I am using the Read Scripture app to read through the Bible in 2017. If you haven’t heard of Read Scripture check it out here. When you start reading through Leviticus and Numbers it can be easy to fly through it and not really pay attention to what you are reading. When it starts talking about all the laws, and all the festivals, and all the things that make you unclean and then what you have to do to make yourself clean, it can be easy to breeze through it and think it doesn’t really apply to me. I’d like to act like I’m more spiritual than that, but my speed reading can hit an all time high when reading those books of the Bible.
The cool thing about using Read Scripture is there is a podcast to go with it that coordinates with what you are reading each week. As I was listening to Francis Chan process some of the stuff we had read, I was convicted about a few things. First was that I need to slow down and really dive into the scripture. But the second thing was thinking about everything that the priests had to go through to enter the presence of God (check out Leviticus 16). It was crazy the amount of work they had to do. All the steps they had to do to make sure they were clean. Then there were animal sacrifices and specific places they had to smear the blood of the animals. If any of these steps were not followed and they tried to enter into God’s presence anyway, they were instantly killed.
I was convicted because I thought about how casually I can enter into the presence of God. There are Sundays I show up for church and am casual about the way I worship. There are Sundays that I treat it as just a thing I do on Sunday morning. I take the presence of God for granted. There are times when I lead worship at my home group as if it is just the thing we do to get the night started. If I lived in the Old Testament times, I would have died a long time ago.
As I read through all the stuff the priest had to go through, it hit me that God didn’t have all those guidelines because He is crazy and controlling. They were there because He wanted them to take it seriously. Thank God that Jesus came and tore the veil so that we can all enter the presence of God, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take it as seriously. God has opened my eyes to this truth, and I pray I keep it closer to my heart than I have. What an awesome privilege it is to be able to go straight into the presence of God. But at the same time, what a serious privilege it is.
until next time…