Lev 14:3+4, and the priest shall go out to the outside of the camp. Thus the priest shall look, and if the infection of leprosy has been healed in the leper, then the priest shall give orders to take two live clean birds and cedar wood and a scarlet string and hyssop for the one who is to be cleansed.
Last time we were in Leviticus, we considered the fact that we are to give thanks to God for the manner in which He makes Himself so very real and caring to us in the every detail of our lives. We looked at the fact that God manifested that care and concern for His people in the very earliest stages of the giving of the means of keeping them safe from even the plagues and illnesses that decimated the surrounding communities. 
In consideration of those communicable diseases, it has been noted that, even though the translation says leprosy, they were also dealing with those general sicknesses that caused rashes to break out on the skin including small pox, measles, scarlet fever, and a variety of others that could wipe out the majority of the people in a very short span of time. Therefore, God made provision, through the inspection of the priests to protect and to separate those with the rashes from those who were not yet infected. None of the other nations had such required regulations of health and well-being. 
The Lord made known to His people that He would provide this protection even as they wandered in the wilderness regions as we read earlier in Ex 15:26. Ex 15:26, And He said, "If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the Lord, am your healer." 
Notice that it was promised by God that He would protect them from all those diseases that were common in Egypt, and in all the communities of the region in which people were closely living together. He would guard them and He would be their Healer. The focal point of our reading today is that when the people who had been quarantined were healed, there were procedures in place for them to rejoin their families and communities. This showed that the Lord was being gracious in the truth that He would heal those whom He would heal. This was not only those under the general umbrella of leprous illnesses, those with rashes, but also those who had true Hansen’s disease, or the leprosy as was so feared because of its disfiguring and painful physical effects. 
Please turn in your Bibles to 2 Kings 5:2-15 where we have the narrative of God’s healing of a man who had leprosy. While Naaman was not an Israelite, but a Syrian, he was still healed from this terrible disease by God through the Prophet Elisha. This showed that God did heal those whom He would choose to heal in order to manifest the truth that He is the Lord God Almighty.
    	2 Kings 5:2-15, Now the Arameans had gone out in bands, and had taken captive a little girl from the land of Israel; and she waited on Naaman's wife. And she said to her mistress, "I wish that my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria! Then he would cure him of his leprosy." And Naaman went in and told his master, saying, "Thus and thus spoke the girl who is from the land of Israel." Then the king of Aram said, "Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel." And he departed and took with him ten talents of silver and six thousand shekels of gold and ten changes of clothes. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, "And now as this letter comes to you, behold, I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may cure him of his leprosy." And it came about when the king of Israel read the letter, that he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man is sending word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? But consider now, and see how he is seeking a quarrel against me." And it happened when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, that he sent word to the king, saying, "Why have you torn your clothes? Now let him come to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel." So Naaman came with his horses and his chariots, and stood at the doorway of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored to you and you shall be clean." But Naaman was furious and went away and said, "Behold, I thought, 'He will surely come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and cure the leper.' "Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and went away in a rage. Then his servants came near and spoke to him and said, "My father, had the prophet told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, 'Wash, and be clean'?" So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. When he returned to the man of God with all his company, and came and stood before him, he said, "Behold now, I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel; so please take a present from your servant now." 
   	There have been many sermons preached concerning this episode in scripture and much can be taken from it. The point we want to focus upon is that Naaman was healed by God and that healing worked in his heart the truth that he stated …I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel… 
	This was a man who was exposed to so many other gods of the nations, but none of them could heal. None of them could deal with such physical torment and suffering. None of them could restore that which had been devastated and defiled and corrupted to the utter disfiguration of humanity. Only God Alone, the Lord God Almighty, Jehovah, Yahweh, could and can heal. This healing was not just of the body, but of the soul and the spirit. 
This witness was so powerful that the account of Naaman’s restoration was well known within the history of the Jews as they recognized the healing power of the Lord God Almighty. The full focus was detailed by Our Lord Jesus, Himself, as recounted in Luke 4:24-27. Luke 4:24-27, And He said, "Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his home town. "But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. "And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian." 
	Jesus would not have used this example unless those who were listening fully knew the account as it was relayed to them. It was from their own history and the records of how God had manifested His healing power upon those whom He so chose to heal. It also highlights the fact that because there were so many lepers in Israel, they were not seeking God to heal them as did Naaman. They were not following after the Lord and neither giving Him their obedience nor their honor. It took an outsider, a Syrian, to come to the prophet of God and ask to be healed by the God of Israel. God’s own people were shown by this that they were neither honoring God, nor in the case of Jesus, honoring the very Son of God.
	The teachings of Moses and of the prophets and of Job were not revered as the truth that they were. The nation of God, as a whole, was allowing itself to become just like the other nations of the world, turning its back upon the One Who had so promised them His protection and His healing and His Providential Mercy and Grace if they would but honor and obey Him.
	The words recorded in Job 5:17+18 were no longer the anthem of their hearts and beings. Job 5:17+18, "Behold, how happy is the man whom God reproves, So do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. "For He inflicts pain, and gives relief; He wounds, and His hands also heal. 
They no longer knew God in this reality. They were poor and they were wretched and they were miserable under the dominion of Rome because they had turned away from the Living Lord God Almighty. They had joined themselves to the practices of all the other nations surrounding them and thereby had succumbed to all the illnesses and the vile diseases common to all the nations. They did not know the joy of the Lord as described by Job because they did despise the discipline of the Lord and set aside in their hearts the resulting truth of God’s reproof, His discipline, and His healing grace.
	The situation within the Nation of Israel was so decrepit that Jesus, when He sent out the twelve, in Matt 10:5-8, instructed them to go to the Jews and to seek the lost sheep of Israel. As we read, they were to preach and to heal the wounds and to cleanse the lepers and to show forth the testimony that the Kingdom of God was at hand for those who would receive it. 
Matt 10:5-8, These twelve Jesus sent out after instructing them, saying, "Do not go in the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. "And as you go, preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons; freely you received, freely give. 
    	They were to concentrate on the people who had been so blessed from the very beginning. They were to draw their attention back to the fact that they were God’s own chosen nation. Notice how they were to make that truth so manifest to the lost sheep of the Jews. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons; freely you received, freely give. 
They were to do all those things that God had promised from the very beginning of the nation that would show that His hand of grace was upon them. The Son of God was here to make known the joy of the Lord through the free gift of God’s own salvation for His people and then for all the nations of the world through His own death and resurrection. 
	The fact of the overruling power of God in the establishment of His Kingdom was further recounted to the disciples of John the Baptist in Matt 11:4+5. Here Christ detailed exactly what was taking place as a witness to the manifested power of God in. Matt 11:4+5, And Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. 
	The work of Christ in healing and cleansing and restoring those who were so stigmatized from the rest of their families, friends, and neighbors because of their illnesses and their disabilities and even their physical deaths was the proof that He was the Son of God sent forth from the heart of God to heal and to save to the uttermost those who would receive Him! The nation, as a whole, would soon crucify Him, but those who believed upon Him were the glorious recipients of His own eternal life. The restoration was not just with their society, but with the Lord God Their Creator and the Healer of their bodies, their souls, and most especially their spirits. He cleansed them from all their impurities as they called upon Him and turned from their evil ways.
	The Apostle Paul, in 1 Cor 6:9-11, detailed exactly the fact that the kingdom of God is for those who have been washed clean from all the filth and the disease of this age, sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ, and justified by His precious and omnipotent name. If you would please read along with me in order to have the fact reinforced in our hearts and minds that we owe God all thanksgiving and praise and honor and adoration and worship and glory for Who He is and what He has done through the free gift of His Only Begotten Son. 1 Cor 6:9-11.
1 Cor 6:9-11, Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. 
	Because we are now found in Jesus Christ, all the sin and the shame and the disease of this world has been cleansed from us. We are free to give God the glory for the great things He has done, as the wonderful old hymn so beautifully proclaims. Our lives are now and forevermore seen in the perfection of Jesus Christ, always under the inspection and the working power of the Holy Spirit to show forth the joy and the fullness and the completeness of our salvation. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 34:1+2. I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; The humble shall hear it and rejoice. Amen.