The fact that John and I seem to continue tracking with the feasts of the LORD in our everyday lives has not ceased to amaze me! Last week he went down to his house in Farmington, New Mexico and spent four days going through all his stuff and cleaning out. It was an exhausting process of throwing out all the old, unwanted items from his past life, but holding onto that which still matters, such as childhood and family photos, books, and bibles. In addition to getting rid of all the junk in his house, he was dealing with the damage from a swamp cooler that had busted last summer, leaving cracks in the ceiling and possibly some mildew damage.
What a picture that was of our preparation for the Passover, and the Torah portion we read this past week! It just seems like we keeping walking out in the physical what God is desiring to do within our hearts in the spiritual.
Leviticus 14:33-42: "The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 'When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as your possession, and I put a spreading mildew in a house in that land, the owner of the house must go and tell the priest, 'I have seen something that looks like mildew in my house.' The priest is to order the house to be emptied before he goes in to examine the mildew, so that nothing in the house will be pronounced unclean. After this the priest is to go in and inspect the house. He is to examine the mildew on the walls, and if it has greenish or reddish depressions that appear to be deeper than the surface of the wall, the priest shall go out the doorway of the house and close it up for seven days. On the seventh day the priest shall return to inspect the house. If the mildew has spread on the walls, he is to order that the contaminated stones be torn out and thrown into an unclean place outside the town. He must have all the inside walls of the house scraped and the material that is scraped off dumped into an unclean place outside the town. Then they are to take other stones to replace these and take new clay and plaster the house."
The house in these verses most certainly represents ourselves; more specifically, our hearts. As we clean out our physical houses prior to Passover, we ask the LORD to get rid of those old, unwanted things we are holding onto, such as unforgiveness and resentment against those who have hurt us, or bitterness over old wounds. These things can look like mildew in our lives, rotting away at our spirits and even bringing illness into our lives. Perhaps the "greenish or reddish depressions" upon the house with mildew is a picture of us and those places in our hearts that still harbor unforgiveness, guilt, or anger.
God says we are to get rid of all these things and ask the Priest to come in and inspect the house. Who is our High Priest? Of course, He is Yeshua (Jesus), and we are to call upon Him to send His Holy Spirit to inspect every dark corner of our hearts and do a cleansing work in us, scraping off all the walls of our hearts and dumping back into the unclean place from which it came! Only then can He rebuild us with new stones and plaster, as we see in 1 Peter 1:4-5: "As you come to Him, the Living Stone - rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to Him - you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood..."
As we move closer to the Passover, our Redemption from bondage and darkness into the glorious Light, from slavery into freedom in Messiah, let us all be about the work of cleaning our houses from mildew and leaven. "And therefore let us keep the [Passover] Feast, not with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." (1 Cor. 5:8).
