It’s been a rough couple of weeks in the Bailey household, thanks to an uninvited guest called THE FLU. He started with my husband and made the rounds through us all. Needless to say, that’s a guest who is not welcomed back. That said, the blog took a break for that time while we all nursed each other and healed up. God is good, though! I finished up my manuscript and sent it out to my beta readers before the yuck hit. I didn’t like being sick, but I sure did thank God the timing wasn’t a week earlier!
In the past two weeks, I’ve waded through Leviticus and over half of Numbers. There are a LOT of rules in Leviticus and Numbers. A lot. Very detailed. Very specific. God laid out a long list of do and do not, of sacrifices and offerings, of festivals and feasts. And He was serious about them, too. In Numbers, we find a man stoned for picking up fire wood on the Sabbath. God was serious about sin, about the condition of the hearts of His people.
The whole thing got me thinking. Are we serious about sin? I was reading all of the sacrifices for various sins and thinking about how Jesus came along, the perfectly sinless and spotless sacrifice, and He nullified the need for all of that bloodshed. His blood was the final sacrifice. He took away the need for us to look an animal in the eye and kill it when we sinned. He did the hard part so that we could have the easy part.
Do I really understand that? Do I truly, truly grasp that sin is equated to death, requires death for atonenment? Death that Jesus took on for me? Can I really comprehend what it meant, how it felt, in the wrenching, horrifying moment when Jesus was so heavy and rank with sin that God turned away from Him because His holiness could no longer stand the filth? I have God with me always… I don’t even want to sit here and try to imagine even a moment when He isn’t there. And Jesus took that on.
But how flippant am I about sin? I stopped reading and wondered at one point if I would take it more seriously if I came face to face with what the Old Testament followers of God faced… sacrifice. Would it stop me from criticizing? From complaining? From turning my back on those in need? With that image of blood in my mind, would sin become more grave?
God demands holiness. And before Jesus, that holiness came at the cost of sacrifice and law. After Jesus? It comes through grace and His sacrifice for us. It’s incredible to me that He took that all on Himself. Incredible to me that His love is so great.
What can I do to live a life that honors what He did for me? What can you do… today?
-JB
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