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

There are seven festivals which the people of Israel were to observe.  Six of the seven festivals were celebrations, but the Day of Atonement is a more solemn assembly.  That was why I wrote that they were to “observe” the festivals, rather than that they were to “celebrate” them.  In the same way, I probably should have written that these were “assemblies” rather than that they were “festivals”.  Both celebrate and festival have connotations about joy, happiness, and fun which are inappropriate for the Day of Atonement.  Having said that I think it important that six of the seven have that sense of communal joy and fun associated with them.  It really tells us something about how we should worship God.  Most of the time (6 out of 7) it should be joyous and fun, but every now and then it needs to be sober and solemn.  We need to know and remember which approach to take on each occasion.  I want to circle back to the fact that these were assemblies.  The people were to gather together to observe these reminders about God.  We should gather with our fellow Believers on a regular basis, often in celebration, but occasionally in a more solemn fashion.

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.

While many of the commands in this passage have been deprecated by Christ’s death on the cross, the central theme remains: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”  We might argue over what that means, over what it means to be holy, but looking at some of these commands which are still entirely relevant reveals the answer to that.

• Do not steal
• Do not lie
• Do not deceive one another
• Do not defraud your neighbor
• Do not hold back wages
• Do not do anything which endangers your neighbors life
• Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge, but love your neighbor as yourself

That last one really sums it all up, love your neighbor as yourself.  One of the things which is often pointed out is that if you are to love your neighbor as yourself, you need to love yourself.  The passage even contains a lesson on how to go about that, and it is a difficult one.  It tells us not to bear a grudge, which is really hard.  We are not loving someone if we seek revenge against them or bear a grudge.  What makes that even harder for many people is that they bear a grudge against themselves for things they did, or did not, do in the past.  In order to love others you must love yourself and you cannot love yourself if you harbor a grudge against yourself for your past actions.  We must accept God’s forgiveness and forgive ourselves so that we can love others.

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.

Immediately after the death of Aaron’s sons, which happened during their ordination period, God gave Aaron additional instructions regarding entering His presence in the Tabernacle.  These instructions also contain the sacrifices for the Day of Atonement for the entire nation of Israel.  It is not clear to me if these instructions meant that the only time Aaron was to enter into the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle was on the Day of Atonement, or if he was not to enter until after the Day of Atonement (which would apply to his successors as high priest, they were not to enter the Most Holy Place until after they had first made the Day of Atonement sacrifices).  In any case, this passage is where the idea of a scapegoat comes from.  The scapegoat as described here is one who bears the blame for the sin of others, sin of which they are not guilty, specifically, it is a goat which is incapable of being guilty of the sins it bears.  The symbolism of the scapegoat here involves carrying the sins away from us.  The New Testament presents Jesus as filling the role of both goats in this passage.  He was sacrificed on the cross for our sins, and He carried those sins away from us despite being entirely innocent of them.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 14-15.

I am at a complete loss today as to what to write.  One can point to a few things about good hygiene presented in this passage, but what lesson can we take from it about how we should live our lives?  Perhaps one could make a metaphor out of the command that someone who is to be cleansed by this ritual must wash their clothes. shave all of their hair and then bathe their entire body for how we should spiritually cleanse ourselves from sin, but I cannot quite put that together.  Certainly, the section on bodily discharges reminds us that even as long ago as these commands were written down people understood the dangers of exchanging bodily fluids with others.  I guess the one point of value I will make is that we need to be willing to go to great lengths to cleanse ourselves from sin.

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.

To my knowledge I have never come across anyone referencing the fact that Nadab and Abihu were among those who went up Mt Sinai with Moses, Aaron, and the 70 elders.  So, they had seen God, yet here they are using fire in their censers other than that which God commanded.  I believe that the honor they had received at Mt Sinai played a role in their deaths here.  Jesus said. “To whom much is given, much is required.”  These two men (I was going to write “young men”, but realized that was unlikely to be true, considering that Moses was in his 80s by this point and Aaron was Moses’ older brother) had been given a lot, both in honor and in knowledge.  They took a “short cut” when they knew the correct way, and they did this on their very first time as priests.  In the same way, those of us who have been given much knowledge about how God wants us to live (in my case, by the example of my parents’ faith and that of the many other great men and women God has put in my life over the years, and by my regular reading of the Bible) will be held to a higher standard of behavior than those who have rarely, or never, been exposed to God’s Word.  I probably deserve to suffer the same fate as these two of Aaron’s sons.

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.

The first point I want to focus on out of this passage is the fact that one can sin unintentionally and unknowingly.  In fact this passage is about holding people accountable for sins they unintentionally, and/or unknowingly, committed.  There are really two points here. We are still guilty of committing sin, even if we did not realize that our action was a sin.  We are also still guilty of committing sin, even if we were unaware of committing the action which was a sin.  This applies to both things we have done against God and things which we have done against our fellow man.   When we discover that we have done that wrong regarding God or our fellow man, we should seek to make amends for our action.

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