SCRIPTURE: Leviticus 19 OBSERVATION/APPLICATION: 1. “I am the Lord”. This refrain seems to be saying: first, that the Lord is the powerful God that rescued them, so take His commands seriously; second, that this is how things work with the Lord, as opposed to the religious practices of neighbouring nations. 2. This mixed list of laws…
Author: Norm
sexual inferno
SCRIPTURE: Leviticus 18 OBSERVATION/APPLICATION: 1. Sex, like fire, is a beautiful gift. In the fireplace, it provides warmth and comfort. But outside of healthy boundaries, that is, when it jumps from the fireplace to the curtains, we have disaster. Sex, like fire, causes a lot of damage when it is taken out of its safe, intended…
practicing the presence of Jesus
“Practicing the presence of Christ means being a living example of the life of Jesus. This raises the stakes enormously. It means that our lives need to become increasingly aligned with the example of Jesus. It doesn’t require sinless obedience – as if that’s possible anyway. It means, though, increasingly becoming people of justice, kindness,…
one with Jesus
SCRIPTURE: Leviticus 17 OBSERVATION/APPLICATION: 1. After 400 years exposed to a variety of Egyptian religious practices, the Israelites must now radically reform their own practices. Common to the religions of the day included regular sacrifices anywhere and everywhere to the multitudes of gods all around them, cultic sexual practices as well as blood drinking. The people…
its curtains for the curtain!
SCRIPTURE: Leviticus 16 OBSERVATION/APPLICATION: 1. Between the people and God there was a curtain. Once a year the priest was to go behind that curtain with blood, to cover the sin of the priest and the people. The message was plain: we do not and should not have the confidence or arrogance to assume that we…
taking God seriously
SCRIPTURE: Leviticus 15 OBSERVATION/APPLICATION: 1. Another day of cleansing laws. Verse 31 seems to summarize the point. ‘You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them.’ The plain sense of these words is that our being…
I just don’t get these laws!!!
SCRIPTURE: Leviticus 14 OBSERVATION/APPLICATION: 1. OK, I admit it, I am getting tired of these readings. What an elaborate system of dealing with the disease, and of getting clean. I get that the disease were dangerous, but so much ritual and sacrifice to be declared clean – with guilt offerings, sin offerings, burnt and grain offerings….
spiritual mildew
SCRIPTURE: Leviticus 13 OBSERVATION/APPLICATION: 1. This chapter addresses very practical hygiene and health issues for that time. The practice of quarantine was the best treatment for these otherwise community-devastating diseases. Communicable diseases (like measles, smallpox, scarlet fever) are in mind here. And mildew would be a health concern in damp climates and seasons. No other ancient…
reaching out to Jesus
SCRIPTURE: Leviticus 12 OBSERVATION/APPLICATION: 1. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. [Luke 8:43-44] According to the reading from Leviticus [see also Leviticus 15:25-33], this woman would have…
feelin dirty?
SCRIPTURE: Leviticus 11 OBSERVATION/APPLICATION: 1. ‘Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods “clean.”) [Mark 7:18-19] Why does God declare some foods unclean? Why does…