House Cleaning

“Then the priest shall come and look, and, behold, if the plague be spread in the house, it is a fretting leprosy in the house: it is unclean. And he shall break down the house, the stones of it, and the timber thereof, and all the morter of the house; and he shall carry them forth out of the city into an unclean place.” (Le 14:44-45 AV)

What the law requires here may, to us, seem a bit drastic.  If the leprosy comes back after seven days of treatment, every stone and timber of the house was to be removed and dumped in the communal dump.  Every last bit.  Every nail.  Every screw.  Every fixture.  Every piece of furniture.  Everything.  When all is said and done, what the owners of the house possessed was the cloths on their backs.  Nothing more.  One might think, “Why not take the entire wall down that was infected and replace it?”  Why not treat it like black mold or asbestos?  Why not remove all areas which are touched by the plague and leave the rest alone?  I have a bit of experience with this.

We lived in a house which had a black mold problem.  It was a constant battle to keep it under control.  There was one basement room that was troublesome.  It was the sump pump room.  I bought the chemicals to fight the plague but no matter how often I sprayed, how dry I kept the basement, or how much I tried to contain the problem, it always came back.  It would show up in other areas of the house as well.  The mold spores, carried about by the HVAC system, would find harbor in any and all environments in which it could grow.  A constant struggle to keep my house livable and healthy for those inside.  Sin is the same way.  It gets everywhere.  No matter how much we try to battle it, it creeps up elsewhere.  We may cleanse it from one area of our lives or homes, only to have it show up somewhere else.  But the question to be asked this morning is:  To what extent or how drastic are we willing to get to rid ourselves of persistent sin?  Are we willing to start completely over?  Are we willing to tear the whole house down (figuratively speaking) to make sure the plague is defeated?

There used to be a day when the preacher would preach on some vice that was infecting the body of believers and they would go through a dramatic cleansing.  A radical and physical cleansing of those things which hinder the work of the Holy Spirit would be abandoned, burned, or discarded.  The filth that we have tolerated in our lives has got to go.  Even if the world would call us radical fundamentalists, so be it.  It is God whom we must please first.  So, how much of the house has to go?  Does it all have to go?  Each and every nail and screw?  Maybe.  Perhaps the LORD is asking of our willingness.  Are we willing to welcome a restart?  Are we willing to ask the LORD to do some radical house-cleaning in our lives that we might be free from the plague of sin?  What are will willing to suffer for the righteousness of Christ to shine through?