The Person Cleanses Himself (Lev. 14:8-9)

9/20/2008 9:48 AM

SPIRITUAL DIARY

My Worship Time                              Focus:  The person cleanses himself

Bible Reading & Meditation               Reference:  Lev. 14:8-9

            Message of the verses:  “8  "The one to be cleansed shall then wash his clothes and shave off all his hair and bathe in water and be clean. Now afterward, he may enter the camp, but he shall stay outside his tent for seven days.  9  "It will be on the seventh day that he shall shave off all his hair: he shall shave his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair. He shall then wash his clothes and bathe his body in water and be clean.”

            I once heard a sermon that was entitled “Becoming What You Are.”  I think that the sermon fits in with what these verses are teaching in a spiritual way.  God saves a person, but that person does not always feel the things that God has done for them and therefore has to begin to dig into God’s Word in order to find out all of the things that God has already done for them.  In the case of what these verses in Leviticus mean the person who was cleansed by the Lord for Leprosy had to wash himself and then go back into the camp, but not live in his tent until a week is up, and then wash himself again.

            Believers need a constant cleansing if they want to have a good walk with the Lord, they have to realize that while walking in this world that the world, at times, becomes attached to them and there is a need for cleansing.  “1 ¶  Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”  Paul speaks of this cleansing in 1 Cor. 7:1. 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I think that there is another way that the Bible teaches me to cleanse myself, but confessing my sin, and that is to have the Holy Spirit search my heart for sins that I have committed an perhaps forgotten about.  David writes in Psalm 139: “23  Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; 24  And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.”

My Steps of Faith for Today:

1. As the Holy Spirit of God to search my heart.
2. Give myself to the Lord today for service and worship.
3. Trust the Lord to guide my path today.
4. Put on the spiritual armor of God.
5. I wish to learn contentment, as Paul wrote about in Phil. 4:11.

Memory verses for the week:                                  Exodus 20:8-11

8. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

10.  but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, your or your son or your daughter, your male or female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.

11.  For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

9/20/2008 10:15 AM