Leviticus

Leviticus isn't easy to read. Some of you may love it. It may be your favorite book in the Bible. But, I doubt that it is. I just finished reading through the book. As is so often the case, God breathed fresh life into passages. Unexpected blessings began to encourage me from a book that I did not look forward to reading. For example, Leviticus 26:12-13 declares "I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high". It's so easy to read through Leviticus and got bogged down in the sacrificial system and the requirements of the law and question the relevance of the rules that God gave His people at Mt. Sinai. It's easy to do that because that is so closely akin to our perspective of Christianity today. "Holiness" is becoming an old-fashioned word (Holy is word that is repeated often in Leviticus). But, you can't appreciate the beauty of Leviticus 26 without the journey that leads to it. God did not give rules because He wanted to burden the people. God gave the law in order to allow them to walk in freedom that could only come through a living relationship with Him. It's hard for us to grasp because we (especially in America) have come to associate freedom with individualism rather than a relationship with a holy God. Now, I'm not advocating a return to the Levitical Law. Jesus became our sacrifice and the sacrifices required in Leviticus are not longer necessary. But, the holiness of God has not changed. The character of the freedom that God provides has not changed. We hold our heads up - not in pride, but to look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.