human sin. And there's nothing that paints that picture more than what we see in chapter 13 and chapter 14 about how it ultimately relates to sin.

So what I'm going to be doing today is in what way does this point to sin? What are some specific things God told them to do and how does that ultimately reveal what's how God views sin? So leprosy has a symbolism that ultimately points to sin. Again, there was nothing taught in the Old Testament law that symbolized the devastating effect of sin more than the disease of leprosy.

If you remember in Jeremiah's day, God's condemnation against the prophets of Israel was that they took the sins of Israel lightly. In Jeremiah 6, verse 14 says, "They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace." And that was the primary condemnation of God's prophets during that period in Jeremiah's time.

In other words, the way God saw sin and the way the prophets saw sin was not even close. In fact, the whole point of the gospel, the whole point of the law was to bring us, remember, to show us what? The utter sinfulness of sin. It's at the whole point of all of these laws, not just about leprosy, but in particular leprosy.

But everything that he was doing up to the coming of Christ is to reveal just how ugly and deadly and devastating sin is, so that when Christ comes, that they would all recognize a dire need for a Savior. So someone who does not see sin as God sees sin, their repentance is always going to be superficial.

They just feel bad. They didn't do the right thing. But it doesn't bring them to a point of devastation where they're beating their chest like the tax collector and can't even lift up their head because they see a holy, holy, holy God. So the whole point of all the laws was to reveal to us just how devastating this sin is.

And that this sin is not outside. It's inside of us. And nothing highlights that more than this particular disease of leprosy. And so again, the sin of the prophets in the time of Jeremiah, the time of Isaiah, it wasn't that they didn't recognize sin in Israel. They just didn't think it was that big of a deal.

And that's the first mistake that any Christian makes is that we sin. It's like, well, where do you draw the line? And then we start to excuse sin. We start to trivialize sin. And next thing you know, the cross and Christ and our salvation also becomes trivial. There are several things that this particular disease points to.

Sin is deeper than the skin. So what they recognize, whether it was the boils or whether it was the whiteness on their hair and various things that God tells them to recognize, it ultimately points to a decaying of something that's happening inward. It wasn't just a simple skin disease.

This rotting was taking place inwardly, but the symptoms were being shown outwardly. And that's exactly how the sin is described. The symptoms that he mentions in chapter 13, swelling in a rash, a whiteness, raw flesh, boils, burns, various skin eruptions. And as disgusting as all of those things are, all of those things only pointed to the decay that was happening within the body.

So it wasn't simply a surface disease that if they found the right ointment and they cleansed themselves, that somehow this disease was going to go away. They had no cure for this. So all the external things that it points to was ultimately pointing to something that was happening much deeper within them.

In Jeremiah 17, 9, it says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?" So God describes sin as not simply an act. It is an act that follows a heart that has already fallen and decayed. Again, as you know, Jesus told us that sin comes from the corruption of the heart.

The act of sinning is simply an expression of the sinful decay within. So when we talk about sanctification and discipleship, we can get somebody who's not reading the Bible to read the Bible. We can get somebody who's not evangelizing to evangelize. We can get somebody who's not giving to give.

But it doesn't deal with what's happening inside. Somebody who's corrupt in nature can go through all of that and have no change in their life. It just becomes—they just become more disciplined. They become better at acting out their righteousness without actually being righteous. So this particular disease, again, the surface thing only points to the outside, but the real decay was happening inside, just like sin.

Sin is something that happens within. So until there is an encounter with God, where God opens our eyes to see the glory of who he is, and there is no change happening inwardly, all that stuff that we do on the outside, it only covers up the decay. It's just like putting Band-Aid on somebody who has leprosy.

So the first thing that the disease of leprosy points to is that it goes in. The outer things are only a symptom of what is happening inside. Secondly, sin is never dormant. So all those passages that I listed there in chapter 13 and on, every part of that examination is to examine carefully to see.

The reason why they are in isolation is to watch them carefully to see if all the skin disease are spreading. If there wasn't a hand, does it eventually show up? Just like cancer, right? First thing that they notice to see how serious this cancer is, is the cancer spreading?

That's exactly what they were watching for this disease. So all of these passages that I noted here was instructions to carefully watch to see if it spreads. So again, the purpose of the close examination and time that they needed to observe these symptoms on the skin was to see if it is going to spread.

Leprosy was not a dormant disease, but one that eventually spread throughout the rest of the body. And that's exactly how sin is described in James chapter 1, 14 to 15. When each person is tempted, when he is lured and enticed by his own desire, then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

Sin is never dormant. So whenever we compromise a little bit, that little bit usually grows. Whether it is lost, whether it is lying, whether it is compromise, whether it's bitterness, whether it's slander, it never stays dormant. You never decide and say, "I'm going to do this much." But when you give room for sin, that sin has a tendency to spread.

And not only spreads within us, it spreads around to whoever we are with. And that's why the Bible describes somebody who is divisive and somebody who is teaching false doctrine, they spread like gangrene. In other words, they have a corrupting quality about them because they're embracing sin. And so that's how sin is described in the scripture.

It not only points to something deeper, but sin has a way of spreading. And it spreads to the people who are the closest to us. So if you're a husband and you compromise in sin, it affects your wife. If you're a wife, it affects your husband. And if it's a husband and wife that's compromising, it affects your children.

No matter how much we try to disciple our kids, they're going to model whatever they see at home. So if slandering is a part of the environment, if compromising is a part of the environment at home, no matter how much you try to send them to VBS and teach them scripture, they're going to catch that.

And that's a tendency of how sin works. So again, leprosy was never dormant. If you had true leprosy, they isolated them to watch to see if it was going to grow. Sin ultimately defiles. There was a corrupting nature. The word "unclean" is used 54 times in Leviticus. It describes a ceremonial defilement that makes the victim unfit for social life or for participation in worship at the house of God.

Because of this corruption, they weren't able to participate in worship. So if you read Psalm 51, let's turn our Bibles to Psalm 51. David describes his sin in detail. And I want you guys to, I've already written it down for you, but if you can look at Psalm 51, he describes how his sin has defiled his eyes, his mind, his ears, his bones, his heart, his mouth, in every part of his life.

So it didn't just affect his heart, it didn't just affect his mind. He says, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy. Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, that my sin is ever before me.

And against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your word and blameless in your judgment." Verse 6, "Behold, you delight in truth and inward being, and you teach me wisdom in secret heart." So over and over again, it describes all the different parts.

He basically goes through every different part of his being, and he describes how sin and his guilt affected every part of it. So sin in our lives, a lot of times we think it affects our heart, but it affects our ability to reason. So to be able to understand even the Bible logically, there has to be a regeneration.

To be able to discern truth and what is right and what is wrong. You can say, "Well, I don't trust my heart, but I trust my intellect. I trust my judgment." No, the scripture says it affects all of us. It affects our ability to understand. It affects our vision.

It affects our appetite. It affects what makes us happy. Sometimes people say, "Maybe these movies are inappropriate." And every once in a while, somebody will say, "Well, it doesn't bother me." Because sin has affected your conscience. So the way that leprosy is described in scripture, it has a corrupting nature of every part of who we are.

And so whatever sin touches, it defiles. Only the blood of Jesus Christ can wash away that defilement. That's not something that we just will ourselves away from. Once you become defiled by sin, the only way that we can be cleansed from that, according to scripture, is by the blood of Christ.

And then ultimately, sin isolates. In Leviticus 13, 45-46, "The leper's person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, 'Unclean, unclean!' He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease.

He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp." So think about that. If you were suspected of having this disease, there was no treatment, there was no doctors, there was no compassion. The first reaction that you got from the priest was, "Get all his clothes and put it in isolation and burn it." The second thing is to inform his parents and take whatever necessities and send them outside the camp.

And he has to live, what it says, alone. By the law of God, he becomes alone. Do you remember what happens in Adam and Eve, the first thing that happens when they sin? They get isolated. They're not physically gone, but they're together, but they cover themselves. So they're emotionally, socially, spiritually, they're completely isolated.

They're isolated from God, and they're isolated from each other. So remember the peace offering? The peace offering is a reversal of that curse where you're united with God and you're united with one another. So this particular sin or disease of leprosy pointed to the isolation which we see in the book of Genesis, chapter 3, when sin comes in, they immediately become isolated.

Not only are they isolated and have to live alone, just in case somebody may come into contact, they have to constantly yell out, "Unclean, unclean." Now you have to understand, when we say unclean, we don't have this emotional baggage that's attached because we don't live in that culture. To say you're an unclean and yelling out to everybody else, basically it's a self-condemnation.

It's just like walking around and displaying the ugliest part of who you are everywhere you went. Because to be unclean in the Jewish community meant you can't be with people. You can't come to worship, you can't give sacrifice, you can't live with your family. And you have, just by being close to somebody, you would corrupt them.

So remember when you guys were young kids, kids would play around and say, "Oh, he or she has cooties." And they would play tag and whoever has cooties, you have to stay as far away from them as possible. And it was a game that the kids played, but imagine if that was real.

Some kid is labeled to have cooties and nobody can sit next to them. Nobody can touch them, you can't eat with them, you can't share with them. Basically you can't have friends because if you get near that person, you get cooties. Well that's exactly how this particular thing is described.

The sin spreads, sin defiles, sin is ultimately pointing to the deep corruption inside. But I think the most painful thing, I mean if you were a leper and you had the disease of leprosy, I can imagine the only thing that you wanted was to die. Can you imagine the pain that this person must have gone through?

No human contact whatsoever. You can't have a conversation with your family members, you're outside the city, and you can't even think about like, "What did I do wrong? What could I have possibly done wrong for me to deserve this?" And then finally, in Luke chapter 17, then through 19, you know that encounter that Jesus has with the 10 lepers, and I think understanding the background, it gives us a better idea, the cultural background.

So it says, "On the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee, and as he entered a village, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance." So you can understand why they were standing at a distance, because by law. And if they didn't stay at a distance, they could have been stoned.

Remember what the rabbis said? Beyond scripture, they were bragging about throwing rocks at lepers to keep them at a distance. So imagine what would have happened if they drew near. This is how they had to live. They can only be with other lepers, and the fact that they even tried to make contact with Jesus would have been enough for them to get stoned.

But what else would you do? If you were a leper, and the only chance that you could possibly have a normal life is Jesus, because you heard about him walking on water, you heard about healing the blind and raising those who couldn't walk, who were lame, and he's coming to town, that even if you get stoned, it would be better than the situation that they were in.

So you can understand why they would come yelling at Jesus, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." So again, it really highlights when they say, "Have mercy on us," considering knowing everything that they were going through. "When he saw them, he said to them, 'Go and show yourself to the priest.'" Now why did he do that?

Because it says in the book of Leviticus, because the priest had the power to determine whether they had this disease or not. So in order for them to enter back into the camp and to be able to have any human contact, the priest first had to clear it. And so that's why Jesus says, "If you want to be healed, when he says, 'Go show the priest,'" in other words, this was promised from Jesus saying, "You're going to be cleansed." Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.

Right? Because as soon as he was healed, you know, the first thing that you would think, humanly speaking, because you want the approval of the priest, because that means that everything that caused pain in your life was going to be cleared by the priest. You can go home. You can come back.

But only one person recognized that the real gift, the real gift was not the leprosy in itself that being gone, but Jesus himself. Because he was the healer. The others were eager to get back into their normal life. The only one who turns around is that when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.

And he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Let me stop right here. Now, again, understanding the cultural and the legal background behind what they were suffering and all that, we can understand why they were so eager to go and get cleansed and get back into society.

But the point of everything that Jesus did, the point of every part of the law was ultimately to bring them to God. Ultimately to bring them to God. They could be healed, but in the end, eventually, if you don't meet God, eventually you're going to die in your sins.

You're superficially healed, right, of your leprosy, but the healing, the real sickness in mankind is the disease of sin, the corrupt nature inside. And so, this we see even in our culture where people who are desperate, they come to God if they're poor, if they have family issues or you're hurt by something.

And I see so many people coming to God when they're desperate, but as soon as their desperation is gone, so is their desperation for God. And so, it's almost like we're waiting for another disaster to happen to bring revival. You know what I'm saying? Disasters tend to bring revival.

And that's why, like if you go to a persecuted church, there's a fire in them because of the persecution. But remember what Jesus said to Thomas when Jesus was resurrected and he said, "Well, let me see you." And then he sees Jesus and puts his fingers inside of his scars and Jesus says, "You believe because you saw, but blessed are those who do not see and yet they believe." In other words, if revival is dependent upon your circumstance, your love for God will come and it goes.

And as soon as the fire is gone in your life, so is the fire for Christ. And that was the sin of the nine lepers. They were healed of their leprosy, but they were never healed of their sin because they didn't recognize Christ. All they recognized was the gift.

And so our churches, if we're not careful, can be filled with people who are coming to Christ because of the gift, not recognizing Christ himself is the gift. Because only Christ can forgive us and only Christ can cleanse us of our sins. And the whole reason why this law is even in here is to ultimately point us to Christ.

Jesus is, yes, he could heal us of leprosy, but even if you are healed of leprosy, it is only superficial. So it kind of gives us a better picture. In the end, he says, "We're not ten cleansed. Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" And he said to him, "Rise and go your way.

Your faith has made you well." Of course, you would say, "Well, nine of them was made well. So what does it mean when Jesus says, 'Your faith has made well?'" He's talking about his sin. There's only one person out of these ten who was truly made well, the one whose sins were forgiven.

And that's the thing that, again, we can, if we're not careful, make Christianity about answered prayers, about getting a good job, and about being healthy and living long lives, and being able to have enough money to take care of our children, and all of these things are and can be a blessing, but they're all superficial.

You can have children who are raised in a good home, well-protected, well-provided. They are A-plus students, get to the best colleges, and yet they don't know Christ. And all of that that you did to help them actually ends up hurting them if they don't meet Christ. So ultimately, everything that God does, whether it's wealth, or whether it's pain, whether it's good, or whether it's bad, if it doesn't lead us to Christ, it actually ends up hurting us.

And then finally, sin is ultimately only fit for fire. And the final thing that he says about the garments is, "A defiled garment was to be burned in the fire. It was not to be purified, but destroyed." There was no redemption for sin. Sinners are redeemed, but sin in and of itself, it says, is to be burned.

So when Jesus spoke about hell, he used the word Gehenna. And the word Gehenna was a literal place outside of Jerusalem where it was a trash dump, and Israelites would have been very familiar with that site, with the trash being burned all the time. And it was described in Mark 9 45 as unquenchable fire.

And the Bible describes the very reason why Christ came was because of this. So as hideous as this particular disease was, all of that points to the hideousness of our sin. And as I started this Bible study reminding us, until sin becomes utterly sinful, our salvation doesn't become utterly glorious.

And until our salvation is utterly glorious, our passion, our love, our obedience will always become a burden. Because Christianity ultimately is about drawing near to Christ. But if drawing near to Christ isn't the source of your joy, and it just becomes homework, it just becomes something that you have to do, because you don't recognize what it is that you have in Christ.

And the reason we don't recognize what it is that we have in Christ is because we have never felt the devastation of sin. Some people have. A lot of people, sin is looked upon as a mistake. Something that we shouldn't have been doing. We should have gotten an A, but we got a C.

Some people get Fs. And it is not utterly sinful. We don't see the devastation of this sin, even though it is happening even in our own lives. That sin that is dormant in our lives is having an effect on your relationship, it's having an effect on your marriage, it's having an effect on your heart, it's having an effect on your worship, it's having an effect on our children.

But when we don't recognize this, when we don't recognize the devastation of sin, we don't feel an urgency to come to Christ. Until we can't pay our bills, until we get sick, until something physically goes wrong, we don't sense an urgency. Urgency is always there if we recognize just how devastating sin is, because sin is always dormant.

Sin is always wanting to creep into our lives. And how vulnerable we are to deception until we come to Christ. So all of this ultimately points to that, because the Day of Atonement, like all of this, was to cover all of this. So imagine how it would change our spiritual lives if we saw our sins like we see leprosy.

Imagine how desperate we were, imagine like the ten lepers were crying out to Jesus, "Have mercy on us!" We would be in that same position if we saw sin the way God saw sin. We would be the tax collector up on the hill beating our chest, not being able to lift our eyes.

If we saw sin as it is described here, as leprosy. And that was the whole point of Leviticus, the whole point of the sacrificial laws. The whole point of the law is to get us to get to a point, like the lepers, to cry out to God, to look to the cross in desperation and tears.

I looked at Google to look up pictures of leprosy, and it was so hideous I didn't even want to show it to you. I showed you some grotesque stuff. I showed you like beheaded lambs and blood, and I showed you all of that because God showed like this is what the Israelites saw on a daily basis.

But I looked at the picture of these people who had leprosy, and there's pictures of them, I couldn't show it to you. And I don't want to show it to you because it is that grotesque. And that image that is described in Leviticus 13 and 14 was ultimately meant to show us our sins.

So again, as we continue to study the book of Leviticus, like that our reality, not to be formed by the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. And these things ought to be renewing our mind to see sin from God's perspective, and see redemption from his perspective, so that we would live our lives as he desires.

The three discussion questions for today, in what ways have you seen or experienced sin spreading when not dealt with in repentance? Secondly, how has sin defiled something precious in your life? For example, relationships, family, worship, et cetera. I'll just give you some examples, but in what specific way have you noticed or seen in your life and maybe in something that you've observed, and how sin has a way of corrupting?

Third, how does sin cause isolation? What does sin leading to isolation teach us about true fellowship? And I'm just going to explain that right now, just in case, you know, I don't want you guys going off tangent. What I mean by that is, if sin isolates, righteousness brings us together, correct?

So oftentimes when we talk about fellowship, it's about people who are compromising in sin commiserating together. That's not fellowship. Because if the core nature of sin is isolation, righteousness leads to communion. So how does that play out in the life of a Christian and in the church? So let me pray for us, and then I'll let you guys take time in your small group.

Gracious Father, we thank you for your living word. Lord, these are heavy truths, Lord God, that we need to really meditate and contemplate, because we know it in our head. And at times, many times, Lord God, it's not in our hearts. Help us, Lord God, to sympathize with those who have experienced this devastating disease in one form or another, that we may recognize what you've been trying for many years to show the nation of Israel, just how desperate and sick we are when we allow sin in our lives.

What it is that you have saved us from, that we would naturally need to worship in view of this mercy, that we would joyfully offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. Lord, we approach you humbled, desperate, crying out for mercy. I pray that the truth and the power of the gospel would have a deep impact on us, that we would not just coast along from day to day, from event to event, from Sunday to Sunday.

Devastate us in our sins, that we may be delivered and live a life truly glorious for your name. Bless the time that we have in our discussion. Help us to be open and honest, and that we may sharpen one another as we have this time. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.