PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2023-2024

Just when we thought we had moved away from the rules and the regulations we find ourselves knee deep in rules and regulations.  Chapter 6 gives us the rules for how the Nazarites are to be prepared for the service of the Lord.  I hope you noticed a primary role that they served was to replace the required offering of the oldest to the Lord for his time to do service to the Lord.  Remember how Samuel was presented to the Lord because he was the oldest in the family?  Well this was supposed to happen with each family, and also each livestock, but of you look at 8:17-18 you’ll see this explanation.

Do not miss what is called the Aaronic blessing in 6:24-26 which is probably the best known Scripture in all that we will be reading for today.  It is powerful, and if you have young children it is something you can say over them as they are falling asleep.  Chapter 7 gives us the offerings of all 12 of the families of the tribe of Jacob, or Israel.  Chapter 8 carries on the theme of the Nazarites being set apart.  Did you see at what age they are to retire?  Look at 8:25.  Shees, I’m putting in overtime!

Chapter 9 speaks to the mandatory celebration of the Passover and chapter 10 gives us the marching orders for the Israelites and how they are to break down and move within the wilderness as they make their way to the promised land.  

Then we get to Jude.  Not the nicest letter in the Bible, but one that speaks to being wary of perversions that might infiltrate into the church and considering sin as a normal course of action within the church.  That is never the case, the church should never be a party to sin no matter what form it takes.  Today this lesson makes me think of how many wars could have been prevented if the church had risen up with their counterparts in the countries where there are feuds and said enough, we will not allow this to happen.  If the church had done that in Germany, there would have been no slaughter of the Jews and no war, but it remained silent, or worse yet, it was complicit.  It is not too late for the church to rise up to spare war from happening in the Ukraine.  Churches are present and could be involved if they so wished.

And so we begin Numbers.  If any book of the Bible has a description of itself in the title, Numbers would definitely be one of them.  I guess most of them do.  Genesis means the beginning.  Exodus is the exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the wilderness and so on.  Numbers is an account of a census that the Lord has asked Aaron and Moses to take in order to number the Israelites.  The first chapter gives us those numbers and then ends with the statement that the Levites are not a part of those numbers because of their role with the tabernacle.

The second chapter gives the description of where the tribes are supposed to be overnight in relationship to the tabernacle and the tribe of Levi.  The third chapter gives more detail for the houses of Levi and the children of Aaron and what their responsibilities are in regards to the set up and the break down of the tabernacle.  This carries on into the fourth chapter.

In the fifth chapter we have regulations for husbands who are jealous of their wives and the excruciating test that they are allowed to put their wives under in order to ascertain whether they have been faithful or not.  Again, this is another example of how the wife is seen not much more than a possession and how they are not full participants in the covenant that up to this point has been established by God and the people of Israel.  Thanks be to God that Jesus brought a new covenant!

Third John brings us to a conclusion in these epistles of John.  Gaius is addressed although John does not know him personally.  He warns the church of false teachers and those whose actions bely that they are not really doing God’s will, but rather pursuing discipline and actions merely on behalf of their own self-interests.  Again, another warning for us in this day and age.

We read the first two of John’s Epistles.  Keep in mind that one of the primary reasons that these epistles are written are in order to combat the heresy of arianism, which is a belief that Jesus was created by God, and so not God in God’s fullness.  As Trinitarian believers we consider that a heresy.  The opposite of that would be docetism that believes that Jesus was actually in spirit form while he was on the earth and not truly human but rather strictly divine and seemed to be human.

Wow, that is a lot of theology, but keep that in mind as you read I and II John as it takes us on a very clear course that not only defines Jesus as God, but also as fully human.  Chapter one identifies that sin should not be present in our lives once we accept Jesus as Savior.  A good reminder for all of us.  He says in chapter 2 that he is writing these things so that we would not sin.  But he also says in chapter 1 vs.4 that he is writing these things so that our joy would be complete  in Jesus.  

Chapter 4 is the most significant chapter on love that we have in the Bible.  Even more so than I Corinthians 13 which is primarily descriptive of love, here John gives us the origin and the reason for love and the purpose that it serves as well as a description.  We see that love originates and has as its standard the love that God has for us in that he sacrificed his own Son for our sake.  The love that we have for each other is important, but ought to be measured against the love that God has for us, which is incredibly sacrificial and not self-serving at all.  It is a difficult measuring stick to achieve.  

John’s second letter is only one chapter and is addressed to and “elect lady” who is thought to be a local church.  The new commandments that are given are actually old commandments which are to love one another and to reject false teachings.  Pretty much sums up all the readings.

We finish up the book of Leviticus with more requirements for sacrifices, as well as an introduction to the year of Jubilee.  Chapter 24 gives us a story of a young man who is the product of an Egyptian dad and an Israelite mom, not something that was addresses as wrong, but who blasphemed and took the Lord’s name in vain.  As a result he was stoned to death.  

We then are introduced to the year of jubilee.  I’ll never forget living in Italy and the Roman Catholic Church preparing itself for the jubilee year which took place in 2000.  Every 50 years there is the year of jubilee and the great door leading into the Vatican which is sealed up is broken down by the pope.  It is very exciting.  But here the Scripture describes a year when all the slaves are set free, when debts are zeroed out, where property is returned, where fields lay fallow.  It is really a year of Sabbath and an opportunity for the people and the land to recover and heal.  Sounds like something we need right about now as well.

From there 26 discusses what the Lord will do to those who are obedient…and what he will do to those who are disobedient.  It is all connected to being able to enter the land that is promised to the people of Israel or not.  If you obey you will enter without fear, if you disobey you will always be fearful.  Then 27 closes out with more regulations that must be followed in order to please God, and just like that we are done with Leviticus.  

We see two psalms that are assigned.  Let’s focus just a bit on 19.  I really hope that vs.14 sounds familiar.  I say these words every Sunday before I am about to preach.  Psalm 19 is a Psalm that I say could be called a Psalm of Providence (I just made that up), which means that the entirety of the Psalm brings the reader to the realization that all things are under God’s control and under God’s loving guiding hand.  

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.

We transition in Leviticus from being told what we ought to do, to what will happen if we don’t do what we ought to do.  The punishment that is meted out by God is very detailed in most of the cases of sin.  We begin in 17 with the mandate to not eat blood because it is considered the life of any animal and we are not to indulge in the life of any animal.

Let me move forward just a bit to explain why do we find all of these things spelled out so clearly.  We have an explanation in Leviticus 20:22 where God says to the people:  “Keep all of my decrees and laws and follow them…You must not live according to the customs of the nations that I am going to drive out before you…But I said to you, ‘You will possess their land; I will give it to you as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.’  I am the Lord your God, who has set you apart from the nations.”

These laws and regulations were completely contrary to what was happening around the Israelites.  Their “neighbors” were involved in sexual practices which God prohibited, they were involved in eating blood, they were involved in doing things that simply were not acceptable to God, so he required the Israelites to be set apart from the other nations.  This setting apart is a theme that remains consistent throughout the Bible.  When the people of God become sucked into the culture and seduced by that which is happening around them, well, then they fall away from the wishes and desires of God.

Chapter 18 contains a series of unlawful sexual relations, all dealing with family dalliances.  19 addresses various laws, many of which are covered by the 10 commandments.  20 gives the punishment for sin for those unlawful sexual relations.  Notice a couple of times God speaks strongly against following mediums or spiritists, something that I have found in this day and age some folks are not taking too seriously.

Hebrews gives us a great Scripture describing the once and for all nature of Jesus’ sacrifice and how this forgave our sins for eternity and that we never have to sacrifice animals again because of what God has done for us.  

If the Lord gave the Jewish people anything, he gave them laws of cleanliness which were detailed and legion.  We embarked on the beginning of those laws in chapter 12 and now we continue in 13 and beyond with the laws dealing with leprosy.  Keep in mind this term in the Hebrew is not the distinct and only disease that we consider as being leprosy, but rather it is in the Hebrew a term for several skin diseases, and the precise meaning is a bit unclear.

So 13 gives the details on what to look for and what is unclean and what is eventually clean.  Notice that there is a time of quarantine for those that potentially had the disease.  We should feel right at home with that.  More leprous descriptions take over 14 and which include not only the person but also his house and what types of sacrifices need to be done in order to come out of the leprous situation.  

We then more from leprosy to the wonderful world of bodily discharges and how long a person is unclean after a discharge and how to get back into the clean world once all that business is done.  We then get to the yearly ritual of atonement which involves a bull and two goats.  One of the goats is said to be the one of Azazel which in Hebrew is thought to mean scapegoat.  This goat has fascinated me.  Every year the priest lays his hands on this goat and puts on this goat all of the sin, iniquities, and trespasses of the people of Israel and then sent off into the wilderness for all eternity.  This is how the people of Israel were made clean year after year, and it had to happen year after year.  This is where Hebrews tells us that with Jesus and his sacrifice, it only had to happen once, and that was enough.

In Hebrews we see the reference again to Melchizedek who is quite a secondary figure in Scripture but who is made primary by the author as Jesus has become his type.  While Jesus was not from the line of Aaron he has right over this new priesthood just as Melchizedek had a right and with the changing of the family of priests there is also a changing of the covenant.  He uses the words of Jeremiah 31 to describe that new covenant in chapter 8 and to underscore that as the old covenant becomes obsolete it will disappear and the new covenant, in Christ, is what will take its place.

We saw earlier the command to prepare all things for the tabernacle and the priests and their duties.  We saw the preparations complete for the tabernacle and the priests and their duties, now in Leviticus we see Aaron and his sons performing their duties just as God commanded, well, almost.  Let’s look at what we have in Leviticus.  In 9 we do see a play by play of Aaron sacrificing just as he had been commanded, so in real time we see all things being played out.  In chapter 10 we see that this position and this calling is a risky one, so much so that two of Aaron’s sons are killed by fire because they were, well honestly, they were playing with fire.  

In the 11th chapter we read about the clean and the unclean animals.  Many think that the reasons why these laws were given were to protect the Israelites from meat that could be dangerous to them.  For example, if you don’t cook pork well enough it can literally kill you.  So if it is unclean you don’t have to worry about cooking it.  We will at some time be reading Peter’s pigs in a blanket dream, but if you want a sneak preview check out Acts 10:9-16.  But until then, there was a very clear delineation of what was allowed to be eaten and was not.

We finish off this part of Leviticus with the laws dealing with the purification of women after childbirth.  Again, notice the difference in times after the birth of a male and after the birth of a female.  I think we have discussed earlier the reality of the patriarchal society in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.  There are outliers, but for the most part it is pretty clear who was in charge and the rules were made to ensure that all knew who was in charge.

For Hebrews we find ourselves once again that Jesus is our great high priest and this name Melchizedek comes into play. We see Melchizedek in Scripture in Genesis 14:18-20 where he blesses Abram.  In chapter 6 we see the author warn the reader about falling away from the faith and the difficulty it is to bring someone back into the faith once they have given of their lives to Jesus and then leave the faith.  This was especially important for the early Christians because any act of apostasy could potentially be a death knell for the community of which they were a part.  Apostates could have brought the authorities to their location and take them all into prison.  

I hope you are holding on as we make our way through Leviticus.  The building project is done with the tabernacle, all the things are in place and everything has been finished and is ready now for us.  But now it is time to get the people who are going to be administrating the actions that take place in the tabernacle ready.  If you haven’t noticed already Aaron and his sons have been set apart to take the role of the priests.  They are now in these Scriptures, and for all future Scriptures, identified as the priestly class.  They have the responsibilities of carrying out all of the priestly duties in  relationship to the tabernacle and later to the temple.

They have to be taught what types of sacrifices are acceptable to the Lord and how are they to logistically administer those sacrifices.  Earlier someone had commented about those offering the sacrifices and if they were allowed to have some of what was sacrificed.  These verses give us those answers.  Yes, they were, but depending on the type of sacrifice.  So each of the chapters describes the sacrifices, how to perform them, and the details involved.  In chapter 8 you have the ordination of Aaron and his sons, their being set apart for this work.  This is similar to what we did last Sunday in church as we ordained installed our elders and our deacons and our trustees for their duties and responsibilities.

In Hebrews we have some of the most powerful memory verses in Scripture.  Granted, Scripture has a lot of really powerful memory verses, but let’s listen to some of them here.  Chapter 4 has a couple of them, look at vs. 12-13.  The Word of God is called a two edged sword able to judge the thoughts of the heart.  We then also see in chapter 4 vs.15 the fact that we repeat over and over again that Jesus understands us and knows us and has suffered and undergone the same things that we have, and faced every temptation that we have, but without sin.  This is powerful.  If you can memorize these verses it will be to your benefit.  Just meditate on them night and day.

So we get into the part of the Bible that often if people are reading straight through it they would get bogged down here and give up the challenge.  Leviticus is a difficult book to make it all the way through simply because it is filled with these laws and sacrifices and antiquated rules that we simply cannot relate to because we do not take part in them anymore.  I am grateful that this challenge has us read Hebrews, because the two do go together.  Let’s look at Leviticus and then how Hebrews complements this book of the Bible.

So the traveling tabernacle is built and now God gives Moses the directions on what the people are supposed to do when they bring an offering to the Lord.  The first chapter covers an offering from livestock and the second chapter covers an offering from grain.  The third chapter covers an offering that is presented out of thanksgiving, or well-being.  The final chapter we read this morning is for an offering for sin that takes place without the individual or the community knowing that it was a sin when it was committed.  So if there is unintentional sin then this is also covered.  We now move to Hebrews.

The primary theme of Hebrews is that Jesus is our high priest.  Not only is he the high priest, but we shall see later as well, he is the offering himself that is presented once and for all for our sins.  As Leviticus presents the Hebrew people with the how to in order to present sacrifices correctly, Hebrews describes to us Jesus who is the final, once and for all sacrifice that when he was presented covered all of our sins, past, present, and future.  

Look at vs.10 and following where we read that God made Jesus the “pioneer” of our salvation and perfect through sufferings.  Look at vs.17 and following and take it under consideration: Jesus had to become like us in every respect sot hat he might be a merciful and faithful Savior in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people (remember Leviticus).  Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.  Take comfort in these words.