Learning from Leviticus

Some people aim to read through the whole Bible in a year. I don’t usually make that a specific goal for the year, but my pace of reading is such that I usually make it through the entire Bible in 15 - 18 months. So it happened, as we began this new year, that I found myself in Leviticus, one of the books that didn’t get read through in 2016. 

A friend asked me why I bother with Leviticus. “I always miss it out,” she said. “It’s just full of old Jewish laws.”  Well, it’s true that Leviticus (which means “about the Levites”) contains a lot of instructions for the early Israelites as they took their first steps in becoming a nation that was the people of God. But does it have any insights that are of value to us who live more than three thousand years later? 

Obviously, a main contribution of Leviticus is the way the Jewish sacrificial system points ahead through time to the sacrifical death of Jesus on the cross. But what else does Leviticus have to offer to the believers of the 21st century? In seeking to answer that question, I’m took time to blog this month on some of my own reflections from the book of Leviticus.  Beginning  on 6th January and continuing through till today, you'll find nearly twenty "levitical" blog postings here for the month of January. Do email me if you have further thoughts and insights to add to these reflections. And may God bless you as you read this ancient book.

The greatest blessing of all

Leviticus 26 is a sobering chapter because it lists the blessings that will result if the people are obedient and faithful to the Lord... and the horrendous consequences if they are disobedient and hostile towards Him.

The most severe consequence is that of completely losing their promised land and going into exile in the land of their enemies. Yet even that is for a good purpose and outcome: the restoration of the land. If the people are no longer there, the land can make up for all the neglected and ignored sabbath years, so that it becomes fertile and ready to be fruitful again when the people return. And the other purpose of the exile is the restoration of the people. As the shock of exile pushes them to recognise and confess their sins, the humbled people will recognise that God has not rejected them and is right there to renew His covenant with them. It's a mind-blowing thought that what appears to be a horrible and cruel outcome is actually evidence of God's kindness and unfailing love - His heart to see both the people and the land restored and renewed.

The flip side of the sober warnings in this chapter is the long list of blessings that will result if the people are obedient. Much of it is what you would expect of a people whose all-powerful God is watching out for them, protecting them and providing for them: rains in season bringing abundant crops, safety from wild animals, victory over their enemies...  But the greatest blessing of all is found at the end of the list, in vs 11 - 12:

I will live among you and I will not despise you; I will walk among you. I will be your God and you will be my people.
There is no greater blessing than the presence of God with us. Knowing this, it's striking that God did not make the loss of His presence the greatest penalty for the people, but limited it to the loss of their land. Even amidst the people's disobedience and failure, even in exile, God sought to be with His people and to restore them. What a touching picture of the heart of a Father who loves and cherishes us.

Finding harmony...

People who know me well are aware that I've been known for much of my life as a "dog person." I'm one of those people who instinctively stops to speak to dogs in the street and enjoys interacting with them.  But when it comes to my usual reading material, I haven't particularly made a point of reading any "dog stories," and so it was kind of interesting over this past Christmas to acquire three dog books that have been fun and inspiring to read. One was the story of someone who rescued an abandoned border collie (my favourite breed) and trained him to be a wonderful sheepdog on the farm. Another was the touching story of a young woman whose personal despair at her gradual descent into a world of darkness (congenital blindness) was turned around when a wonderful guide dog came into her life.

I haven't always been able to have a dog of my own, due to the circumstances of being an overseas missionary, but when I have had a dog, I've always enjoyed training it and seeing its canine intelligence in action. So perhaps it's hardly surprising that this was one of the possible solutions that jumped to mind when I found myself confronted with some ambiguous health news.

In a recent blog post (see 21st January) I was bemoaning the frustration I sometimes feel when arthritis and fibromyalgia cause me to have nagging neck pain, uncomfortable feet or weakness in my thumbs. I can clearly remember, some fourteen years ago, when the blood tests came back and I was given the diagnosis that I had osteoarthritis with fibromyalgia: one of my doctors there in South Africa sat me down and gave me a rather sobering little talk about not feeling overwhelmed if a time came when I had to make decisions about the kind of wheelchair that was the best choice for me, or if I had to put special attachments on the taps of my kitchen sink.

I remember going home that day, getting onto the internet and researching "assistant dogs"and "service dogs" to find out what sort of options were available. While the doctor was not telling me that I would definitely reach a point in life where restricted mobility made a chair or scooter a necessity, he wanted me to be aware of that possibility, so that I wasn't derailed by it if my condition progressed in that way. I remember thinking, "Well, if there's any chance that I might end up with severely limited mobility, I want to make sure I at least get a dog out of it."  I knew that border collies, with their sharp intelligence, are often trained to carry out dozens of tasks for owners who are unable to do certain things for themselves. Fourteen years later, I'm very thankful to the Lord that I still have good mobility (despite the pain) even if I don't yet have my dreamed-of border collie :-)

And so I'm looking forward to beginning reading the third of my three "doggy books" this weekend. It's the story of a young woman who had been very physically active - even climbing Mount Everest - before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 28. To make life even more challenging, one of her three children was diagnosed with autism shortly after that. "Finding Harmony" is the story of a remarkable dog that helped this family through one of the darkest times in their lives. I'm looking forward to it because it's the story of a dog trained to be an assistant, and I've long thought that it would be stimulating to know more about that, or even to have some involvement in helping train that kind of dog.

The title of the book, although referring to the dog's name, is also very meaningful to me in another way: finding harmony. I realise that so many of life's difficult circumstances - whether loss and bereavement, illness and disability, childlessness, unemployment, or some other challenging personal or family situation - could so easily upset the fragile balance of our lives and send us spiralling into discouragement and despair. It is so important that we learn how to find peace and harmony, even amidst circumstances where we see no way out and realise that perhaps there will never be a nice, tidy, miracle solution. Our challenge as believers is to know how to stay close to the Prince of Peace and draw on His stability amidst our difficulties and limitations. As I referred to in that previous blog post, we will truly discover that, "His grace is enough" and His strength is made perfect amidst our weaknesses.

The real meaning of jubilee

In modern society, the word "jubilee" has become synonymous with "anniversary." We celebrate a monarch's diamond jubilee when she has been on the throne for sixty years, or an organisation's golden jubilee when the movement has been in existence for fifty years.

In the Bible, there was so much more than that to the understanding of jubilee. Yes, it happened after 50 years (after seven cycles of seven) but rather than being only about partying, it was very clearly about returning, redeeming and releasing.

Returning referred to land that had been sold to someone else. The assumption here is that people probably wouldn't be selling their land because they wanted rid of it, but rather because their economic situation had prompted them to sell. Perhaps they had fallen on hard times and needed the money they'd get from selling the land. Perhaps it was because a man only had a few children and didn't need so many crops; or perhaps he mostly had daughters and didn't have enough manpower to work the fields. Whatever the reason for selling, God ordained that in the fiftieth year, all the land should return to its original owner and all the people should return to the land that had belonged to their ancestors.

In a sense, this shows God's mercy to future generations by protecting their inheritance. If a father or grandfather had been a poor steward or a negligent farmer, or had been overtaken by misfortunate and forced to sell some land to make ends meet... somewhere along the line, the inheritance would come back to his descendants, so that future generations weren't doomed to poverty with ever decreasing amounts of land.

"All the land belongs to me," said the Lord, and it was never to be sold on a permanent basis. People were allowed to redeem their own land if and when they had the money. And even if they were never able to buy it back, the land was nevertheless returned to them in the year of jubilee. The clear principle was that no one should seek to benefit from another's misfortune - not on a permanent basis - because God is a God of justice and compassion. Laws about how to decide the selling price made sure that both buyer and seller were treated in a just way.

Jubilee was not only about returning and redeeming property, but also about releasing people. It was not only the land that was returned in the year of jubilee, but also the people who had ended up in slavery.

There must be no heavier feeling than knowing that you have nothing left of any value except yourself. Even in modern movies, the sign that a woman is at rock bottom is often when she realises that turning to stripping or prostitution is the only way she can get food to feed her children. It's a known fact that in some Asian countries, people break their own children's legs, so that the crippled child will elicit more sympathy when begging on the street.

God wanted His people to be servants of the Lord and not slaves of another person. (Leviticus 25: 42 and 55) But sometimes it happened that a person saw no hope of economic recovery and so he was forced to sell himself or another family member as a slave. Even when this happened, there were laws that required the slave to be treated with dignity. If a family managed to come up with sufficient money, they were allowed to redeem the person at a fair price, based on what a worker would earn in the market place. But even if that didn't happen, the year of jubilee meant that a time was coming when all slaves were to be released. Even a person who had been born in slavery was to be set free with his parents when the year of jubilee came around.

So jubilee represents so much more than a big celebration to mark an anniversary. It was a landmark year that tangibly demonstrated the character of God: a God of mercy and compassion, a God who protects our inheritance, a God who redeems us from enslavement, a God whose heart longs for us to be set free. That's what jubilee was really about.

Total dependence

Having previously described festivals that the Israelites were to celebrate in particular months every year (see this blog post) Leviticus moves on in chapter 25 to describe instructions for special years. The first of these, described in verses 1 -7, is the so-called sabbath year. 

Every seventh year, the fields were to be left unplanted and the vines unpruned. From a purely pragmatic perspective, leaving the fields fallow for a year is a good agricultural principle, allowing the soil to "rest" and recover its goodness. Here again, we see that God is giving the people instructions for their own good. Uninterrupted cultivation over many years would have brought them to a situation of decreasing harvests.

But beyond the purely practical aspect of good farming practice, the sabbath year law promoted, and possibly tested, the people's dependence on God. What did it feel like to begin a new farming season knowing that you weren't going to harvest any crops that year? The people had to trust that the surplus from the previous year, or the previous six years of crops, would be enough to carry them through this seventh year. They had to trust that God would still bless and protect their livestock. They had to relax and expect that what the land produced on its own would be enough to sustain them. (Although they weren't intentionally planting and working towards harvest, they were allowed to eat anything that the land produced by itself.)

In fact, the sabbath year didn't only push them to trust God for the year itself. Because they were instructed not to store up any of the crops that happened to grow that year, they were also taking a step of faith and dependence for the following year, the first one in the next cycle of seven. Everything would start from scratch, and they needed to believe that God would bless them with a good harvest that year; that He would be as faithful to them in the next seven years as He had been in the previous seven. The command not to store the (meagre?) produce of the seventh year was protecting them from falling into a poverty mentality and depending on their own efforts rather than on God.

As Christians, we need to learn to live with this same attitude of trusting dependence. How do we strike the right balance between working hard and saving for the future (which are also principles clearly commended in scripture) and still living a life of joyful dependence on God? What are our modern equivalents of this sabbath year principle?

Respecting God's name...

Most of Leviticus is kind of a legal manual: lists of laws and instructions for the people. Only occasionally is there narrative, a story of something that actually happened, and one of these times is in the middle of chapter 24. It's the account of a man who blasphemed the name of the Lord with a curse. (vs 10 - 16) As the story unfolds, we discover that blasphemy (using God's name in a disrespectful way) was one of the crimes punishable by death in those days.

That's a sobering thought if we consider  how often the name of the Lord is used as a swear word in films and TV programmes nowadays. It has become so much a part of our media-saturated, social-networking culture, that it can be very easy even for Christians to be shaped by the culture around them and to use God's name disrespectfully without even realising it.

About a year ago, when speaking to some younger children about the ten commandments, I suggested to them that one of the most obvious ways we can obey the third commandment and be careful not to misuse God's name is to be conscious not to fall into the habit of exclaiming, "Oh my God!" - as we see modelled for us on so many reality TV shows. 

In western culture, no one will stone us to death if we speak God's name in a wrong way nowadays.... but what a pity if our carelessness in this matter brings sadness to the heart of God and dulls our spiritual sensitivity to His voice,

Don't forget to remember

A whole list of the festivals in the calendar of the early Hebrews, chapter 23 of Leviticus highlights the value that God places on remembering and on celebrating. Remembering and thanking God for the things He had done for them - historical things like the escape from Egypt, and ongoing things like the yearly harvest. Some were solemn occasions like the day of atonement, and some were probably "fun," like when the festival of shelters allowed the kids to do "camping" for a week and celebrate with much joy.

God knows how important it is for people to have times of celebration, and we instinctively know it ourselves. That's why we celebrate things like birthdays and wedding anniversaries. It's why many of our cultures have introduced other celebrations such as mothers' day, fathers' day, and even grandparents' day. Yes, we could be cynical and chalk it all up to a money-making strategy by the card manufacturers, but the truth is that it's nonetheless important for us as human beings to be able to celebrate the people and events that bring meaning to our lives.

We'd do well to consider how we can build remembrance and celebration into our own lives - perhaps beginning with things like Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and some kind of thanksgiving... but also extending it to commemorate specific things that God has done for us as individuals, as a family or as a church. How sad if God-given celebrations are allowed to pass like any other day, or are so secularised by our modern society that they become more about our own indulgence than about the goodness of God.

What things do you want (or need) to remember, and how can you celebrate them in a meaningful way this year?

What is holiness?

In the Bible translation I'm using at the moment, the editors have added a heading to Leviticus chapter nineteen. It says, "Holiness in Personal Conduct." Sure enough, the very first verses in the chapter are the ones where God's instructions to the people are, You must be holy because I the Lord your God am holy. And this command wasn't given only to the priests; it was addressed to every single person who considered themselves part of God's people. Holiness wasn't and isn't an option; we are all called to grow in holiness.

The rest of the chapter goes on to unpack what holiness means in practice, and the first three things on the list might come as a surprise to us:

1. Respect/honour your father and mother
2. Observe the value of sabbath rest
3. Don't put your trust in anything other than God 

We sometimes confuse holiness with being religious, thinking that someone is "holy" if they pray, go to church a lot and do other religious things. But holiness is much more practical and personal than that. According to these verses, it's about whether we're patient and honouring towards ageing parents, even when disability or dementia robs them of the strengths they once knew. It's about whether we honour God's principle of rest, instead of being workaholics who behave as if everything depends on us. And it's about whether we truly place all our trust in the Lord, rather than trusting in our financial security, in our good job, in other people, in our government pension or healthcare system, or in our country's anti-terrorism policies. If our trust is primarily in something other than God, the Bible calls that idolatry.

The next instructions for holiness include providing for the poor and caring for refugees. (The Bible called them "aliens" - people who come into our nation.) And the list continues: 

• don't steal, don't cheat 
• don't lie or swear falsely
• don't mistreat your employees
• don't mock the handicapped
• don't gossip
• don't be indifferent to those in crisis
• don't hold on to hatred against relatives
• don't bear grudges
• don't neglect to confront people
• don't have anything to do with fortune telling or witchcraft (horoscopes, tarot cards, spiritism)
• show respect for the elderly
• don't encourage prostitution (or human trafficking, in our modern world)
• don't be dishonest in your business practices
• obey the Lord in everything

and more...

Yes, there are some things in the list that were probably specific to Hebrew culture of the time - like instructions about ritual sacrifices or how to cut your beard. But most of the things in this list are very relevant to living a holy life in our modern world. If we were to work our way through this ancient chapter, focusing on the commands that particularly apply to us, we would truly live more holy lives in the 21st Century.

Feeling isolated...

Chapter sixteen of Leviticus contains instructions for the Day of Atonement, the Jewish festival known today as Yom Kippur. This was a special day, once a year, when atonement or payment was made for the sins of the people - all the wrong things of the previous year that hadn't specifically been atoned for by other sin offerings.

The people of Israel were left in no doubt that sin was a serious business that deserved death. If there were any animal-loving children in the camp, it must have been hard to know that little lambs and goats were going to be slaughtered because of our sin.

Two goats were needed for the day of atonement: one to be killed and the other to be kept alive. The killing of the first goat reminded the people that there could be no forgiveness without death, without the shedding of blood. The second goat was called the "scapegoat" - the origin of a word that we still use in our language today. The priest laid his hands on this goat's head, confessing over it all the sins and wickedness of the people. Then the goat was released and driven into the wilderness, symbolically carrying away the sins of the people with it.

Perhaps it seems at first that the second goat, the so-called scapegoat, was escaping the fate of being slaughtered and sacrificed. But I can imagine that being banished to the desert was not really a better fate. Perhaps the goat would go hungry for a while, before ultimately weakening and being eaten by a wild animal. It's a graphic picture of how our sin leaves us "banished from the safety of the camp" to a barren place where we will be easy prey for the enemy. 

The symbolism of the day of atonement - in the fate of both the first goat and the second one - would not be lost on these early Israelites as they travelled through a hostile desert environment and smelled the stench of blood whenever an animal was sacrificed for their sins. For us today, there's a danger that we become nonchalant about it. The concept of sin bringing death can seem so far away and other-worldly; we're not constantly reminded of it by seeing a favourite pet lamb or goat slaughtered to pay the price.

But if we're honest in the quietness of our hearts, the fate of the second goat is not so alien to us. We've all experienced times when our own selfishness or unkind words broke a relationship and alienated us from a friend. Perhaps we've even experienced being ignored and ostracised by others because they despise us for something wrong that we did. And at some point in everyone's life, there comes that moment when they realise that God seems far away; that their sin and selfishness have made them feel isolated and alone, easy prey for the accusation and discouragement of the devil. Many of the people who choose to commit suicide do so because they feel alone and without hope; they see no way forward and feel they have nothing and no one to live for. 

Yes, the fate of the two goats may seem like an old Levitical ritual, but they both remind us of the devastating effects of our sin; they both call us back to a loving God who, in this new covenant era, freely offers us atonement because of the death of His Son on the cross.  Who would choose isolation and wilderness when atonement and relationship are freely available to us? What a powerful picture and an amazing privilege!

The true source of our strength...

Sometimes I get tired of weakness. It's normal, of course, to notice signs of failing strength as we grow older, but sometimes I catch myself feeling older than my years, as the effects of osteoarthritis catch up with me a little more each year. Often it's my spine and neck that trouble me, causing constant pain that lingers in the background and never quite goes away. At other times, it's the osteophytes in my feet that make life challenging, especially when trying to find winter footwear that allows me to walk without pain. 

This month, it's been my hands that are the source of frustration. I'm fortunate that I don't have pain in my hands, nor have I lost any mobility in my fingers; I'm thankful, for example, that I can use a computer keyboard, or can hold a pen and write without pain.  But I simply don't have any strength in my hands, and every few months something draws my attention to a further loss of power, especially in my thumbs. Often it's when washing the dishes - when my grip is not quite as firm as I'm used to and suddenly I drop a plate and watch it smash on the tiled floor.

It's happened six or seven times this month that I plugged in an electrical appliance - a vacuum cleaner, a toaster, an orange juicer or coffee machine - and then discovered afterwards that I simply wasn't strong enough to remove the plug from the socket. Once, I had to ask a neighbour to come into my house and unplug the toaster for me. There were two times that I didn't have the strength to push down the latch that allows me to open the window and one time that I wasn't able to open the door that leads to the back terrace where I hang up the laundry. Most frustrating of all, there were three or four times when I couldn't open a food package, such as the sealed pack of chicken breast or the ring pull on a can of cat food.

It's easy to feel "useless" at such times, when you realise that you can no longer do some of the normal things that ordinary people do. But then I'm reminded of a simple little verse in the New Testament (2 Cor 12: 9), where God tells us that His grace will always be sufficient for us. In fact, it's when we're weak that God's strength becomes more obvious in and through our lives. It doesn't matter whether the weakness we feel is physical, mental, emotional or spiritual; wherever and whenever we feel inadequate, our all-powerful God is more than adequate and is able to work even through weak and flawed vessels. That's why Paul wrote to the Philippians (Phil 4: 13) saying that we can do all things through Jesus who strengthens us. It's always important to stop for a moment before saying, "I can't do that," because just perhaps it's one of those situations where God wants to show His perfect strength in the context of our weakness.

In that letter to the Corinthians, Paul goes as far as to say he can rejoice in his weaknesses because they allow God's strength to be displayed. I'm not sure I could honestly say that I rejoice in my limitations, but I do know this: my times of feeling weak are precious, because they remind me that God is the true source of our strength.

Read on in the post below for reflections on the true source of our value.

The true source of our value..

Today I arrived in the very last chapter of Leviticus, chapter 27, and discovered a rather strange passage in the first eight verses, something that raises an interesting question about what makes a person valuable.

Most of the chapter is about how to "redeem" people or things that had been promised to the Lord in a vow. Vows are not a particularly familiar concept to us nowadays, at least in this sense, and so the detail in this part of Leviticus might seem a little puzzling to us. Why would God choose to end this book of the law with this particular section?

The vows referred to were when someone made a voluntary promise to give something to God. It was sort of a "credit card" kind of worship. The person might not have a sheep available at that point in time, but he was promising to give one to God in the future, usually as a voluntary expression of thankfulness for God's blessing or favour in his life, or in anticipation of some way that he was trusting God to intervene on his behalf. A modern day example might be when we pledge to give a certain amount of money to a church building project or a missionary endeavour, even if we don't have that much money available yet. We're trusting God to provide, and promising to give in the near future.

In some ways, this section is a sad commentary on the weakness of human nature. If promises are supposed to be kept, why would God make provision for people to break them and reverse their vows? I think it's simply that God in His graciousness is recognising that sometimes humans change their minds or realise that they impulsively made a vow which they're unable to follow through with. So he's offering the people a way out: a way of backtracking on vows they were unable or unwilling to fulfil, so that they wouldn't deserve a penalty for breaking their word.

There's a lot of detail about what to do if you'd promised to donate a house or field or animal to the Lord, but the section that caught my attention this morning was the early part of the chapter where it talks about redeeming people - presumably when a person had pledged themself or another family member to serve God in the temple or serve the priests by working in the fields. (An example of this might be when Hannah prayed, in the first book of Samuel, longing to become pregnant and vowing to give the child back to the Lord.)

It would be so easy to interpret these verses in the wrong way. A "price list" is laid out at the beginning of chapter 27, clarifying what needed to be paid to redeem someone who had been pledged to the Lord. The price for men is higher than for women; the price for a healthy, mature adult is more than for children or the elderly. It's easy to see how this section could contribute to the flawed worldview that so many people embrace today: believing that a person's value lies in what they are able to do. This is the worldview that allows people to have no qualms about killing an unborn child because she has Down's Syndrome, or advocating euthanasia for an elderly person with a physical or psychological disability. Our modern world focuses on what people are able to contribute to society and assesses a person's value on that basis.

It's true, in fact, that this list of redemption prices is based on the "market value" of people in those days. The amount to be paid is in line with what that person would fetch if they were working. It's not in any way intended to be demeaning of women, children or the elderly, but is simply a recognition of the value that person had in the workforce of that society, and therefore the level of sacrifice involved in dedicating them to serve the Lord.

How vital it is that we don't carry a wrong understanding of this passage into our dealings in the modern world. There's nothing in scripture that suggests women are less valuable to God than men, that adults are of more value than children, or that the young and strong are of more value than the old and weak. Our true value lies in the fact that we are unique individuals, created in the image of God.

Think about it for a moment. What makes something valuable? Why is a diamond more valuable than a pebble, or a painting more valuable than a toilet roll? There tend to be two things that determine something's value:

1. How rare is it? Gold is more valuable than plastic because there's less of it in the world. If there's only one of something, it's especially valuable, much more so than something that is common and easy to come by.
2. Who created it? A painting by a master like Van Gogh has more value than a picture by an unknown artist.

By those standards, there is nothing more valuable than you - because you're unique; there's only one of you. Even identical twins have their own unique characteristics and personality.

And every single one of us, young or old, rich or poor, strong or weak, male or female, was created in the image of God by God Himself, the greatest Artist of all time.

This is where our true value lies. It's really nothing to do with what we can achieve, and everything to do with who we are in God's sight.

Sun and snow in Spain...

In astounding contrast to the sunny and relatively mild weather we've been having this January, we had sudden and unexpected snowfall this week. Snow in Spain is not at all unusual; there are many ski resorts here and we're used to seeing on the TV news that the northernmost provinces of the country are under two feet of snow. But it's pretty unusual to see snow on the low lying hills here in Alhaurin.  My neighbours who've lived here for more than thirty years had never seen snow in the town before. The last time was apparently around 43 years ago.

It was melting on landing, and not really lying on the ground in Alhaurin, except for on the hills around us where I usually walk the dog. All along the Costa del Sol, however, there were scenes of snow covered palm trees and beaches... and the snow lay even thicker up the eastern coastline. I felt rather sorry for any tourists who had headed to Spain this week for some "winter sun."

The winter sun is back now, though, and it was quite pretty this morning to see the sun glistening off the melting snow, against a backdrop of a pale blue sky. Despite the cool morning and evening temperatures, the thermometer is forecast to creep back up to afternoon highs of 17 or 18 degrees next week. That's good news for the FOCOS coaching workshop, as it means the trainees can work outside in the sun while doing their practice exercises. Perhaps the snow is gone now for another forty years or so.

Obedience is more important than religion

Chapters 8 and 9 of Leviticus speak about the ordination of Israel's priests and the beginning of their ministry. Part of the priests' purpose in life was to remind the people of the holiness of God, and the power of God's uncompromising holiness is illustrated graphically in Chapter 10 of Leviticus, which begins with the sobering tale of two men named Nadab and Abihu.

We know very little about these two men and their character, or even about what they were thinking and reasoning when they committed this sin of offering "unauthorised fire." We only know that they were sons of Aaron and were part of the top tier of leadership under Moses. (See Exodus 24: 9) As priests, they had heard and practised Levitical law and they knew that the stakes were high. (See Leviticus 8: 35) Their job came with privileges, but also with sacrifices and with risky responsibilities.

Were they being deliberately rebellious in this incident, or were they simply negligent and presumptuous, not taking seriously the holiness of God and the gravity of disobedience? The outcome seems harsh (the two men died) but this was the beginning of the Israelites' history as a nation and precedents were being set. The ultimate role of the priesthood was to reflect God's holiness to the people, so that they wouldn't embrace the abhorrent practices of the people around them - practices like child sacrifice and bestiality. It was absolutely critical that the people learned the importance of uncompromising obedience to God's instructions.

This is equally crucial for us in the 21st century. We live in a generation where doing your own thing, doing what feels or seems right in your own eyes, is a high value, strongly defended by our society. As Christians, we need to be careful that we are truly living our lives by God's standards and not according to our own opinion, to the trends of the world around us, or to the traditions of a bygone age. If we compromise (see next post below) or take God's instructions lightly, we will never be able to reflect His love and holiness to a world that is desperately in need of Him.

The dramatic demise of Nadab and Abihu possibly shocked the whole nation; the people were learning the importance of uncompromising obedience and the cost of indifferent negligence or wilful disobedience. There's a tense moment later in the chapter when another two men completely burn up an animal instead of eating it. This too was their own idea, and not what the priests had been commanded to do. Their action is later forgiven when they explain that they intended it to be an act of contrition for the sin of the first two men. However, the general principle is clear: our to-the-letter obedience is more important than our apparently noble acts of self-sacrificing religious activity. 

As the prophet Samuel expressed it many centuries later: What is more important to the Lord; your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to His voice? To obey is better than sacrifice, and heeding God's will is better than offering up the fat of rams. (1 Samuel 15: 22) 

No amount of religious activity can ever be a substitute for hearing and obeying the voice of God, and these early Israelites were seeing this principle in action, way back in the days of Leviticus.

Beware of opening the door

Chapter 18 of Leviticus has a rather provocative chapter heading in my Bible: forbidden sexual practices. That's a rather inflammatory concept in our society, where many people consider that anything and everything is acceptable in our modern world.

There's much controversy nowadays about verse 22, which prohibits homosexual behaviour. Many nations around the world are working hard to promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle choice and are redefining how we understand the words, "couple" and "family." Laws are being passed that permit homosexual marriage and that fight for the rights of same-sex couples to adopt children or have IVF treatment. Even Disney Channel has begun to portray same sex couples as an alternative model of a happy and "normal" family. 

The reality, if you speak to children who were raised with same-sex parents, is somewhat less rosy: much as they may have loved their "two mums" or "two dads," they often speak with disappointment of what they missed out on by not having a Dad, or not having a Mum in their lives.

Transgender choices are the buzz word of today, and people risk legal action if they dare to voice the opinion that homosexuality is not a desirable lifestyle choice. Laws are in place to protect homosexuals from discrimination, but it seems that no laws are in place to protect the freedom of speech of anyone who happens to believe in Leviticus 18 verse 22.

What's sometimes forgotten amidst the furore is that homosexuality is only one in a list of many possible "alternative" behaviour choices in this chapter. Is championing homosexual relations as "normal" simply a first step in opening the door to the other behaviours in the list - things like having sex with your father, or your granddaughter, or with an animal? Today's Christians are often accused of intolerance if they dare to express the opinion that it's not acceptable for someone to be in a sexual relationship with a person of the same gender. Will future generations be accused of intolerance if they dare to express the opinion that having sex with your dog or cat is not an acceptable lifestyle choice?

Perhaps that last question was shocking and distasteful to you. And yet anyone over the age of forty today has seen in their own lifetime how opening the door to just one area of compromise will quickly lead to that door being wide open to many and greater compromises. Towards the end of the 1990s, I was once present in a youth group where a guest speaker showed a photograph of a woman in a bikini and asked the teenagers what they thought about it. There was much laughter in the group and some of the young people described the woman and the swimsuit as "demure"  and "old fashioned."  Imagine their shock when the speaker told them that the photo was a picture from a Playboy magazine of early 1954. What was considered pornography in the 1950s was perceived to be rather "reserved" in comparison to the fashions and the advertising of the twentieth century. 

Leviticus 18 is considered outdated by many people today. But we ignore at our peril the dangers and consequences of recklessly opening doors that can probably never be closed again.

Of parenting and preventive medicine...

If you're a parent, you've probably experienced those times when a small child didn't know or understand why you were asking certain things of them. Why were you insisting that they go to bed early or clean their teeth every night? Why didn't you allow your toddler to play with that sharp knife? From the child's limited perspective, it probably seemed petty or unfair, even when you were requiring behaviours that were the best thing for their health and wellbeing.

With this understanding in mind, why do we sometimes doubt that God knows best? Why do some people feel that God's instructions in the Bible are restrictive, petty or designed to "spoil our fun" ? Once we know the love and care of God, there can be no doubt in our minds that the things He asks us to do or not to do are only for our protection and well being.

Reading through the book of Leviticus, it strikes me that some of the instructions the people knew as "laws" were actually more like a manual of preventive health care. We need to remember that this was a people who had been enslaved in Egypt for four hundred years, and probably didn't know the first thing about living a healthy lifestyle and protecting themselves from disease.

So when God told them (chapter 7 vs 14 - 17) that the meat from the sacrifice could be eaten on the first day and leftovers eaten on the second day, but anything remaining on the third day should be burned up and shouldn't be eaten.... He wasn't seeking to deprive them of food, He was protecting them from food poisoning. These people lived in a hot, desert-like place; they lived at a time in history when they couldn't pop their meat into the fridge to keep it cool; a time when food wasn't pumped so full of chemicals and preservatives that a sausage can sit on a shelf for three months and still look exactly the same. This instruction was probably primarily to protect the people's health. Verse 18 sounds harsh to us: if you eat the meat on the third day, you'll be punished for your sin. But a closer reading of the verse reveals the truth behind it: long before manufacturers started putting "best before" dates on their products, God was warning his people that contaminated meat would give them a terrible stomach ache, or worse; that disregarding God's instructions could have natural, but painful consequences.

I remember when I lived in Africa, a teenage boy who had been on an outreach with us set himself the goal of reading through the whole Bible. At a weekend camp, we got into conversation over a meal time, and he was very excited about what he had been reading in Leviticus. "It's totally amazing," he said. "God told us stuff thousands of years ago that the scientists are only discovering today." He was referring in particular to Leviticus chapter 15. In my Bible, the chapter heading says, "Bodily Discharges." Yuck! It doesn't particularly entice you to read further, does it?

But we were living in Southern Africa at a time when the AIDS statistics were scarily out of control. Some of our ministry was with child headed households: kids who were raising their siblings alone because both of their parents had died of AIDS. No wonder this young man was blown away to discover that God had already told us thousands of years ago what it took an AIDS epidemic to teach us today: bodily fluids carry disease. All that stuff about blood and semen and other body fluids making people "unclean" was nothing to do with strange religious ritual and all to do with protecting the Israelites from spreading an epidemic throughout the camp. Yes, some of the instructions (like the sacrificing of pigeons) were about recognising God's hand in cleansing and healing people in a day where there were no hospitals to take them to. But other instructions (like taking a bath and washing your clothes) were basic primary health care.

The book of Leviticus, strange and complex as it sometimes seems to modern readers, is full of stuff like this. God was giving people instructions for their own wellbeing, but they needed to trust Him in that and follow His instructions to the letter. In our modern world, we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that we know better, that we're too technologically "advanced" to follow God-given instructions that we don't understand the reason for. Maybe the scientists, psychologists and sociologists of a future generation will have the same reaction as that teenage boy in South Africa when they realise they are discovering things in the 21st Century that God already told us thousands of years ago.  

Let those of us who know the Lord be the first to trust that He truly knows what's best for us.

Privilege and Responsibility

Most people instinctively know or recognise that any privilege brings a responsibility with it. President John F. Kennedy is known to have mentioned that in the political and social realm, while others have made similar statements in the realms of education or economics. It's also a spiritual principle that we find as far back as the early chapters of Leviticus.

In Leviticus chapter 6, we read that the priests offered up sacrifices to God on behalf of the people. They also "benefitted" from these sacrifices, in that they were sometimes allowed to eat the meat or the grain that had been offered. It was sort of like a salary for them, and that was a privilege, but it came together with sacrifice and responsibility. The sacrifice was that the Levites were not allowed to own houses or land; they received no inheritance as the other tribes did, but simply lived off the gifts that other Israelites brought to the Lord. The responsibility was that the Levites were called to a high level of holy living and were required to make daily offerings for their own sin, as well as for the sins of the people. Another responsibility was that they were required to keep fire burning on the altar both day and night; it was never allowed to go out. This must have meant that the priests sometimes had to be on duty during the night when everyone else was asleep.

In Leviticus 6 vs 9 - 16, it's repeated three times that the fire on the altar must be kept burning; it must never be allowed to go out. It got me wondering why this command was so important. It seems too simplistic to draw the parallel that we are to remain "on fire" for the Lord. As I reflect on it, it seems to me that the constantly burning fire is a picture of our privilege, but also of our responsibility.

To me, the always-burning altar fire speaks of the fact that forgiveness is constantly available, day or night, without having to wait for it.  But in order to have access to that forgiveness, the priest had to add fresh firewood every morning, just as we need to "keep short accounts" and check in regularly with the Lord about sin that needs to be confessed and forgiven. The fact that the altar fire needed to be watched because it could possibly go out, speaks to me of our own weakness and vulnerability - the fact that we could sin at any time if we are not vigilant in our walk with the Lord. Each one of us is to be responsible for our own Christian growth and maturing.

There are many areas in life where we have privilege, and it's worth stopping to reflect on whether we're also fulfilling our responsibilities. If we have the privilege of relative wealth, we also have a responsibility to think of those who are poor, hungry or who need shelter. If we have the privilege of salvation, we have a responsibility to pray for those who don't know the Lord, or to go and share the gospel with them. If we have the privilege of freedom of religion, we have a responsibility to pray for the persecuted church. If we have the privilege of access to fuel and transportation, it comes with a responsibility to reflect on our carbon footprint and whether we are being good stewards of God's creation. If we live in a society with just laws built on Biblical values, we have a responsibility to speak out or seek justice for those who are oppressed or unjustly imprisoned or exploited in the work place.

It was this sense of God-given responsibility that caused believers of past generations to speak out against slavery or child labour. Today our world still faces the evils of human trafficking, child abuse and hunger. Each one of us needs to know how to live out our own responsibilities in the 21st century - whether we're called to pray, to speak out, to write, or to take action in some other practical way.

One of the privileges that I most value as a Christian is the fact that we can talk to God and hear His voice for ourselves; we no longer need a priest to be an intermediary for us. But even this privilege comes with responsibility: it's up to me not to "waste" the privilege; I need to make time in my daily life to talk to God and quieten my heart to listen to what He has to say to me. In a sense, it's our modern equivalent of keeping the altar fire burning, just as was commanded in the book of Leviticus.

It's free, but it will cost you everything

Leviticus chapter 5 outlines the procedures that the early Hebrews had to go through in order to receive atonement for their sins. It's interesting that forgiveness was never out of reach: if a person was too poor to be able to offer a sheep or a goat, they were allowed to bring two young pigeons instead. If they were not even able to offer pigeons, they could bring an offering of flour. But if the wrongdoer owned a sheep or goat, that was what they had to bring; the sacrifice had to cost them something, as a reminder that mercy and forgiveness are not cheap.
It's the same today: the sacrificial death of Jesus means that forgiveness is within everyone's grasp; the price is already paid and no one is too wicked or too poor to be able to avail themselves of this freely given forgiveness. But this is no cheap grace. Our salvation cost Jesus everything and He asks us to give Him everything, our whole lives, in return. Paradoxically, those who recognise this, and who willingly surrender everything to Jesus, live their lives with a deep sense of freedom and purpose, while those who struggle with the cost and try to retain the reins of their own lives often find that they struggle with their faith and with their assurance of salvation.

Moving on to chapter 6, another principle that underlines the consequence of sin and the cost of redemption, is the principle of restitution. A sin offering made forgiveness available, but it didn't undo the damage or loss that the sin had caused. For this reason, whether the sin was against the Lord or also against another person, the wrongdoer had to face up to the cost of putting things right. If he had stolen something, cheated someone, or told a lie, he had to go back to the injured party and pay back what had been taken - also adding another 20% so that it cost the wrongdoer something to make amends. The cost involved was a reminder and an incentive not to commit that sin again.

This principle of restitution is often neglected or not understood today. People wrong others and think that a "cheap apology" will get them off the hook. It's true that some things can never be restored or put right - like the teenager killed on the road by a drunk driver. In such cases, one can only ask forgiveness and throw oneself on the grace and mercy of the grieving parent. But many other things can be made right to some extent, and God watches to see if we'll be faithful to make restitution. If I steal something or break something belonging to another person, the right thing to do is to replace it. If I lie to someone, I need to go back and tell them the truth. If I spread gossip or slander about someone, I need to go the extra mile to correct the wrong impressions I gave, and see that person's reputation restored again.

This principle is built into the legal systems of many of our nations. Stolen goods need to be returned to their owner, probably together with a hefty fine. The company whose chemicals caused my cancer needs to cover my medical bills and pay me "punitive damages." The newspaper is required by law to print a retraction of the inaccurate report they wrote about someone. Our society knows this is necessary in the "big stuff," but sometimes we as Christians are careless and complacent about the smaller stuff.

I remember one of the first times I saw this principle in action. A few of us had been in a conversation around the table - about how our adult gifting and abilities often begin to show themselves even in childhood. A few hours later, one of the friends came back to me. "I need to put something right," he said. "When we were chatting at lunch time, I told you that I had won first prize in a high school poster competition for best creative design. That wasn't completely true. In fact, I came second in that competition. God has shown me that I exaggerated to make myself look better, or more gifted, and that I needed to come back to all of you to tell you the truth."  I confess I was surprised; it didn't seem to matter in the grand scheme of things whether this 30 year old man had come first or second in a teenage competition. But the lack of integrity mattered to God, and this young man had understood that. I was only in my early twenties at the time, and this friend's example helped make me more aware of the value of integrity and the importance of restitution in my own life too. Restitution costs us. If it doesn't have a material or financial cost, it has a cost to our pride, as it did for my Austrian friend in that situation. It's uncomfortable and embarrassing. It's a reminder that sin can always be forgiven, but there's always a cost and it shouldn't be taken lightly.

Complex chapters about sacrificing animals and birds... yet these passages in Leviticus remind us of timeless principles that will make all the difference to our lives in the 21st century.

A sweet smelling fragrance...

A number of friends were concerned for the health and wellbeing of an overweight team mate - not because she had finally begun a weight-loss diet, but because she had also embarked on a seemingly radical programme of aerobic exercise. In defence of her chosen strategies, she announced, tongue in cheek, that she was "completely Biblical" - because Leviticus 3: 16 says that "all the fat belongs to the Lord" and she was simply aiming to burn up fat before God.

In Leviticus chapters 3 and 4, it is, in fact, repeatedly emphasised that the fat belongs to the Lord. The significance of this can escape us today. I thought back to our recent Christmas dinner and how my family members meticulously cut all the fat off our food, simply to throw it outside for the birds and squirrels. Fat has become somewhat undesirable in my culture, but in the Bible context it was a valuable and useful part of the animal, as it could be used for cooking and other things. (I wonder if they used it to make soap, as some cultures still do today.) As in the first chapters of Leviticus, I think the principle here is that of giving to God wholeheartedly and not holding back things that could be useful to ourselves.

If you don't come from a culture that practises the burning of incense, it may seem strange that it's mentioned so often in these early worship instructions, but it makes sense if you think of the stench that would otherwise come from the shed blood and burning fat. In fact, because of the sheer amount of fire needed to consume a bull, the rest of the animal was burned outside the camp - just as Jesus was crucified outside the city wall. The liberal use of incense also adds an extra layer of meaning to New Testament scriptures such as Ephesians 5: 2, which says that we are to live a life of love, just as Jesus loved us and gave Himself up for us as " a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." Or Philippians 4: 18, where Paul says that the believers' generous financial gifts were "a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice pleasing to God."

What an incentive to live a godly life, when we understand that our acts of love and generosity are like a gift of perfume, "a sweet smell" to the Lord. Our holy lives are the only fragrance that God seeks today, because of the fact that the stench of sin and blood no longer needs to be masked by incense, thanks to the once-and-for-all sacrificial death of Jesus. So it's very symbolic (Hebrews13: 11 - 16) that Jesus sacrificed His life outside the city gate, just as these priests in Leviticus burned the animals' bodies outside the camp. Now our "sacrifices" (Hebrews 13: 15 - 16) are not of blood and fat, but are sacrifices of praise, kindness and godly living.

It's notable, in Leviticus chapter four, that there's a clear assumption that everyone sins - priests, leaders and ordinary members of the community. No one is so mature, or so religiously involved, that they are above sin. Everyone needed the forgiveness bought by the sacrifices and burnt offerings, just as today everyone needs the forgiveness that's only given when you come to Jesus.

So these ancient chapters of Leviticus appear to be about blood, fat and incense. In fact, they're a challenge to give wholeheartedly to God and to live "fragrant" lives that bring joy to His heart.

Determining priorities

The first two chapters of Leviticus launch right in with detailed “how tos” of how the early Hebrews were to make offerings to the Lord. The more basic information was already covered in the book of Exodus, so now we find ourselves in an almost bewildering amount of detail about burnt offerings (bulls, sheep, goats, pigeons) and offerings made out of grain. On the surface, it appears to be religious instruction from a bygone age, practices that even the Jews no longer follow nowadays. So what principles are there for us as God-followers in 2017?

The main thing that immediately stands out to me in these chapters is that the things sacrificed in these offerings were things that otherwise would have been used as food. So there was a cost involved: the people had to “waste” food that would otherwise have fed their family. I see two principles behind this:

1) the people were demonstrating their dependence on God and not just on food that they’d raised for themselves. They were willingly giving up food to demonstrate their commitment to obeying God.

2) the people were demonstrating that atonement for sin (and relationship with God) was even more important than food for physical survival.

These same principles are important today. Am I willing to tithe my income to God, even if I feel I don’t have a lot to spare? Am I willing to observe sabbath rest, even though working seven days a week would give me more income? Do I care more about dealing with sin and having relationship with God than about having a good reputation in the world's eyes and avoiding any pain or persecution that might come as a result of my faith?

Yes, these first two chapters of Leviticus are about old sacrificial rituals... but I think that they are also a reminder about determining our priorities in life.

New endings

For around a decade now, I've preached in my home church on the first Sunday of every new year. Today it happens to be on the very first day of the year. During December, as I was praying over what to speak about, my thoughts drifted to different kinds of "new beginnings" in the Bible. But then I felt God saying that what was really on His heart for 2017 was that we would successfully journey towards a "new ending." As an old axiom expresses it, the beginning may be set in stone, but we can all adjust our course today and work towards creating a new ending. And as I asked God what sort of ending He wanted for us in 2017, my attention was drawn to Ephesians chapter 6 verse 10, which says, Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.

In some ways, it seems a strange command. It's easy to imagine that strength is something we don't have any control over; some people are strong and others are weak, just as some people are tall and others are short. But that's not true physically and it's not true spiritually either. Physically, we become stronger by intentionally exercising our arm muscles, leg muscles, heart rhythm, lung power or whatever it is we want to strengthen. God would never command us to do something that's impossible for us. So when Paul tells the early believers to be strong in the Lord, it implies that there's something we can do about that: we can respond in a way that intentionally helps us become spiritually stronger and more able to draw on the supernatural power of God.

In its Biblical context, the writer goes on to unpack this (verses 11 and 13) by telling the believers to put on every single piece of God's armour…. with the result that we will be able to resist the enemy. And, even if we happen to face battles and have a hard time, the ending will be that we are still standing firm. The Bible passage about the armour is well known, but it doesn't specifically tell us what to do to use that armour, and so there's a danger that we could leave it at a theoretical level and not actually take any of the steps needed to help ourselves be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.

Just reading the Bible passage about putting on the armour will not make us spiritually strong, any more than reading health magazines will make us physically strong if we don't actually do anything in response to what we read. We need to find ways of taking these six spiritual weapons out of the realm of theory and into the realm of our daily reality and experience, or we won't see any difference, any tangible result in our own lives.

On Christmas Eve, my message in the church service was about six miles and six gifts. This morning, my preaching is about those six weapons, and how to use them practically in 2017 so that we end the year having become stronger in the Lord.