Sermon Tone Analysis

Ha-Foke Bah Hebrew

Ha-Foke Bah Hebrew

Tzaraat

Keep an eye on the well-being of the community.

Intro to the series this is a story of God’s unrelenting love to recreate a “good world” for very sinful people.

Because of God’s unrelenting love, after the storm a good world can be co-created.

We are in our series through Leviticus, We are calling this series “After the Storm” because after the storm it is still possible to recreate a “good world” because of God’s unrelenting love.

Remember, we said God’s love is highlighted because in the background of Leviticus is the golden calf

and in the foreground is the strange fire.

Despite the horrible failure that both these two events represents, God continues to move forward with a Redeemed People.

And, His unrelenting love is more punctuated by his choice of Aaron to serve as High Priest.

Aaron the guy who made the golden calf and then switched sides and said, “kill everyone who worshiped the golden calf” is chosen to lead God’s brand new religious system.

That is unrelenting, unconditional love that believes even the worst of sinners can still have a great purpose on planet earth.

If you prioritize happiness over holiness you will get one hot mess.

Remember, last week we said that a good world means a world where you are happy.

But, you can’t prioritize happiness over holiness.

You can’t prioritize anything over holiness.

I said the greatest threat to your happiness is not holiness but sin.

Now this week’s Torah portion is a big, big deal.

The portion is called “Tzaa’rat.”

Most of the English translations translate this Hebrew word as “Leprosy” because of the Greek LXX that translates it as λέπρα lepra or leprosy.

This is unfortunate because most scholars and medical doctors agree that the Tzaraat described in Leviticus 13-14 does not fit what we know as “Hansen’s Disease” or “Leprosy.”

Jacob Milgrom, renowned Jewish scholar, hired one of the best dermatologist in our country to investigate Leviticus 13-14 to determine if it is in fact leprosy, Hansen’s disease.

He stated his conclusions without any hesitation: “the symptoms described in Leviticus 13 do not correspond to any known skin disease.”

His main difficulty, surprisingly, was not the diagnosis but the treatment.

Chronic skin diseases, he claimed, such as psoriasis, favus, and vitiligo, will not disappear or even change appreciably within one or two weeks.

He said, “The safest statement that can be made about these diseases is that they share one feature in common: they produce scales.”

Connection - Tzaraat and Sin

If Tzaraat is not leprosy, what is it?

Most Jewish and Christian scholars agree, it is some kind of skin infection that’s cause is rooted in evil not biology.

Most Jewish thinkers point back to Miriam who was struck with leprosy for slandering her brother.

And Uzziah, the prideful King of Judah, who tried to act as a Priest and the Lord struck him with leprosy.

And in Luke 17 the Ten Lepers do not ask Yeshua for a “healing” that ask him for “mercy,” have “mercy on us” they say to Him and when the one comes back Yeshua says, “your faith has saved you.”

The Lepers faith was that Yeshua’s living word of mercy countermanded the effects of leprosy and sin.

I generally ask a doctor for medicine not mercy.

Tzaraat acts just like Sin

It’s Origins is Secret and Private

It Initial Effect Seems Harmless

It is Painless in the First Stages

It Spread Slowly at First and Then Rapidly

It Takes Over the Person

It Creates Death in the Person

It Contaminates Other People

Tzaraat stood for the forces of sin that created death.

Alfred Ederesheim correctly points out in his commentary that the Rabbis considered the one with tzaraat as a walking corpse.

The laws in Leviticus relating to them are the same as that of a dead body.

They are as toxic as a dead body in that they can contaminate anything and everyone that comes in contact with their home or even clothes.

The only thing in Leviticus, all of the Scriptures, that can countermand the effects of Tzaraat and sin is the life-giving grace of God.

Only God can reverse the effects of Tzaraat and sin.

He uses the same means, sacrifice, we will see this next week.

In our text in Tzaraat, the focus is on the priest watching out for the well-being of the community by identifying those with Tzaraat.

Sixty-nine times in Leviticus 13-14 the same phrase occurs: wera'ah hakkohen 'eth-hannega' וְרָאָ֣ה הַכֹּהֵ֣ן אֶת־הַנֶּ֣גַע which translates “and the Priest shall inspect the plague.”

He is to be concerned about Tzaraat because it is more than just a medical condition, it is an evil that is in the camp that if not quarantined could spread.

The phrase wera'ah hakkohen 'eth-hannega caught my attention.

Because that word “ha’nega” in Hebrew is the word used to describe being stricken by God with “plagues” or discipline in relationship to sin (Ge 12:7; Ex 11:1; 1 Ki 8:37; Ps 91:10; 2 Sa 7:14; Is 53:8).

You may think, “But that is ancient thinking, no one thinks like that anymore.”

Today, Infectious diseases and especially those to which a sexual fault is attached always inspire fears of easy contagion and bizarre fantasies of transmission by non-venereal means in public places.

The removal of door knobs and instillation of swinging doors on U.S. Navy ships and the disappearance of the metal drinking cups affixed to public water fountains in the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century were the early consequences of the “discovery of syphilis”—“instantly transmitted infection.”

The warning to generations of middle-class children always to interpose paper between bare bottom and public toilet seats is another trace of the once rife horror stories about the germs of syphilis being passed to the innocent by the dirty.

Even Bob Newhart did a humorous skit where the punch of the joke was that it is okay to be obsessed with washing your hands but not with being buried alive in the box.

The joke was that you have just as high a likely of dying because you did not wash your hands as of being buried alive in a box.

It caught my attention because I thought, “Okay, to recreate a good world we have to watch for sin’s threat against the well-being of God’s people.”

But my second thought was, “ we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God.” Who has the right to make these kinds of judgments.

And, what happens when the wrong religious people stall calling everyone else “sinner” or “heretic.”

There is a church in our area that gives there members bumpers stickers that say, “No perfect people allowed.”

Whenever I see it I think to myself, “My struggle is not that I think I am perfect.”

No, my struggle is that I don’t think my “minor flaws are major sins.”

I would rather have a bumper sticker that says, “Only people who know their minor flaws are major sins are allowed here.”

Here is where the whole thing gets real sticky for me.

I don’t really like the idea of anybody, priest or otherwise, poking around in my Tzaraat because I don’t know what is really motivating them or what they are going to do with that information.

There is this case in the Gospel of John of Tzaraat.

Not skin disease per-say but sin disease called adultery.

Like Tzaraat, the relationship started privately and probably seemed harmless but we all know it had devastating consequences.

And, some local religious leaders discovered the “Tzaraat” and decided to deal with it.

Context in this passage is everything.

First, this is a rare cause where Yeshua is being put in the position of a Religious Leader with Buck Stopping Power.

He is like the High Priest who is going to determine the fate of this woman caught in adultery.

“At dawn, He came again into the Temple.

All the people were coming to Him, and He sat down and began to teach them.”

(John 8:1–2, TLV)

We know Yeshua is in the Temple.

Here is a modern picture of the Temple Mount.

Here is the Golden Dome Mosque, the Al Aqsar Mosque but

before any of this was here this 30 acre sight housed God’s Temple.

And around the temple were all these gates to enter and courts were designated for certain people.

Courts for Gentiles, for women, for lepers.

Here are the southern steps.

These could be called the steps to heaven because when you ascended these stairs you entered into the presence of God.

You climbed the stairs to get atonement, to worship, to find mercy and then to return with the blessing of God.

This is the place lepers would be inspected and declared clean or unclean.

The sun is barely up.

The first morning sacrifices are being offered, the continual sacrifices are going up.

The sound of animal slaughter is in the background.

But there is the sound of crowds coming to Yeshua.

People are taking their seats and Yeshua is teaching them.

By the way, don’t miss the allusion to Yeshua being a High Priest fulfilling his calling to teach Israel about matters of clean, unclean, holy and unholy (cf.

Lev 10:10-11).

This is the big picture.

The story goes on.

“The Torah scholars and Pharisees bring in a woman who had been caught in adultery.