Back to Basics

The strangest thing happened to me this week as I was praying and seeking God on the direction to go as we begin to trek into the book of Numbers. I tried to read the first few chapters but nothing clicked and I found myself staring blankly at my bible.  Flipping back through the pages into the book of Leviticus, I began looking to see if I had missed something.

Last week, I began my column with this little self fulfilling prophecy. “Many pastors and teachers skip this book altogether because it is filled with procedures and rituals.” Although this sentence is true of the first sixteen chapters, there is so much more God has to say about the Ten Commandments, morals and human decency. The last eleven chapters of Leviticus describe how to be holy or set apart for God’s use and shed light on why Jesus had to come and literally release us or free us from our bondage to sin.

News reporters exhibit great strength in the area of reporting just the facts and leaving out their opinions. This week I’m going to pull up my bootstraps, and do some reporting on what I’ve been studying:  just the facts as they were written in the book of Leviticus chapters 18 -22.  I’ll be reporting on what God instructed the Israelites on what not to do so that they would not fall back into idolatry through immorality.

Leviticus chapter 19: 1-2 states, “And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.’” God sets the bar high and keeps the Levite’s really busy interceding for the fledgling nation of Israel with a multitude of burnt offerings.  In addition to the Ten Commandments of “Thou shall not…”, God expounds on the laws of sexual morality. Let’s take a closer look at chapter 18:20-23: “Moreover you shall not lie carnally with your neighbor’s wife, to defile yourself with her. And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the LORD. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion.”

So as with any good reporter worth his salt, I’m not going to add or subtract from the text that is recorded in your bibles other than to say that breaking any of the above laws earned the death penalty. Interestingly, God lumps adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality and bestiality in the same group of sins.  It’s sad really; hard to believe that any of these acts could take place in today’s world. But as we pick up our newspapers during any given week, we can’t escape reading about horrible acts of evil perpetrated on the innocent. Some acts are so heinous we gasp for words to describe the hollow, empty feeling that is left behind.

In the Sermon on the Mount contained in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus said “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” Jesus taught the people that were there that day, sitting and listening on that hill, that it’s really a problem with our hearts. Then He went on to say that if anyone has broken the least of these commandments, then they have broken them all. The Law was designed by God to be our schoolmaster to drive us to the mercy seat of grace. It’s not the idea that any one sin is worse than another but that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Because our Heavenly Father is holy, righteous and exists as unapproachable light, we can’t come to Him in our fallen state. We are all sick and in need of a heart transplant where we ask Jesus to become our sacrifice, our ransom, our Lord and our God! None of us can live in a way that is pleasing to God until we first act upon faith and receive the free gift of salvation that God offers all of us through His Son, Jesus Christ.

So what’s so funny about peace, love and understanding? Elvis Costello once asked all of us listening to our FM radios during the 1980’s. Meanwhile, some 1450 years before Christ was born, God chiseled into stone the Ten Commandments, put them into the ark and covered them with a mercy seat. Today, in all our glory we stand here trying to understand why some people are so determined on changing God’s laws. People will interpret, redefine and twist them into something more palatable, pleasing and politically correct while our society spirals back into idolatry, immorality and rebellion of our Creator.