Archive February 25, 2024

God’s Holiness Expressed

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Leviticus 8-14

Passage

Continuing on, we see how the book of Leviticus demonstrates the holiness of God trough His instructions. He demonstrates the sanctification of the priests through the ordination process, along with how important it is to recognize God’s holiness and respect His guidance.

We also see that the declarations around uncleanliness is not to push people away as outcasts, but to protect the others from contamination, providing a way back into the population once they have been restored. Another example of God’s wisdom and love for us.

We can look at this as a choice to honor God through His law, or choose to honor ourselves through the law. If we see the perspective of how much God loves us and has much more wisdom than we can imagine, we can truly see His holiness and thank Him for providing guidance in our lives.

Leviticus

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Leviticus 1-5

Passage

Leviticus is probably the least likely book in the Bible to be studied by modern Christians. After all, we are under the new covenant, and these laws and practices were for the Jews. However, as we get into the details we see that Leviticus is about our relationship with God and how we serve Him.

As you dig in to these chapters we see that thes early sacrifices were not about what we do to get God’s approval or blessing, but is about how we acknowledge His holiness and maintain our relationship. These sacrifices demonstrate what we can do to show our respect and what is needed to restore our relationship when we have gone astray. These actions do not affect our salvation, which is freely provided for us to accept, but they are actions needed to maintain a strong relationship and draw us closer.

Salvation is free, but a relationship requires some effort.

Becoming Intimate with God

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Job 38-42

Passage

The discussions among friends has ended, and now it’s God’s turn to speak. Job was declared at the beginning as upright and righteous by god, but as he went through his anguish and pain Job accused God of not caring for him. He even demanded an answer from God to explain why this was happening.

It was apparent that job did not fully understand the character of God. At least until God laid it out for him. God’s response spells out that He is much more than we can imagine or understand. Even more, god makes it clear that we do not need to understand. We need to have faith that whatever we are going through god has a plan and a purpose for us.

Job never found out why he had to go through his trials, but after getting through his faith was strengthened as he built a more intimate relationship with God. In a similar way, we may never understand why we face certain challenges, but as our relationship with God becomes more intimate, we are able to face the, knowing that God will provide a path for us to make it to the other side.

Listening Friends

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Job 32:1-5

Passage

The previous 28 chapters provided the dialog between Job and his friends. Job discussed ho he was righteous and did not deserve this suffering, while his friends tried to explain why it was happening and what Job needed to do to resolve it. At this point Job’s friends have decided that they had heard enough and are ready to move on.

This started with Job’s friends coming alongside to comfort and support him, but quickly turned into opinions and accusations, providing little support. Dialog is an exchange of conversations where each party takes turns listening and speaking. The key is how they were listening.

Job’s friends were listening in order to prepare a response so they could feel superior because they had the answers. What Job needed was someone to listen to understand and provide comfort. How often do we encounter situations where we need to just listen to understand the situation someone is experiencing, and be there for comfort or instead do we jump in and provide our opinion, whether it helps or hurts. The book of Job tells us a lot about listening skills and their impact. Let’s learn from it to help build relationships that follow our Savior’s example.

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