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“You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees.  I am the Lord your God.  Keep my decrees and laws for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the Lord.”  Leviticus 18:4 (ESV)

I will readily admit there are some passages and books of the Bible that are harder to read and understand.  The past two weeks, I’ve been in Leviticus – you got it the book of laws, sacrifices, and all kinds of instructions about animal fats and burnt offerings.

Definitely not my fave to read; however, I have loved reading it from the lens of God’s love for His people.  Rather than view all those weird, lengthy and too much detailed instructions as boring (and not applicable today), I have gained a deeper and renewed sense of God’s love for His people.  For instance most of the guidelines for unclean and clean foods to consume protected the people both physically and spiritually.  Also they had no means to truly preserve food so leftovers were at a minimum.  And passages where I felt like God was cruel to make people leave the camp because of skin diseases, etc. (basic quarantine), these were all for their protection so everyone wasn’t infected.

One commentary even detailed God’s deep love for women and their time of the month.  They were declared unclean due to the issue of blood not because they were women.  Yet because of those seven days of being declared unclean, they couldn’t touch anything – which means they didn’t do housework, they didn’t clean or cook – they had total rest.  They didn’t travel by foot in the heat to the temple – they stayed at home.  Now that’s the tenderness of our God to know that women need extra care during those times of the month.

Yet my fave statement throughout Leviticus was God’s reminder “I am.”  He declares He is the great I am 90 times in Leviticus which is the most declaration in any book of the Bible other than the book of John where He declares “I am” 98 times.  Constantly, He was reminding the Children of Israel of his might and power as “Elohim,” the One who delivered them out of Egypt.

When I couple I AM with God’s deep love then I see how his passion for His people is beyond comprehension and it brings clarity and understanding to all those restrictions in Leviticus.  Bottom line our God – the Great I AM is always operating out of a place of love and devotion for His creation.  What we can’t understand and at times may seem even unreasonable is for our protection and for the ultimate glory of our God.

Thought For The Day – Do I view God’s restrictions as burdensome, heavy and unnecessary or do I see them as His divine loving protection poured out for my good?

“Sweet Jesus thank you for giving us Your word to teach us about how you love and care for your people.  We are so blessed to be living under Your grace and forgiveness – surrounded by the Great I Am.”

For His Glory

Janet Martin
TRBC Women’s Life