Year 4, Day 120: Numbers 5

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Forgiveness

• Forgiveness: Obviously, forgiveness is when our sins are absolved by God.  We do not deserve this forgiveness, but God grants it to us anyway.  We cannot earn forgiveness, but God gives it to us anyway.  As we are forgiven by God, He also asks us to forgive others.  In fact, Jesus Himself teaches us to pray for our forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer when He says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

As we open Numbers 5, we hear about the punishment for the unclean as well as some words on restitution.  The unclean are to be put out of the camp – at least until they are no longer unclean.  Proper restitution is to be accomplished.  In both cases we hear the lesson that God desires that those people who are to be in His midst are clean from their sinfulness.

Of course, in Christ we are made clean.  We are washed in the blood.  We know complete and utter forgiveness through Christ.  We should not forget this point.  The Hebrew people of Numbers certainly couldn’t have known this, but we in our day most certainly do.

Knowing that we are made clean in Christ, it is also valuable for us to remember that God desires us to be clean from our sins.  He doesn’t want us to take our cleanliness for granted, He desires that we genuinely repent and seek after spiritual cleanliness.  He knows that we cannot be perfect, but He desires that we still take the process of repentance and forgiveness seriously.  Our forgiveness is no cause for cheap grace.  Rather, our forgiveness is costly.  Restoration is costly.  Forgiveness is something to be valued.

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Year 4, Day 119: Numbers 4

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: D3, D4, Discipleship Square

• D3 is the moment in life where a person is consciously competent about what they are able to do as a disciple of Jesus Christ.  They are maturing, able to do ministry and disciple others, but it is still a conscious effort.  This is the time when a disciple’s skills are often honed deeply.
• D4 is the moment in life where a person is unconsciously competent about what they can do as a disciple of Christ.  They are mature.  Often they disciple others and perform ministry without having to think about it.  They do it simply out of their spiritual maturity and their closeness with God.

Looking at Numbers 4 allows us to see the importance for maturity.  Notice that in all other censuses that the age of counting is 20 and older.  But when the Levites are counted, the required age is 30.  When it comes to dealing with the work of God and moving His earthly dwelling place, God wants mature people to do the task.  He wants people who are spiritually mature enough to know their place, execute what needs to be done, not do anything that shouldn’t be done, and lead with maturity.  God wants people who are mature enough to be willing to listen to His orders and then act upon them appropriately.

What God wants are people who are competent.  He doesn’t mind people growing into competency.  But there are certain tasks in the faith that are so important that the competent should do them.

We can see this in the New Testament as well.  Before Jesus leaves His disciples, He leads them into maturity.  Before Paul goes out into mission, Barnabas mentors him into maturity.  Paul likewise mentors Timothy, Luke, Titus, and a host of other characters.  We are to be a people who look forward to developing God’s servants into mature followers who are capable of listening and then doing what God asks of them.

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Year 4, Day 118: Numbers 2-3

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

What a great set of readings to ask who is at the center of our own lives!  Here in these chapters we are confronted with the Hebrew people forming camp around the tabernacle.  God is literally at the center of their life.  We hear about the Levites camping around the tabernacle in order to draw even more attention to God being the center of our life.  God makes His point clear.  Life starts with God.  He is the center of life, identity, and authority.

This is a great day to ask if that has remained true throughout the millennia that followed.  Is it true today?  Is it true in my life?  Is it true in your life?  Is God at the center of your life?

When God is the center of life, life takes a certain shape.  Life looks and feels like God.  When God is at the center of life, He is present and visible.  As we look back at the book of Numbers, we see evidence of God’s presence in the life of Moses, Aaron, Aaron’s offspring, the Levites, Joshua, and Caleb.  Life starts with God.  True life flows from God.

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Year 4, Day 117: Numbers 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Identity

• Identity: Our true identity comes from the Father.  Only when our identity comes from God can we be obedient in ways that satisfy our person to our core.

Yes, this is another day in which we can talk about identity.  There are two great reasons for this.  Notice that God knows all of His people well enough to tell Moses whom he should use to conduct the census.  Yes, God knows His million-plus nation intimately enough to pick out assistants who can help Moses.   So God knows His people pretty well.  In fact, one might think that God knows His people better than they know themselves.  If that’s true, why shouldn’t we get our identity from Him instead of ourselves?

At the end of this chapter we also hear quite clearly that the Levites are excluded from the census that God commands Moses to do.  God separates His priests out even further!  That is a huge comment on identity.  To be a priest of God – remember that all Christians belong to the priesthood of all believers – means that we are separate.  We are called for God’s purposes in life.  Our identity is not found in the world, it is found in God.  In truth, if we get our identity from the world are we truly His priests?  Are we truly holy and separate if our identity comes from the world?

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Year 4, Day 116: Leviticus 27

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

As we end the book of Leviticus, it is a great place to be reminded of our true relationship with God.  Is He the source of our identity?  Is He the source of our values?  Is He the source of our authority?  Is His passion driving our passion?

Here at the end of Leviticus we see God placing value upon people.  In my theological commentary from three years ago I speak about the difference between reading these words in an eternal spiritual context versus reading them in the context of worldly pursuits and worldly economics.  But with that point aside, the one thing that we hear quite clearly is that the things that are dedicated to the Lord are more costly to redeem than the things of the world.  If you dedicate a sheep to God and then want to buy it back from God so you could do with it what you wanted, you would pay one fifth again plus the price of the sheep.

Is that really how we perceive our spiritual life?  Is my time with God the most valuable time in my day?  Is my time in worship more costly to redeem than my time of vacation or even my time of work?  Is Sunday church something to cross off my to-do list so I can get on with the day or is it a time to be valued and prized?  When God is truly in our focal point of worship, His things and His ways dominate our life.

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Year 4, Day 115: Leviticus 26

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Identity

• Identity: Our true identity comes from the Father.  Only when our identity comes from God can we be obedient in ways that satisfy our person to our core.

Anytime we hit one of these “choose righteousness or choose the consequences” passages it is a great time to talk about identity.  After all, we have the ability to choose what is best for us or choose to follow our own ways.  At the heart of that issue is our identity.  Do I want what God wants for me or do I want what I think is best?

Of course, all identity questions eventually lead into obedience.  It is one thing to know what is best; it is another thing to actually do it.  But before we can get to obedience we must take the time to first go through identity.  Before we can obey God we have to take the time and discern God’s will for my life.  We have to take the time and discern how God desires me to live.

I think this is a huge point for most of the 1^st World to consider.  So much of our lives are spent deciding what I want.  Who do I want to live with?  Who do I want to marry?  Where do I want to go on vacation?  What job do I want to do?  What things do I want to buy?  What hobbies do I want to consume my free time?  It is important for us to remember to go to God for identity and not myself.  As the opening verses of this chapter promise, when we do that, things will go well for us.

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Year 4, Day 114: Leviticus 25

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Rhythm, Semi-Circle

• Rhythm: We are designed to work from rest, not rest from work.  God has created us to be a people of rhythm in which we rest (abide), grow, work (bear fruit), and prune.  The better we understand this natural rhythm in life, the more satisfied we will feel in life and the more we will be able to be in tune with succeeding in what God desires our life to be about.

Leviticus 25 is one of my favorite chapters when it comes to thinking about the semi-circle and rhythms in life.  Here we have what I believe is the grand-daddy of all explanations for needing rhythm.  We need rhythm because we live best when we understand that everything truly belongs to God and we are merely stewards of what He has given to us.

You see, we as human beings like to long for possession.  We like to own things.  We like to believe that things we purchase are ours forever.  Life becomes a grand collection of stuff.  Rather than focusing on relationships and spirituality our life becomes the pursuit of things and places.  We strive to own our way into stability – and by stability I mean keeping things just the way we like them so that we don’t need to change, work, or be under any agenda but our own.  That leads us to self-centered living.

In this chapter we hear about Sabbaths.  Each week is to have a Sabbath.  Every seven years is to have a Sabbath year.  Every fifty years is to have a special additional Jubilee.  All of this reminds us that the things that we work for are not ours.  This whole world belongs to God, and He is responsible for giving to each of us.  What should be important to us is our relationships, our freedom, and our spirituality.  These are things that are given to us by God.  These are things that cannot be taken away.  These are things that remain while the world is passing away.

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Year 4, Day 113: Leviticus 24

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Character, Discipleship Square

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

Leviticus 24 is all about raising the bar of life up to God’s expectations.  In this chapter we hear about not blaspheming against God.  We learn about setting high expectations for those who dwell in our midst.  What we are talking about here is lifting people up rather than compromising ourselves down.

This really hits home when it comes to discipleship.  What is discipleship about – teaching others to imitate godly patterns or asking the godly to lower their standards to accept the world’s standards?  Obviously discipleship is about teaching other people to imitate godly patterns!

In this chapter, we really feel the discipleship challenge with respect to godly living.  Yes, we don’t live in a culture that stones people and we certainly live in a faith that believes in forgiveness.  But this chapter is about raising expectations.  This chapter is about discipling people into strong godly lives.  This chapter is about developing character that is worth imitating.

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Year 4, Day 112: Leviticus 23

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Rhythm, Work, Rest

• Rhythm: We are designed to work from rest, not rest from work.  God has created us to be a people of rhythm in which we rest (abide), grow, work (bear fruit), and prune.  The better we understand this natural rhythm in life, the more satisfied we will feel in life and the more we will be able to be in tune with succeeding in what God desires our life to be about.

At first glance, Leviticus 23 seems to be about special religious holidays.  This is absolutely correct.  God does want the Hebrew people to remember significant days throughout the year.  He wants them to remember Passover – when they were brought out of Egypt.  He wants them to remember Pentecost – when the first fruit of the harvest should just be coming in.  He wants them to remember the Day of Atonement, when the whole community makes atonement for their sinfulness.  He wants them to remember the feast of Tabernacles as a remembrance of the time spent in the wilderness – especially since it occurred as the last of the harvest would be brought in from their fields.

However, on a more deep level we can see that this passage is about rhythm.  In this chapter we hear about the Hebrew yearly rhythm.  But we also hear about a daily rhythm as well.  Ordinary work can be done for six days of the week, unless there is a special Sabbath or festival.  But on the seventh day, there is not supposed to be any kind of ordinary work.  Here we can hear of another rhythm: God’s work verses the world’s work.

God knows that there is work in the world that needs to get done.  God knows that there needs to be time dedicated to working.  But He also knows that we need to rest from the work of this world and work at the work He has called us to do as well.  In order to be healthy, we need to establish healthy rhythms that allow for us to accomplish work but then rest from the work of the world while we grow closer to God.

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Year 4, Day 111: Leviticus 22

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Provision

• Provision: God gives us what we truly need.  God knows our needs better than we can know them.  We learn to trust God to provide for us.

It wouldn’t seem right to get through Leviticus without even once talking about provision.  After all, this sacrificial system had two purposes.  The first purpose is to give sacrificially to God for the sake of atonement and fellowship.  But the second purpose was so that the priests who were serving the Lord would have access to meat and grains since they couldn’t be out in the world producing it themselves.  At some level, Leviticus is always about provision.

The neat thing about this idea is that it truly does show us God’s provision.  God does know what we need before we know we need it.  Therefore, we don’t need to worry about our needs.  Rather, if we focus on God’s desire and accomplishing His ways, God will take care of our needs.  When our perspective is truly on God, we find that God has truly already given us all that we need.

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Year 4, Day 110: Leviticus 21

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Identity

• Identity: Our true identity comes from the Father.  Only when our identity comes from God can we be obedient in ways that satisfy our person to our core.

In this chapter we come across the question of what moves us in life.  What are the things that we value?  Where do we derive our value in life?  Are we holy unto God or are we seeking our own agenda?  Do we desire what the people of the world around us desire or do we take our agenda from the Lord?

We who follow Jesus are always in this situation.  Any one of us can find ourselves tempted by the world.  Any one of us can find ourselves living in such a way as to feed our own passions rather than in submission to God.  It’s so easy to fall into the trap of the world’s seduction.

Where does our identity as priests of the living God come from?  Are we truly about His will?  Do we make ourselves unclean without any thought?  Does our identity come from the Father so that we can pursue and be obedient to His will?

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Year 4, Day 109: Leviticus 20

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Obedience

• Obedience: Genuine and satisfying obedience comes out of our identity.  Our true identity comes only from Father.

In this chapter sit would be easy to talk about either identity or obedience.  Obviously our identity should come from a holy God.  We are called to imitate His holiness as we gain our identity from Him.

But for me, the real question is whether we will actually do it.  That’s where the rubber meets the road in my book.  Are we going to keep His statutes?  Or are we going to keep them when they are convenient?  Or are we going to keep them when they make sense to us?  Or are we going to keep them when we aren’t likely to get mocked by the world?

It is difficult to get our identity from the Lord.  It is even more difficult to be obedient to that identity.  Obedience is hard enough because none of us likes to serve someone else.  But when we add to it that the world will not understand our obedience it becomes even more difficult.  We are called to be a holy people.  It is time that we begin to live like it.

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Year 4, Day 108: Leviticus 19

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

Up is an interesting concept through which to view Leviticus 19.  Most of Leviticus 19 appears at first blush to be about us and how we interact with others and the creation around us.  We don’t glean our fields to the edges.  We don’t pick fruit from trees that are less than three years old.  We don’t engage in the practices of sex with people who are not for us.  In general, we are to watch out for the people around us.  From a discipleship perspective, that sounds like a healthy mixture of In and Out.

So what am I doing talking about Up in a post about community?  Leviticus 19 starts off with a reminder that God is holy.  Holy is a word that means “separate” or “different.”  God’s holiness is the beginning of godly community.  If we want to be godly, we must start with God.  If we want to have godly community (In and Out) then we must start with Up.  Living in a manner different than the world expects assumes that we will look to a different (holy) model for living.  It all begins with God’s holiness and our desire to pause, reflect upon, and then imitate His holiness.  Godly living flows from God and it starts with our desire to look towards Him.

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Year 4, Day 107: Leviticus 18

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Identity

• Identity: Our true identity comes from the Father.  Only when our identity comes from God can we be obedient in ways that satisfy our person to our core.

I speak an awful lot about identity on this blog.  Or, at least I have in my first four months of the newer format.  But I think it is a topic that human beings living in the 1^st World can stand to look at frequently.  I sure know that I can!

Anyway, I think it is especially valuable to look at identity in the midst of a chapter on human sexuality.  Where does our identity come from?  Do we act upon the desires of God, the desires of the people around us, or the desires of our inner flesh?  Is my identity based on who I think I am, who God has made me out to be, or my sexual conquests in life?  The question, “Who am I?” is quite a valid question to ask when speaking and thinking about sexuality.

God makes it pretty clear in His word.  All sexual acts make one ritually unclean.  Sexual acts outside of marriage make one sinful.  A man having sex with anyone other than his wife is not acting according to God’s desire.  A woman having sex with anyone other than her husband is not acting according to God’s desire.  His identity for us is very clear.  If our identity comes from Him, we have sex with our spouse.  If our identity comes from Him, sex with our spouse is the only sex that brings true fulfillment in our life.  We have no need to be like the world when our identity comes from Him.

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Year 4, Day 106: Leviticus 17

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Character, Forgiveness

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.
• Forgiveness: Obviously, forgiveness is when our sins are absolved by God.  We do not deserve this forgiveness, but God grants it to us anyway.  We cannot earn forgiveness, but God gives it to us anyway.  As we are forgiven by God, He also asks us to forgive others.  In fact, Jesus Himself teaches us to pray for our forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer when He says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Our character should reflect the character of God.  We are created in His image.  He has created us with an identity that comes from Him.

So what is the character of God?  Yesterday we saw that God is a God of forgiveness and atonement.  He is a God interested in relationship and He knows that to be in a relationship with human beings implies that He will have to deal with our sinfulness.  He has.  Through Christ, He dealt with sinfulness in a very profound manner.

In this chapter we learn that God is a jealous God.  He doesn’t want us worshipping other gods.  He doesn’t want us relating to other gods.  He wants forgiveness to begin and end with Him.  He wants fellowship to begin and end with Him.  He wants community to begin and end with Him.  With God, we need nothing in this world that does not come from Him.

Today as I read this chapter I find myself again being thankful for the forgiveness that comes through Him.  I find myself not wanting to take that for granted.  I find myself being grateful for having the character of God upon which I can rely as a model and goal.  I find myself pondering how I can make my character match the character of this jealous and loving God who wants to be a part of every dimension of my life.

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Year 4, Day 105: Leviticus 16

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up, Father, King

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.
• Father: This is the pinnacle of the Covenant Triangle.  God is the Father.  He is the creator.  He is love.  Our relationship with the Father is rooted in His love for us.  We get our identity through Him.  When the Father is in our life, obedience becomes clear.
• King: This is the pinnacle of the Kingdom Triangle.  When we look towards God’s position in the universe, we acknowledge that He is an omnipotent king.  Authority comes from Him.  Power comes through His authority.  He is looking for representatives for His kingdom.

With all this talk about scapegoats and sacrifices for the Day of Atonement, it is hard not to have an upward focus.  God did not need to forgive us.  He did not need to love us.  He did not need to atone for our sins.  He could have abandoned us to our sinful ways.  But He did not.  He does not.  He will not.  He is God and He desires relationship with us.  Why shouldn’t we worship Him for all that He has done yet needed not do?

This is what it means to be the Father.  He created us in His image.  He desires that we should be like Him.  When we turn away into our sinfulness, He calls us out of our sinfulness and back into a relationship with Him.  When we turn to our sinful nature, the Father desires for us to repent so that our sins can be atoned and we can return to living out of the identity that He created us to have.  He loves us enough to call us beyond our sinful nature.

This is also what it means to be King.  God is powerful enough to let us destroy ourselves in our sinful self-centeredness.  He could wash His hands and be done with us.  But that is not His desire, either.  He desires to break into our life and empower us for something greater than our own desires.  He desires to give us the authority to impact the world around us for His ways.  He could abandon us; but rather He breaks into our world, takes away our sinfulness, and empowers us to go and do His will.  That is what atonement is all about.

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Year 4: Day 104: Leviticus 15

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

In Leviticus 15 we have a great opportunity to get in touch with our creator.  I know what you’re thinking.  How can we go from bodily discharges, semen, and menstruation to the creator?  Actually, the leap isn’t all that hard.

I believe that the closest we can come to seeing through the eyes of a creator is in our sexual nature.  When man comes together with woman and new life is formed, it can feel very much like creation.  However, it is not the man and woman who are creating life; God is creating that new life.  God is acting through two people to bring new life into view.

The question that we have to ask ourselves in that moment is how we relate to God.  Do we in that moment act as though God is the source of our identity or do we think of only our own needs and desires?  Do we see ourselves in those moments as the masters of our own destiny and the creator of life or do we still see ourselves as God’s servants knowing that He is in full control?

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Year 4, Day 103: Leviticus 14

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

I’m going to go with a little artistic license today and fudge a bit with the discipleship conversation.  Three years ago I came across a very profound thought.  You can read up on it in the theological commentary by following the link above.  But essentially I found a helpful analogy comparing the two birds to Christ and us.

In the sacrifices for declaring a leper clean, one bird is killed.  The other bird is dipped in the blood and then set free into the world.  The same is true with us.  Christ came and died for us.  We are dipped in His blood and set free into the world.  The highly infectious nature of our sin is put behind us.

If that isn’t a reason to have an Up moment, I’m not sure what is.  God declares us clean when we don’t deserve it.  God sent us His Son when we didn’t deserve it.  God allows us to go free into the world when we have every reason to fall under His condemnation.  We are free from the spiritual leprosy that naturally inhibits our hearts.  What a mighty God we serve!

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Year 4, Day 102: Leviticus 13

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: In

• In: This is the word we use to express our relationships with our spiritual family.  These are often the people who hold us spiritually accountable.  They are the ones to whom we typically go for discussion and discernment.  These are the ones with whom we learn to share leadership.  They are the ones with whom we become family on mission.

Leviticus 13 is a neat chapter through which we can view the concept of In.  On one level, In is all about verification and discernment.  This chapter is all about discerning leprous skin conditions.  Being branded a leper was serious business.  You needed to have trust in the diagnostician when dealing with something like a leprous skin disease.  The communal isolation that would occur required having an In that you knew was looking out for your best interest and would be there for you regardless of the verdict.

However, there is another level of In through which we can look.  In is a means of protection.  In can help protect us from our own bad ideas.  It even protects us from our own good ideas that prevent us from following great ideas.  But In also protects the community from our bad ideas as well.  What we see happening in Leviticus 13 is that the priests are serving to protect the community as well as the individual.  Without a proper In, both the community and the individual suffers.

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Year 4, Day 101: Leviticus 12

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Obedience

• Obedience: Genuine and satisfying obedience comes out of our identity.  Our true identity comes only from Father.

This is a fairly difficult chapter to look at with respect to discipleship.  The scope of this passage is particularly narrow: the sacrificial law surrounding the uncleanliness of women at childbirth.  Perhaps you find yourself asking the same question that I found myself asking today.  What on earth does this have to do with discipleship?

In the end, I found myself coming back to obedience.  Think about this for just a second.  God created us and told humanity to take dominion over the earth.  He commanded us to be fruitful and multiply.  Procreating is a part of God’s plan.  While I’m sure some children are born purely out of passion and not necessarily love (rape, lust, sex outside of marriage, etc) I’m also sure that a good number of children are born through love as God intends (within the confines of two parents who love one another).  Having a child does not necessarily imply that sin has occurred.

Yet, God still demanded a sacrifice.  That’s where the obedience comes into play.  It is one thing to know we did something wrong and have our conscience and the Holy Spirit tell us that we need to repent in order to move beyond.  But it is another thing to obediently offer up a sacrifice to God simply because He asks of it and no sin has occurred.  Here in Leviticus 12 we see that obedience is about doing the prescribed thing of God simply because He tells us to do it.

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Year 4: Day 100: Leviticus 11

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Out

• Out: This is the focus of our mission.  These are the people to whom God has called us to go.  These are the people into whom we are focused on attempting to speak God’s truth.

Leviticus 11 reminds us about holiness.  The word holy means separate.  In Leviticus, we see that the kosher laws listed here help the Hebrew people understand that they are different from the world.  Being in a relationship with God is unique and special.

However, we also recognize that this is a part of the Law that Christians no longer are required to uphold.  Acts 10 tells us that God has made all things clean through Christ.  Through Christ, we are called to go into the Gentiles, not separate ourselves from them!  Therefore, in this chapter we actually see that we have a reminder to Christians about Out.  We learn from Leviticus 11 that our relationship with God does make us unique.  But rather than isolate ourselves from the world in our uniqueness, we are instead to go into the world and call others into a relationship with God as well.

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Year 4, Day 99: Leviticus 10

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Father

• Father: This is the pinnacle of the Covenant Triangle.  God is the Father.  He is the creator.  He is love.  Our relationship with the Father is rooted in His love for us.  We get our identity through Him.  When the Father is in our life, obedience becomes clear.

In the theological commentary from three years ago, I commented that this chapter is incredibly high challenge in its message.  The call is to elevate common life into the holy rather than let the holy slip into the common.  What we’re really talking about here is the Father.  Is my identity rooted in the holiness of the Father?  Is it the Father to which my life rises?  Or does something else occupy the Up position?

It is easy to set a low bar when it comes to life.  It is easy to allow the common to infiltrate the holy until nothing is holy anymore.  But the Father does not call us to be common.  The Father calls us to take the common and elevate it into holiness.  We need not abandon the common.  We need to recognize how God has taken the common and made it holy.  In this sense, I am reminded of the conversation Jesus has with Peter on top of Cornelius’ house in Acts 10.

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Year 4, Day 98: Leviticus 9

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Obedience

• Obedience: Genuine and satisfying obedience comes out of our identity.  Our true identity comes only from Father.

Here we have another good day in which we can talk about obedience.  Again we see Moses, Aaron, and his sons acting obediently out of God’s calling for your life.  They offer up the proper sacrifices.  Aaron blesses the gathered congregation.  Everyone sees the glory of the Lord.

This leaves me pondering an interesting point.  When we live in obedience, we see the glory of the Lord.  When we get our identity from the Father and live obediently to the Father, why wouldn’t we see His glory?  Sure, we may not see a physical manifestation.  But we will see His glory.  Lives will be changed.  Our own life will be changed.  Our obedience leads us into God’s glory and the change that it brings in our life.

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Year 4, Day 97: Leviticus 8

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Obedience

• Obedience: Genuine and satisfying obedience comes out of our identity.  Our true identity comes only from Father.

This is a great chapter in which we can take a good hard look at the concept of obedience.  Of course, we understand that this chapter is the fulfillment to the commands given to Moses in Exodus.  God gave Moses the Law and told him to give it to the people; Moses did.  God gave Moses the instructions for the building of the tabernacle; Moses oversaw its construction.  God gave Moses the ritual for consecrating the priestly line of Aaron; here we see that Moses once more obeyed.  God gives Moses his identity.  Moses lives out of that very identity.

However, we can see this concept of obedience in another place in this passage.  Moses places blood on the ear, the thumb, and the toe of the soon-to-be priests.  I like to think that there is an order to this.  Blood is placed upon the ear to indicate that we are to listen to God first.  Then, blood is placed on the thumb to indicate that we are to serve God in obedience to the identity that He speaks into us.  Then, blood is placed upon to toe to indicate that we are to obediently follow wherever He tells us that we are to go.

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Year 4, Day 96: Leviticus 7

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

In this chapter we can hear about the priestly duties.  Each priest was given the opportunity to serve in the tabernacle.  In their service, they were able to claim the promise of God.  They were able to glean from their portions of the sacrifices.  This is a very good thing.

This also brings up the issue of character.  Did these priests have the interior life to sustain the work that God set before them?  I can’t help wonder how many of the priests chose not to work as hard as the others and settle for less means to support themselves and their family.  I can’t also wonder how many of the priests tried to outserve the other priests in order to be able to lay claim to a bigger share.  I hate to say it, but you know this happened.  These priests are human beings just like you and I are.

These priests were called to serve.  So long as they listened to God and served according to His calling, I’m willing to bet that things ran rather smoothly.  But when their humanity was allowed to get in the way, I bet the tabernacle just didn’t run as smoothly.  This is a concept that can truthfully teach us the importance of having a character that focuses first on humble submission before God.  When we trust God and obey, our character will be in line with His and we will be assured of His provision.

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