Even Leviticus

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our reading, titled Even Leviticus, was written by Tim Gustafson. The topic was Leviticus, and I had a confession to make. I skipped a lot of the reading, I told my Bible study group.

I'm not reading about skin diseases again. That's when my friend Dave spoke up. I know a guy who believed in Jesus because of that passage, he said. Dave explained that his friend, a doctor, had been an atheist. He decided that before he completely rejected the Bible, he'd better read it for himself. The section on skin diseases in Leviticus fascinated him.

It contained surprising details about contagious and non-contagious sores and how to treat them. He knew this far surpassed the medical knowledge of that day, yet there it was in Leviticus. There's no way Moses could have known all this, he thought. The doctor began to consider that Moses really did receive his information from God.

Eventually, he put his faith in Jesus. If parts of the Bible bore you, well, I'm with you. But everything it says is there for a reason. Leviticus was written so the Israelites would know how to live for and with God. As we learn more about this relationship between God and his people, we learn about God himself. All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, wrote the Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3. Let's read on, even Leviticus.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Leviticus chapter 13 verses 1 through 8. When the hair in the sore has turned white and the sore appears to be more than skin deep, it is a defiling skin disease. When the priest examines that person, he shall pronounce them ceremonially unclean. If the shiny spot on the skin is white but does not appear to be more than skin deep and the hair in it has not turned white, the priest is to isolate the affected person for seven days. On the seventh day, the priest is to examine them, and if he sees that the sore is unchanged and has not spread in the skin, he is to isolate them for another seven days. On the seventh day, the priest is to examine them again, and if the sore has faded and has not spread in the skin, the priest shall pronounce them clean. It is only a rash. They must wash their clothes, and they will be clean. But if the rash does spread in their skin after they have shown themselves to the priest to be pronounced clean, they must appear before the priest again. The priest is to examine that person, and if the rash has spread in the skin, he shall pronounce them unclean.

It is a defiling skin disease. Let's pray. Father, teach us how to appreciate the Bible, every word of it, especially the parts that have always seemed irrelevant, confusing, or boring to us. Let every part speak to our hearts. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening today. I'm Stephen Tabor, and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.