Devotionals
Three Witnesses to Life
“For there are three that testify, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are in agreement.” — 1 John 5:7-8 (NET) God doesn’t leave us guessing about who He is or the life He offers. In His mercy, He gives us witnesses to testify to the truth of His eternal promise.... Read More →
Holy Like Him: Living Out Our Call to Be Set Apart
“As the one who called you is holy, you yourselves be holy in all your conduct, for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:15-16). This is not a casual suggestion. It’s a direct call, echoing Leviticus 19:2, where God commands His people to be holy because He is... Read More →
Going Through the Motions? The Call to True Holiness
During today’s reading, I was struck by how the people of Israel seemed to treat the temple and its associated rituals as mere routines, missing the deeper significance. This echoes God’s command to His people in Leviticus 19:2: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” The call to holiness means being set apart—distinct... Read More →
Promises
God was utterly faithful with his covenant promises and he expects the same from us. Which is probably why He is constantly upset with Israel. My father used to tell me that the only things you really have in this life are your family and your word, and the latter is how you’ll be remembered.... Read More →
Blessings, Curses, & Unfailing Love
Reading through the blessings and punishments of God in Leviticus 26 is interesting. As modern Christians under the New Covenant with Jesus the “goods” of obediences and “bads” of disobedience seem much more… temporal and terrestrial. Grounded in the things of this earth. Since Jesus has come we tend to think of God’s blessings and... Read More →
Blasphemy & Death
To this point no punishment has yet been handed down for blasphemy despite it’s prohibition (Ex20:7;22:28. It would stand to reason, then, that it is likely to this point that no one HAS blasphemed the Lord. Along comes this half-Egyptian/half-Hebrew fellow. Who does not simply blaspheme, but blasphemes AND curses! We’ll get to what those... Read More →
Putting Our Money Where Our Mouth Is
So far in Leviticus and through the back half of Exodus we have gotten a great deal of instruction from God through Moses. We got case law, regulations, best practices, and punishments for crime. Some of it is thick and worth contextualizing and explaining, like why Molech — of all the Mesopotamian “gods” — was singled out,... Read More →
The Original Mold Remediator
A lot of what we read in Leviticus can seem bizarre and foreign to us. Which is not surprising since we are separated from those people and their circumstances not only by thousands of miles, but also thousands of years! The way we look at… everything… is so different. The way we look at family,... Read More →
Does God Prefer Boys?
Today’s reading has, broadly, two sections. The bulk of it addresses skin diseases, which is an interesting topic unto itself, and its relative size would seem to demand attention, but the relatively minuscule chapter 12 — a mere 8 verses long has stolen the show today. My wife and I were reading the Bible together... Read More →
God’s Hatred of Yeast
Ever since the Passover we have been reading about unleavened bread. Yeast is not allowed! If you’re like me, you have likely been wondering why God has such an irrational abhorrence toward leaven. Well, if you Google that you are likely to end up with several folks telling you that it is because of Paul’s... Read More →
A Pleasing Aroma
Just a quick thought today. If you have been reading along you’ll have noticed that the phrase “a pleasing aroma to God” has appeared a great many times in Genesis, Exodus, and especially Leviticus. Depending on what translation you use this phrase pops up some 43 times in the Old Testament. But what does it... Read More →
Making It Right
There is much todo about sin throughout the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). And much of it is sin against God. The things we do that are an affront to Him and His law. But God isn’t simply worried about how we treat Him, but... Read More →