Thursday, February 3, 2011

leviticus 18-20

Sorry, I'm a day late with this.  No good excuse, but I spent yesterday in the airport and on the planes getting back to beautiful Eastern Jackson County and Faith UMC.   I'll try to catch up today....in the meantime here is my meandering thoughts about these passages:

We often wonder about the Old Testament, so many rules, so much blood and violence; what is it all about?  There is your answer in 18:3.  God is warning Israel and us; do not be as those in Egypt, do not be as those in Canaan.  And then comes this long list of warnings that end up with how we curse the land when we violate God's will in these matters and the land becomes defiled and vomits up the perpetrators of the cause of the abomination.  Israel did not keep God's commandments and centuries after these writings, they are carried off to exile in Babylonia and Assyria.  We would do well to read these warnings well and commit them to our hearts and lives; to teach them to our children and our children's children.  Should we expect that our land that has been blessed by God would experience in less judgment than Israel?  As you read, count the number of offenses we have committed......it might make the hair on the back of your neck stand up at the spiritual state of our nation.

The reading concludes in 20 with God's desire for Israel and for us: "Do not defile yourselves......you are holy to me, because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own."  We are only made holy by the work of God in us through Jesus Christ.  Accepting that gift is the only way we are made right with God and having been made right with God we must accept the responsibility that he places on his children.....to live lives that are a reflection of his holiness.  We are a people set apart to be a blessing to the world.  The world may live in sin, but we are called to be "in the world but not of the world."  We are called to set an example of what it means to be obedient to God.  We cannot expect the world to conform to Christianity if we do not live the lives that make us salt worth savoring.  We cannot expect God to bless us in our sin.  Repentance is a daily matter for the Christian.  We must constantly give thanks for the Grace that restores us as we confess our frailty and walk in his mercy.  God is good!!  I am glad to be home!  See you on Sunday.

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