Verse for the Day, 19 February 2015.

Leviticus 26:3-4  "If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them,  (4)  then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.

Leviticus 26:11-13  I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you.  (12)  And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.  (13)  I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. And I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.

Leviticus 26:14-16  "But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments,  (15)  if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant,  (16)  then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.

Leviticus 26:40-45  "But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me,  (41)  so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity,  (42)  then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.  (43)  But the land shall be abandoned by them and enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them, and they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they spurned my rules and their soul abhorred my statutes.  (44)  Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them, for I am the LORD their God.  (45)  But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the LORD."

This particular chapter makes for both encouraging and sobering reading. There are wonderful promises made by God if the people remain faithful to His commandments. Surely having read of these promises, the people of Israel would have been adequately motivated to live in obedience. These promises and the kind of life that they would lead to, is something that all of us desire. We want to live in peace and security, we want to have all our needs supplied and for there to be an abundance. As Christians we desire to know close fellowship with God, to know the presence and blessing of God. Had Israel lived in obedience to God, they would have been envied by all the world, all mankind would want to be a part of Israel, to enjoy all these rich blessings from God.

Unfortunately the chapter gives more time to the consequences for their disobedience than the blessing for obedience. We must not think that this is because God would rather punish them, or that God takes delight in thinking up all kinds of suffering that He can inflict upon them. This lengthy section on the consequences for their disobedience gives evidence of the fact that God is no fool, and God knows the future. Despite all the promises and pledges made by the people to walk in faithfulness and obedience, God knew that they would fail and quickly turn aside to disobedience. These consequences are stated clearly and explicitly to warn the people that God was serious about obedience, God was serious about His glory and He should not be taken lightly, taken advantage of or disregarded. To do so would be to invite the judgement and discipline of God.

However it is important for us to note that God’s wrath, judgement and discipline are not without mercy. God clearly tells them that if they should acknowledge their guilt, their sin, repent of it and return to Him, then He will forgive them, He will heal them and He will restore them. God is holy, God will deal with sin, but God is merciful and willing to forgive.

For us as believers in Christ we need to give attention to this chapter and not make the mistake of thinking that there is no application to us. We have been given more, we have been given a greater privilege, position, promise and possession. God’s grace towards us is beyond what we can fathom, for it is not the blood of a lamb that was shed to secure our lives and salvation from slavery, but it was the blood of the Lamb, God the Son shed for us. We now live in a state of tremendous blessing, in fact if we take time meditate upon this we will quickly realise that amongst all mankind we are the most blessed. Who else apart from the believer in Christ can call God, Father? Who else apart from the believer in Christ is called a child of God? Who else apart from the believer in Christ has the Spirit of God living within them? Who else apart from the believer has the certain promise of a glorious eternity in God’s Kingdom?

We are blessed beyond what we deserve! But let us not make the mistake that the nation of Israel made by taking all this out pouring of God’s grace and favour for granted. They presumed that because they were God’s covenant people, God would always be faithful to them, He would never punish them. They failed to remember that God is holy, just and jealous for His glory. This led them to become casual about obedience, which quickly led to compromise and sin. As believers in Christ we may have eternal security and all the promises of Christ, but let us not become casual about the holiness, glory and honour of God. Let us not because casual about obedience towards God and the service and worship of God. If we seek to live in obedience, for the glory and honour of God, we will know in greater measure the blessings and presence of God, our relationship with God will grow closer and all the more precious. But if we turn aside from obedience, we will come under the hand of God’s discipline, a discipline that will not be pleasant, but is necessary, is for our good so as to bring us back to repentance and renewed obedience.

We are the most blessed of all men, both here on earth and for all eternity, we have all the promises of Christ, heaven is our home, God is our Father and His Spirit is within us. What more could we ask or want for? Let us therefore walk in joy-filled, loving and willing obedience to our good and gracious God.

Holy, glorious, just Father, thank You for the many, rich and undeserved blessings that You have given to us in Christ Jesus. They are truly beyond what we can fathom and what we know now on this earth is but the beginning, is but a small foretaste. Help us to set our eyes upon You, upon Your awesome holiness, majesty, glory, goodness and grace. May we keep in our minds all that which Christ has done for us and given to us. We pray that this would help us to walk in greater obedience of You, for the glory of Your name. Amen.

Verse for the Day, 18 February 2015.

Leviticus 25:1-12  The LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying,  (2)  "Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD.  (3)  For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits,  (4)  but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.  (5)  You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land.  (6)  The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired worker and the sojourner who lives with you,  (7)  and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food.  (8)  "You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years.  (9)  Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land.  (10)  And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.  (11)  That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines.  (12)  For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field.

As we have made our way through Exodus and Leviticus we have seen that many of the laws and commandments God has given to the nation of Israel are to serve as important reminders, and are for their good. In Leviticus 25 we have such laws given in the giving of the Sabbath and Jubilee years.

The following truths are made clear and taught in this chapter:

1.) They are to trust God to supply all of their needs. For six years that could sow and reap, trusting God to supply the growth and feed their nation, and to further demonstrate that trust in the Sabbath year, by trusting God to supply a bumper crop in the sixth year. This bumper crop was given not to enable them to become exceedingly wealthy, but so that they could make preparation and provision for the Sabbath year. They were required to demonstrate obedience in that sixth year by storing crops and food for the coming Sabbath year.

2.) The land is God’s, they are not land owners rather they are stewards of God’s land. God will bring them into the Promised Land, God will drive out their enemies and God will establish and bless them in this land. The Promised Land is not that which they deserve, it was not stolen from them, nor did it belong to the ancestors since for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was entrusted to them by God, but He remained the sovereign king, ruler and owner of that land. God desired for the people to understand this and with that understanding care for the land in an appropriate, God-glorifying manner. They were to worship God in how they used, cared for and lived in the land.

3.) They were all God’s servants, no man belonged to himself, nor was any man a power or authority unto himself. God was not just king, ruler and owner of land, but also of the people. God made this clear to them when He entered into the covenant with them back in Exodus 19 and 20, they were to be His people, belonging to God, His nation. They promised to serve God and God alone throughout all their generations. Therefore they were not to permanently enslave their fellow countrymen but set them free in the year of Jubilee.

4.) The Sabbath and Jubilee years were also designed to encouraged honesty, generosity and care for the poor. It ensured that the poor were not just cared for, but were also restored to that which had been lost, or sold due to their poverty. It sought to bring an end to the cycle of poverty that families find themselves in, with the present or future generations inheriting the poverty of the past generation. The Jubilee year encouraged them to be honest in their business dealing when it came to the buying and selling of properties and fields, whilst also protecting people from being taken advantage of by deceitful, manipulative or powerful people.

There are many other reasons for which the Sabbath and Jubilee years were instituted by God, but ultimately these years were designed to bring the people back to that which was the centre of everything, God. It reminded them that the land was God’s, the crops came from God and they belonged to God. God was to worshipped, served and obeyed in all things. Life for the Israelites was not about enriching themselves, but was to be about loving God and loving their neighbour, seeking to build a nation that loved and served God.

Despite all the good reasons for which the Sabbath and Jubilee years were instituted, on no occasion in the Old Testament do we ever read of either of them being observed. Sadly we do read of oppression, cruelty and greed. The failure to be obedient in matters such as these quickly led the nation into sin and compromise, and brought them under God’s hand of severe discipline on a number of occasions.

There are several important truths that we can learn from this passage. We can apply the same four lessons we have observed in this passage: The need to trust God to provide for all our needs, and that all things belong to God, in the words of Job we came into the world with nothing and we will leave with nothing. We need to remember that we are a part of God’s creation, and all the more the so if we are believers in Christ, for we are now a part of God’s people, God’s holy nation. We are also to care for one another, and especially for the oppressed, poor, fatherless, orphaned and widowed.

But the more important truth that we need to learn from this passage is that disobedience, the ignoring of God’s ways and commands, always leads to sin, compromise and distress. Human wisdom is so often contrary to God’s wisdom and therefore contrary to true wisdom. Human wisdom teaches us to get as much as we can, to look out for ourselves, to do that which will ensure we will have a good life and prosperous future. If there is a deal to be had we should go for it, even if it comes at a cost to others. Human wisdom says swim or you will sink! Therefore we work longer and harder, to use underhanded means to gain a profit, or try to manipulate a deal so that we get more than what we should. God’s wisdom says, trust in God, look to God for all things, serve, obey and glorify God in all things, and demonstrate the truth of this in your life and in your love for your neighbour. As we do this we are to confidently rest in the fact that God will faithfully provide for all our needs. We need to trust in the wisdom and ways of God, and not the world.

Faithful Father, Your goodness and wisdom is so much higher and greater than ours. Your faithfulness knows no end! Forgive us for the times when we have departed from Your wise, good and faithful ways, thinking we know better, or thinking that You will fail us. In doing this we have foolishly led ourselves into much distress and brought others into suffering. Help us to learn the truths taught in Leviticus 25, and to put them into action in our lives. May You truly be the centre of all that we are, do, love and long for. Amen.

Verse for the Day, 5 February 2015.

Leviticus 24:1-9, “The LORD spoke to Moses, saying,  (2)  "Command the people of Israel to bring you pure oil from beaten olives for the lamp, that a light may be kept burning regularly.  (3)  Outside the veil of the testimony, in the tent of meeting, Aaron shall arrange it from evening to morning before the LORD regularly. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations.  (4)  He shall arrange the lamps on the lampstand of pure gold before the LORD regularly.  (5)  "You shall take fine flour and bake twelve loaves from it; two tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf.  (6)  And you shall set them in two piles, six in a pile, on the table of pure gold before the LORD.  (7)  And you shall put pure frankincense on each pile, that it may go with the bread as a memorial portion as a food offering to the LORD.  (8)  Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the LORD regularly; it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever.  (9)  And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, since it is for him a most holy portion out of the LORD's food offerings, a perpetual due.”

The lampstand and the twelve loaves appear to be rather obscure signs and symbols, what is it that they represent, what does God seek to constantly teach and remind the people of?

From the passage above we learn that both the oil for the lamps and the loaves of bread had to be made from the best of the best. The oil for the lamps was the purest oil and in many respects involved the hardest, most labour intensive method of extraction. The flour could not be any flour you had to hand, it had to be the finest flour, the flour most refined and beaten, so as to produce the best loaves. The oil and the flour served to remind the people of God’s purity, perfection and holiness, only the very best should be offered to God. They were also reminded of the infinite value, worth of God. Pure olive oil and the finest flour were significant in value, they took time and hard-labour to produce, they were made from the best olives and grain, thus they were valuable. Their worship of God was to be sacrificial, require time, effort and preparation, a willingness to give what is most valuable to God, trusting God to supply their needs. They were to offer up twelve loaves of bread, a loaf for each tribe, this bread was to be left in the tabernacle for a week. These loaves served as a continual offering to God from the entire nation, from every tribe as a symbol of worship, thankfulness and trust in God.

Whilst the loaves were an offering, an act of worship, thankfulness and a demonstration of trust in God to supply their daily needs, the lampstand with the burning lamps had a very different function. We are told that this lamp was to burn continually, it was to never go out. This lamp served to both remind the people of God’s presence with them, and their unique calling as the people of God. God had chosen them and redeemed them from Egypt, He gave them His Law, entered into a covenant with them and was about to give them the Promised Land. But God was not doing this simply for the benefit of the Israelites, God had a global purpose in mind. The Israelites were to be a unique nation, living differently to the rest of the world around them so as to be a light to those nations. They were not called to hate, despise or think of themselves as being superior to the other nations, the people of Israel were called to constantly remember their salvation by the hand of God, the receiving of God’s undeserved favour and then their responsibility to make the salvation and grace of God know to all others. Essentially this burning lamp reminded them that God is light, God is with them, God is present among mankind, God has acted in grace and mercy so as to save undeserving sinners. Because God is all this, they as God’s people are also to be a people who reflect and radiate with the light of God, seeking to extend the kingdom of God through making God’s ways, God’s grace and God’s salvation known to the nations.

There is one final truth that they would have been taught and reminded of, and that was a constant dependence upon God to enable them to do this work of being a light to the nations. They were called to supply the oil for the lamps, but this oil did not come from their own hands, it came from the olives, olives that they were dependent upon God to supply. They planted the seeds for the olive trees, but they depended upon God to give the growth and produce, they were powerless to manufacture olives. They depended upon God to supply the olives, which they could then use to make the oil for the lamps. This was a valuable lesson for them to learn, they would only ever be the people that God called upon them to be if they lived in dependence upon Him, looking to Him for all things, serving Him and worshipping Him in obedience.

For those of us who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ we have a similar calling, we are called to be a light to the nations, to the world around us. We are called to be Christ’s ambassadors, going to the ends of the earth proclaiming the Gospel and living out the truth of it in our lives. Many of us find this very difficult and frustrating, we seem to fail more than we succeed. But the important question we need to ask ourselves is, Who am I depending on? If we are depending upon our own knowledge of the Gospel, of the Scriptures, of evangelism techniques, if we are depending on our own strength and ability to live out our faith, then we will grow tired, weary, discouraged and we will fail. Essentially we are trying to manufacture our own olives, to make our own oil, with which we can light our lamp. Yet this is futile and foolish, we cannot do it. We need God to provide the olives, the oil, which we should then use thankfully, responsibly, obediently and daily. Where are olives and where is the oil? God has given this to us in the form of the Holy Spirit, upon which we are to draw all this from, upon whom we are to depend and trust in. As God says in Zechariah 4:6, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts.” (For further reading, read Zechariah 4:1-14, which records more about the lampstand.) We can only reflect and radiate with the light of Christ, the light of the Gospel, when we live in complete dependence on God, trusting Him to supply us with what we need, when we need it, rather than depending and trusting on ourselves. This is no easy task, for we are naturally (but only due to the fall into sin) inclined to be independent and self-sufficient. It requires us to deny ourselves daily and to live out the words of John the Baptist, He (Jesus) must increase and I must decrease (John 3:30).

Our glorious and great God, who dwells in unapproachable light, glory and majesty, we praise You today for You have caused Your light to shine upon us and into our hearts, through the work of Christ. Thank You that You have opened our eyes to see Your light and that You have breathed new life into us. We rejoice in our salvation, and in the fact that You have given us the privilege of reflecting and radiating Your light to the dark world around us. Forgive us for so often trying to do this work in our own strength and effort. Help us to remember that You have given us Your Spirit, who supplies us with all things so that we may be Your faithful ambassadors. May we shine brightly and joyfully with the light, life and love of Jesus Christ today. Amen.