I’m currently reading Leviticus. A seemingly tedious, boring, and overkill rule book. Honestly, the only people who actually like reading Leviticus are people like me. How could 27 chapters on animals that chew the cud, bodily discharge, uncovering nakedness, and exactly how to dismember and drain an animal for sacrifice be interesting? Well, it’s not really. Not if you take it at face value. But you know you can’t do that.
Leviticus is fantastic. It reveals God’s purpose for Israel. And because it reveals God’s purpose for them, it reveals our purpose as God’s chosen people.
God called Israel to be a priestly nation.
It’s not that God wanted a list of impossible rules for Israel to follow, or to suck the fun out of everything, or even for Israel to be “better than”. It is that God chose Israel to be a priestly nation to be a blessing to the nations. God desires all of the nations to know Him, and he chooses Israel to be the example (Duet 19:5-6).
He chose Israel, He entered into a covenant with them, and through Israel (and subsequently the Church body) the world will see that God is holy and turn to HIM. It shifts the need to be righteous from one that says “be holier than” to “be holier for.” We the church, need to live in our priesthood. We don’t do this because we ought to, or because we want to be better than someone, or even to “get out of hell.” NO. We live as a blessing to the nations, showing them the holiness of our God: of his mission, of his desire to see the oppressed freed, the hungry fed, the downtrodden filled with joy; for families to be restored, for shackles broken, and a life lived abundantly.
Elizabeth Horn 