Every six years God promises a bumper crop so Israel will let the land have a sabbath in the seventh year. Obeying this command requires no faith - the farmer can see the sixth year bounty. If he plants on the seventh year, he is taking more than God is offering. Such ill-gotten wealth creates all sorts of societal problems.
In Scripture there are three distinct voices: the king, the priest and the prophet. The king speaks of the wisdom people have learned over the centuries of human existence. The priest speaks of the things that have been revealed to man by God. The prophet speaks for God when a society has drifted away from God's plan. Y'shua embodies all three roles and speaks with each of the three voices at different times. It is important to determine which voice He is using in each situation. Without that understanding one may misinterpret what He is saying.
Leviticus is the center of the Torah and, since it describes how God is to be approached and worshiped, it is the most important of the books in the TANAK. In Leviticus 19 and 20 God defines how Israel is to behave as a holy people in the presence of a holy God. This behavior is to the benefit of the nation. They will be blessed if they follow God's instructions. More important, however, is that Israel's holiness is important to God's purposes. When they follow His laws, they become ambassadors of His goodness.
In the sermon on the plane, Y'shua is speaking to His disciples and explaining what He expects of them. He describes His own character as the Lamb and tells them to emulate that. He also tells them that whatever standard they use with others will be applied to them and that, if they are successful, they will have a great reward.
During the dedication of the Tabernacle, Nadab and Abihu died when they brought unauthorized fire before the Lord. Despite an abundance of speculation as to their motivation, that is not what is important here. Rather, the problem is that they tried to introduce something common into holy space. That was not permitted.
At Passover we remember and celebrate the birth of God's firstborn; when the Hebrews went out through the bloody door, Israel was born. Today there are powerful forces seeking to eradicate Judaism and Christianity from the world and replace it with Islam or some secular form of collectivism. Instead of uniting to resist, Christians are fragmented and arguing. One of the wedge issues splitting us is the question of who are the Jews and what is Israel.
When Job is suffering, his three friends keep accusing him of hidden sin for which he is being punished. His response is that they have the platitudes correct but that is not his situation and those platitudes don't apply. With the rise of AI people are turning to chatbots for answers to all sorts of questions. It is inevitable that some of those questions will be spiritual. The very grave danger is that such people will see the bot as an intermediary between themselves and God. That is precisely the sin that Israel committed in the wilderness with the Golden Calf.
Leviticus is the central book of the Torah and as such is arguably the most important. This is where God tells humanity how He wants to be approached and how we safely can interact with Him. The book begins with sacrifice. Contrary to the perception of many, most of the sacrifices in the Tabernacle had nothing to do with sin. Those that did concern sin only covered unintentional sins. As such they do not conflict with the work of Christ in any way.
Christians today do not typically observe Shabbat, believing that everything changed after the Resurrection. Some, citing Colossians 2, assert that it was nailed to the cross along with the rest of the law. Is this correct? If not, does it really matter?
In making the Golden Calf, Israel violated one of God's clearest boundaries. Only Moses' intervention prevented their immediate destruction. The human impulses that led Israel to worship idols have not gone away; they are still very much active. The vehicle has changed but the underlying urge to get a "better deal" than God says is proper has not changed. Going to an illicit spiritual relationship may provide short term satisfaction, but the end is misery and death.
In Exodus, Israel is told to crush olives to make oil for the light. In life adversity, being crushed, is never to be desired even though it happens to everyone in varying degrees. When the heroes of the Bible, Job, Daniel, Esther, Mordecai, Y'shua, Paul are crushed, they respond by bringing light into the world. The question they ask when faced with adversity is not, "Why me?" Rather it is "What do I do now?"
In Luke 3, when baptizing in the wilderness, John addressed those coming to him as a brood of vipers; especially those who had no intention of repenting of their sins. Religious ritual without the intention of a behavior change is futile. True repentance is measured by the fruit that it produces.
Unbelievers often mock Scripture because of the instructions about how to manage slavery. Slavery has always existed and continues to exist world wide today. For example prisoners in the county jail are forced to mop the floors, wash the dishes, collect trash along the roads, etc. They are, in fact, slaves for the duration of their sentence. What God gives in Torah are rules to prevent unnecessarily harsh conditions for those who are enslaved.
2026-02-07 Legislating Morality - Moses and the Church
There is a liberal mantra that you cannot legislate morality. That is precisely what God did do at Sinai. What He did not do was force a heart change in the Israelite people. The Torah codified God's vision of a moral society. That vision has not wavered, Christ did not change it. Just like the Pharisees, the church today has drifted away from God's design as presented in the Torah. We can expect pretty much the same results.
Water figures prominently in Exodus and, indeed in the whole Bible. Beginning with crossing the Red Sea where the nation Israel is born and Egypt dies, the story goes to bitter water, then twelve springs then water from the rock and finally to Moses striking the rock and being denied entry into the Land. God uses water both to bring forth life and to destroy. In Exodus water is used to outline the entire plan of salvation for the whole world.
In 1873 Horatio Spafford sent his wife and four daughters ahead of himself to England. Their ship was struck by another and his daughters were all killed. As he crossed the Atlantic himself, he wrote the words to the hymn. This a masterpiece of beauty and sound theology. The lessons are very apt for today's climate in the west.
https://youtu.be/VmvnE6erj6I?list=RDVmvnE6erj6I
The Egyptian magicians are able to duplicate the first two of God's plagues, water into blood and frogs. When they are unable to produce gnats, they proclaimed that "This is the finger of God". This prefigures a nineteenth century intellectual hubris that only the things that science could not explain need be attributed to God. God responded to the Egyptians with satire - so also with the nineteenth century. (Idea from Rabbi Sacks.)
When God encountered Moses at the burning bush, He told him that he was to return to Egypt and free the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. Moses, not wanting to go, responded with two questions: "Who am I?" and then "Who are you?" Each of those questions has multiple possible meanings and both are still relevant for the believer today.
Joseph weeps seven times. In every case his tears are in response to his relationship with his family. Even though he has available all of the power and resources of Egypt, he cannot make his brothers accept him. Similarly, God has all of the power and resources in the universe, yet He does not coerce us into having a relationship with Him. This Biblical concept is the origin of the American belief that government requires the consent of the governed. Inspired by Rabbi Sacks.
