The disease was killing me.
It wasn’t a virus that ran its course, nor was it an infection that antibiotics could kill. There was no natural cure. No doctor on earth had a remedy. It was destroying me. It was destroying my ability to think straight and talk coherently. It was robbing me of ambition, and energy and killing my relationships.
My health was deteriorating. My teeth were decaying and causing excruciating pain. I was sinking deeper into pot clouds of depression by the day. The ‘medicinal’ attributes of marijuana numbed the pain in my head and my heart. It numbed my mind and replaced reality with fantasy thinking that amounted to nothing – zip, nada. According to the Law of God, sorcerers like me deserved the death penalty.
My ‘friends’ jokingly called me a ‘wasto.’ Real funny. I was wasting away at 25, my hair was already starting to turn gray. Miserable and lonely, my future looked dark and bleak. At 25, I was the walking dead, a zombie. I felt like dying and didn’t want to live anymore. A slave to sin, there was nothing I could do to deliver myself from the rut I was stuck in.
The only place I felt somewhat okay was riding my bike alone on the lonely streets of Beloit, Wisconsin, often down by the old railroad tracks. Whether I was hallucinating or not, I don’t know, but I remember seeing a black boy lying still and dead on his back, lying across the railroad tracks with his lips swollen and eyes wide open to the dark sky. Scared me to death.
Truth be told, I was an outcast leper with a hideous disease called ‘sin.’ Sin. Period.
The Leprous Condition of Sin
And the wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23a) Leprosy, like a fatal sickness, is just limited to death and dying. Like leprosy, sin is so deeply entrenched into the flesh and the walls of the home that it cannot be removed by natural means. Sin ran through the warp and woof of the fabric of my life. I couldn’t remove – but not for my divine Savior Yeshua.
Because leprosy is so fatally infectious, lepers have to be quarantined, and ostracized from the public. I found myself withdrawn and lonely, nobody wanted me around them.
Oh, it started out ‘fun’ and ‘pleasurable.’ I started out living to ‘enjoy the pleasure of sin for a season.’ (Hebrews 11:25) Deceived, I thought smoking pot and partying was a lot more fun than being straight, being a good boy, and going to church. But the pleasure of the ‘high’ from that first hit of dope diminished over the years, until it did nothing but make my condition worse. My life in a liberal arts college was like a downward spiral on the highway to hell.
Never did I feel clean. My whole being always felt dirty, poor, unclean, unclean like a leper. I hated myself for defiling others I touched, so I withdrew even more as a wretched introvert.
Cleansed and Pronounced Clean!
During the darkest of days of my life, a Man came knocking on the door of my heart. I could see Him with my mind’s eye waiting so patiently for me to come to the door and just let Him in. He came occasionally knocking, to see if I was ready, but when I wouldn’t let Him enter, He would disappear for a time.
Then one day in the spring of 1985, I finally realized that I was an all-out ‘wasto,’ a completely helpless leper – it was like my heart cried, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ (Lev 13:45)
And if leprosy breaks out all over the skin, and the leprosy shall cover all the skin of the infected one, from his head to his foot… Leviticus 13:12
The Man at the door of my heart knew the condition I was in, yet He came to my door for a visit. Amazing that He’d come looking for a complete reject of a sinner from head to foot like me.
Wherever the priest looks, then the priest shall look and see, if the leprosy has covered all his body… Leviticus 13:13a
At the end of my rope, having come to the end of raw-flesh selfishness, the leper hopped on his bike and rode it in pouring, cleansing rain down the streets of Beloit to a church. Yes, I went to a ‘Christian church.’ This is where I turned away from my sinful lifestyle. There it just so happened that the pastor preached the Gospel that day on how Jesus died to save sinners.
Soaking wet, I sat in the back of the church building and heard the good news of how my Savior carried a wooden cross on His bloody back outside the city to be crucified. He took my sin upon Himself and died the cruel death I certainly deserved to suffer and to die for. There I put my faith in the Savior, For God so loved the world, that He gave… John 3:16
Covered head to toe with His blood, rejected and alone, Yeshua hung on a cross to take the sin of the world and all its curses upon Himself – for he who is hanged is accursed is accursed of God. (Deut 21:23) Because of His mercy upon me, a sinner, He appeased the wrath of the Almighty I knew I deserved. My Savior redeemed me from the curse of sin and of the cruel death I earned. Opening the door of my heart, I received and believed the message that Jesus Christ had forgiven me of my sin and by His blood had pronounced me – ‘Clean!’
He shall pronounce the infected one ‘clean’. It has all turned white, he is clean.
Leviticus 13:13
Though my sins were as scarlet, my Savior pronounced them as white as snow. (Isaiah 1:18) My loving Savior had entered and had cleansed my heart. For the first time, I felt clean inside! I could see, think, and talk clearly again! The clouds of depression had dissipated like sunlight burning away the fog! The joy of my Salvation flooded my soul! I had no desire to smoke pot or indulge in the ‘pleasures’ of the flesh again. I was no longer an addict. No longer did I feel like the Walking Dead, I was alive again! I could sense love in my soul. I had never felt so alive!
And the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Messiah Yeshua our Lord. Romans 6:23
Serving my Savior with a Grateful Heart
Set free and cleansed from sin, all I wanted was to come to know my Father and my Savior Jesus. I just wanted to read the Word and be with others who believed in Him, which yes, meant that I went to ‘church’. I just wanted to pray and grow by the new, born-again spirit within me, by His Holy Spirit now living on the inside of my soul. No longer an unclean outcast, I could now enter His Kingdom of Light. No longer did I feel dark and lonely, but a part of His wonderful family. HalleluYah!
Sure, I have and still do slip and fall into temptations, but no longer am I a slave to sin. No longer am I an addict with incurable, terminal leprosy. No longer am I helplessly lost, but found in the fold of the Good Shepherd. So when I confess my sin when I do stumble, He is faithful, He is just, and the blood of Yeshua cleanses me from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:7-9).
Because He cleansed this leper, I now owe my life to Him! I don’t want to be like the nine lepers that didn’t come back and thank their Savior. The ten lepers were healed by faith in His healing Word ‘as they went’ (Luke 17:14). May I be like the one leper out of ten who comes back to heartily praise and thank my Savior for what He has done! Thank You, Yeshua!
The Way of Salvation
Know any addicts? If an addiction is to a vice, if it’s contrary to the Torah, it is a sin like leprosy. The answer is to acknowledge that the whole being is leprous as Paul realized,
I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good. Romans 7:18
For we have all become as one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is as a polluted garment: and we all fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. Isaiah 64:6
All means all. All of us were lepers, some still are. Everyone needs a Doctor. All need the Healer Who can cleanse us from our sins. Everyone needs the Gospel of Yeshua, the leper cleanser. Only Yeshua the Messiah is the great High Priest, Who can declare us ‘Clean.’
The only good in us are born-again spirits within the souls of believers in the Messiah. Nothing good is in the fallen, sinful nature of man. What’s good about me is the One Who lives in me by His Spirit. Then to do good is to be led by the spirit, not by the flesh. Paul said it this way:
Therefore consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Messiah Yeshua, our Lord. Romans 6:11
The Healing of the Unclean Woman
In Yeshua’s day, a woman with an issue of blood, who’d been unclean for 12 years, came to the Master. She represents the uncleanness of the exiled twelve tribes of Israel. Since no doctor could heal her, she was a perpetual outcast. But through the press of the crowd, she by faith, touched the fringes, the tzitzit, of Yeshua’s garment. Since we know Yeshua kept all the Torah perfectly, what was Yeshua wearing on His fringes? The blue thread is set to remind the wearer not to commit adultery. That’s one reason I wear them. Was adultery what caused her issue of blood?
She knew in her soul that if she could just touch His garment, she could be healed and her unclean state would finally be over. Don’t you just love how Yeshua responds to her?
“Daughter, cheer up! Your faith has made you well!” And the woman was made well from that hour. Matthew 9:21
How can we believe like that woman did for the healings so desperately needed in the house of Israel today? So many are in dire need of healing from the ravages of sin on the soul and body.
The paleo-Hebrew meaning of the word for faith – emunah – reveals a better understanding of what Yeshua meant by that statement on faith. ‘Emunah’ in paleo-Hebrew has to do with the power of Elohim in the womb of the soul reproducing His life by the seed, the Word of Messiah. When we were born again and as we received the Gospel in the womb of our souls by Emunah, we came alive where we were dead and dying. We receive “the engrafted Word which can save your souls.” (James 1:21b). The same Spirit raises us up from the dead.
But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Yeshua from the dead dwells in you, He Who raised up Messiah Yeshua from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit Who dwells in you. Romans 8:11
The Conception Connection
In the Torah portion Tazria, what in the world do pregnant women have to do with lepers? Why do we read the instructions about women conceiving and giving birth to healthy babies, but then go to descriptions of leprosy and instructions on priests examining lepers? Do the two sets of instructions have anything in common?
Yeshua declared that ‘you must be born again’ (John 3:7). Our first birth into this world is to be born in a leprous condition of sin sickness (Psalm 51:5) in a sin-dying world. Before we receive Yeshua as Lord and Savior from sin and are cleansed by His blood of all unrighteousness, we are in a leprous condition that’s killing us. When we come to the foot of the cross, the blood of Yeshua cleanses and heals the soul. The transformation is as radical and real as a caterpillar going into a cocoon of baptism to emerge a butterfly free to fly on the wings of the Spirit!
Looking ahead to Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread during this time of spring cleaning, our Messiah is cleaning the house and preparing a Bride for Himself, for our Bridegroom is coming soon. Now’s the time to remember what our Savior has done for us when He first saved our souls. It’s time to get ready, to turn from any sin we’ve stumbled back into, put our Emunah (faith) in Messiah, and be cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb. It is time to be healed and changed by the engrafted Word and live ‘as He is, so are we in this world’ (I John 4:17), for ‘the just shall live by Emunah (faith). (Galatians 3:11) This is the season to submit to the work of the Holy Spirit. As His Bride, He wants us to participate in His rehearsals and prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah, the Son of David, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
On Passover, YHWH commands His people to tell their personal stories of deliverance and salvation. He commanded the children of Israel who were born in the wilderness, who never were in Egypt:
And you shall tell (Haggadah) your son in that day, saying, “It is because of what YHWH did for me when I came out from Mitsrayim (Egypt).” Exodus 13:8
Moshe didn’t say to tell, to haggadah, what YHWH did for our fathers, but for what YHWH did for me when I came out from Mitsrayim. How was it that you and I were delivered and came out from miserable Mitsrayim? How did it happen that you were cleansed from the leprosy of sin? It’s time to testify of the great things Yeshua has done to save us from the slavery of sin, giving us a new life in Messiah!
Eternally grateful, praising my Savior, and looking unto Yeshua, the Author and Finisher of our faith,
David Klug