No tatoo's, no clean shaving, no mildew, no eating fat or drinking blood, no blue, rare, or medium rare steaks, no shirts made of cotton and wool, no incest, no homosexual relations, no ripping off people, no perverting justice, no owning of land or fellow Israelites.
Today I read from Lev 14-the end. Apparently the show Fear Factor wouldn't have been a hit with God in the time of Moses. Now some of these requests may seem strange, some I don't completely understand, some have changed or have been modified because of the new enternal priest and new covenant according to Hebrews 7:12 "For when there is a change of the priesthood, there must also be a change of the law", and some simply stand forever. I'm thinking tommorow I will read from Hebrew's so I can try and bring more clarity to all of this.
But from today's reading God spoke to me and the main message of this whole book of Leviticus became clear. This conditional covenant if all went well was supposed to return the Israelites back to what God had originally intended His relationship be like when He created mankind in Eden. In the cool of the day He walked in the Garden with Adam and Eve, now in Lev 26:12 He says "I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people". But since the people weren't Holy God couldn't just walk around or else everyone would die because His holy presence would be too much. It's incredible to think God so desperately wanted to be with us and yet if He came near us we would die.
The priests seem to have the harshest requirements, they were to marry a virgin, they couldn't touch or go to the visitation of their decesed loved ones, if they were blind or lame they couldn't enter the sanctuary, they couldn't skin their knee's and enter into the presence of the Lord or else they would die. God made these harsh rules because He cared about them, the priest got the closest to God and so they were required to be even more holy, the closer they got the higher chance they would die.
The best news I learned was repeated several times "I am the LORD, who makes them holy". God was making them holy, all it took from them was obedience.
And so as I was praying I became overwhelmed at God's incredible desire to be my friend, my Lord, my Savior. To think this Bible is a huge story about God persuing a relationship with us, a relationship with His creation, His creation which has been broken and this brokeness has created such a gap between God and us that His holiness would kill instantly, but as I turn the pages a story is revealed of a very determined Father who does what it takes to re-write the brokeness, to restore our holiness, so we can one day embrace Him in a life filled hug.
My prayer, in it's simplicity became "make me holy as you are holy", "make me holy", "may I be like you".
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