Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 22-23.

God established seven festivals for the people of Israel.  They were to be celebrated as assemblies.  There were seven events when the people of God were to assemble together in order to worship God.  This tells us that it is important for the people of God to gather for worship and fellowship.  In fact, it tells us that worship cannot be completely separated from fellowship with the people of God.  It is not possible to be a faithful Christian in isolation.  OK, that is an overstatement.  One could be a faithful Christian if one was isolated from other Christians by being thrown in jail, or being stranded somewhere where there are no other Christians, but one cannot be a faithful Christian if one chooses to not fellowship with any other Christians who are in one’s vicinity.  Now when considering the festivals we tend to adopt a few misconceptions about them.  The first misconception is that we think of them as annual events, because we often forget that the first assembly named was the Sabbath, which is weekly.  That tells us that we should meet with at least a few of our fellow people of God on a weekly (or near weekly basis).  We need time spent in fellowship and worship with our fellow believers on a regular basis.  The second misconception is that we tend to think of these assemblies as times of celebration.  This is mostly true, but the Day of Atonement was a somber day of fasting to consider the ways we have fallen short of the holiness to which God has called us.  So, we should get together with other people of God on a regular basis in order to worship God and fellowship with each other.  Most of the time those assemblies should be joyous, but occasionally they should be somber reflections.  In both cases, our focus should be on God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 19-21.

My thought when I read today’s passage was that the rules laid out in this passage were about the first command God gave Moses  in this passage for the Israelites: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” 

• Respect your father and mother
• Observe the Sabbath
• Do not make metal gods for yourselves
• Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge, but love your neighbor as yourself

All of these are about being holy.  I could list many more of the commands given here which are about being holy, but I think you can read them for yourself.  Later in the passage it says this, “‘Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the Lord your God. Keep my decrees and follow them. I am the Lord, who makes you holy.”  That tells me that God was not telling us that keeping His commands would make us holy, because He made us holy.  Rather, God is telling us that He has made us holy, and as a result we would do these things.  The holiness which God has given to us will lead us to act in this way.  When we find ourselves failing to keep these instructions we realize that we need to turn to God and request that He pour out His Spirit and power to make us holy.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 16-18.

As with the previous several days’ passages, when I began this passage I thought I would have nothing.  However, when I came to the part about the scapegoat, I was reminded of research I did a few years ago because so many people now say “escape goat” instead of “scapegoat”.  When I did that research I discovered two interesting things.  The first is that “scapegoat” does indeed derive from “escape goat”, so substituting “escape goat” for “scapegoat” is not really wrong.  The second is that the word translated as “scapegoat” is “Azazel” (or, as close to that as transliteration of Hebrew allows).  Now the Hebrew word Azazel is not used anywhere else in the Bible, so we don’t really know what it means, or even to what it refers.  I am not a Hebrew scholar, but after reading multiple commentaries on this, it seems that Hebrew allows for several different understandings of the script which would be translated as azazel.  The most common of those understandings would be that it is a name (probably of an individual, but possibly of a place).  The only other place that Hebrew word is used is in ANY ancient manuscript is the Book of Enoch, where it refers to a demon.  The problem with saying that is what it means here is that it appears that the writer of the Book of Enoch was inspired by his understanding of this passage to make that designation, rather than using the word as the name of a demon of which he was otherwise aware.  Nevertheless, it appears that a literal translation of the passage is that one of the goats is chosen for YHWH and the other is chosen for Azazel.  Then the goat chosen for YHWH was to be sacrificed before the Lord as a sin offering.  The goat chosen for Azazel was to be presented alive before the Lord.  Then Aaron, and his successors as high priest, was to lay his hands upon the head of this goat and confess all of Israel’s sins, placing them upon the goat.  The goat was then to be sent into the wilderness to Azazel (or perhaps sent into the wilderness of Azazel).

All of the above set me to thinking about what the commands regarding the scapegoat would mean if we translated the goat we call the scapegoat as being the “goat for Azazel” where Azazel is a proper name.  Dualists (those who believe that there is are two Divine Beings, one good and one evil) would take this as support for their position.  I am not a Dualist.  However, perhaps Azazel was a name for Satan, the Adversary.  Satan is the one who stands before God and tells Him that in order to be a just God He must condemn us for our sin.  Looking at it this way, I see this ritual as the High Priest offering the blood of the first goat to cover the sins, then loading them onto the head of the second goat and sending them to Satan, saying, “These sins have been covered by the blood of the sacrifice.  I am sending them to you as the people of God no longer need to carry them.  They have been forgiven.”  This foreshadows the way in which Jesus covered our sins completely.  In a manner, He covered both roles by offering His blood as the sacrifice while taking our sins upon Himself.  Then going into the country of the dead and delivering those sins unto Satan, to be burned in the eternal fire alongside Satan.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 10-12.

The description of what happened to Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, seems harsh.  However, as I read about it today I had an idea that explained why what they did was so serious.  They may not have done all of these, but these are all things which make things go disastrously wrong.  First, it probably never occurred to them that the source of fire in their incense burners mattered.  Second, they likely thought that they were important people now that they were priests and they wanted everyone to know it.  They put their own judgement and desires ahead of God’s instructions.  Doing either of these things always ends poorly, but in this case they presented themselves as God’s representatives.  Making matters even worse, God had called them to be His representatives.  So, to put this fully in perspective.  Bad things happen when we use our own judgement in place of God’s direction.  It gets worse when we do so while claiming to speak on God’s behalf.  But it gets truly tragic when we do so after God has called us to speak on His behalf.  My take away is that we should seek God’s direction even for things which seem minor.  This is especially important when we are speaking on God’s behalf, something we should never do unless we are sure that God has called us to do so and that we are speaking words which God has given us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 8-9.

The first thing which struck me about today’s passage was that, as part of consecrating the tabernacle and its furnishings and ordaining Aaron and his sons, Moses performed a series of sacrifices.  The sacrifices which Moses performed acted as a sort of example to the ones which Aaron and his sons performed on the eighth day of their ordination, as the culmination of that ordination.  Then, as I was reading Moses instruction to Aaron, his sons, and the assembly of the people I read that the reason Aaron and his sons were to perform these sacrifices was so that the glory of the Lord could appear to them and to the people.  Specifically, Moses told them all, “This is what the Lord has commanded you to do, so that the glory of the Lord may appear to you.”  So, here’s what I take from this.  God gives us an example of what He wants us to do, then He expects us to do it.  When we do as He commands, we witness the glory of the Lord first hand and experience the joy which comes from that experience; joy which makes doing His will more than worthwhile.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 5-7.

Today’s passage begins by holding us responsible to tell those in authority what we know about things which they are investigating.  Actually, it looks as if we are obligated to help those who are seeking to get to the bottom of anything (although that gets more complicated).  From there it goes on to talk about those who committed sins without realizing it, and those who were unaware that they were committing a sin.  As the final part of this, it mentions those who do wrong without intending to do so.  All of this touches on things which lead us down a path to bad things:

• • “I don’t want to get involved.”
  • “It’s not my concern.”
  • “I didn’t know it was wrong.”
  • “I didn’t know.”
  • “I didn’t mean to do that.”
  • “I meant it to help them.”

  The point of this passage is that we are still responsible for our actions, and for the results of our actions, even if those results were not our intentions, even if we meant well.

  I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 1-4.

As I read this I was not sure what I would write about since we no longer offer sacrifices on an altar.  However, I noticed one thing as I was reading.  Some of these sacrifices, the entire item being sacrificed was burnt on the altar.  For other sacrifices, only a portion was burnt on the altar.  I am not sure of the overall significance of this difference, but I noted that certain sin offerings fell into the first category and some fell into the latter.  The sin offerings for a priest and the sin offering for the entire community were to have a portion burned on the altar, and the rest burned outside of the camp, while the sin offering for a leader and the sin offering for individuals (other than priests) only a portion was to be burned on the altar, and the rest was left unburned.  The passage even tells us why the priest sin offering was treated the same as the community sin offering.  It was because if the priest sinned he brought guilt on to the people as well.  The more I think about it the more I think the fact that sin offerings for political leaders being treated the same as sin offerings for individuals while the sin offerings for priests (religious leaders) being treated the same as sin offerings for the entire community tell us a lot about how we should think about political leaders.

As I thought about that distinction between the sin offerings for priests and the sin offerings for secular leaders I thought about our role as Christians in our society.  I had mentioned earlier this year about how we, as Christians, are all priests.  When we look at society around us, the terrible things we see result from our sins as priests for our society.  When we sin, we bring guilt on society around us.  Sometimes we blame the debauchery of society around us on the failings of its political leaders.  Instead of doing that, we should examine ourselves, we should examine how our sins may have brought guilt on those around us.  We are called to be salt, which transforms the food around it.  So, we should transform society around us for the better.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.