WEEKLY ARTICLE

GETTING THROUGH LEVITICUS AND NUMBERS

Weekly Article

by the Rev. Matt Kennedy

The Church of the Good Shepherd

It figures that the first week of our 365 day walk through the bible should start off in Leviticus on Sunday and end in one of the more, well, tedious sections of Numbers by Saturday.

The Old Testament can take some time getting used too, but it is worth it.

The books of Leviticus and Numbers are part of the “Pentateuch” or the “five books” written by Moses. By the time Jesus was born, the Pentateuch was referred to simply as “the Law” because these books contain the laws and regulations that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai . There were more than ten. In fact, there were 613 in all depending on how you count them.

The book of Leviticus is largely made up of three sorts or types of law: Moral, Ceremonial, and Civic.

Moral laws are laws that deal with behavior. The Ten Commandments are moral laws. They reveal our duty toward God, toward other human beings, and toward the created order. Many of the moral laws we follow today were revealed on Mount Sinai but Jesus explained the meaning of those laws older laws and revealed many more during his earthly ministry and through the teachings of his apostles found in the New Testament.

Ceremonial laws had to do with the proper way to approach God in the Tabernacle and (later) the Temple . God gave Moses extensive and complex regulations dealing with “purity” or “cleaness”. A Hebrew could only approach the Tabernacle and enjoy fellowship with God and the rest of the community if he were ceremonially clean. Infection, disease, death, certain foods, animals, and behaviors caused ceremonial "uncleanness" or impurity.

As you read these laws today you may wonder why God would care about things like mold or skin disease or why he would make people to go through so many cleansing rituals in order to draw near him an experience his presence. But the purpose of the purity laws was twofold.

First, God used these laws to teach his people that the whole world is fallen. God associated “uncleanness” with conditions like sickness and death precisely because these conditions exist as a result of humanity's original falling away from God. The Tabernacle, as a clean or purified worship space, stood as a living model or vision of restored fellowship with God, a picture of the lost Garden of Eden and of the restored Heaven and Earth that would one day be ushered in through the final sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But In order to approach this holy space and enter into this restored fellowship, God required his people to be cleansed of all impurity.

And this leads to the second purpose of the ceremonial laws. The Ceremonial laws require the sacrificial spilling of blood to cleanse from sin and impurity. God used this system to "foreshadow" or to point to Christ's final atoning sacrifice on the cross. Every time a Hebrew gave over a living animal to be sacrificed and, thereby, to be cleansed of sin or of impurity, God provided an image of his own death in Jesus Christ for the sins of the world.

Civic laws were to be used by the Hebrews within the borders of the Promised Land. As detailed in Leviticus, they were primarily punitive, telling the leaders how to punish certain crimes. The people of Israel were called to be holy, to shine the light of God's glory to the nations and to reconcile the world into restored fellowship with God by living lives that reflected the beauty and goodness of God. The civic laws were given to ensure the holiness of Israel.

The punitive civic laws also pointed forward to the cross where, ultimately, Jesus bore the penalty of our sins to the full extent of the Old Testament law and by his death, ushered in a New Kingdom, a new society or civil rule governed by the love of God through the power of the Spirit.

Jesus, in his death, fulfilled the Ceremonial and Civic laws of the Old Testament. He purified us from all uncleanness and bore all of our punishment. He became our living Temple .

These laws no longer apply to the Church. They have been fulfilled in Christ.

But Christ commanded believers to continue to obey the moral laws. Unlike the civil and ceremonial laws, the moral laws are reflections of God's own character and since God is eternal so are they.

When we are faithful, God is glorified.

The Book of Numbers is part history and part, well, numbers. The first chapters of Numbers are tedious, but they are tedious for a reason. They provide details of the great census that God commanded Moses to take right after the Hebrews were redeemed from slavery in Egypt. God wanted Moses and the people to know the full extent of his faithfulness. 400 years before the Exodus, God promised Abraham that his descendants would outnumber “the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore”. The sheer size and multitude of those escaping Egypt was a clear and evident fulfillment of God's promise.

But there was another reason for the census and for the ordering of the tribes in camp and when they marched. I remember my military training. Many days in basic training are spent marching up and down the drill field. It is monotonous and boring. But the drill sergeants are dead serious about training recruits to march and move in units and to keep in step. No one marches around like that on a battlefield anymore, but the training is not useless. It teaches people to work together, to think as a team, and to listen to commands. The Hebrews coming out of Egypt had been slaves for 400 years. They acted and thought like slaves, not like servants of the living God. Their trek through the desert was a lot like boot camp. God put them in his own marching order so that they might be broken down, brought together as a community, taught to think as a unit and listen to divine commands.

How on earth does all of this apply to us? Well, isn't this precisely what Christ does both in your heart and in the church? When you come to Christ, the Spirit moves in and begins to reorder your thoughts, words and deeds. He puts you through spiritual basic training, breaking down your sinful nature and rebuilding you in the image of Christ.

In the church, Christ brings together people from every walk of life: enemies, friends, neighbors, family members, all former slaves to sin. He unites us all to him and to each other through His Holy Spirit whom we all share and then he begins to mold us into One Body, one unit, and though we are many, through his love, over time, we become one. This involves a lot of disagreement and some pain, but, like boot camp, he radically reorders us by breaking down our pride, prejudice, and resentment until we become family.

Thank God for reordering us and that in Christ he has counted us among those brought out of slavery to sin and into this new life of Grace.

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