WHY DO I ALWAYS LEAVE FIRST?

You told them the worst about you already. You told them it early. You always do. You get out of the way early. Before they can find it out on their own about you. Or at least what you think there is to know about you. Because if they're gonna leave, they're gonna leave you? Well, you'd rather it be now than after you've let yourself want them to stay. And you've called that honesty for so long it doesn't feel like a wound anymore. It feels like policy. There's a man in Leviticus who walked down the road calling out his own condition so people could step back before they reached him. And most of the people, most of the people, you listening. Most of you. You've been doing exactly that for years. There's no disease on your body that causes people to recoil. I'm Dr. Sean. True word of faith for life with Dr. Sean. I'm Sean. Subscribe, hit the little bell, hit the thumbs up. You have no idea what it means. It's amazing, it's powerful. And if you do it, it makes a massive difference. I sure would love it if you would. We're through the Bible in a year walking the story of God. The whole story of God. And if this feeds you, the book gathers a lot of the true word faith for life by Dr. Sean Michael Greener. That's me. It's in the store. Up at the top. Gathers a lot of this and into one place. And there's a lot more than that here. So here's one for the chat. Thank you to everybody listening in live chat. If you're so brave, so bold, so generous, so vulnerable, here's a question for you. Have you ever disqualified yourself from a room before anybody else got the chance? All I want you to put in the chat is if that's you, just write yes. Three letters. Y E S. I want you to see how full that road actually is. And here's why. Leviticus 13, 14, and 15. They aren't three subjects. They're one argument against, not against, but about the human body, its boundaries, and the priest who gets to stay gets to say what's true about you. Split them and you sit through the same setup three times and miss the shape of it. And carry one word in with us. Tame. Unclean. It isn't a moral verdict. It isn't. It isn't. For how long you've been thinking, unclean, it's a moral verdict. But it's not. It's a category about who can approach sacred space. And I want you to hold on to that because it's going to come back to you. You see, this is where people forget it. They try. However, they might they try. But they forget what this means, and sometimes they've been taught wrong about what it means. Today you're going to be taught the truth. If you're ready, take a deep breath, because here we go. Chapter 13. That's about a condition the Hebrew callsarat. Your Bible probably calls it leprosy. And unfortunately, that translation, mistranslation, has done real damage. So let's fix it right now. Listen, I don't want you to throw shade at your pastors. I don't want you to throw shade at your Bible. They translated it how they knew. They didn't understand the Hebrew language culture and context. They didn't understand the ancient Near Eastern language culture and context. They didn't, so they picked one. This is not Hansen's disease. That's what leprosy is, is Hansen's disease. The word Zarat is not Hansen's disease or leprosy. We know that because the same word covers mildew and fabric and green streaks in the plaster of a house. Diseases don't infect walls. It's a category for a surface condition that breaks out and doesn't belong, whether on skin, cloth, or a wall. And here's the detail. Here's the detail that unlocks the chapter. The priest doesn't treat it. Read the whole chapter and you won't find one remedy. Not one. You won't find an ointment. You won't find an herb. No oil. Whatever company the uh the oils are from, whatever your group is. No herb, no prayer of healing. Nothing. The priest looks, waits seven days, looks again, and does one thing. He declares, Ta'or or Teme, clean or unclean. And unlike the cultures around Israel, there's no incantation here. There's no exorcism, there's no demon to drive off. The priest examines you, tells you the truth, and keeps checking. Comes back on day seven and again on day 14. Because the system is built to notice when you get better. That isn't superstition, that's a God, the God who assigns a man to keep looking at you. But then comes chapter 13, 45 and 46, the passage that's broken more hearts than anything else in Leviticus. The person declared unclean tears his clothes, uncovers his head, covers his upper lip, and cries out, Unclean, unclean! And he lives alone, outside the camp as long as it lasts. He announces it himself. Nobody else has to say it. He walks the road, calling out his own condition, so people can step back before they reach him. And he lives outside the place where God's presence is, alone. Some of you have done that for years, and you don't have a rash anywhere on your body. You step back before anybody could step back from you. You stop walking into the room because you already know what you'd have to say when you got there. Which brings us to chapter 14 and what God does for the person outside the camp. This one gets me every time. It opens like this. The law of the leprous person for the day of his cleansing. God writes the ritual for coming back before anybody has come back. He legislates a return. And it starts with the priest going out to him. Verse 3: The priests shall go out of the camp. Nobody comes to the camp first. The camp comes out. Then the ritual, strange and beautiful, two living birds, one is killed, the other is dipped in its blood and set loose in the open field, alive, wearing the death of the one that died. One dies, one goes free. Are you making that connection? Is it starting to sink in now? Breathing in. The priest puts blood on the tip of the man's right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and the big toe of his right foot, then oil on the same three places. I want you to go back to Leviticus 8 and pay mind to the ordination of ordination of Aaron and his sons. Ear, thumb, toe, blood, then oil. The ritual for the restoring. I don't know if you're ready for this. Maybe you might write this one down. The ritual for restoring the outcast is the ritual for ordaining a priest. The ritual for restoring the outcast is the ritual for ordaining a priest. The man crying unclean on the road is brought back with the ceremony they use to consecrate the men who serve at the altar. And that isn't a grudging readmission. That's God saying, When you come back, you come back consecrated. The chapter follows the affliction into the walls of the house, and listen to how God names it. I put a case of leprous disease in a house, a disease in a house, which is exactly why leprosy is the wrong word. It's been translated incorrectly. It's been mistranslated, and here's how you know. Notice who claims it. I put it, God says. Stones get pulled in and pulled out, walls get scraped, and only if it keeps spreading does the house come down. There's a real chance it survives. That's the whole point of pulling the stones. Chapter fifteen closes with bodily discharges, and the same shape holds. Ordinary realities, not sins, each with a duration, a washing, a way back. And that's the way. That's the spread. That's the golden crimson thread. Through this entire all three chapters. Are you starting to see it yet? Every case has an end. Every condition here is temporary. Not one is permanent. And that's where these chapters land on us. Because we've built the opposite instinct. There's a version of humility that's just really self-exile. You call yourself unclean before anybody else gets the chance. You tell yourself it's consideration. I'm just being considerate. That I'm sparing everybody else. And you've done it so long, it feels like honesty, but it isn't honesty. Honesty was the priest's job, and he had to come back and look again. The man outside the camp was never given authority to make his condition permanent. He was told to wait for the one whose entire assignment was to notice when he got better. Some of you have been living under a verdict that you handed down yourself. Then you sentence yourself for life, which is the one thing the law never did to anyone. And some of you need this house. Something has spread into the structure of your life and you've been living around it. God's instruction is to pull the affected stones all the way out and look again, not demolition. The one version of this where the house gets to stand. Well, you say you want a piece of concrete obedience. You want a step, something you can do. Well, if you're ready, I'll give it to you. But I want you to take a deep breath because it's real. And you can skip over all the other things, put it in chat, this and that. This I need you to do. Think of the thing you always announce. The sentence you say early so nobody's surprised later. Today, walk into one conversation and don't say it. Don't confess it. Don't make some joke about yourself. Don't hand it over to control how they see you. Just go in and be a human being. A child made in the image and likeness of God. One conversation, one time without the announcement. Now, I want you to watch what happens in Mark One. A man with oh, this story gets me. This is in Mark One. Please read it. A man with Zarat comes to Yeshua, which he isn't supposed to do. And he says, if you are willing, if you are willing, you can make me clean. Notice he doesn't say heal, he says clean. He knows exactly which chapter he's living in. And Yeshua, moved with compassion, reaches out his hand and touches him. And under Leviticus 13 through 15, contact runs one direction. Touch the unclean and you become unclean. Every rule in this, oh, in these chapters, assumes impurity spreads, and that holiness is fragile. Get your pen ready. I want you to write this down. Yeshua touches him and it runs backward. Yeshua doesn't get sick. He's not made unclean. The ban, the man, the man is made clean. Holiness turned out to be the more contagious thing. Then Yeshua sends him to the priest to offer what Moses commanded, chapter 14, the very ritual we just read, because the man still needs to be declared clean out loud by the one whose job that is. And then Mark tells us something devastating. After this, Yeshua could no longer openly enter a town, but stayed outside in the desolate places. The leper went in. Yeshua went out. He didn't recoil. He reached, and he took the outside for himself, so the man would not have to. He touched the one nobody had touched in years. And he went outside so that man could come in. My friend, beloved, you aren't the exception to the chapter. You are the reason it was written. I have for you today a challenge and a choice. Here's your choice. You can keep saying it first, keeping people at a distance that you've decided, well, it's safest for everybody. And you can call it being considerate, or you can believe what these three chapters say. God wrote a law for the day of your cleansing before you were ever afflicted. The priest is told to go out to you, and the ceremony waiting when you come back is the one they used to consecrate priests. One keeps you outside, the other reason. The other is the whole reason this chapter exists. Prayer isn't asking for an easy journey. It's asking for a strong back. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, you know how long some of us have been outside this camp. And you know we've walked out there on our own. Father, we've announced our own uncleanness. We've said the worst thing about ourselves first so that nobody could say it to us. We've called our hiding humility and our distance being considerate. Father, thank you that you wrote a law for the day of our cleansing before we ever needed it. Thank you that the priest goes out to the one who can't come in and that your son touched what nobody else would touch. Please come out to the ones who've stopped expecting anybody to come. In Yeshua, the matchless name of my Redeemer. Amen. Maybe you've been living outside the camp for years. Not because anybody put you there, but because you decided this is where you belong. I want you to hear this. He didn't recoil. He didn't re-look, he didn't recoil, he didn't reach back to grab somebody. Pull me away from this one. Pull me away. No, no, no. He didn't recoil, he reached out. He's reaching out to you. Listen, he went outside the city himself so you could stop living there, outside the city. You don't have to get clean before you come. Come just as you are. Being unable to clean yourself is the reason he came. I want you to pray this with me if you're tired of messing with it. Place your faith in Christ. Yeshua, I need you. I believe you died for me and rose from the grave. I surrender my life to you today. Forgive me, fill me, lead me, make me new. I am yours in your heavenly name. Amen. Glory be to God. All of heaven is rejoicing right now. It's so loud, it's so ruckus up there, you'd think there was some metal band playing. So if you prayed that, if you just prayed that today, tell somebody. Don't be ashamed, tell somebody. They may ridicule you. So what? Listen, you may tell your mom, your dad, your sister, your brother, your uncle, your aunt. You may tell them, and you may think, I think they'll be happy about it. And they may not respond the way you think. They may go, you? Are you kidding me? They're judging you by your worst day, your worst moment. And that is exactly what God does not do. He washes you clean. That's what he does. He washes you clean. The blood of Christ on the cross watches, he washes you clean. Not for a while, but forever. Listen, if you prayed that prayer today, tell somebody and stop announcing what you were. Yeshua has already declared what you are. Find people who follow Yeshua and walk it with them. He tore his clothes and covered his lip and said the word himself out loud on the road, so that nobody, and I mean nobody, would have to say it to him. But there was already a chapter written for the day of his cleansing, a priest already told to walk out and find him, and a ceremony waiting that was the same one they used to ordain a priest. He said it first. God had said it earlier. If this met you today, send it to one person who's been standing outside a room they belong in. They're sure that they're doing everybody a favor by staying out. But you know what? It just might be the day that they come back in. I want you to receive this blessing in his heavenly name in the Lashon Hakadesh, which means the language of God. That is the language he spoke to his first people and he speaks to us. Are you ready? I'll translate it for you at the end. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.