We read the book of Leviticus in 2 ½ days. Every. Word. Our pastor jokes that you can find coffee in Leviticus. "Look for yourself," he says. This because NO ONE wants to randomly read Leviticus, therefore, you wouldn’t know if coffee was in there or not. I’m here to tell you, no coffee in Leviticus. Sorry. However, I had a revelation in Leviticus that blew me away!
Leviticus isn’t about rules, and some ridiculous and boring at that. At least in my mind. Leviticus is about COVENANT. It’s beautiful. It’s about God making a covenant with His people. And, in doing this, in making covenant with them, in promising them good, land, provision, milk and honey, He is giving them a structure to protect that LOVE He has for them, with them. It’s all there and I realized it in Chapter 20 when God says to the Isrealites, His people, His love, in verse 23 –
“You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did ALL these things, I abhorred them. 24- But I said to you, “You will possess their land; I will give it to you as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.” I am the Lord you God, WHO HAS SET YOU APART from the nations ... 26- You are to be holy TO me because I, the Lord, am holy, and have SET YOU APART from the nations TO BE MY OWN."
There it is. Love. He has set us apart. Those rules and regulations weren’t written in Leviticus because the Isrealites were living this way, they were a warning of how the people of the land they were headed to were living and how that was not honoring to the Lord. God was warning His people. The ones He called to be His own, to live differently. Because He knew, and knows, we are a stiff-necked people and that we chase after false Gods and follow the ways of the world and He wanted us to be forwarned that we might love Him and Him only. God is so good.
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