One of my goals this year is to read the entire Bible in chronological order. To help me absorb more of what I read as well as to help with accountability, I'm posting every week or two about what I read the previous week.
I don't know about you, but I struggle with this part of the Bible, especially Leviticus. Reading about how burning bull organs are a pleasing aroma to the Lord...it's just a little difficult to get through. I'll admit I skimmed a lot of it.
I remember my freshman year of college, my roommate was doing a paper comparing and contrasting the Hebrew God of the Old Testament and the Christian God of the New Testament. I thought, but they're the same God! And then I took the same class the following semester, reading Biblical texts from an atheistic viewpoint, including some of Leviticus. While my faith was still strong at the end of the semester, I must admit, if you remove God from the story, these rituals don't make a lot of sense. And as a Christian, it's still hard for me to look at this part of the scripture and see the amazing, loving, awesome God that we sing songs about.
So, what's the takeaway from the laws of the Old Testament? How do we apply Leviticus to our daily life and strengthen our faith by reading it? Honestly, I'm not sure, which is why this section is a struggle for me and why I hesitated to even write about it. I am thankful that these laws are no longer our laws. I'm very thankful, for example, that I don't have to sacrifice two turtledoves or pigeons to be cleansed each time I have my period.
How about you? What helps you get through this part of the Bible? What's the lesson to be learned?
It IS hard because we are so far removed from the daily-ness of it all. This was life as the Israelites knew it. One of our pastors went through Leviticus on Wednesday nights over a year ago, and I really enjoyed understanding more of the symbolism and precision of it. From my perspective, it shows clearly how God is a God of order, a God of design. He didn't set up the rules and sacrifices to waste time. Each type of offering acknowledged Him and/or the price of sin, but it also pointed ahead. Without seeing all the Israelites did on a weekly and daily basis, my faith could easily take for granted exactly what Christ's death on the cross accomplished.
ReplyDeleteThat was the old covenant. Christ initiated the new, better covenant. (Heb. 7:22, 8:6) :)