Leviticus Pt. 3- The one where the law reveals God’s love
GOD HAS ALWAYS WANTED US TO KNOW HIM
I believe that everyone on the planet has an innate desire to be loved. It’s written in our genetic code. The world has put great efforts into diluting the truth about why we have this desire, masquerading it as something supremely superficial. It’s expressed in greeting cards and in poetry, in romantic comedy films, and scientific psychology textbooks. People spend tons of money every year to talk to counselors who are considered experts on love (particularly of the “self” variety). When you get to the nitty gritty, though, the truth is that the desire for love exists because that’s the way God designed us. We were made for community and communion.
In my last post, I wrote about how God the Father is holy and no unclean thing can stand in His presence- that man is sinful, so we cannot be near Him without His intervention. Though His presence, even from a distance, is seen clearly through the whole world because He has always remained involved, we could not draw close. His hand remained at work with His people, though, and they could see Him act all throughout the Old Testament. Men like Abraham, Isaac, Moses, and Noah encountered God’s presence and power. Jacob even discovered that while it may be unwise to upset a wookie, it’s even more ill-advised to wrestle with the Almighty. These moments in history reveal a God who has never withdrawn from His people. He’s never stepped aside. We were the ones who wavered.
God doesn’t need us, He never did. But he wants us. And that’s even better. I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent more time in my life where I felt like I was unwanted than I have standing secure in the knowledge that people really really liked me (a shameless Sally Field reference, I know). I still struggle to understand why an all-powerful, all-knowing God would want little ole me when I can’t even get my cat to show affection unless I bribe him with food. PS: He’s the fattest cat you’ll ever see.
But He does. Love me. God, that is, not my cat. Well, maybe my cat, too. In that aloof non-committal standoffish way cats choose to loosely hint to the possibility of maybe at some point potentially declaring a sort of disdainful sense of like for their human slave person. But I’m getting off-topic here…
I came to know Jesus in high school. I’d been in the church since late in the fifth grade, and I’d heard things about Him. As a person who very much focused on pleasing the adults around me, I obediently memorized the Bible verses my Baptist Sunday school teacher gave me to learn. I went to summer camp and sang the songs. I got baptised, not understanding what it meant, but did it because my dad told me it was what he wanted me to do. In high school, I found myself attending large youth rallies, and eventually went for two different summers on intense mission trips to Venezuela, leaving my home for months at a time. I don’t think it was really until then that I came face to face with God.
I remember during my first summer away, we had a short break where there was no mission work planned. At the time, we thought of it as a vacation. Today I’d call it a Sabbath. We were bussed out to the coast, took a ferry north to a small island, and camped out for four days and three nights on a private beach; the time there was donated by the owner, a supporter of our mission trip to his country. On the third night, a bunch of us decided to climb to the top of this huge rock that swept out over the ocean. We carried our water bottles and sleeping bags up, up, up, and we fell asleep under the stars with the sounds of the ocean all around us. It must have been pretty cold that night because when I woke up, I saw that the only ones left out on that rock were myself and one other. She decided to climb down pretty quickly once we were awake, leaving me alone to watch the sunrise. Sitting there wrapped in my sleeping bag with ocean on three sides, watching the sun come up over the horizon, the rays turning the water iridescent shades of pinks and oranges, then yellow with silver ribbons, and finally, blue; listening to the waves rolling onto the beach behind me, I looked out at God’s creation and just knew. I knew He was real. I knew He was there with me. I knew He loved me. I knew He had to be the most powerful and beautiful God, having created everything my eyes feasted upon in that moment. I spent the whole morning talking to Him. I came down from that rock changed.
On that mission field, I truly started to love a God who had become real to me. A God who had saved me from my sin. Even then, I didn’t really understand- just enough to know I was saved. Kinda like that man on the other cross next to Jesus who I’m happy to say is the perfect example of how the simplest faith can truly be enough. You don’t have to know everything. You don’t even have to know a little. You just have to know Him.
But this wasn’t always the case. Man was separated from God by sin. There was no Savior back then- just the promise of One to come.
So, in the meantime, there was the Law that established a system of sacrifices that could momentarily bring a man into right standing with God. It allowed people to finally be in God’s presence, to have communion with Him. It was a system that let His people know what He loved and hated. We could never hope to measure up to the sinless standard necessary for a full reunification with our Creator, but it created a way through which a perfect sacrifice could ultimately be made to fulfill it.
The system didn’t exist because it was convenient. It didn’t even exist because man had begged for it. No. It existed solely because God wanted to be with His people. It wasn’t anything we earned or deserved in any way. But, like a loving Father who leaves the porch light on for the son who stormed out of the house that afternoon full of curses and defiance, He had begun to pave the way for us to come home. While the Law was only a shadow of what was needed to fully wipe away sin, it was a first step. A necessary step. A step meant to teach and to reveal the true nature of man’s need for God and a Savior.
A lot of people look at the Law, the Old Testament, and Leviticus in particular, and see an overpowering and angry God who wants to restrict and punish the people. While He makes no qualms about declaring and asserting His authority all throughout these chapters, it’s not the behavior of a petulant and domineering ruler. Instead, everything He does when it comes to His children is done out of a parent’s love. God is not one-dimensional. He wears a lot of hats: He is Sovereign, He is Almighty, He is King, He is Holy, He is Master, He is Guide, He is Creator, He is Abba Father, He is Savior. At the core of everything He is, He is love. All of His actions in the book of Leviticus tie directly back to a loving Father putting a plan in place to bring us back into the fold. Even the hard stuff.
As a teacher, I have systems in place that I know are best for the kids who sit under my care in my classroom. Some of those systems create fun. I have reward systems and my own store where students can purchase items using tickets they earn for the amazing choices they make. I also have assignments and systems in place that they hate. Some are for their safety. Some are because I know they’ll need to be able to do things in high school that they can’t see the need for today. Some are because I’m trying to teach them things that are necessary for a rewarding life; things like organization, time management, dealing with people they don’t necessarily get along with, realistic self-monitoring, regulating emotions, and social maturity.
And we haven’t even touched the curriculum yet.
I can honestly say that many of these routines, structures, expectations, and assignments feel uncomfortable or downright mean at times to the thirteen and fourteen year-olds who are bound by them. Even after explanation, many times they still don’t understand why they have to do what they have to do. Sometimes, I know they won’t understand, so the explanation isn’t something I bother to give them. Kids simply don’t have the life experience to get it a lot of the time. But as their teacher, I know what they need to know and be able to do once they move on from my classroom, and I take their grumbling and resistance for what it is- child brains with child understandings who may (if I’m lucky) one day look back and say, “Hey, that’s why she made me do that thing.”
God gave the Law to His people because without it, they wouldn’t have known how to please Him (again, an impossible task). He used the Law to set expectations. Yes, there are a lot of things in the Law that He didn’t explain fully. I imagine it’s at many times the same reason I don’t explain to my kids why they have to do certain things. As our Father, it’s well within His right to throw out the very familiar, “Because I said so.” Back in the time of Leviticus when God’s people had just come out of Egypt and were standing at the base of Sanai headed into a land full of foreign gods and cultural practices that went against His desire for them, their loving Father made a covenant with them. After all, they were a very stiff-necked people who had already established a pattern of looking back toward the damaging things they’d left behind with fondness and yearning like they suffered from some sort of Egyptian Stockholm syndrome. He laid down rules for their safety. For the assurance that they would not stray away from a God who loved them and sought to protect them. And for a Father who, had he not wanted them to commune with Him, wouldn’t have needed to bother with any of it in the first place.
God is a good God. And God is a good Father. Sometimes we look around at the hard things that happen in life and blame Him for them. We use them as circumstantial evidence in the courtroom of life and disguise them as proof that He doesn’t love us. How easily we forget. How easy it is to believe the lie. But Leviticus points us to the truth. It points us to a God Who loves His people enough to parent them. He took the time to teach, guide, and discipline. So they could then follow, obey, grow, be safe, and not fall away into temptations that could damage the relationship God intended to have with them. All of the things a good dad does. It paints the picture of a loving God calling us back to Him. Not because He needed to. Because He wanted to. Because God has desired to walk with us from the beginning. Because He made us in His own image and called us good. Because His heart broke when we rejected Him. God’s holiness and the Law weren’t arbitrary obstacles He put in the way of His people; they were part of His gracious plan to dwell among them and ultimately bring about redemption.
Next Time: GOD’S PLAN IS PERFECT- AKA. WHAT’S THIS WHOLE SACRIFICIAL LAW THING, ANYWAY?