Leviticus has never been the most fascinating book for me and I’m betting it’s not the favorite of many other Christians either. There’s a lot about sacrifices, rules and regulations, offerings and so on and so forth. Yet, as I continue to read through the Word I know that each book is included for a purpose and I should try to dig deep, even if it is a bit “old school.”
As I was sitting in a hostel in Phnom Penh last night, I started into Leviticus 11. The heading in my Bible reads “Clean and Unclean Food.” Ok, that sounds like it could be fun at least. In one night I found out that the horned owl, the screech owl, the little owl, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl and the stork are all ceremonially unclean. Who knew?! And…get this… “Of the animals that move about on the ground, these are unclean for you: the weasel, the rat (I saw that one coming), any kind of great lizard, the gecko, the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink and the chameleon” (Lev. 11:29-30).
Let me just give a little advice…if your readings of Leviticus seem dry, you should go on the World Race and read them afresh and anew. It will make such a difference! In every country since Eastern Europe we’ve seen little and not so little geckos hanging out on the walls, floors and even ceilings. They’re just like the cute Geico gecko, but they’re tan instead of green. I’ve kind of grown fond of them; it’s too bad that they’re unclean.
I digress. I kept on reading in chapter 13. That one’s a doozy…it talks about infectious skin diseases. “When anyone has an infectious skin disease, he must be brought to the priest” (Lev. 13:9). It goes on to describe how to determine if you’ve got an infectious skin disease. Please know that I read this verse a few hours after I realized there was a scratch across the back of my arm that had become infected. It’s puffy and red and a bit sore to the touch. Yikes! The beginning of chapter 14 explains how to cleanse from these skin diseases. I actually chuckled to myself when I read it: The person to be cleansed must wash his clothes…” (Lev. 14:8). I thought, Bump that. It’s too much effort to wash clothes here!
It continues to get better… Regulations About Mildew – Lev. 13:47-59. When we packed all of our things yesterday morning I tried my best to put all the dirty, sweaty clothes together in plastic bags, covered in lavender dryer sheets and securely closed up in a stuff sack. My exercise clothes hadn’t been washed in days, nor had the outfit that I jumped into the brown water with. When I got to the hostel I threw one shirt away and even that action was long overdue. We washed our clothes in dark yellow water that had bugs and dirt particles floating in it. So what was that about mildew? Haha! I’m telling you, read Leviticus on the Race and it will certainly come alive to you.
Leviticus. Exodus precedes it, so you can guess what I was reading last week. I had a few interesting thoughts that may connect…we’ll see. But hey, you’re already reading this because of the catchy title anyway, so I figure I’ve got your attention.
Exodus 28 and 29 go into great detail about the priestly garments for Aaron and his sons, as well as strict instructions for the consecration of the priests. Ex. 28:2 reads, “Make sacred garments for your brother Aaron, to give him dignity and honor.” While Moses has been on Mt. Sinai receiving these laws and regulations for the people from God Himself, the people grow restless. When he is gone for too long, the people turn away and say to Aaron, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him” (Ex. 32:1).
Aaron seems to agree rather quickly and fashions a calf of gold by his own hands (32:3-4). When Moses confronts him, he’s quick to say, “They gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” (32:24). I thought, Really Aaron? You’re going to give an excuse like that? Lame. I would’ve judged Aaron harshly. And while Moses does grind the calf to powder and make the people drink it, he does not second-guess God’s decree that Aaron be a priest in the Lord’s tabernacle. The priestly garments are made in chapter 39 and by 40:12-13 the Lord commands, “Bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and wash them with water. Then dress Aaron in the sacred garments, anoint him and consecrate him so he may serve me as priest.”
God gave instructions from the top of Mt. Sinai to make Aaron an honored priest while Aaron was at the bottom of Mt. Sinai sculpting a repulsive and idolatrous golden calf. That’s something significant right? The fact that God saw Aaron and chose to use him despite his blatant mistake? Moses himself was a murderer for crying out loud! I don’t want to be that person who regurgitates clichés or old themes, but this is an important one. God uses messed up people. That’s not just an Old Testament idea about David the adulterous murdering king, Gideon the petrified fighter who kept asking for reassurance or King Solomon who gave his heart to follow the gods of his many wives.
God used messed up people for His Kingdom then and I believe he’s still in that business today. I have heard countless testimonies of people who have overcome drug and alcohol addictions to follow after Christ. (Well, Christ pursued them first and led them to change their lives but that’s another story). I know one girl (pretty well actually) who was saved from a very prideful attitude of believing in her own self-righteousness. The Lord knows our pasts; he knows who we are now and who we’ll be tomorrow. He helped me to see with His eyes as I looked at those precious boys at Teen Challenge this past month. I didn’t see them as poor, dirty, street kids who had been addicted to glue. I saw hope. I saw a future with an education and an unshakeable faith.
Don’t ever believe that you must try and change yourself to somehow be more worthy of Christ. For one, He’s seen worse – Paul was the worst of all sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). Secondly, you can’t do it. Even God’s chosen people rebelled and fell away on countless occasions. Look at Israel in Isaiah… “Jerusalem staggers, Judah is falling; their words and deeds are against the Lord, defying his glorious presence. The look on their faces testifies against them; they parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it” (Isa. 3:8-9). These were the people God had called out for His own; they were the ones who were filthy and unclean, lost in their sin. Later the Lord tells them, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it” (Isa. 30:15). Still, he pursues them! “Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!” (Isa. 30:18).
When we really start to chew on and internalize the message found in Romans 5:6-8, we’ll understand how beautiful His grace really is. “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless (not weak, fragile or broken, but incapable, unable, and dead), Christ died for the ungodly (not the self-righteous, perfect, goody-goodies, but the dirty, ceremonially unclean, hopelessly lost sinners). Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. (We’re not even righteous or good, so what chance do we have?) But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still eating ceremonially unclean geckos on a stick, dealing with our infectious skin diseases and making golden cows, Christ died for us. He initiated, he rescued, he saved us. You see all those action verbs there? He took action, we were just passively acted upon. We were rescued, we were saved. He did the rescuing, the saving.
You know, all those crazy laws of Leviticus do have a point….they point to the One who came and by grace, set us free from the Law of sin and death. “The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace might increase all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 5:21-22).
God sees our sin, our filth, the grime that collects in our souls and on our consciences and he is not afraid of our stench. He sees the sin (He can’t excuse it because it is detestable to Him and must be punished), but He also sees what we can be in Christ. He looks past our sin (again, he doesn’t excuse it but forgives freely when we choose to repent and trust Jesus) and sees us as clothed in the righteousness of His son.
I can’t believe all of those thoughts started out with a verse about a gecko, but I’m glad they did. You can never have too many sweet thoughts about the Lord and how He beautifully redeems us.
