Reading Leviticus

It's time to get down to the nitty gritty of the Bible. Leviticus along with Numbers, and partially Exodus and Deuteronomy are the most difficult books of the Bible to read through, based upon their listing of numbers and laws. Commonly, many will fall away from reading plans, or will be steered away from finishing the Bible because of the struggles of getting through these books.

As I suggested from the tail-end of Exodus, one way to get through these books is to hold onto one main theme, or a key idea that is present throughout the whole book. Sometimes you know what this main theme is going into the book, but other times, something sticks with you as you make your way through the book. The latter is what occurred to me as I spent the past few weeks reading through Leviticus.

As a side note, commonly because these law books are so difficult to read through, we refer to them in a derogatory manner. I feel like we should work on staying away from this trap. Every single book in the Bible has a purpose, one that God has specially chosen. Anything that God has had a hand in, we should automatically revere. Even if it is dry content, it is still the words of our Lord, and these books need to be treated as such.

Anyways, as I was reading through Leviticus, I noticed this key theme; "You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy. I have set you apart from the nations to be my own." This is repeated in one sense or another over and over again. It almost seems that after every chunk of law, God states this.

It got me thinking on a couple of levels. Obviously, the question is why include this statement so often? What's the purpose behind including this in a book of laws?

The amount of laws that God gave the Israelites is overwhelming, even just for the reader. Imagine how it must have been for the people actually living during that time. God definitely knew the weight of what He was demanding from His people. I think He ties in this statement for a few reasons.

When I think about a lot of the laws that we have today, we keep the ones that we understand the purpose behind, whereas the ones we don't understand we break. Using the examples of teens and taking away the extreme cases, the majority of youth today drink alcohol underage because they don't fully understand why they are being restricted from doing so (amongst other reasons). Whereas, the majority of teens won't go out and murder, because they understand why they are told not to.

I think that issue will remain no matter the age, no matter the time in history, no matter the situation. Having all these laws, the Israelites must have looked at them, and asked why they had to obey all these rules. God clearly states why; because you have to be holy like I am holy. The reasons for all these laws are to set apart God's people from the rest of the world. His goal was to have a godly nation modelled after Himself.

What does that then say about God's character? First, that He truly cares about His people. He was doing everything He could to build that relationship between His people and Himself. The purpose of these laws was to create a level with which the people could communicate with God, and live with Him. Secondly, it states just how holy God is. The amount of the laws, the extent of them, and everything that goes with that, such as punishments, shows that God is holier then anything we can even imagine. Because He is so holy, He can't dwell where there is sin. That's why He was trying to help these people become holy. That's why He sent Jesus to die for our sins, and pin them on Himself.

The whole issue that all these laws are dealing with isn't creating a perfect nation, or perfect people, or a better group. God was attempting to let His people have the chance to become set apart for Him, to live with Him in their midst, to have a relationship with the Israelites. When the people failed Him, God was extremely disappointed, but His plan continued on, and He kept offering more and more chances.

This applies to us today as well. We should be striving to be holy, as God is holy. We all remain set apart for Him, even though we may not all be Israelites. We are each set apart for a personal relationship with God, for a personal purpose, for a personal reason. While we know that we can't be holy without God, because Jesus came into the world and sacrificed Himself in order to rip down that divide, and granted us the gift of the Holy Spirit, we now have God in us. With God, we can be holy. But it doesn't just happen. It requires every ounce of human effort, and then the finishing miracle of God's hand.