I Saw God In Mildew And Boils - Leviticus 14

There is a rhythm to this chapter. There is a cleansing ritual, followed by a guilt offering, followed by anointing. I’m not sure if this rhythm will be repeated in the rest of Leviticus, but it is obviously fixed in chapter 14. I believe I am seeing three separate ministries of God at work here. In fact, I dare to say I see three separate persons of God at hand. The cleansing ritual is indicative of the Father. The guilt offering reminds me of the atonement work of Christ. The anointing with oil represents the power and comfort of the Holy Spirit.

Observe the cleansing ritual with the two birds. One is sacrificed. The other is set free. One is defiled by representing the disease. The other is unpolluted. There is no escaping the analogy of holiness. And redundant or not, it just cries out the most basic understanding of God. He is holy. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” The two birds clearly symbolize a total separation between the holy and the unholy, the defiled and the clean. The two states cannot exist together.

The correlation between the guilt offerings is so obviously symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice that I hardly need to mention anything further. The perfection of the sacrificed animal, the cost involved, the suffering, the blood, salvation, atonement and reconciliation all shout out our need for a savior and the perfect fulfillment in the ministry of Jesus. He came to seek and to save. He came to suffer and to die. He came to conquer sin and death.

Oil is highly symbolic of the Holy Spirit and in Chapter 14 just the word oil is used no less 14 times. And the oil is everywhere. Not just used as anointing, but mingled in with the sacrifice, offered up and surrounding the whole ceremony. It is a presence within the story. It is a comfort to diseased skin. It is used to symbolize restoration and wholeness. No wonder Jesus calls the Holy Spirit “The Comforter”. The Spirit of God brings peace, healing, wholeness and it permeates the entire world, both the seen and the unseen.

As I said earlier, I may be guilty of drawing something out of Leviticus 14 that was not intended. But regardless, this is how God spoke and revealed himself to me; in a story of boils and mildew no less.