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.

Verse for the Day, 29 January 2015.

Leviticus 23:33-44  And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,  (34)  "Speak to the people of Israel, saying, On the fifteenth day of this seventh month and for seven days is the Feast of Booths to the LORD.  (35)  On the first day shall be a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work.  (36)  For seven days you shall present food offerings to the LORD. On the eighth day you shall hold a holy convocation and present a food offering to the LORD. It is a solemn assembly; you shall not do any ordinary work.  (37)  "These are the appointed feasts of the LORD, which you shall proclaim as times of holy convocation, for presenting to the LORD food offerings, burnt offerings and grain offerings, sacrifices and drink offerings, each on its proper day,  (38)  besides the LORD's Sabbaths and besides your gifts and besides all your vow offerings and besides all your freewill offerings, which you give to the LORD.  (39)  "On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD seven days. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest.  (40)  And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days.  (41)  You shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It is a statute forever throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month.  (42)  You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths,  (43)  that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God."  (44)  Thus Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed feasts of the LORD.

Leviticus 23 gives further details and commandments concerning the various feast and Sabbaths that God called on the people of Israel to observe. The last of the instructions given in this chapter relates to the Feast of Booths. What makes this section worthy of particular mention is that it speaks about something which has not yet become a full reality. The people of Israel are still camped around Mount Sinai and they believe that in the very near future they will enter into the Promised Land. The rebellion recorded in Numbers 14 has not yet taken place. Therefore the booths (temporary structures) in which they were living, was not understood by them to be a long term dwelling place. The manna and quail, the protection, provision and guidance of God, would be there for a short time and then they would no longer need it as they would be in the land of milk and honey, living in cities they did not build.

What was meant only to be temporary, became a permanent reality for them, they would live out their lives wandering in the wilderness, living in booths, feeding off of manna and quail and constantly dependent upon God for all things for the next 40 years. They had to exercise this faith and dependence upon God every single day. They did not know what we now know, that God would not abandon or forsake His people. It is an incredible truth to know that for some 14600 days God supplied their every need, every day the pillar of cloud, every night the pillar of fire. Six days of the week manna and quail, countless miraculous provisions of water and numerous victories in battle. God was entirely faithful to His people.

The Feast of Booths would have been a wonderful and encouraging annual reminder of God’s salvation and God’s faithfulness. This reminder would be made all the greater when they considered that fact that whilst their fore-fathers rebelled against God, God did not treat them in a similar manner, but continued in His faithfulness. Furthermore this feast took place shortly after the harvest and that in itself would be a reminder of God’s faithfulness towards them. This Feast was designed to be a time of great worship, adoration of God, thankfulness and joy, for they were being reminded, they were celebrating God’s salvation, God’s provision in the wilderness and God’s continuing faithfulness.

As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we all have a similar testimony to that of the people of Israel. We too rebelled against God, yet God continued in faithfulness to us throughout the years we continued in our rebellion. God was not just faithful to us, He saved us from slavery to that rebellion, He saved us from death, He gave us a whole new life, with a new future, a future that is filled with hope. God has continued with us, faithfully providing, guiding and protecting us, we are filled with His Spirit each and every day, and this shall be our daily experience until we enter into heaven itself.

Sadly we can be so quick to forget all these wonderful truths, we find ourselves in the midst of hardships, trials, ill-health, family crisis, spiritual distress and such, these problems seem so much bigger, they cast a Mount Everest like shadow over our lives and our faith. We seem to lose sight of all that God is and all that God has done, we suddenly start to doubt the goodness or faithfulness of God, when God has never proved to be anything other than good and faithful. It is as though we need to have a daily Feast of Booths, whereby we constantly remind ourselves that God has brought us safely thus far and He will not abandon us. We need to look at past trials and remember how God worked faithfully then, we need to think upon the miracle of our salvation. We need to then look forward and remember that our names stand written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, that a place is being kept for us in the Kingdom of God and that a room has been prepared for us in the Father’s house. This will enable us to persevere through the difficulties to come, knowing that God will once again work in grace and prove Himself to be faithful, loving and good.

Most merciful Father, how we thank You today that You are so faithful towards us. There has not been a day since the dawn of creation that You have failed to be faithful and good towards all that which You have created. Forgive us for being so quick to forget all Your past acts of faithfulness, especially our salvation through Christ. We pray that You might help us on a daily basis to be mindful of who You have been, who You are and who You will remain to be to us, the eternally faithful and good God. We thank You once again for Your goodness and favour towards us. Amen.