My sweet little wife and I decided it was time to replace the windows in the sunroom on the back of our house. I call it a “sunroom” but don’t be thinking I live in some Tuscan villa – this thing was built in the seventies using pallet wood by the previous homeowner who, by the level of craftsmanship, had a mild chromosome deficiency. It had those thin, aluminum windows that slam down like a guillotines and untempered glass that shatters into stabbing weapons. A couple of the windows had already broken and it was looking straight ghetto, so we decided to replace the windows.
So we took down the windows and found the drywall festooned with black splotches not unlike the image to the right. In what seems like a developing trend in our house, a small fix with a reasonable budget turns into a multi week demo job, with the largest demo being the budget. But mold must be dealt with.
Black mold and other nasties festering behind damp drywall are well known for causing respiratory or even neurological symptoms. Often they are named as the mysterious cause for symptoms which have no obvious source. Because mold spores, it can be difficult to eradicate unless the source is completely removed. Dealing with this problem goes all the way back to the Levitical law, where Moses gave instructions to Promised Land homeowners on how to handle mold infestations. As is true of most of the Law, it was looking forward to Christ and a deeper, blacker, more insidious mold problem.
As the Israelites were on the cusp of settling in the land of Canaan, Moses was given some rules given by God aimed at the general health of the population. One of those rules regarded mold or mildew found in the house. Naga, the Hebrew word, means literally “leprosy” and is associated with uncleanliness and disease.
Moses gave strict instructions for how to deal with this problem should it arise. A priest would be called upon to inspect the house. If the mold or mildew was of a certain kind, the priest would command the house be vacated and left for seven days. After this period, if the mold persisted, the stones which contained the mold would need to be removed and tossed in a unclean heap outside the camp, and new ones put in its place. If this solved the problem then goody gumdrops, the house was saved. However, if the disease then broke out anew, the priest must condemn the house.
And if the disease has spread in the house, it is a persistent leprous disease in the house; it is unclean. And he shall break down the house, its stones and timber and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry them out of the city to an unclean place.
Leviticus 14:44-45 (ESV)
Sometimes, if the disease is advanced, the only solution is total and complete destruction.
Jesus, the High Priest, was also called upon to inspect a diseased house. His first inspection of the disease was just after he began his ministry. After a quick miracle, where water looked at its Creator and blushed into wine, he visited his mom and sibs in Capernaum, then headed for the temple in Jerusalem.
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.
John 2:13-15 (ESV)
Mold was found in the house; the center of the religious order of the old covenant was diseased. The period of quarantine had begun; a second inspection was scheduled.
This follow up visit happened some three years later, during the last week of His life. After a small but glorious parade in the tiny town of Bethphage, he heads for his final inspection of the house where he finds the leprous disease persists.
And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
Matthew 21:12-13 (ESV)
Just as the Levitical priest would have condemned the structure, so this temple and the entire religious structure supporting it had become diseased and rotten by the unrepentant sins of His people. The remedy for this house after the inspection of the great High Priest was the same – it was condemned.
Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
Matthew 24:1-2 (ESV)
Just as the diseased and moldering house of the Israelite would be dismantled, stone by stone, and completely destroyed to cure the disease, so the temple of God would be thrown down with not one stone left on another. The wrecking crew for this first, diseased temple would come in the form of undisciplined mercenaries hired by Roman troops during the Jewish Wars in 70 AD, when, after a brief siege, the walls of Jerusalem were toppled and the entire temple structure razed to the ground.
The old house is gone, a new one would be built, a greater temple built in the bodies and hearts of believers, purified by the blood of Christ, which will stand forever.
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?
1 Corinthians 6:19 (ESV)
Thought Butter 