February 7, 2022: Day 29 – Leviticus 21-23 and Hebrews 11-13

We now transition to details about the priest and who they can marry and what they must do.  Keep in mind the priests were a part of the “priestly class” and the rules for them in a variety of ways were completely different.  They had to come from the family of Aaron and we see in chapter 21 that they could have no known and seen physical defects.  This theme of describing the priests and who they could be and who they could marry continues into 22 until we transition to the types of sacrifices that had to be presented.  All sacrifices had to be pure and perfect, you can’t give God that which you don’t want yourself.

Chapter 23 then describes a series of festivals that the people were commanded to follow.  I remember when I was in college during the last one that is described in this chapter, the festival of booths, or the feast of tabernacles, below my dorm were a series of huts that some of the students had made to live in during this time, made literally out of palm branches.  It made me look at this chapter and see how God commanded the people to live in these booths for 7 days.

When we look at Hebrews we close the chapter out with some of the most memorable verses in Hebrews.  Look at 11:1 which describes faith in the most succinct and memorable way possible.  Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.  I love that definition.  We then get a listing of all those who lived in faith and this verse stuck out to me this time that I read this chapter in vs.6: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”  That is powerful to me because it does tell me that there is a role that faith plays which is not insignificant.

Chapter 12 includes the verse which points us ot the fact that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and those witnesses are spelled out in chapter 11.   We are called in 12 to live in peace with all people and to be holy in vs.14.  Chapter 13 gives us some concluding remarks that remind us how important it is to keep our marriage pure and not to pursue money as the ends.  Great book of the Bible, one that should be read again and again, but alas, for now, we come to an end.