Bible Reading Challenge Blog

If you go back to Leviticus 10 you will see that it is here where we see the story of the death of the two sons of Aaron.  This entire chapter is dedicated to the day of atonement which continues to be a central feature of the Jewish religion.  It is from this act of atonement where one one goat is slaugthered and the other is set out into the wilderness with the sin of all the people, that we get the term scapegoat.  It is the goat which “escapes” into the wilderness which is carrying the sins of all the people.  On a yearly basis the priest had to slaughter one and the other he laid his hands upon it and by doing this he laid the sins of the people upon it.  No, the goat did nothing wrong, but he still carried their sins.

Does that sound familiar?  Who else do we know who had the sins of humanity laid upon him, even though he did nothing wrong?  This is why Jesus is called the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  This entire concept of atonement originates in these chapters and carries forward into our understanding of Jesus’ salvific work upon the cross.  Praise be to God for what God has done for us through His son Jesus Christ.  

Great to be back, by the way.  Sorry for the long silence, nearly two weeks, wow, that is a long time.  Alaska was awesome, Italy is next.  Back to Leviticus.

I hope you get the idea that cleanliness was next to godliness in the eyes of the people of Israel.  Certainly God required it and certain measures were enacted to ensure that the people were clean to the nth degree.  Back in that day without antiseptic someone could die from just a simple cut if it got infected and gangrene set in and then that would be the end of the story.  But what we find in this chapter is simply natural events that happen in life which Scripture here defines as unclean.  

A man who has a discharge, I guess loose bowel would count as that, as well as a discharge of semen was considered unclean.  Likewise a woman who was in her regular monthly period was considered unclean.  We know that neither of these things can create catastrophic health problems, but the people back then didn’t know it.  Anything that came out of the body was considered unclean and so was seen as potentially dangerous.  

Obviously we no longer follow any of these rules by considering anyone unclean and untouchable for a week or longer because of their physical condition.  It is amazing how detailed these laws are, probably way more information than what we would want to know.  

Imagine living in a culture where certain people are considered unclean.  In India and other countries there remains some of this with the caste system and how much certain levels of the caste can interact with others in different castes.  The more things change…

Apparently houses can get leprosy as well.  We get a lot of water in our basement and just over this past year we have put a dehumidifier down there to prevent the mold from creeping up the walls and into our main living area.  It has worked. We no longer have mold downstairs, but I never thought for a moment that it might have been leprosy.  Back in Moses’ day there was no explanation for a lot of things.  If you had leprosy then you must have sinned in some way.  As a result you were required to make sacrifices as sin offerings.  We no longer equate disease and illness with sin.  We don’t say that a person has cancer because they have turned their back on God.  No, we say that a person has cancer because medically they were predisposed to cancer cells reproducing in their bodies.

As we read along in Leviticus it is important to make distinctions between that which the people in that day simply did not know and what was used as an effective tool to draw people closer to God.  There is nothing wrong in asking God to bless your house.  But if you have some mold in your house it is not a result of your family’s sin or do you necessarily have to tear it down brick for brick.  Some things change, but the basic fundamental relationship with our Savior, and His desire for our heart, does not change.

Medical conditions were handled quite differently back in the day than they are today.  If you had leprosy, or some kind of a skin disease, you wouldn’t go to Wiley’s to get a cream, you would be banished from your home for a week or until it went away.  If it got worse over those two weeks then you were required to wear your clothes disheveled, not comb your hair, and go around town covering your mouth yelling out “unclean” as you made your way through town.  In Florida where we served if you were picked up for shoplifting then one of the potential punishments was to stand outside of the courthouse in public with a sign that said: “I stole from a store.”  The purpose was to embarrass and to try to prevent the thief from stealing again.  But the purpose of this diseased person letting people know they have a disease was so that they would not come into contact with other people so that they could pick up the disease.

The laws on purity in the Jewish community were very strict and severe.  It is interesting because we really don’t know what this Hebrew term for leprosy means. We don’t know to what they are referring.  Is it the actual medical leprosy that we understand today, or was it just any generalized skin condition which was puzzling and undefined?  I think it was the latter which provided for a whole lot of potential for calling out your neighbor if you didn’t like them.  Notice that it was the priest who examined and who declared that a person was clean or unclean.  There was quite some power in the priesthood back then.

Some of these Scriptures are interesting in that they reflect some of the information that we have in the New Testament in reference to Jesus.  Go to Luke 2:21-40 and we will see that Jesus is presented in the temple in accordance to what the Levitical laws requires.  Notice that the family is given a choice on what to bring.  If you have wealthy you can bring a lamb, if not then doves and pigeons will suffice.  Do you see what Jesus’ family ends up bringing into the temple?  The least sacrifice, the doves and pigeons and not the lamb.  That should tell us something about the financial welfare of Jesus’ family.  They offered the lowest sacrifice possible to compensate for the purity of Mary after the birth of Jesus.

So these codes which allow us to see how people kept healthy back in the day, are helpful for us to understand what they were allowed and not allowed to eat.  You can’t really read this  chapter without actually reading Acts 10:9-16.  In these Levitical laws we read what we can eat.  In Acts God says that whatever he has made is actually clean by default.  Nothing on this earth is unclean simply for the fact that God made it.  So as a result we can eat anything which is upon the face of the earth.  I’m grateful for that because I have had ostrich at one time and I absolutely love grilled pork chops.  In the covenant of God that He establishes with us we see that there is a time for when it is effective and helpful, and there is a time when it has run its course.  How do we know that it has run its course?  Simply by the fact that Peter had a dream and that dream is recorded into our Scripture.  This is fairly self-explanatory.  But often we try to say that God’s word has run its course simply because we disagree with it.  That is not a course of action.

So you can actually get it wrong.  If you do get it wrong there is a repercussion which is not insignificant.  As we go through life we get things wrong and as we do, those actions, words, and inactions will have repercussions on us for the rest of our life.  When we live our life we sin, and that sin will have repercussions on us for the rest of our life.  Aaron found this out as he lost two of his sons because they did not obey what the Lord had commanded that they should do.  They were consumed by fire as a result of their sin, as a result of getting it wrong.  We don’t know the motivation of the sons, but can’t we assume that there was some  ill intent?  I have no problem assuming that.

The grace and the mercy of the Lord continues to amaze me, even in the midst of the very harsh realities that faced the people of Israel and that the Lord took upon himself.  The Lord does not hold punches, He takes action.  This does not bother me simply because I know what we all deserve.  None of us deserves anything less than what we get.  We are the clay, the Lord is the potter.  We are the creature, God is the Creator.  So I am okay with what happens at the hand of the Lord, even if it doesn’t seem right, fair, or humane from our perspective.  Not sure if that will attract others, but that is not why I believe what I do.  The Scripture I read points  to that.

So, I need to make a correction to what I posted on the day for Leviticus 7.  That would have been on Day 47.  I opened and read and did a commentary on Deuteronomy 7 by mistake.  I think it was an insightful commentary for the day, but for the wrong book of the Bible.  Okay, that is my mea culpa, now on to Leviticus 9.

So here I am on vacation in Washington State staying at the home of Stacy’s sister.  Here is the view from their deck. 

Yeah, it is pretty stunning and it certainly is a place that we come to for rest and relaxation.  It is also our anniversary today, 25 years.   What a great life I have been able to live.  No, really, as I look back, I think, what a great life I have been able to live.  But what if the family in which I was born into was very different than the American missionary family that was serving in Lisbon, Portugal when I was born?  But I wasn’t, I was born into this family, married this amazing woman, and have three amazing daughters.

The scene that we find in Leviticus is one where God again commands Aaron to do certain things for the people in order for their relationship to be made right before the Lord.  Consistently we see that it is a family thing and Aaron’s sons are bringing him all that he needs in order to carry out the orders for the Lord.  Almost every paragraph we read that Aaron’s sons brought him this, and brought him that and Aaron did what the Lord required.  As a result of all that happened, the very last verse is powerful.  The people of the Lord were able to see a very visible presence of the Lord.

When you look back over your life can you see a very visible presence of the Lord?  All that I recounted above about my own personal life has allowed me to see the visible presence of the Lord every single day.  I pray that this blog will allow us to continue to see His presence either by fire, or by other blessings.

This is quite an elaborate ritual in order to christen (probably the wrong word here) both the tabernacle and ordain those who would be serving the people while in the tabernacle.  Aaron and his sons were appointed by Moses to perform the priestly duties.  It is fascinating to me to see the ordination ceremony that takes place starting at vs. 22.  Aaron, who would have been considered the high priest, has the blood of the ram placed upon the lobe of his right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and the toe of his right foot.  Keep in mind that this all has incredible significance.

All of them are the right side because it was the dominant side and so the side which was chosen as the one that would be selected by the Lord.  The right ear would be that which would be able to hear the voice of the Lord while he would be serving.  So this consecration by blood allowed Aaron to be ordained to hear the voice of God.  The right hand would be the hand which would be the most involved in making sacrifices and taking action on behalf of the Lord.  So the consecration of the right hand would prepare Aaron to serve on behalf of the Lord.  So far Aaron has been consecrated to hear the voice of the Lord and to act on behalf of the Lord.  The right toe would allow Aaron to walk in the direction that the Lord would point him.  It would be the first to take a step in the direction that the Lord would want him to take.  So Aaron is consecrated to go in the direction that the Lord would want him to go.

All of this is indicative of what Aaron would be equipped to do which would in turn allow him to share that with the people of Israel as they seek him out for guidance and direction.  Notice that all of Aaron’s sons also were ordained in this same way.  Pretty intricate and pretty interesting.

This might be one of those chapters that we would like to not read and see as a complete anomaly to what the Lord requires and what the nature of our Lord is really like.  We find this chapter begin with the commandment to utterly destroy their enemies and to not keep any of the spoil.  I wish it would just end with that, but it actually gets more somewhat brutal.  In vs.2 we read: “you must utterly destroy them.”  The reasoning behind this is so that the sons and the daughters of the Israelites would not intermarry.  That was a huge issue for them because then they would lose their children to other religions.  

It is not a made up point.  I know when I served in Italy there was the same sense that if the children of the church did not marry within the same Protestant faith that they would be lost in the sea of non-Protestant Christianity and that would make the church sad and weakened.  Now, there is no comparison to what the Lord tells Moses, to destroy his enemies and we do not have enemies in other churches, only the devil is our enemy, and so this is not a great example.  But there is a sense of losing your identity when you get swallowed up in culture.  This can be seen as a generalized warning against that.

You also find in this chapter why the Lord chose the nation of Israel as the promised people and the chosen people.  It was not because of their number, but as vs. 8 states: “It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors.”  That is a personal God.