A Dangerous God

Have you ever thought about being with God as dangerous to your health? It seems to be what God himself is implying in Exodus. God says, "I might destroy you..." That's not exactly the quote we use to bring people into the church.

God had decided to send an angel with the people and not to go with them himself, because he was afraid they would not make it. He had already told Moses he wanted to wipe the Israelites out and start over with him. Why are the people in such danger?

Read Exodus 33:1-6

God wants nothing more than to lead his people to Canaan, but they might not survive the trip. Moses expresses the peoples' desire for God to go with them in 33:13-17, a beautiful passage. And God relents. But he does something else.

He gives them the Levitical code and the sacrifices. How does this help address the dilemma?

What do you think, do we still serve a dangerous God? That depends, right?

Stay holy,

Len

New Post: Where's the Power?

The question that I put out at the end of class last Sunday was a simple one: Where is the power of the sacrifices located?

To flesh that out a little more, where does the power to forgive come from? Does blood, especially animal blood, inherently contain the power to forgive sins and make atonement for guilt? Can blood, all by itself, restore the relationship between humans and God that is broken by our iniquity?

Or does the power lie somewhere else?

Read I Samuel 3:10-15

In speaking to young Samuel, God announces his judgment against the High Priest Eli for the sins of his sons and for his tolerating of their actions. Eli did not hold the office of priest holy and stop his sons from taking advantage of their position and incurring God's wrath.

But pay attention to verse 14 and what God promises about Eli's sacrifices.

What does this tell us about the power of the sacrifices to forgive? Where is the power? And what are the implications of that?

Stay Holy,
Len

Flesh and Bones

Last Sunday morning we had a great discussion about what God is trying to accomplish with the sacrificial system of Leviticus. We said, in the end, that he was attempting to get a message across to his people. Here are some of the pieces of that message that you thought were most important:

• Sin matters and cannot be easily erased, but atoning for it comes with a cost; that cost is a life.
• Obedience to the law is paramount and the sacrifices do not diminish that truth, in fact, they enhance it.
• Submission to the details of the sacrifices shows how submissive a person is to the will of God; it is not wise to think we have a better way.
• Death and Life are the stakes being laid out in this system. It is foolish not to take God's law and sacrifices seriously.
• Inclusivity is found throughout the system. In one sense because there are exceptions made so even the very poor can participate, but in another because no one is exempt from the sacrificial system and given a pass.

We will continue this discussion on the 24th, putting these themes and messages into some kind of semblance so we can get our hands around them. We will also open up the Old Testament and look at what other passages say about these sacrifices.

Let me offer an anology to help us understand the Levitical code and sacrificial system. Perhaps the Law is like a human skeleton. It is a crucial part of the body, providing framework and solidity. But unless that skeleton is fleshed out with sinew, muscle, organs, blood, and skin it is just a skeleton, devoid of life, rigid and useless. What the Israelites were asked to do was flesh out the Law through every day obedience. The kings, priests, judges, and prophets helped to add substance to the bones.

Does this analogy help put the Law in its proper perspective? Where is the analogy strong? Where does it fall short? Do you have another analogy or image to offer?

I'll offer up another post with the question I posed at the end of class later this week.

Stay Holy,
Len

Heading Home Holy

Yesterday morning I was so excited after our exercise in class. I was nervous about how it would go when I asked everyone to imagine themselves in the midst of the tabernacle as the sacrifices were being offered up. We don't flex our imagination muscles as adults very often, which is a shame.

I asked what you saw - blood, animals, fire, lines of people
I asked what you heard - murmured talking, crackling of flames, animal noises (possibly in fear)
I asked what you smelt - blood, barbecue, smoke, animal feces
I asked what you might feel - fur, blood, the warmth of the live animal
I asked what you felt emotionally - sorrow, relief, peace, anxiety

Together our imaginations painted this complex tableau of what these sacrifices looked, felt, and even smelt like. We didn't try to analyze the passages or unpack the theology, we simply placed ourselves in the midst of the bloody scene and looked around. I believe that to be an incredibly important step in understanding their meaning, one that most Christians never take.

Now let me ask you this question: What would you be thinking and feeling as you headed home after offering a sin or guilt offering to the Lord?

Let's say you knew of sin in your life and you went to offer an unblemished goat from your flock for your forgiveness. Now you are walking home, having placed your hand on that animal and watched as its lifeblood flowed out for your guilt. You are now forgiven, but how do you feel? What is going through your mind? What do you tell your family when you return home?

Please post your comments/replies or email me and I will post them: chapsdriskell@gmail.com

Stay Holy,
Len

Some Guidelines

I would like to offer a few guidelines for our continuing discussion on Leviticus. As Keith Cuttrell helped us begin to do last Sunday, some of these guidelines address our hang-ups or default modes of interpretation. These hang-ups will hamper our complete understanding of what we are reading (this is especially true of Old Testament texts) and keep us from realizing any truth that does not already fit into our view of the Mosaic Law.

1. We must begin by attempting to understand the Levitical Code as it was when it was handed down by God. In other words, we need to try and get in the mindset of the Hebrews at Mount Sinai when they first received the law and as they tried to carry it out in the following generations.

Obviously, the Hebrew nation interpreted and reinterpreted the law many times trying to live it out in their ever-changing milieu. Their history (as read in the Old Testament) is full of clues as to how they interpreted God's laws. It is also obvious that it is extremely difficult for each of us to think like an ancient Hebrew person. But that does not take us off the hook for trying to do so. Taking us to guideline number two...

2. We should not view the Levitical Code solely or even mostly through the lens of the New Testament. For example, by the time Jesus was born there was a strong movement among the Jews to bring more importance to observance of the law, something many saw lacking in the people. We read how Jesus was constantly dealing with the poisonous legalism of the Pharisees and others. So it would be easy to conclude that legalism was a problem for the Israelites.

A quick glance through the prophets of the Old Testament, however, shows us that legalism was not a problem throughout most of the history of the Hebrews. They actually had a difficult time following the most basic laws of the Ten Commandments, especially the whole you will have no other gods before me part. If we allow our New Testament understanding of the law to overshadow our studies we will have many of these kinds of misunderstandings.

3. It is important to recognize the tendency in many of our churches (churches of Christ) to lean towards a legalistic theology. Some of us grew up in a church where 'being right' trumped everything else and nowhere was this more prominently displayed than in worship. Conducting worship correctly was all that really mattered.

Because of this history, some of us have an aversion to studying law at all. We want grace and truth, not law. We wonder how God could have ever put so many, seemingly meticulous, laws on his people and then linked obedience to the law with righteousness and holiness. This can scare us, anger us, and even hurt us, depending on how legalistic our past churches have been.

Not all of you have this in your past and will not understand completely what I am talking about. That is great! I am glad you do not have the often painful memories that legalistic Christian leaders/teachers have given the rest of us.

For those of us with these memories...should the fact that someone in our past misused, or misunderstood, the word of God keep us from studying that word and exposing that misuse? Of course not. We should reexamine the law and expose the ways in which it has been abused so that we might have a fuller understanding of how God relates to his people, then and now.

4. The first three guidelines having been said, we should come to an understanding of what the Levitical Code means to us today as Christians. There is little point studying Leviticus if we do not answer some important questions about how we relate to it.

Does the old law matter at all to us?

Why do we still follow some laws, but not all?

What does it mean for us to be a priesthood today?

Why would God set up this code of living only to do away with so much of it through Christ?

How does Christ's sacrifice on the cross relate to the sacrifices of the old law?

These are just a few of the many questions that are important to us. Will we answer all of these in our three months of study? No. Actually, more than anything I am hoping to leave you with many more questions than you had when we began. That way hopefully you will continue your study and never stop learning.

In some of our classes I will force us to stay in the text of Leviticus and discuss only it. Once we have done that, then we can move on to what the New Testament says about our text and what it should mean to us today.

5. No question or comment is too pushy, controversial, or stupid. We are a community of love and our assumption is that everything we say is in a spirit of love. Therefore our classes are a safe place to question and comment as we see fit. Sometimes I will say things that are meant to be thought-provoking, though I may not even believe them, just to push us to a new place. I believe we learn more when we are exploring the unfamiliar than when we are merely re-hashing the familiar.

Sometimes I will do what I call 'pushing back' on your comments and questions, but it is only to force you to defend what you say or develop the thought more fully. It is never to argue or put anyone down.

These are the guidelines I feel are most important. I could write many more, but these are the basics and give us somewhere to start, and from which to possibly deviate.

What am I missing? What did I get wrong? What would you add or change?

This is supposed to be a forum for you to express your thoughts.



Stay Holy,

Len