Leviticus and how God wants you (yes, you) near

This learning curve is steep.

New job, all new terminology, volumes of unfamiliar acronyms and unfamiliar operating systems are a tad overwhelming.

I could chalk it up to a lot of things— age, background, disposition—but it is now a moot point. In the last three weeks I have learned more than I ever thought I would about Georgia motor vehicle laws, chain of custody for a vehicle, weight classifications for truck tractors and straight trucks, millage rates, replacement titles, property taxes and insurance lapses.

When I try to sleep, the DOS based software I am fumbling through flashes behind my closed eyes.

It is as if I am lost in a scene from The Matrix. The screen is blinking with numbers and codes and to someone insightful they mean so much more. There is so much detail and every inch of it has a meaning whether I fully grasp it or not.

It is as if I am in a foreign land and do not speak the language. I just nod and smile and ask for help over and over again. I plow forward hoping that at some point this will suddenly click and what is now foreign will feel familiar and ways I feel I’m failing and a hindrance will transform into some type of success and helpfulness.

When JP began the current series on the Pentateuch, I loved the overviews of Genesis and Exodus and took ravenous notes reminding myself of the beautiful details of so many stories I have known since childhood. They are a reassuring continuum of God showing his faithfulness to an unfaithful people.

As he turned last week to Leviticus, the foreign feeling I have been grappling with at work came flooding in. So many times I have attempted to trudge through the readings of entrails being washed with water, hands placed on an animals as they are killed, the blood thrown on the sides of the altar and the processes for ritual purity.

The feasts, the sacrifices, the blood shed. Burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings and scape goats—Nadab and Abihu consumed by fire for unauthorized fire. It can overwhelm the mind and, not unlike a code you’ve never seen and are trying to learn, seem like it makes no sense.

This moment in history is yet one more beautiful reminder of the God we desire to know, the God who has called us to love. He chose the people. He chose their leader. He answered their cry while laboring under oppression and slavery. He called them to himself time and again while they chose to turn away.

At the beginning of their relationship, God called to Moses from the burning bush. At the beginning of Leviticus, God called to Moses from within the tent, the tabernacle, He had instructed them to build. Once constructed, however, no one was able to go in.

They could not bear to be in His very Presence.

It is the great divide in need of bridging for every person on the planet. How do sinful people draw near a Holy God?

The details required and contained within Leviticus seem so foreign and strange, and at times barbaric. But like JP explained, they truly become the most amazing component of it all. In the middle of the details, there is the one detail that matters. The one that amazes.

This is what it takes to have sinful people draw near.

And this Holy God, He wants them near.

He wants us near to Him.

He wants you near.

Author, Creator, Finisher, Perfector is seeking you. He is seeking a relationship that will change and shape and remake.

Whatever it means to let us into this dwelling place with God, He will prescribe a way.There is a standard, a code, that brings order and ultimately a solution to the sin problem.

If the steps to get there in Leviticus seem monumental and daunting, they are. To approach God, who is like no other in heaven above or the earth below, offers a way to approach, it is no wonder it boggles the mind. It is essential, it is the least that could be done for someone to approach and still survive.

Laws are in place to protect people There are codes that provide order and keep people surviving.

Like a renewal on your car’s registration, however, this type of solution must be repeated. If someone takes ownership of a vehicle, a tax is due. It is the cost of having an ordered society where people can come and go on safe streets and with protection in place.

The sacrifice required to approach, to find relationship is astonishing. It is the cost of a people who continue to choose sin as long as they are bound in earthly flesh. Year after year, day after day, sacrifice and rescue are imperative to continue the relationship.

But much like dreading going to a job day after day with details I don’t yet fully comprehend and certainly have not mastered, the day in and out of offering sacrifices was wearisome. It was a system that was only foreshadowing a more perfect solution. The One Perfect Solution.

Hebrews brings Leviticus into focus through the lens and person of Jesus.

Leviticus was straining to see the glory of what was to come and Hebrews reflects the beauty of what He accomplished. The context unlocks that mysterious code and ritual:

“For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him….

8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ2 had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified."

~Hebrews 9:24-28; 10:8-14

Like the flashing numbers that are so foreign, and the rituals of blood and sacrifice. There is meaning in every detail. The rituals of sacrifice foreshadowed the One Sacrifice that would put it all in place. His One perfect offering brought an end to all others and relationship is granted, established.

Here we find rest in a finished work as we move towards greater understanding.

I will move ahead and trust that The Perfect Sacrifice offered in my place will take my fumbling and failings and use them. There is a purpose and He has already accomplished it.