Journal Through the Bible: Week 19 Thursday

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Leviticus chapter 19

What did holy living look like? It looked pretty much like Jesus affirmed it to be in the gospels. First, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And second, because you do love God, love your neighbor as yourself.  Until God spelled it out in minute detail no one had any idea how to go about it. Even when we do have the minute details we are incapable of doing them! Sin still distorts our ability to perfectly follow God's description of holy living.

Included in God's plan for holy living and loving the neighbors was a welfare system that allowed anyone who needed food to gather it out of designated areas in nearby fields or vineyards. What a great idea! God designed the original Food Bank! If landowners left some of the harvest out in the field, orchards, and vineyards for the poor and the poor would gather it for themselves, all would be adequately fed from God's sufficient bounty.

Does God make any promises in this chapter?

• Those that followed God's guidelines would be considered holy. (No human could follow them perfectly, however, except the God/Man Jesus Christ. And that was the point God was making.)
• Those who ate the peace offering sacrifice on the third day would bear their iniquity because the hallowed sacrifice would be profaned. (In other words, God promised there would be no peace!)

Are there any references to Jesus?

• As previously mentioned, Jesus was holy and exhibited actions that demonstrated all of the criterion necessary to be declared holy.
• The peace-offering sacrifice was not to be eaten on the third day but was to be burned. As stated in previous posts, Jesus was the peace offering and He arose on the third day. Any death sacrifice that portrayed the Messiah could not be used longer than the length of time Jesus spent in the tomb! (Plus, there is that problem of corruption, or decay. Jesus' body was not allowed to suffer corruption.)

Are there any references to future events?

• These standards of righteousness will be the law when Christ reigns on the earth in the Millennium. Most of them will no longer apply on the New Earth since no one could be poor and there definitely are not going to be any physical defects like blindness. But those that deal with getting along well with neighbors and honoring God completely will be standard behavior. (We really have no idea what it is like to even have thoughts cross our minds, let alone how to interact with our God and our neighbors, apart from the sin nature that permeates our being! It makes it difficult for us to picture eternity unhindered by sin!)

Does God issue any commands?

• First and foremost God commands the people to be holy because their God is holy. A list then is given of what the actions would be that indicate holiness: respect of parents, keeping the sabbaths, not worshiping idols, making free-will peace offering to God
• The corners of the fields should be left for the poor to reap and that some of the grapes in the vineyard be left for the poor to gather. This work-fare system was God's way of providing welfare for the poor.
• God commanded honesty in all dealings including not stealing, not lying, not defrauding, not withholding pay to a hired laborer, and not falsely swearing using God's name as a witness.
• No one was to make the deaf or blind the target of practical jokes.
• God commanded honest judgment untainted by bribery.
• Gossip was not allowed!
• Hatred and retaliation were forbidden.
• Animals were to be kept purebred and not hybridized.
• Seed for planting was not to be hybridized.
• Fabric was not to be of mixed yarn, specifically linen and wool.
• A man that seduced a bondwoman had to offer a trespass offering and the woman was scourged.
• The fruit of newly planted fruit trees was not allowed to be eaten at all for three years, the fruit of the fourth year was to be offered to the LORD, but the fruit from the fifth year onward was allowed to be eaten.
• Witchcraft and astrology were forbidden.
• Disfiguring marks on the head, cutting oneself in grief, and tattoos were forbidden.
• Their children were not to be sold into prostitution.
• The elderly were to be honored and respected.
• Strangers were to be allowed to live safely and treated hospitably. 
• Scales and measures were to be honest.