everybody and welcome to steadfast baptist church we can go ahead and find our seats we'll go ahead
and get started this morning once you found a seat go ahead and find a hymnal we'll start this
morning off with song number 409 109 fight is on so grateful for this church grateful for the
opportunity to gather here and sing unto you and hear great preaching lord we just love you and
thank you again we just ask you to bless this service in jesus name amen song let's go song
number 149 number 149 trusting jesus sting jesus so much for coming to said fast baptist church if
you did not already get a bulletin put your hand nice and high one of our ushers is going to come
down the aisle bulletin on the we have the bible memory passage proverbs 31 verse 24 inside we
have our service times we have spanish service 4 30 on sundays and then we have our evening service
at 5 30 that's for you guys that only come sunday morning we have we do actually have a service at
5 30 on the evening okay they didn't find that funny it's all right i won't see you later anyways
so um down below we have the soul winning times and the churchwide meet here at the building and
then regional times meet at different parts dallas ford area and so you just need to see
the respective leaders there um also we have our church stats down below please make sure you're
turning in your soul winning numbers to your soul winning captains and lieutenants also on the right
we have a list still several ladies who are expecting please be in prayer for them during
their pregnancies also we have some upcoming events march 9th going to be our next preaching
class so that's this upcoming saturday uh march 16th is a baby shower in honor of mariah jackson
and that's going to be at 12 30 i think the details yeah the details are on the back um
on on the events list on the 30th there's going to be a cedar hill soul uh south dallas sewing
marathon so we'll meet here at the building at around nine and then we'll go out at about 10
and we'll just go soul winning come have lunch somewhere and then go out sewing again in the
afternoon and we have these nice easter invitations that you can be using for your soul winning
um we ordered a lot so don't feel shy about using them now to invite people easter is a great
service to also invite family members friends or anybody that you think would love to come
visit our church that evening we're going to be having our communion service that we have
about once a year and so if you would like to participate in that as well i encourage you to
come then one thing that's not in the bullet in the events list and i just thought of it so i want
to say it is we'll be having our just annual like kind of our year-end recap finance meeting
next sunday evening service so that just gives you like one week just to to know that it's an
annual business meeting we pretty much do it actually every six months so we just every six
months approximately we have a year in review and a midpoint of the year review where we just present
all of the annual business financials for the church and everything like that and just have a
simple business meeting immediately following the service it is for members only but if you are
wanting to participate or be here for that it's going to be next sunday evening so i just want to
put that on your radar also april 9th through the 10th that is a event that one of our friends pastor
roger jimenez from very bad this church is hosting a youth rally it's geared towards teenagers there
is a poster in the hallway that has much more detail and so that's a great way to figure out
what's going on you can always email their church if you have any questions and then i believe we
have a sign-up sheet and we're not really going to do anything with it but just simply it allows
other individuals to see who's going or if they want to communicate with others who are planning
on traveling to that. April 13th is a Shreveport Louisiana Soul Winning Marathon we're going to be
driving out and meeting in Shreveport Louisiana we've done this pretty much once a year approximately
and and really honestly it's always been very receptive it's been a lot of fun people really
enjoy this particular Soul Winning Marathon I think that everybody enjoys all the Soul
Winning Marathons we're going but this one specifically a lot of people I get the most
thank yous or like excitement usually around this one just because of the fact that it's a lot more
receptive than other areas and so especially considering being stateside being in the United
States it's got to be one of the most receptive areas within the United States itself and so
for you guys that can't necessarily travel to the Caribbean or Fiji or Philippines or all these crazy
awesome destinations you know you can always go to Shreveport okay and and honestly it's
it's it's pretty receptive like I'm sure that some of these other areas are better but mostly
the only reason other areas are better is just because you have a sheer volume increase like
there's just so many more people to talk to but honestly when I've gone to Shreveport the people
there a lot more receptive than other areas and so I'd really encourage you you know you got to go
before we all gobble them all up because you know eventually we might get everyone saved there that
can get saved and so it won't be receptive anymore but while the while the getting's good we're going
over there and dropping our net and trying to drag it into the the boat okay also on the back
is these the details about our baby shower on the 16th it is going to be happening at 12 30 to 2 30
please rsvp to miss milstead if you would like to attend also if you would like to get them a gift
they're registered on baby list and if you would like to bring a dessert or side dish please
communicate that as well so all ladies are invited it is nursing's only preferred so if you can that
would be a blessing down below is our prayer list please continue to pray for our church family and
if you have any additional prayer requests you can always email those in and we would love to be in
prayer with you that's all i have as far as announcements we're going to go ahead and sing
um our psalm of the week psalm 149 you can use your special handouts or kingdom's bible if you
need to hand out makes it a lot easier psalm 149 psalm 149 psalm chapter 149 all right sing it out
together singing a two song praise in the congregation a saint will rejoice in him that made him let the children help Zion beat his name sing praises unto him with the temple and her salvation saints be joyful on them the judgment praise singing everybody now
Now it's an offering pleasure for you to pass around. Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Leviticus chapter 13. That's Leviticus chapter number 13.
Chapter 13, the entire chapter, as is our custom. Follow along silently. Beginning at verse 1, the Bible reads, "And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, saying,
"When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy,
then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, and unto one of his sons the priests. And the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh;
and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy;
and the priest shall look on him and pronounce him unclean. If the bright spot be white, and the skin of his flesh should in sight be not deeper than the skin,
and the hair thereof be not turned white, then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague seven days; and the priest shall look on him the seventh day;
and, behold, if the plague in his sight be at a stay, and the plague spread not in the skin, then the priest shall shut him up seven days more.
And the priest shall look on him again the seventh day; and, behold, if the plague be somewhat dark, and the plague spread not in the skin,
the priest shall pronounce him clean; it is but a scab, and he shall wash his clothes and be clean.
But if the scab spread much abroad in the skin, after that he hath been seen of the priest for his cleansing, he shall be seen of the priest again.
And if the priest see that, behold, the scab spreadeth in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it is a leprosy.
When the plague of leprosy is in a man, then he shall be brought unto the priest, and the priest shall see him; and behold, if the rising be white of the skin, and it have turned the hair white, and there be quick raw flesh in the rising, it is an old leprosy in the skin of his flesh; and the priest shall pronounce him unclean, and shall not shut him up, for he is unclean.
And if a leprosy break out abroad in the skin, and the leprosy cover all the skin of him that hath the plague from his head even to his foot, wheresoever the priest looketh, then the priest shall consider, and behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague; it is all turned white, he is clean.
But when raw flesh appeareth in him, he shall be unclean, and the priest shall see the raw flesh, and pronounce him to be unclean; for the raw flesh is unclean, it is a leprosy.
Or if the raw flesh turn again, and be changed unto white, he shall come unto the priest, and the priest shall see him; and behold, if the plague be turned into white, then the priest shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague; he is clean.
The flesh also, in which even the skin thereof was a boil, it is healed; and in the place of the boil there be a white rising, or a bright spot, white, and somewhat reddish, and it be shewed to the priest.
And if, when the priest seeth it, behold, it be in sight lower than the skin, and the hair thereof be turned white, the priest shall pronounce him unclean, it is a plague of leprosy broken out of the boil.
When the priest look on it, and behold, there be no white hairs therein, and if it be not lower than the skin, but be somewhat dark, then the priest shall shut him up seven days.
And if it spread much abroad in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean, it is a plague.
But if the bright spots stay in his place and spread not, it is a burning boil, and the priest shall pronounce him clean.
Or if there be any flesh in the skin whereof there is a hot burning, and the quick flesh that burneth have a white bright spot, somewhat reddish or white,
then the priest shall look upon it, and behold, if the hair in the bright spot be turned white, and it be in sight deeper than the skin,
it is a leprosy broken out of the burning, wherefore the priest shall pronounce him unclean, it is the plague of leprosy.
But if the priest look on it, and behold, there be no white hair in the bright spot,
and it be no lower than the other skin, but be somewhat dark, then the priest shall shut him up seven days.
And the priest shall look upon him the seventh day, and if it be spread much abroad in the skin,
then the priest shall pronounce him unclean, it is the plague of leprosy.
And if the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not in the skin, and it be somewhat dark,
it is a rising of the burning, and the priest shall pronounce him clean,
for it is an inflammation of the burning.
If a man or woman have a plague upon the head or the beard,
then the priest shall see the plague, and behold, if it be in sight deeper than the skin,
and there be in it a yellow thin hair, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean.
It is a dry skull, even a leprosy upon the head or beard.
And if the priest look on the plague of the skull, and behold, it be not in sight deeper than the skin,
and there is no black hair in it, then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague of the skull seven days.
And in the seventh day the priest shall look on the plague, and behold, if the skull spread not,
and there be in it no yellow hair, and the skull be not in sight deeper than the skin,
he shall be shaven, but the skull shall he not shave, and the priest shall shut up him that hath the skull seven days more.
And in the seventh day the priest shall look on the skull, and behold, if the skull be not spread in the skin,
nor be in sight deeper than the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him clean, and he shall wash his clothes and be clean.
But if the skull spread much in the skin after his cleansing, then the priest shall look on him,
and behold, if the skull be spread in the skin, the priest shall not seek for yellow hair, he is unclean.
But if the skull be in his sight at a stay, and there is black hair grown up therein, the skull is healed, he is clean, and the priest shall pronounce him clean.
If a man also or a woman have in the skin of their flesh bright spots, even white bright spots, then the priest shall look,
and behold, if the bright spots in the skin of their flesh be darkish white, it is a freckled spot that groweth in the skin, he is clean.
And the man whose hair is fallen off his head, he is bald, yet is he clean.
And he that hath his hair fallen off from the part of his head toward his face, he is forehead bald, yet is he clean.
And if there be in the bald head, or bald forehead, a white reddish sore, it is a leprosy sprung up at his bald head, or his head, or his bald forehead.
Then the priest shall look upon it, and behold, if the rising of the sore be white reddish in his bald head, or in his bald forehead, as the leprosy appeareth in the skin of the flesh, he is a leprous man, he is unclean, the priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean, his plague is in his head.
And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry unclean, unclean.
All the days wherein the plague shall be in him, he shall be defiled, he is unclean, he shall dwell alone, without the camp shall his habitation be.
The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in, whether it be a woolen garment or a linen garment, whether it be in the warp or woof of linen or of woolen,
whether in a skin or in anything made of skin, and that the plague be greenish or reddish in the garment or in the skin,
either in the warp or in the woof or in anything of skin, it is a plague of leprosy, and shall be shewed unto the priest.
And the priest shall look upon the plague, and shut up it that hath the plague seven days; and he shall look on the plague on the seventh day.
If the plague be spread in the garment, either in the warp or in the woof or in a skin, or in any work that is made of skin, the plague is a fretting leprosy; it is unclean.
He shall therefore burn that garment, whether warp or woof, in woolen, or in linen, or in any thing of skin wherein the plague is, for it is a fretting leprosy; it shall be burnt in the fire.
And if the priest shall look, and behold, the plague be not spread in the garment, either in the warp or in the woof or in any thing of skin, then the priest shall command that they wash the thing wherein the plague is, and he shall shut it up seven days more.
And the priest shall look on the plague after that it is washed, and behold, if the plague have not changed his color, and the plague be not spread, it is unclean; thou shalt burn it in the fire, it is fret inward, whether it be bare within or without.
And if the priest look, and behold, the plague be somewhat dark after the washing of it, then he shall rend it out of the garment, or out of the skin, or out of the warp, or out of the wolf. And if it appears still in the garment, either in the warp, or in the wolf, or in any thing of skin, it is a spreading plague; thou shalt burn that wherein the plague is with fire.
And the garment, either warp, or wolf, or whatsoever thing of skin it be, which thou shalt wash, if the plague be departed from them, then it shall be washed the second time, and shall be clean.
This is the law of the plague of leprosy, in a garment of woolen, or linen, either in the warp, or wolf, or anything of skins, to pronounce it clean, or to pronounce it unclean.
Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.
Father in heaven, I pray, Lord, that you would fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit, and help him to preach the sermon you've laid on his heart, with clarity of mind, and with boldness.
And I pray that you soften hearts in the room, and help us to receive the preaching of your word, and to make any necessary changes, subsequently, to serve you better.
We love you in Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.
Amen.
I want to look back at verses two and three here.
The Bible says, "When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or
bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy, then he
shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priest, and the priest
shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh.
And when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than
the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy, and the priest shall look on him, and pronounce
him unclean.
Now the Bible really emphasizes, especially in the Old Testament, the distinction between
things that are clean and things that are unclean.
Today when we talk about someone being unclean, often we use the word sick.
And the Bible does use the word sick, often to describe what we think of as someone being
sick.
Sickness is also described sometimes in the Bible as that feeling of just feeling bad
emotionally.
So not every time sickness is used in the Bible is it talking about a physical illness.
Sometimes it's talking about an emotional feeling.
But when we talk about this cleanliness and this uncleanliness, we're talking about things
that are related to being sick, diseased, having some kind of illness.
This is the concepts that we're talking about.
And really what we're talking about is things that are dirty.
If you're unclean, it's dirty.
These are really basic concepts.
They're pretty simple.
And I think because of our culture and our society, a lot of us are very familiar with
these concepts.
But throughout history and in different civilizations, many people didn't understand dirtiness, uncleanness,
or cleanness, or they have weird ideas on what things are clean or unclean.
And really what the Bible always does is it gives us a balanced view.
And my goal this morning for my sermon is to try and help us have a balanced view on
sickness and to have a biblical view on sickness.
Now I'll say this, I guarantee if we were to ask everybody in the room their views on
sickness and illness and disease, we're gonna have pretty much people on both sides of extremes.
We're gonna have people all over the map.
There's a lot of different views on sickness, illness, disease.
And I'm not trying to get super scientific with my sermon this morning, but what I do
want is I want everybody to recognize the fact that the Bible talks about this.
And no matter what your views are as far as modern science or health or medicine or doctors,
you should agree with the Bible every time.
The Bible is always right.
And the Bible, regardless of what science says or medical says, you know what?
The Bible is always giving the right advice.
And many times science is trying to catch up to or figure out like, wow, the thing that
the Bible said is actually right.
And many times what science is doing is it's trying to describe or understand the phenomenon
associated with why biblical advice is right.
It's more of the details or the specifics as to why certain phenomenon are true.
And I think what sometimes happens is people will look at a particular explanation and
say, I think there's flaws in this particular explanation or I don't like some of the things
that they're saying, and then they'll reject the obvious biblical advice that's given.
And what we need to do is say, hey, we're going to do whatever the Bible says regardless
of if we understand all the details of it, regardless if it makes perfect sense to us,
regardless if our world or culture agrees with that or not.
We should follow what the Bible says regarding sickness.
And the title of my sermon is this, sickness and stopping the spread.
Sickness and stopping the spread, okay?
Now the Bible hammers this point.
In fact, I have so much Bible that we could be here for five plus hours if I was going
to show you everything the Bible talks on this subject.
But luckily it's only going to be three, okay?
No, I'm just kidding.
Now I'm really trying to condense this as much as I can this morning.
And I want to cover a lot of material, but to try and help us to walk away from the sermon
and have something tangible, I kind of came up with an acrostic or some kind of a device
to try and help us remember the principles that the Bible gives us in regarding to sickness.
And so I have just kind of seven points that I'm going to be constantly referring to, and
it kind of spells two words together.
And I was trying to make this in a way that would be easy for us to remember, but basically
this is what you have to remember, Wash Men, all right?
Wash Men.
That's all you have to remember, okay?
So if you walk away from the sermon and that's all you remember, great, all right?
Now I believe that these seven letters represent seven principles that we find here in the
Bible.
The first one's really easy because it matches the word, it's wash, all right?
And the Bible constantly emphasizes this.
Look at chapter 15 for a moment, we're going to come back here, go to chapter 15.
Now Jesus said this in the New Testament.
He said, "But thou when thou fastest anoint thy head and wash thy face."
So Jesus was instructing people to wash their body, wash their face, and really one of the
most important principles when it comes to being healthy and getting rid of sickness
is just washing.
And specifically, the Bible tells us with running water, if you look at verse 13, the
Bible says this, "And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue, then he shall
number to himself seven days for his cleansing and wash his clothes and bathe his flesh in
running water and shall be clean."
So notice cleanliness is associated with washing your body and specifically even in running
water.
Throughout history, this has not always been common knowledge and in fact, many times when
people would wash, they weren't washing with fresh water, clean water or running water.
They would simply bathe their hands or body in water that had already been used by someone
else.
So doctors may dip their hands in a bowl of water that already has been contaminated
with blood or disease or bacteria or all kinds of different things.
People are constantly taking a bath in the same bath water.
So the oldest takes a bath, then the next oldest takes a bath, then the next oldest
takes a bath.
By the time you get to the youngest, now it's really not water anymore.
It looks like coffee or tea.
You guys drink that.
Go back to chapter 13 for a minute and look at verse 34.
Chapter 13, look at verse 34, "And in the seventh day the priest shall look on the skull,
and behold if the skull be not spread in the skin, nor be in sight deeper than the skin,
then the priest shall pronounce him clean, and he shall wash his clothes and be clean."
Notice that the Bible also mentions not just washing your body or your flesh, but also
washing your clothes.
And really, this just goes a long way.
Please, please wash your body and wash your clothes.
This is a huge factor in how often you're going to get sick.
The Bible extends this to many things.
Your sheets, your pillowcases, your furniture, your carpet, basically any fabric or any kind
of cloth substance that you have, the Bible is constantly reiterating the idea of washing
these things.
We want to keep these things clean and that prevents people from getting sick or illness
or disease or these type of things from spreading.
Now that's point one, wash.
Point two is verse 44 is alert.
I want you to alert and what is alert?
Alert people.
What do you alert people for when you're sick?
Look at verse 44.
"He is a leprous man.
He is unclean.
The priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean, his plague is in his head and the leper in
whom the plague is.
His clothes shall be rent and his head bare and he shall put a covering upon his lip and
shall cry, 'Unclean, unclean!'"
Now what is he doing?
He's telling other people that he's sick, that he has some kind of illness, and he's
telling other people so that they'll be alerted and they'll realize, "Hey, I should stay away
from this person."
And you know what?
It just should be common sense and it's common courtesy to tell people when you don't feel
good or when you are feeling sick or you have some kind of illness or some kind of disease
like, "Hey, I'm not going to shake your hand," or, "Hey, you might want to stay away from
me," or, "Hey, I'm not feeling very good."
You know, it's just common courtesy to let people know that you don't feel good.
So you're going to wash and then you're going to alert people.
Here's the third point.
You're going to separate.
Look at verse 46.
"All the days wherein the plague shall be in him, he shall be defiled.
He is unclean.
He shall dwell alone, without the camp shall his habitation be."
So notice when you want to become clean, when you cleanse yourself from the illness, you
would wash.
But when you're sick, while you're sick, it says you need to alert people and then specifically
you need to separate from people.
In fact, notice that it says these would dwell alone.
It doesn't say like dwell with family members, dwell with your cousin.
It doesn't say go to church.
It says dwell alone.
And here's something that I think a lot of people maybe don't realize is when you're
sick or your kids are sick, sometimes it's good to isolate them from even your own family
members.
Keep them away from the other children or other people so as to try and not cause them
to get sick as well.
You don't want other people to get sick and so you're supposed to dwell.
Notice this alone.
When someone is sick or ill or has an issue, there's no need for other people to get that.
They can just deal with their issue on their own so as to not spread.
You don't want to spread whatever illness, sickness, disease or whatever issue is going
on so you're going to wash, you're going to alert people, you're going to separate.
Here's another point that the Bible brings up and I want you to go to Deuteronomy 23.
Keep your finger here because we're coming back to the video because it's a lot.
Go to Deuteronomy 23 for a moment and this one is hide.
So that spells our word wash.
We're going to wash, alert, separate and hide.
Now the hiding in the Bible is in reference to the idea that you want to hide contaminated
material.
And the Bible constantly brings this up in lots of different contexts where you have
something that's contaminated or something that's dirty or something that's unclean and
it's supposed to be hidden.
Most of the time you're covering it with the dirt or with the earth.
There's a lot of different ways in which something could be hidden but generally speaking it's
supposed to be buried, okay, and you're hiding it.
Now Deuteronomy 23 look at verse 13, "And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon,
and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt
turn back and cover that which cometh from thee.
For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp to deliver thee, and to give up
thine enemies before thee.
Therefore shalt thy camp be holy, that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away
from thee."
So what the Bible is saying is that when people use the bathroom that needs to be covered.
And specifically it says to cover it with dirt, that's what they're doing, but you're
hiding it.
You're hiding it.
It's not like it disappears.
It's not like it goes somewhere that, I mean, it can't just disappear or just go somewhere
else.
It's supposed to just be hidden.
It's just supposed to be covered.
And so the Bible consistently talks about how things that are contaminated, dirty,
diseased, or just infected have some kind of a problem that they could be covered.
They need to be discarded in such a manner.
And there's other ways to deal with waste or trash as it were, but this is one of the
specific ways.
Now most of our trash, if you think about our society, this is how it works.
Essentially they go out to the outside city limits somewhere and they literally just throw
the trash out somewhere and then they cover it with dirt.
And then eventually it becomes a giant mound.
So a lot of times where we have our trash areas, it's really tall now, it almost looks
like a mountain, just because they've constantly been covering it in the trash.
But here's the thing, when you put trash or waste or anything like that in the ground,
it slowly decomposes and then goes back to the state that it was, turns back into dust
or rock or whatever material it was made of, and so it gets put back into the environment
and it can become safe again.
And in fact, a lot of times people even use waste products for specific gardening or making
fertilizer.
It's very interesting how almost everything has some kind of use or can be turned back
into something useful again.
It can be redeemed, okay, in a sense.
But in its current state, it's unredeemable.
It just needs to be hidden, buried, covered.
I mean, a dead body, same thing.
What do we do with dead bodies?
We bury them.
We hide them in the earth.
We cover them, and then that body will slowly decay, rot, decompose, and turn back into
the dust that we eventually are, okay?
So when it comes to excrement, blood, dead animals, all kinds of things like this, the
Bible is telling you to hide these things.
Some societies weren't doing this.
Some cultures, like what I'm saying, you might be thinking like, duh, Pastor Shelley.
But you have to understand that parts of Europe and other places throughout history, they
would be having excrement in the middle of the street, trash in the middle of the street,
dead animals and dead people in the street.
And in fact, you go to third world countries, you go to places in India, you go to places
in Africa, you go to places where disease is rampant.
And I'll tell you something, they have excrement and dead things and all kinds of stuff out
and open in the public and it's not being hidden, it's not being dealt with.
And so that dirtiness, that uncleanness is causing problems for that area.
It's like, I wonder why God's not walking through India and Africa in some places.
It's because the excrement literally, and I mean, think about it.
God says specifically, "If you're not doing this, if you're dirty, I won't even walk
around you."
You know, you're like causing God to not want to be around you because of your uncleanness.
You know, that's what the Bible is teaching.
Go back to Leviticus 13.
So our first word, wash.
We need to wash, alert, separate and hide.
As a individual, as a church, as a state, as a country, as a people, we should be doing
all of these principles consistently.
We need to be washing, alerting, separating and then hiding.
Now here's another one the Bible brings up is masking.
Look at Leviticus chapter 13 verse 45, we're going back to this verse, "And the leper
in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent and his head bare, and he shall put a
covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry unclean and unclean."
So another aspect of this is that he's literally putting some kind of a garment over his mouth
and covering his mouth when he was crying, like, "Unclean!"
He's probably lifting his voice because it's been kind of muffled, it's been kind of,
you know, "Unclean, unclean!"
And basically what the Bible is kind of teaching is the idea that there's something associated
with covering your mouth when you're ill to what, reduce the spread again, okay?
And this is, I would think, common knowledge.
Most people recognize, like, if you're going to sneeze, if you cough, if you're ill, like,
cover yourself, cover your mouth, you know, don't just be like, "Ah-choo!"
You know, all over your brother, or just be coughing all over other people.
Again, most likely, if you're so ill that you're just coughing every second or something,
you probably need to do what I said earlier, alert and separate.
But if you even find yourself in a situation where you're around others, you have to be
around others, at least be covering your mouth when you're coughing, covering your mouth
when you're sneezing, covering your mouth especially when you're ill or you have some
kind of illness, a lot of hospitals, a lot of places that use masks and face masks to
prevent contamination, and this is just honestly biblical.
It's biblical to cover your mouth.
Now, here's a couple of things I want to make notice of.
Notice it didn't say cover your nose, okay?
Now, this is what made me mad when we had that stupid COVID thing is that they wanted
people to cover their nose when they weren't even sick, okay?
Notice again, the context of this is someone is sick.
It's not even a question.
They're definitely sick, and then it's saying cover their mouth.
Again, if you sneeze or something, that could come out.
So I'm not saying don't cover your nose if you're going to sneeze or something like that,
but generally speaking, we don't need to stop people from breathing while they're sick.
That's just a bad idea, okay?
So when people aren't sick, they shouldn't be having to be stopped from breathing, okay?
That's just going to make your life worse.
So I don't recommend wearing a mask as a fashion statement, okay?
It's not China.
We don't need to look like China, and we don't need to necessarily just wear a mask every
single where we go.
I think there's probably a detriment to your health for just wearing a mask all the time,
okay?
Notice that in some cases, in some situations, wearing a mask is appropriate.
And I'll say this, there's lots of times where people wear masks, and it makes tons of sense.
You know, if you're working outside in the yard, a lot of times, wearing a mask will
help prevent a lot of the allergic reactions you can get from all of the dander and the
pollen and all the other elements that are being exposed.
Because when you're cutting these plants and the grass and the trees, you know, that's
releasing all kinds of different pollen and things throughout the air and you know, by
having a mask, it can reduce the amount that you're ingesting.
Sometimes you can, I have bad allergies sometimes when it comes to just the release of different
pollens and different elements into the air.
So wearing a mask during that, if you're doing woodworking and you have a lot of really
fine sawdust, that's also another important time to wear a mask because you don't want
to be inhaling large portions of dust or just these kind of things that can cause issues
in your body.
So you know there's lots of times to wear a mask, but one of them specifically in the
Bible is in regards to if someone is sick, to cover their mouth, to cover their face
a little bit and to not contaminate other individuals.
Here's another point that I believe is in verse 51, the Bible says, "And he shall look
on the plague on the seventh day, if the plague be spread in the garment, either in the warp
or in the wolf or in a skin or in any work that is made of skin, the plague is a fretting
leprosy."
It is unclean.
Now, fretting is not a word that we use very often I think in this context, but I believe
if you look it up, it's kind of describing a decaying composition or consuming aspect.
So the fretting is the fact that it's kind of consuming and it has a connotation with
spreading as well, but just think about something that's like eating the flesh away or kind
of just consuming the flesh.
That's what it's talking about when it's talking about this fretting aspect.
Moses says in verse 52, "He shall therefore burn that garment, whether warp or wolf in
woolen or in linen or in anything of skin, wherein the plague is, for it is a fretting
leprosy it shall be burnt in the fire."
So sometimes you hide things that are contaminated, other things that have this, you know, arguably
a flesh eating bacteria on it.
I mean, if you had a garment that's slowly being consumed by some kind of a disease or
illness it's saying, "We're not just going to bury this thing, we're going to burn this
thing."
And so my next point is that we need to eradicate contaminated materials, okay?
So you kind of have to identify what kind of material it is.
Certain materials they hide, we bury them, other materials they burn them, okay?
We need to eradicate.
This is just so bad, this is so evil, we're just going to eradicate it, okay?
And this is in context, this is in context of things like garments, houses.
Think about this, why do you think the Bible is saying that we need to break down the houses
of the sodomites?
It's because their houses were so contaminated with disease and illness and filth and just,
it's just like this is not redeemable, we need to break it down.
And in fact, when you read these chapters, which I would love to do, I would love to
just read all this and really explain all this, that's when we go through Leviticus.
But honestly, you can tell like, hey, there's a reason why the house of the Sodomites were
broken down.
Because of the disease and the illness and the issues that are going on in this house,
the material itself is contaminated and the material itself needs to be destroyed.
And so sometimes even housing needs to be destroyed.
I mean, San Francisco might need a lot of burning, okay.
But it's a beautiful city and it's a beautiful area, you know, we could burn a lot of houses
down and then rebuild the city and it can be beautiful.
I heard someone say, and I kind of like this point, they were like, you know, I know that
a lot of people's attitude is just to flee, you know, Chicago and New York and LA and
all this.
And he's like, but it's not really, that's not really a manly attitude where we're just
forfeiting our best cities and the things that make America America, you know, we should
be cleaning up those cities.
And you know what?
Amen.
We need to imply the burning principle, okay.
We need to start knocking some stuff down and burning it and destroying it and cleaning
it up.
I mean, talk about human feces.
You know, we talked about, you know, the idea that we should be covering feces.
San Francisco has a poop map where literally human feces are everywhere in the city.
I mean, people are spotting this everywhere.
I mean, this is insane.
But you know what?
You know why things are happening like that?
Because they reject the Bible over there.
Because where the spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty and cleanness, okay.
When you kind of notice the cleanest parts of the world, often the most godliness and
the spirit of the Lord is there.
And the most disease and illness and issue is usually often where there's a rejection
of the Bible, rejection of God's Word, rejection of these things.
That's why the most evil religions such as like Hinduism and Buddhism and atheism, a
lot of these countries are filthy, disease-ridden places and they're very awful.
I mean consistently through the Bible, the most ungodly places, Canaan or other areas
of just ungodly places are the most filthy, the most disease.
Egypt was also known as a place full of disease, very filthy and contaminated and I guarantee
they're not observing and following the statutes and the principles and the ordinances that
God has laid out.
You know the Bible says, "My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge."
And let me tell you something, part of that is just knowledge around cleanliness and uncleanliness.
Just understanding how disease, illness, and these kind of things can spread and trying
to stop the spread through the principles that he's laying out.
Like what?
Washing, alerting people, separating, hiding.
And then we want to mask, then we want to eradicate.
And here's my last point that I have is nutrition.
Nutrition is also another important point.
Now I'm not going to have you turn there, but it does say in 1 Timothy, this is Paul
instructing Timothy himself says, "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy
stomach's sake and thine often infirmities."
So the Apostle Paul recognizes the fact that sometimes the things that you eat or consume
also have an impact on your overall health.
And you know what?
There's a lot on that subject.
I plan on preaching another sermon about nutrition and health.
That's not what I'm dealing with this morning.
I'm dealing with the sickness side, right?
We're talking about sickness and stopping the spread of sickness.
There's going to be another sermon where I want to emphasize the idea of nutrition and
health.
The Bible talks about this a lot as well.
But I just want to help you understand what I'm saying.
So I want to just cherry pick a lot of verses here in Leviticus 13.
But I want us to read and notice a pattern here, okay?
We're in Leviticus chapter 13, look at verse 5.
And I'm just, I'm not going to read the whole verse.
I'm reading sections of these verses, so try to follow along.
Verse 5.
"And the plague spread not."
Verse 6.
"And the plague spread not."
Verse 7.
"If the scab spread much abroad."
Okay, verse 8.
"Spreadeth in the skin."
Verse 22.
"If it spread much abroad."
Verse 23.
"And spread not."
Verse 27.
"If it be spread much abroad."
Verse 28.
"And spread not in the skin."
Verse 32.
"If the skull spread not."
Verse 34.
"And if the skull be not spread in the skin."
Verse 35.
"But if the skull spread much in the skin."
Look at what it says in verse 51.
"If the plague be spread in the garment."
The plague is a fretting leprosy.
Verse 52.
"For it is a fretting leprosy."
Verse 53.
"The plague be not spread in the garment."
Verse 55.
"And the plague be not spread.
It is unclean."
Verse 57.
"It is a spreading plague."
I'm noticing a common theme in this chapter that is talking about something.
If something is spreading or not spreading, what do you think all these principles are
in Leviticus chapter 13?
The principle is to stop spreading, fretting, illness, and disease, and specifically it's
dealing with leprosy, but these principles can be applied to any disease, any illness,
any kind of issue, and it's trying to do something.
Stop spread.
Washing will stop the spread.
Telling people to stay away from you will stop the spread.
Separating from people physically will stop the spread.
Hiding contaminated material will stop the spread.
Masks will stop the spread.
Eradicating just things that are just gross and bad and cannot be redeemed, that will
stop the spread, and by having good nutrition it can help stop the spread.
But notice that these principles are taught in the Bible.
I haven't shown you anything, science or medical theory, I haven't gotten a doctor up here.
I'm just telling you what the Bible says, and it's really clear that things spread and
things don't spread based on how you deal with them, and God is wanting these things
to not spread, okay.
Now when it comes to uncleanness, we need to identify things that are unclean.
And it was the priest's job, one of the priest's main jobs was helping everybody understand
something that was clean and something that was unclean.
That's a giant job, it's a huge job, main aspect.
Now in these chapters and all through the Bible, I'm just going to give you a list of
things that are unclean.
What are things that are dirty?
Well, it says if you have a rising in the skin, that's some kind of an uncleanness.
So where your skin is, if the skin starts to rise or be higher in a place, that's something
that can determine if it's unclean.
If there's a lowering in the skin, so the skin's actually depressed or going down, that
is a potential for something to be unclean.
If there's a scab, that's determining whether it's clean or unclean.
If there's a bright spot, so the color of your skin is changing, that could be a determination
on something being unclean.
If the hair color is changing color, that's also a determination if something is clean
or unclean.
If there's a burning sensation, that's determining whether something's unclean or clean.
If there's an issue of fluid, according to the Bible, all issues of fluid are unclean.
Now I don't even have to describe all the things that can issue, but it's saying any
kind of issue, any kind of seed of copulation, any kind of issue of blood, or any kind of
a woman's flowers, her special monthly flowers, that is all unclean according to the Bible.
And again, when something's unclean, what do you do?
Well, you wash, alert, you separate, you hide, you mask, you eradicate, and nutrition.
Okay, now not all of those principles apply to every situation, right?
Some of those, you have to use them as seeing fit, what's appropriate, what kind of material,
what kind of situation.
Leviticus chapters 13, 14, and 15 really hammer all the different kind of scenarios, what's
the protocol, how do I handle this particular situation?
I think generally speaking, most of what's taught in our country follows a lot of these
things.
I think that for, you know, because we are a Christian nation for a long time, because
people had respect for the Bible, a lot of these things got ingrained into our culture.
I think a lot of people are accustomed to washing themselves, washing their bodies,
washing their clothes, hiding contaminated material.
But sometimes people forget about these things.
I think some of the more lackadaisical things are how people don't really alert people
when they're sick anymore.
People aren't really separating when they're sick anymore.
And some of those principles are still just as important as all of the others.
Other things that are disgusting, gross, disease, have a problem, dead animals.
Bible says you touch a dead animal, you're unclean.
You got to wash yourself.
Bible talks about someone being sick, they're unclean.
Fecal matter, unclean.
Vomit, unclean.
Here's another thing that's unclean according to the Bible, fornication.
And I think a lot of people don't realize that fornication, there's an associated dirtiness
or uncleanness with it.
Why?
Because the issues, the seed of copulation or whatever has happened.
And so there's an associated dirtiness with it.
Also, fermentation is uncleanness.
Death in the pot is described in the Bible.
That's uncleanness.
And here's a big one, leaven.
Leaven is associated with uncleanness.
Okay.
Now go ahead and go to Numbers 31.
Go to Numbers 31.
What you have to understand is God uses carnal truths to expound spiritual truths.
Carnal truths expounds spiritual truths.
So the Bible wants us to understand that there are things that are dirty and there's things
that are clean.
Now this is what you don't want to get confused on.
Just because something is dirty or just because the Bible describes something as unclean doesn't
mean it's sinful.
Okay.
If I touch a dead body, I didn't sin.
Okay.
But I'm unclean.
I'm dirty.
And then that dirtiness needs to be dealt with according to the Bible.
So if I touch the dead body, I now need to wash myself.
I need to not touch other people anything.
If I violate what the Bible says, though, let's say I get defiled by something dead
body or something gross and I don't wash myself or I don't follow those principles, then that
would be a sin.
The sin is not dealing with the defilement appropriately.
Okay.
So, getting sick or being defiled or being unclean, it doesn't mean that you sin.
Okay.
Some people work in sanitation and they have to deal with a lot of these things.
You know, janitors, sometimes they have to clean up vomit and excrement, and there's
people that have to deal with dead animals, there's people that have to deal with dead
bodies, there's people that have to deal with cleaning up blood, there's a lot of these
different things.
That doesn't mean the person sinning when they deal with those issues, it just means
that they're dirty and they need to clean themselves up, they need to make sure they're
following the protocol here.
But here's the thing, when someone is dirty and they're not taking these advices and they're
not taking these statutes and ordinances seriously and they're not applying appropriate cleanliness
standards, I believe that is sin.
I believe it is a sin to not deal with uncleanness appropriately, okay?
And so we need to make sure that we, as God's people, are taking the Bible seriously, taking
sickness, illness, uncleanness seriously.
Now of course, God then uses uncleanness, physical dirtiness, to illustrate spiritual
truths as well.
So uncleanness or dirtiness physically represents sin often in the Bible, okay?
And uncleanness represents righteousness.
And so there's a correlation to these, but I don't want anybody to get confused and think,
"Well, if my hands are dirty, I'm sinning."
No, you know, dirty hands are when you take bribe money.
Dirty hands is when you shed innocent blood, okay?
That's sinful, that's wicked, you know, playing in the dirt doesn't make you a sinner, okay?
And of course, you know, Jesus was dealing with the Pharisees a lot on this, and they
found fault with his disciples for eating with unwashed hands.
But you know what, the Bible doesn't say that eating with unwashed hands is a sin.
The Bible doesn't even actually describe that in any kind of real detail.
So here's the thing, let's say I've gone my whole day and I haven't washed my hands
today, but then I just eat dinner, I pick up a burger and I eat it.
That's not sinning, because the Bible didn't say that.
But you know what?
When Jesus was dealing with those people, you know what Jesus was not saying?
Pick up dead animals and get your hands defiled and then eat food.
He's not saying, you know, because he talks about how when you eat something or what goes
in through the mouth, it doesn't defile the man.
That wasn't in the context of literally anything.
That wasn't the context of eating with unwashed hands, okay?
It was not in the context of like, now I can eat dead animals, now I can eat poison, now
I can drink Clorox and bleach and it won't defile me.
That is not what Jesus Christ was saying.
In fact, often when Jesus Christ is talking to people and he cleansed them of their issue,
he would then say, "Go show yourself unto the priest.
Do exactly what Moses said."
Because I believe that Jesus wants us to follow exactly what Moses said when it comes to cleanliness
principles.
Now, of course, we don't have to show ourselves to a priest.
We don't have a priest.
We don't have the Levitical priesthood.
Some of the sacrifices associated with becoming clean, obviously we don't have to do that.
But I'm saying the principles, I believe, are something we should all follow.
We should be washing, we should be alerting, we should be separating, we should be hiding
contaminated material, we should be masking, we should be eradicating, and we should have
good nutrition.
I think all those things are really important.
And when you think about the children of Israel as a whole, they needed to be careful of other
nations and other cultures from what?
The spread of illness, leprosy, and disease.
So think about it.
You just conquered some other nation or some other city.
What do you have to be worried about?
You have to be worried about their disease and their illnesses and all the things spreading.
So the principles that God gives them actually help eliminate the chances of any kind of
sickness coming into their camp from taking over consuming another nation.
What are some of these principles?
Look at Numbers 31, look at verse 17, "Now therefore kill every male among the little
ones and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
But all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."
So notice they would actually kill everyone but the female virgins and one aspect of this
is certain to prevent any kind of sickness or illness or disease from coming into the
camp because there's no chance of some kind of an STD or some kind of an uncleanness or
filthiness coming in because the only people that are coming in are the young virgin females
who have not been, what, defiled.
And in fact if you read in Revelation which we've read that the 144,000 are considered
virgin and it said these were not defiled with women, meaning that what?
That there's some kind of uncleanness associated with that.
Now again, I'm not Catholic, Catholics will literally teach that relations between husband
and wife is sin.
It's like, what is wrong with you, okay?
There is nothing sinful, marriage is honorable and all and the bed, undefiled.
But let me explain that.
That's undefiled from a sin perspective, it's not saying it's undefiled from a physical
cleanliness perspective.
There is a physical dirtiness associated with that and so that's why the Bible talks about
washing.
When David and his men came under a biathlar, the priest, they literally had to tell them
like, "Hey, we've been kept from women three days so they could eat the bread."
Why?
Because there was a physical dirtiness, there was a physical defilement associated with
that and they weren't supposed to be touching things when they were in an unclean or defiled
status.
Why?
Because we don't want to defile the house of God.
If you let sickness and illness come into the house of God, well now the priesthood
and everything is going to come to a halt.
I mean what if all the priests get sick?
Who's going to worship God?
Who's going to be lighting incense?
Who's going to be doing the sacrifices?
You know they had very strict principles associated for all the priests.
Why?
To prevent a lot of the sickness and illness getting spread amongst the God's priests and
for them to cease the work of the Lord.
So it's really important that they have these really high cleanliness standards.
In fact, the Levitical priests, they weren't even allowed to marry a woman that was not
a virgin.
They had to marry a woman that was a virgin and they were really careful in preventing
a lot of sickness, illness.
I mean, people that just even had some kind of defilement physically, like they were a
dwarf or they had some kind of physical deformity or any kind of blemish, they were kept from
the priesthood.
They were kept from the tabernacle.
I mean, God is really specific on these details.
And of course, some of that is to illustrate how Jesus Christ is the perfect spotless and
lamb without blemish.
Okay.
And we get that.
There's also a physical truth with this.
Now, when you take their physical possessions, we've taken captive this nation or the city.
We're eradicating all the people that are not virgin female.
Here's what else we're doing.
Verse 23, "Everything that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and
it shall be clean."
Any kind of material that can survive fire, they were supposed to put all of that in there.
Gold, silver, precious stone, and of course, that's illustrated in the New Testament with
the spiritual truths of 1 Corinthians 3, we talk about heavenly rewards.
How we don't want to lay up for ourselves wood, hay, and stubble, but rather we want
gold, silver, and precious stone, which can what?
Abide the fire, okay?
And this is illustrated by the physical carnal truth that we have materials today, like gold,
silver, and precious stone, that when they go through fire, it doesn't destroy them or
cause them any kind of harm, and in fact, in many cases, it purifies them and makes
them even better.
So the reason why gold is considered "pure gold" is because it's been going through
a refining process and actually heated up to get all the impurities out of it, okay?
And so that's a process.
Now, we're not Catholic, so we don't have purgatory, all right?
Catholics teach that humans have to go through that, right?
They have to go through purgatory and they have to kind of burn off the impurities before
they can go to heaven.
The problem is, when you go to hell, there's no getting out, okay?
You weren't that gold getting purified, you were that fretting leprosy and contaminated
product that just need to be eradicated, okay?
That's what you were, alright?
One more verse, verse 24, it says, "And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day
and ye shall be clean and afterward ye shall come into the camp."
So, and in this verse it talks about the water separation.
Basically, they take over an area, only people that could come into the camp were female
virgins, young children, and then stuff that was either burned or washed completely.
Why?
Because they don't want to bring their diseases, they don't want to bring their filth, bring
their uncleanness into their nation and cause their nation to be destroyed by conquering
this people.
You know, some people don't recognize or realize that many Native Americans were killed from
settlers of Europe, not through physical violence, but rather from just disease.
Just the spreading, just disease wiped out a large portion of the Native American population
was just disease itself.
And disease can be very harmful to another nation when they're not necessarily maybe
exposed to your diseases or illnesses, or maybe they have bad health principles.
Maybe they don't have the same kind of standards or principles as you.
And so by just sheer fact that they're not ready to handle this, they could be eliminated
or eradicated through just simply disease itself.
And again, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
You see a lot more disease and illness in the children of Israel as a nation when they're
more sinful.
The more they get away from the Lord, the more they forget the Bible, the more they
have these issues, the more sickness, illness, disease, plague is consistently shown in the
Bible.
Okay.
Now, when we talk about spreading, there's the idea that we use today of the idea of
something being contagious or contagion.
Now, if you just read a dictionary definition of the word contagion, it says this, transmissible
by direct or indirect contact, capable of transmitting a disease, or spreading or tending
to spread from one to another infectious, communicable by contact, by virus, or by body
exhalation.
I don't see how that isn't just describing exactly what we are reading in Leviticus chapters
number 13, 14, and 15 when it comes to the ideas of spreading disease.
Now, I want to go to a couple more places.
Go if you would to Ezekiel 24, go to Ezekiel 24, but Jesus said this, "They that behold
need not a physician, but they that are sick."
You know, Jesus didn't say you never need a physician.
He said, "If you're healthy, you're well, no physician."
Hey, if you're sick, you need a physician.
And look, what did the Old Testament priests do?
They were diagnosing the sicknesses and the illnesses, prescribing certain activities
for them to do.
So whether they're supposed to be in quarantine or washing or what kind of state they're in,
and they're giving them a lot of this instruction.
And you know, there is value in our society having doctors and physicians, individuals
who check and notice diseases and illnesses, and they tell people things.
Now, of course, we live in America, so a lot of this has changed over time.
And as a result of that, advice and recommendations have greatly shifted.
Many times they're not giving advice that's coming from the Bible.
Sometimes they're giving advice, it's just like, "Take a drug."
But you know, we don't really see the Bible saying, "Take drugs," anywhere.
Now, the Bible did say nutrition, right?
So drink a little wine, but that's more like eating the right kind of foods.
A lot of doctors are not necessarily giving you advice like that, giving you advice of
eating specific foods or seeing ways.
I think sometimes they do give the right principles of like, "Hey, you need to stay away or cover.
This is spreading.
This is contagious."
And I think all of those advices should be taken seriously.
If a doctor tells you, "Hey, you're very contagious.
Stay away from people," I think you should stay away from people.
I think that just fits exactly what the Bible is saying, and it's a pretty common modern
application that we could have today.
To basically just say, "Well, I don't think so," is sometimes just ignorance on your part.
It doesn't really help society if you're smarter than the doctor.
What is it going to hurt if you isolate yourself a little bit every once in a while and really
follow kind of what the Bible is saying?
That's why I have constantly reiterated, "Hey, if you're sick, don't come to church.
You don't get a special trophy in heaven for coming to church sick."
I don't think that God's like, "Well, this person went to church a lot, but this person
went to church when they were sick.
Let's give them an extra special trophy or something."
I am really big on church attendance.
I'm sure that you hear me harp on church attendance all the time, but it has a very clear and
obvious exception.
If you're sick, I don't want you here.
No one wants you here, okay?
And when you're not sick, we all want you here.
We're really excited.
I love seeing everybody at church.
I get excited when I see people at church, especially if they've been away.
I'm disappointed when people are not here.
I would love for everybody to be here all the time, but let's be real.
No one wants you here when you're sick.
And even the carnal world recognizes this.
Even like many companies, if they notice you're sick, they'll just send you home.
Or if you have an office job that can be done from home, they'll tell you, work from home
today, you're not allowed to come in the office, you're not allowed to show up or be around
other people because we don't want to get contaminated.
And really it's common courtesy.
It's loving your neighbor as yourself to not infect other people or to spread something
that could potentially be eliminated through you just separating yourself.
Staying away from people, washing your hands, being very careful.
I'm thankful that when I go to a lot of restaurants, it literally has a sign up that says, employees
must wash their hands before returning to work.
What if it said, no one needs to wash their hands?
I mean I'm already thinking that food's sketchy.
Like that, that is at least one principle.
Can we continue that threat, that thread?
Like let's continue the sign that says that.
And you know, how would you feel if you go to a restaurant for lunch this afternoon and
everybody in there is like, we all have the flu and RSV and whatever.
Here you go.
Like here's your food.
You'd be like, uh, no thanks.
Like that's not very nice, right?
Wouldn't you want the restaurant to have a standard where if their employees came sick,
they're like, just go home.
We don't want sick people to make the food, right?
But if that's how you feel, then why wouldn't you have that same approach to your workplace,
to the house of God?
You know, we don't want to necessarily bring in these types of things.
Also some people are more susceptible to sickness or illness.
You know, elderly people, maybe sometimes people have a weakened immune system because
they're struggling with something.
Sometimes you know, what people don't understand is that somebody will be sick or ill from
something and then they'll catch something else that's even worse and then that causes
them problems.
You know, and this is what is identified sometimes as a comorbidity even, where somebody has
multiple illnesses or multiple diseases, multiple problems and they die.
And they die in a motorcycle accident from COVID.
You know, and it's just like, it's crazy how they were driving and they like hit another
truck and right before they bled out, COVID just got them.
You know?
It was just like, it was like, what's the, what are those chances?
I mean, that person just wasn't lucky that the COVID just got them right before they
bled out and died or whatever, you know?
But what I'm trying to say is that, you know, people that are elderly, sometimes, you know,
you want to be more careful around them.
If you have grandparents or other people, try to stay away from them if you're sick.
Like don't put them at risk when it's not needed.
I've been to some churches, there was a church that I went to back home and they had a very
large sanctuary.
They're blessed with a large building, with a large sanctuary, and in fact, one whole
section was basically just like for people that were either just kind of trying to avoid
sickness or illness, like elderly or something, and so they could kind of just be on their
own and they weren't necessarily having to interact with as much people so they could
feel safe coming to church but not being exposed to a higher level of risk.
You know, another thing is newborn babies.
Reborn babies are more susceptible to sicknesses and illnesses and so it's often very good
advice to just stay home for the first few weeks, okay?
Again, I'm not going to put any hard and fast rules on our church but, you know, the Bible
has a lot of principles here.
When a woman gives birth, it literally says that she's unclean for the first seven days
and then there's like another period of days depending on if it's male or female.
And you know, I think it's good advice to not go into the public for at least a few
weeks, maybe three weeks after giving birth.
And we have a lot of ladies pregnant.
Don't feel any pressure from me to show up like, "I gave birth 20 minutes ago and I'm
here for church.
I didn't want to miss, pastor."
I'm going to be like, "Go home, okay?"
You know, that's extreme.
And look, some people could physically do it, but it's, you know, it's not, I don't
think that it's impressive or anything like that.
You don't need to impress me or anybody else or like look how spiritual I am.
And I think that most people do it just because they just love church and they just love this
social interaction.
They love to be around people.
They hate being stuck up in the house.
I hate being, you know, stuck alone doing nothing and being bored.
But because I travel so much and I have six kids, being alone is actually a lot of fun
for me.
But you know, I'm just saying in general, if I were a housewife where I was stuck in
the house with just the kids for a long time, I would get stir crazy for sure.
Like I love to go out, play golf or run or hang out with people or be social.
You know, like I love it.
And so I totally get it.
But at the end of the day, you know, we all have our different burdens.
You know, my wife, I'm sure she would like to be out more or do more fun things.
And she notices me doing a lot, but I would rather many times stay home.
So it's, you know, the grass is always greener, folks.
You know, it's like you, you know, you got to just accept your plight and life.
You know, sometimes I just have to go out more and do more and I don't necessarily want
to do it.
And sometimes she has to stay home more.
She doesn't want to do it.
You know, we want to abide by good principles and it's just not considerate to come to church,
being sick, getting other people sick, causing them to not come to church.
That's not fair.
And that's not loving your neighbor as yourself, you know, to get other people contaminated
or for them to be ill.
Now I settle that.
I want to take a second and explain what modern science says on some of these issues, okay?
And I'm sure that in here people aren't going to agree and I don't really care what your
opinion is.
But at the end of the day, like, there's a lot of different schools of thought.
And I guarantee there are people in here that are kind of pro-vaccine and then there's some
people in here that are just extremely anti-vaccine.
And I'm sure there's some people in here that like hospitals and I'm sure there's people
in here that hate hospitals with a burning passion, okay?
And I'm the pastor of all these people, okay?
And I love all of you and I don't care about all of your opinion, okay?
So, so I'm not here to like piss any specific person off, just all of you at the same time,
okay?
But here's the thing, the only thing that matters, wash men, okay, the biblical principles
we talked about.
But we look in the world, we don't want to just completely abstract ourselves with the
world saying, we want to, how does this reconcile with the world says?
Now the world will say that there's a thing called germs and there's the idea of germ
theory.
Not everybody agrees with this, not everybody believes that, okay?
And some people have what's now deemed as germ theory denial, okay?
This is a term that's being thrown out there.
Now here's the thing, I am probably well known as a conspiracy theorist.
So like, I don't think that anybody would accuse me of just believing every narrative
that's being espoused, okay?
But at the same time, I'm also not the person that believes in literally every conspiracy
theory out there, okay?
Obviously, if you're a flat earther, you're retarded, okay?
You're mentally inept, okay?
If you don't think that Michelle Obama looks like a dude, there's something wrong with
you, okay?
If you think that a building can fall, a skyscraper can fall in seven seconds flat due to office
fires, you have serious issues, okay?
I mean, there's all kinds of things out there.
If you don't think there's anything suspicious about the Federal Reserve and the Titanic
and all that, you know, well, you definitely believe anything and everything.
Also, I believe that we landed on the moon, and some people will be like, "Ah, you're
so ignorant, Pastor Shelley."
You know, I don't just think we landed on the moon.
I'm very confident that we did, and I believe a lot of things that NASA said.
Now he's a FEMA pastor, you know?
It's like, obviously, this is what I want to do.
I want to have a balanced view.
Some people, they just go like way over here, just like literally every YouTube conspiracy
video is true.
And then other people go over here and they just think like everything that the government
does is right.
Eighty-one million people voted for Joe Biden, okay?
And I've known people that are, you know, conservative, and they believe that, and it's
like, wow, okay?
But you know, we have to comfort the feeble-minded, okay?
Now here's the thing, germ theory denialism, I just want to read a little bit of this,
okay?
This is what it says.
Derialism is the pseudo-scientific belief that germs do not cause infectious disease
and that the germ theory of disease is wrong.
It usually involves arguing that Louis Pasteur's model of infectious disease was wrong and
that Anton Bachamp was right.
In fact, its origins are rooted in Bachamp's empirically disproven theory of pleomorphism.
Another obsolete variation is known as terrain theory and postulates that the state of the
internal environment determines if germs cause disease rather than germs being the sole cause
of it.
So, I'm just reading this to just tell you kind of the things that exist.
I'm not telling you what's right or wrong, I just want you to know these things exist.
Virtually everyone believes in what's called germ theory and then there's a smaller group
of people that would say that's totally wrong and they believe or subscribe to an idea of
terrain theory.
Now, here's the thing, from my research or understanding, kind of these two different
things that exist, I don't think that they're mutually exclusive.
I don't even personally believe that it's like black and white over here.
I think that there's probably a lot of crossover personally, okay?
But I also think this, I kind of identify there's flaws with a lot of the conclusions
of germ theory and there's a lot of flaws with the conclusion of terrain theory, okay?
And I think there's a lot of truth on both sides.
That's my personal opinion.
If you don't agree with that, you can believe whatever, you can believe, you know, that
Michelle Obama is the most woman, like, feminine person you've ever met, okay?
And that Joe Biden's coherent.
But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter the details, as long as everybody's
going to agree to the biblical principles, okay?
I don't really care so much, like, how you describe what you think's happening, as long
as you're like, I'm still going to wash, alert people when I'm sick, I'm going to
separate, I'm going to hide contaminated material, I'm going to mask, I'm going to eradicate
bad material, and I'm going to work on my nutrition.
I think those are really important, okay?
Now when it comes to germ theory itself, I think that germ theory is compatible with
what the Bible teaches, because, frankly speaking, we recognize that the Bible is constantly
talking about things spreading.
Well, you know, germ theory is the idea of small microbes, or what we know as bacteria,
these type of things, growing and expanding.
Now, the Bible actually teaches similar concepts to this, and a lot of the things that Louis
Pasteur discovered, I believe, are biblical.
You know, one of the things that Louis Pasteur is famous for is disproving spontaneous generation.
And spontaneous generation is the idea that things just come out of nowhere, called evolution
and Big Bang.
Well, you know what?
That's garbage.
And you know what?
I do agree that spontaneous generation has been disproven and is not true.
That life can't come from non-life, that you're not going to have a bunch of rocks and then
all of a sudden just bacteria just magically shows up and then that bacteria turns into
a fish which turns into a cow which turns into us.
You know, that's ridiculous, obviously, okay?
So that was a good thing that Louis Pasteur did.
Another thing that's attributed to him is the idea of pasteurization, which if you go
to the store today and you get some milk, it'll say pasteurize on a lot of the milk.
What is the idea of pasteurization?
Pasteurization is the idea of heating the milk to a certain temperature to try and kill
off or destroy some of the bacteria in it and cause it to have a longer shelf life.
That's the idea of pasteurization, okay?
But you know, what's interesting about pasteurization is I believe that that's actually found in
the Bible a little bit.
Go if you went to Ezekiel 24, I had you try to turn there earlier, and look at verse
number 6, okay?
Ezekiel 24, look at verse number 6.
The Bible says, "Wherefore, thus saith the Lord God, woe to the bloody city, to the pot
whose scum is therein, and whose scum is not gone out of it.
Bring it out piece by piece, let no lot fall upon it."
Now God uses carnal truths to expound spiritual truths, and he's talking about a physical
pot of food that has its scum still in it, that the scum wasn't taken out of it.
Now as we keep reading in this particular passage, skip down to verse 10, "Heap on
wood, kindle the fire, consume the flesh and spice it well, and let the bones be burned.
Then set it empty upon the coals thereof, and the brass of it may be hot and may burn,
and that the filthiness of it may be molten in it, that the scum of it may be consumed."
So what the Bible is saying is that by heating up this food and causing it to have an extreme
temperature, you're actually going to destroy and consume the scum that is found in it.
And this is the basic principle that is parallel to the idea of pasteurization, that you have
something that may contain some kind of harmful element, some kind of disease, or some kind
of bacteria that's spreading in it, and by heating it up, you can eliminate, eradicate,
or neutralize that particular substance to where now it's safe to consume.
So you know, I'm not against the idea of pasteurization.
Some people are really big components of raw milk.
I'm not against raw milk at all.
In fact, I'm sure there are benefits to raw milk.
But when you think about the mass production of milk from a lot of these dairy farms where
things are not always as sanitary as possible, I think the pasteurization sounds good to
me.
You know, I'm thinking like, hey, let's make sure that this is okay, right?
And in fact, meats, many meats, in fact, you could eat raw meat technically and there's
no problem.
But the reason why eating raw meat is bad today is because many times they contain harmful
bacteria or some kind of issue.
And by cooking it, you actually now make it safe.
That's why you cook a lot of meats, specifically like chicken or poultry, you want to make
sure there's no red in it so that there's no contaminants in it.
Technically if the chicken was perfectly healthy and there was no issue, you could eat raw
chicken meat and not get sick.
But the problem is, it's very likely that that chicken meat could contain some kind
of contamination and by not cooking it properly, you don't get all of the disease or illness
out of it, but by cooking it, you do.
Same principle.
I think that's good.
Now, Louie Pasteur is also famous for a lot of things associated with vaccination.
And you know, I personally just think that a lot of the vaccination science is misguided
and misunderstood and there's a lot of problems with it.
So I don't really agree with a lot of the vaccination principles because I don't think
that it causes the same immune response in your body as catching the disease itself.
But there's a lot of things that we all notice.
You notice that when you get a specific disease like chicken pox or certain other kinds of
diseases as a child, you never get them again.
And that's through the idea that look, your body has created antibodies that now can handle
that particular illness or issue and you're less likely to get it.
Here's another thing that we notice.
When a little kid has chicken pox and you put them in a room with a bunch of other little
kids, all the other little kids get chicken pox.
And if you were to try and tell people that's not happening, they would look at you like
you're a flat earther, that you're just denying the reality that we notice consistently where
people go into an environment with a lot of other sick people and then they get sick from
it.
I went to Red Hot a few years ago after COVID and it was like literally every single person
got COVID except for like my wife and Pastor Anderson.
You know, it was like three or four hundred people all got COVID at the exact same time.
Why?
Because obviously you notice a phenomenon that when you're around sick people, you're
highly likely to get sick and that it's somehow spreading.
I think that's why God's giving us all those principles of washing, alerting, separating,
hiding, masking, eradicating nutrition, because things can spread.
We observe them spreading.
The Bible is talking about it spreading in the skin, spreading on the wall, spreading
on the garment.
What is that?
That's bacteria multiplying.
And Louis Pasteur, his experiments were based on another man's work, a guy named, I have
it written down here, I think it's Nathan or something.
Let me see if I can find it.
These notes are out of whack.
Theodore Schwann, I was totally off, all right.
Theodore Schwann, a lot of these experiments were based on wine, and they were based on
the process of fermentation specifically.
And Proverbs 23 goes into that a lot.
Go through to Galatians 5.
I just want to go to two more places.
Go to Galatians 5 and 1 Corinthians 5.
Theodore Schwann would study the process of fermentation, how a great beverage will turn
into alcohol.
But what he noticed is that with through microscopes, there's something called yeast.
And that yeast grows.
Yeast multiplies.
And without yeast, alcohol does not ferment.
So if you put alcohol in a container where there's no yeast and it's not exposed to
other air, then you can actually preserve that wine for a long time.
Have you ever noticed?
People have bottles of wine.
They're like, this is from 1957 or whatever.
Or in fact, you could take even juice itself and if it's in a container where it's not
being exposed to the outside air and it's sealed tight, it can last for a long time.
Why?
Because things can be preserved without being exposed to more yeast or any sign of kinds
of yeast.
The fermentation process even stops without the adding of more yeast.
Yeast is also very prevalent in baking.
If you have dough and you want it to rise, you add yeast.
But there's a principle that the Bible teaches that's very important here.
Look at Galatians chapter 5 and I'm thinking which verse number it is.
What's the verse number?
Yeah, verse 9.
"A little leaven, leaven it the whole lump."
Notice this, the whole lump.
Why?
Because it spreads.
It spreads through the whole thing.
It can't stop.
It's just going to keep growing, growing, growing until you either cook it out or do
something.
You have unleavened bread, meaning you never had any of that leaven.
So we can actually physically see, and the Bible literally is teaching, the idea of multiplication
of what?
Bacteria, yeast, leaven, these kinds of principles.
And that's the kind of same principle that comes with sickness.
Someone has some kind of germ and it gets on you, and then what happens?
That little leaven leavens the whole lump, essentially.
That bacteria on you can grow, multiply.
People talk about this with cancer.
Cancer can grow.
It can multiply.
A lot of diseases, illnesses, that's how it works.
Essentially that you get exposed to it, and then that little leaven can leaven the whole
lump, okay?
And it's the same principle that's being taught in the Bible.
That's why it's important not to be getting the leaven, you know?
And in our parable, you know, disease, illness, sickness, whatever that we're kind of talking
about.
Go to the One More Place, First Corinthians, chapter number five.
So when it comes to germ theory and dream theory, this is what I, I don't think that
either of them are just a hundred percent accurate, but I also think that a lot of people
take these things to weird extremes.
The germ theory is taken to like get every single vaccine and all kinds of weird medical
suggestions and drugs and stuff like that.
And then you take this train theory to his extreme.
It says like germs don't even exist.
And you're just like, what, like that's just weird.
That's just, it's like thinking like we, we observe bacteria.
We observe these things growing.
We observe people catching diseases.
I mean, you know, I can totally get where a train theory comes from.
A lot of times as the importance on physical health, like being healthy and getting good
sleep and nutrition, all that, all that is great.
But I don't want to go so far and extreme to say like nothing can be spread.
Contagion doesn't exist.
Germs don't exist.
I don't think that that's compatible with what the Bible is teaching in these areas.
And at the end of the day, whether you agree or disagree with me, please abide by the biblical
principles.
Okay, that's what's important.
And these carnal truths are to expound what?
Spiritual truths.
Think about the little leaven that leavens the lump.
That's representing sin.
You get a little bit of sin and a little bit of sin can leaven the whole lump in an individual
and in a church.
It's important that we eliminate physical illness and sickness in our church and spiritual
illness and uncleanness in our church.
And you know what principles we apply?
The same principles.
Alright.
You know what we need to wash?
We need to wash ourselves with the water of the Bible.
We need to be constantly washing ourselves of the filthiness with the word of God.
You know, we need to alert people.
Hey, when someone's spreading some kind of a sin issue or some kind of a heresy issue,
you need to alert the pastor.
You need to alert the people about the situation.
When someone has a serious illness or situation, spiritually speaking, you know, we separate
from them.
That's what 1 Corinthians 5 is about, is church discipline, eliminating that sickness and
illness.
Because you know what?
It can spread to others.
And so you want to eliminate that illness because a little leaven, leavens the whole
lump.
So when something is obvious, like this is a big issue, you have to deal with it.
What does the Bible say?
Specifically, in 1 Corinthians chapter number five, it says in verse number 11, someone
that's a fornicator, covetous, idolater, railler, drunkard, or extortioner.
Those people are supposed to be put out of the church.
Just like you would deal with physical issues, you deal with spiritual issues the exact same
way.
Why?
Because God uses carnal truths to expound spiritual truths.
And notice in this chapter, in verse number six, "Your glorying is not good.
Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?"
The same principle, the same principle.
Don't mess around with sickness and illness, and don't mess around with spiritual sickness
and illness.
If someone's, you know, drinking alcohol on a regular basis, is drinking hard liquor,
they need to be disciplined from church and removed until they repent, until they get
clean again.
And then when they get clean, they can come back.
This is what people say, "Church is a hospital."
Wrong.
We, we're not, this is not a hospital.
We are not trying to find people that are diseased and ill and bring them in.
We're saying you're not welcome, whether that's spiritually, whether that's physically.
People are like, "Oh, come as you are."
Not if you're a drunkard, not if you're a fornicator.
Now here's the thing.
When we get people saved or we meet them for the first time, often what we do is we allow
them to come to church for a few weeks or a month or something, hear the preaching so
that they have a chance.
But you know, eventually it gets to a point where those things need to be addressed.
You know, if people are living together and they're not married, that's fornication.
They're not welcome to be in church.
Now again, someone that's new, we're not going to just be mean to them or whatever.
We want to lovingly tell them, "Hey, you're sick.
You have an issue.
This is a problem.
We can fix it.
You know, let's get married."
Or stop living together, but you know what?
If you just let everybody commit fornication or you let one person commit fornication,
now everybody's committing fornication.
You let one person get drunk, everybody gets drunk.
Just like hey, someone brings in RSV, everybody gets RSV.
Someone brings in pink eye, everybody gets pink eye.
And it's like why in the world would you come to church with pink eye or RSV?
And it's like why in the world would you come to church when you're a drunkard or a fornicator?
It's the exact same principle.
Hey, you know, we want to make sure that we're washing with the Bible, we're alerting the
pastor, we're separating, then we're also hiding the contaminated material.
You know what's the contaminated material that we need to hide?
The NIV.
You know where you found that?
Go and dug it up.
We need to put it back in the dirt and cover it up.
But in fact, we've actually recognized that that method didn't work, so we need to go
to the burning method.
Okay?
We'll go to that in a second.
But, hey, how about the mask?
The mask was the idea of covering things.
You know, not everything you think needs to be said.
Sometimes you need to have discretion and shut your lips.
And not say things.
Hey, if you have something negative to say about your spouse, shut your mouth.
If you have something negative to say about church, shut your mouth.
If you have something negative to say about brothers and sisters in Christ, just shut
your mouth.
We need to eradicate false doctrine.
We don't mess with that stuff.
We need to burn it with fire.
We need to destroy that.
And lastly, nutrition.
We need good, healthy doctrine.
Healthy doctrine.
If you have lots of good doctrine, you will not get sick, spiritually speaking.
Just the same way.
You have really good nutrition.
Often, you won't even get sick because you're really healthy or you're in a good shape.
You know, you're basically preventing yourself from getting sick, okay?
Just like when you know the Bible really well, when you know doctrine really well, you're
basically, it's not very likely that you're going to get infected with any kind of weird
idea or some kind of a heresy because you have such good nutrition, you have such good
doctrine.
So we want to apply these principles, these carnal truths, and these spiritual truths
in our church.
We want to constantly wash, alert, we want to separate, we want to hide, we want to mask,
we want to eradicate, and we want to have good nutrition.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you, Holy Father, so much for the Word of God and for giving us such great principles
in the Bible to help us to stay clean physically and to stay clean spiritually.
I pray that you would just help our church, you'd help our church members to take these
things seriously, and that you would help us to eliminate sickness and illness physically
and to eliminate sickness and illness spiritually from our church as much as possible.
People are going to get sick and things are going to happen, but I pray that you would
help us to learn how to deal with those issues, to fix them, to cleanse ourselves, and I
thank you so much for giving us so much wisdom and knowledge.
I pray that all of us would take heed to the biblical advice here, in Jesus name we pray,
We take demons or men or wealth.