January 28 - Leviticus 23-25
This morning the devotional passage in Experiencing God Day-By-Day was especially meaningful to me. It was taken from Ezekiel 22:30 where the Lord searches for an intercessor to stand in the gap for the nation, but when no one steps forward, He proceeds with the destruction of the country. What a sad statement. If one person would have taken the call to prayer, the destruction would have been postponed or cancelled. What power there is in prayer. I just had to spend some extra time going through my prayer list to make sure I was standing in the gap for those persons and needs. I realized anew that no matter what I do, if I don't take time to pray, the rest is not enough. That is especially true when God has called me to be an intercessor for a person or a church or a country.
The Bible reading from Leviticus began with the feasts of Israel. It is interesting that God called for His people to all come together for a holy meeting several times a year. In each case there was a definite purpose. It was a time of remembering God's deliverance, a time of thanksgiving, or a time of repentance. However, what strikes me is the calling together of the people. It would produce a national unity. I think we need more of this today. We need times when all Christians come together to seek the Lord and rejoice in Him together. That is why I believe in the Easter sunrise service for all denominations to come together to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. I don't believe in compromising our beliefs for the sake of unity, but I do believe that we should have a unity in Christ, so we should proclaim it to the world around us. They see too much division among Christians, and that division drives them away from God.
The teaching on the Sabbath year and the Jubilee year is very interesting, too. God says to take a year off every seven years and to take an extra year off every fifty years. That takes a lot of trust in God that He will feed you and provide for you. It takes a lot of unselfishness to set aside our goals and focus on Him. That is what we all need, and He knows it. Life is not about how much we can accumulate, so we can retire. It is about Him. Don't get caught up in the stuff of life and miss the substance of life. We are eternal beings. We must do what it takes to keep our minds on eternity. Also, in this section there is the emphasis on helping our brother who falls into poverty. It says the slaves were to be set free in the Jubilee year, and the land was to revert back to the original owner. When you put these two things together, it sounds like the Great Commandment to me. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:37-39)
The Bible reading from Leviticus began with the feasts of Israel. It is interesting that God called for His people to all come together for a holy meeting several times a year. In each case there was a definite purpose. It was a time of remembering God's deliverance, a time of thanksgiving, or a time of repentance. However, what strikes me is the calling together of the people. It would produce a national unity. I think we need more of this today. We need times when all Christians come together to seek the Lord and rejoice in Him together. That is why I believe in the Easter sunrise service for all denominations to come together to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. I don't believe in compromising our beliefs for the sake of unity, but I do believe that we should have a unity in Christ, so we should proclaim it to the world around us. They see too much division among Christians, and that division drives them away from God.
The teaching on the Sabbath year and the Jubilee year is very interesting, too. God says to take a year off every seven years and to take an extra year off every fifty years. That takes a lot of trust in God that He will feed you and provide for you. It takes a lot of unselfishness to set aside our goals and focus on Him. That is what we all need, and He knows it. Life is not about how much we can accumulate, so we can retire. It is about Him. Don't get caught up in the stuff of life and miss the substance of life. We are eternal beings. We must do what it takes to keep our minds on eternity. Also, in this section there is the emphasis on helping our brother who falls into poverty. It says the slaves were to be set free in the Jubilee year, and the land was to revert back to the original owner. When you put these two things together, it sounds like the Great Commandment to me. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:37-39)