Moving Closer
In view of Sunday’s sermon, entering our fourth week in Leviticus, I want to be clear that eight weeks isn’t enough to do this book justice. To be honest, upon closer study of Leviticus, I’m finding that it’s way deeper and more wonderful than I realized. There are layers and layers of meaning in these chapters that are echoed throughout the rest of the entire Bible.
At our very best all we’re doing in this series is giving you a primer. Which means, if at any point this book seems anything less than glorious, please know that it’s not the book but it’s the inadequacy of your preachers. Even as I’m scrambling to finish writing this sermon on Chapters 11–15, I feel the disparity between what’s there and my ability to explain it. At one level, it’s strange and far from applicable to our New Covenant context. And yet, at another level, it’s echoing the deepest realities of what it means to be humans created by God, and it has everything to do with some of the most menial things we do, such as how we drive vehicles (I’ll explain later).
I’ve prayed that God would use this passage, this story in Leviticus, to intensify in us a greater passion to be close to him. To want to move nearer to him. Would you pray that too?
For the series, we’re just highlighting a framework and naming some categories, but this book was meant to be lived in. That’s the case for the whole Pentateuch (and the whole Bible). If we truly want to understand the Word of God, we shouldn’t just read it often, but we should inhabit its world and try to see everything through its eyes . We need to be shaped by the Bible, and ruled by it. And I want more of that in my own life and more of that in our church. I believe God is doing something in us through Leviticus.
I’ll say more about this in December, but I have a plan for us to read the whole Bible together next year as church. I know several folks have their own reading plans, and I’m not wanting to change any of your good “habits of grace.” But for as many who are willing, I can’t wait for us to get more of the Word together in the next year. We’ve not encouraged a church-wide reading plan before, so this is new. More Bible. More prayer. How else would we move closer to God?
