Michele on Leviticus
Leviticus. I’d heard some about. Never read it. It was much more interesting to me than I expected it to be! Where to begin….
Obviously, if you’ve ever read Leviticus, you know that it is a book full of detailed and specific laws that can be overwhelming enough to make a person flip the pages until they come to the next book. I am glad, however, how Eileen helped it come alive to me, and introduced it as a book that could potentially become one of my favorites. It came alive and brought much more meaning when I looked for the character of God throughout the book. Instead of looking at the laws as just laws, we looked at what they showed about God’s character. This made it so much more exciting and interesting!
Another thing that helped make this book come alive was looking at the things that were symbolic for the New Testament; a shadow of things to come. Especially interesting was tying in verses about Jesus. One of my favorite things that I saw was the requirement for sacrifices to be perfect, and without blemish. I realized that this was the same requirement Jesus had to fulfill. Someone who was perfect, sinless, and without blemish was needed for sacrifice to make atonement for the sins of the world. A sacrifice that wasn’t perfect wouldn’t be acceptable to God. It is SO cool that Jesus was the only one who could EVER fulfill this, and he chose to do it. 1 Peter 1:19 says that Jesus’ blood was ‘like that of a lamb without defect or blemish’. God knew that he would be the only one able to be that acceptable sacrifice; he knew this, and out of his GREAT love and mercy, chose to send him, to save the world, a stubborn, sinful world, who deserved his wrath (John 3:16).
I think this message is one that I will need to keep hearing over and over again. Leviticus helps make this message come alive. It has proved to be a valuable, interesting, and even exciting book!
