The Contagion of Rebellion and the Authority of God Text: Deuteronomy 24:8-9
Introduction: The Body Politic
We live in an age that despises authority and loves autonomy. Every man wants to be his own priest, his own king, and his own god. The spirit of our time is one of rebellion against all established order, and this is not a new thing under the sun. It is the ancient lie of the serpent, "you shall be as gods," repackaged for a generation that thinks it is too sophisticated for old temptations. But sin, particularly the sin of rebellion, is a contagion. It is a spiritual leprosy that does not just corrupt the individual soul; it threatens the health of the entire community, the body politic.
In our text today, Moses gives Israel two brief but potent commands. At first glance, they might seem disconnected, one dealing with a public health crisis and the other with a historical family squabble. But they are woven together with a single, crucial thread: the necessity of respecting and submitting to God's ordained means of dealing with corruption and uncleanness. God establishes order, He defines purity, and He delegates authority. To disregard His instructions is not just to risk a physical disease; it is to invite spiritual rot and societal disintegration.
The modern evangelical mind often wants to skip over passages like this. We want the comforting psalms and the glorious epistles, but we don't know what to do with laws about skin diseases. But this is the Word of God, and it is given for our instruction. It teaches us about the nature of sin, the necessity of submission, and the severity with which God treats those who challenge His appointed leaders. This passage is a warning, a diagnostic tool, and a pointer to the Great Physician who alone can cleanse us from the ultimate leprosy of sin.
The Text
Take care against an infection of leprosy, to be very careful and to do according to all that the Levitical priests instruct you; as I have commanded them, so you shall be careful to do. Remember what Yahweh your God did to Miriam on the way as you came out of Egypt.
(Deuteronomy 24:8-9 LSB)
God's Appointed Diagnosticians (v. 8)
We begin with the command concerning leprosy.
"Take care against an infection of leprosy, to be very careful and to do according to all that the Levitical priests instruct you; as I have commanded them, so you shall be careful to do." (Deuteronomy 24:8)
The first thing to notice is the gravity of the command. "Take care... to be very careful." This is emphatic. Leprosy in the Old Testament was not simply a medical condition; it was a profound object lesson. It was a physical manifestation of the nature of sin. It was a creeping corruption that made a man unclean, isolating him from the covenant community and the presence of God in the tabernacle. It was a living death. Like sin, it started small, a suspicious spot, but it had the power to spread and defile the entire body.
So what was the remedy? A trip to the doctor? A folk remedy? No. The first and only recourse was to go to the Levitical priests. God did not give the Israelites a medical textbook; He gave them an authorized priesthood. The priests were the designated public health officers, yes, but more importantly, they were God's ordained diagnosticians for ritual purity. Their job was to examine the sore, to apply the law of God found in Leviticus 13 and 14, and to render a verdict: clean or unclean. Their authority was not their own; it was delegated. Notice the text: "do according to all that the Levitical priests instruct you; as I have commanded them." God commanded the priests, and the people were to obey the priests because the priests were obeying God.
This strikes at the very heart of our modern, anti-authoritarian impulse. We don't like the idea of a delegated authority having the right to examine us and declare us unclean. We want to be the judge of our own condition. But God's economy works through delegated authority. This is true in the family, in the civil realm, and it is certainly true in the church. The elders of a church are God's appointed spiritual diagnosticians. Their task is to apply the Word of God to the lives of the flock, to identify the leprosy of sin, whether in doctrine or in life, and to call for repentance. To reject their lawful authority is to reject the Word they are appointed to administer. When our Lord Jesus healed a leper, what did he tell him to do? "Go, show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commanded" (Matt. 8:4). Jesus Himself, the Great High Priest, honored the delegated authority of the Levitical priesthood, even in its corrupted state, because the principle of delegated authority is God's principle.
A Case Study in Rebellion (v. 9)
To drive the point home, Moses immediately provides a historical case study. The link is not leprosy itself, but the rebellion that leads to God's judgment, a judgment that took the form of leprosy.
"Remember what Yahweh your God did to Miriam on the way as you came out of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 24:9 LSB)
The command is to "remember." The corporate memory of Israel was to be a bulwark against present and future sin. We are a forgetful people, and so God continually commands us to remember His mighty acts, both of salvation and of judgment. Forgetting is the first step toward apostasy.
So what were they to remember about Miriam? We find the full story in Numbers 12. Miriam, a prophetess and a leader in her own right, along with Aaron, the High Priest, spoke against Moses. The presenting issue was Moses' Cushite wife, but the root issue was a lust for power and a challenge to God's ordained authority. They said, "Has Yahweh indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?" (Numbers 12:2). This was a direct challenge to the unique office of Moses, the man with whom God spoke "face to face" (Numbers 12:8).
This was not a polite theological disagreement. This was sedition at the highest level. It was an attempt to flatten the distinctions God Himself had established in the leadership of His people. And God's response was swift and terrifying. The anger of Yahweh was kindled, the cloud of His presence departed, "and behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow" (Numbers 12:10). God Himself struck her with the very disease that symbolized corruption and uncleanness. The punishment fit the crime perfectly. Her rebellious words were an outbreak of spiritual leprosy, and God made that spiritual reality a physical one for all to see. She who challenged God's chosen authority was made visibly unclean and was put outside the camp for seven days, bringing the entire nation's journey to a halt.
This is a sober warning. The sin of Miriam was not just speaking ill of her brother. It was despising the office God had given him. It is a dangerous thing to attack God's appointed servant, not because the man is untouchable, but because the office he holds is from God. This is not an excuse for tyranny. The Levitical priests had to judge according to God's written law, not their own whims. Church elders are bound by the Word of God. But when they are faithfully executing their office, to rebel against them is to rebel against the one who sent them. The leprosy of gossip, slander, and division in the church is a direct descendant of Miriam's sin. And we are commanded to remember what God did to her.
From Leprosy to Cleansing
This passage, then, is about far more than skin disease and a family dispute in the wilderness. It is about the very structure of God's covenant dealings with His people. God hates sin, which is a corrupting leprosy. And God hates rebellion, which is the fountainhead of sin.
The entire Levitical system for dealing with leprosy, with its examinations, quarantines, and complex sacrifices for cleansing, was designed to show the people two things: the utter foulness of their sin, and their complete inability to cleanse themselves. No leper could pronounce himself clean. He was utterly dependent on the priest's declaration, which came only after God had healed him. The priest did not heal; he merely confirmed the healing and administered the rites of restoration.
This whole system screams for a greater priest and a greater sacrifice. It points us to the Lord Jesus Christ. We are all born outside the camp, spiritually leprous from head to toe. Our sin is not just a spot here or there; it has corrupted our very nature. We are, as Isaiah says, a body of "wounds and welts and raw sores" (Isaiah 1:6). We cannot cleanse ourselves. We need a divine intervention.
And that is precisely what we have in the gospel. Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest, is not afraid to touch the unclean. The gospels record Him touching and healing lepers, an act that would have made any other Israelite ritually unclean. But when Jesus touches the unclean, He is not defiled by them; they are made clean by Him. He takes our uncleanness upon Himself.
This is what happened at the cross. On the cross, Jesus was smitten by God, afflicted, and made to be sin for us. He became the ultimate leper, cast outside the camp, outside the city of Jerusalem, bearing our corruption. He endured the ultimate quarantine, the separation from His Father, when He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He did this so that we, the truly leprous, could be declared clean. Through faith in His substitutionary death and resurrection, we are not just healed of our leprosy, we are clothed in His perfect righteousness. The priest has not just declared us clean; He has made us clean.
Therefore, let us heed the warning of this text. Let us take all sin with the utmost seriousness, recognizing it as the contagion it is. Let us submit ourselves to the Word of God as it is ministered to us through the church He has established. And let us remember Miriam, not to gloat over her downfall, but to tremble at the holy justice of God against all rebellion. And in that trembling, let us flee to Christ, the one who bore our leprous judgment, and find in Him our only hope of cleansing and our only true restoration to the people of God.