Tag: Leviticus

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

A community of mutual care and support

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by RDNE Stock project on pexels.com

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 25.

I’ve read that about 2/3 of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. That doesn’t sound good. That means a household is one case of the flu, one injury, one unexpected expense, or one layoff from not being able to pay bills or buy food or cover some other expense.

In the Old TestamentGo made provision for such a family:

“Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means among you falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a resident, so that he may live with you” (Leviticus 25:35).

If you keep reading, there are specifics about how to care for someone who has become poor. Don’t charge him interest if you lend money. Sell him food for cost. Hire him on as a worker. Treat that person with compassion, dignity, and encouragement.

One could boil down God’s commands into one simple idea: “Take care of each other.” Paul wrote, “Love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10).

Stuff happens. It might happen to you. Life throws curves at us. But if a faith community, whether a chosen people or a gathered church, takes care of each other, no one has to do it alone. God provides for us in many different ways. Sometimes it’s through me. Sometimes it’s for me.

And just like that, we’ve made it through Leviticus. I hope you enjoyed the journey as much as I did!

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Add this to your schedule

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Dan Loran on Unsplash

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 23.

As you might imagine, God was on my mind a lot in full-time ministry. If I wasn’t at church teaching or preaching or preparing to preach or teach, I was visiting a member of the congregation in the hospital or their home. Many of my daily tasks orbited around the Lord. My daily habits of scripture reading, prayer, devotional writing, and listening to Christian music followed me into retirement.

It was and still is hard to remember that even in church circles, not everyone’s life is infused with spirituality. Thoughts of God are a weekly occurrence, typically on a Sunday morning. Faith is there, but so is work, household chores, schoolwork, family commitments, hobbies, sports, self care, friends, sleep, and screen time. God is just one of the many priorities that vie for our attention, energy, and affection.

So God puts himself on the calendar. Pretty clever. The cycles of planting and harvesting were punctuated with feasts and celebrations that acknowledged God as provider and gave him thanks (Leviticus 23). He made himself a scheduled part of their work and rest each day, week, season, and year. It was virtually impossible to forget that he gives us life and breath and all things.

I guess we could do that. Put God on your daily schedule. In fact, put him on first, so that nothing else interferes with your time with him.

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

A little extra

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 19.

Friday is big trash day in our neighborhood. That’s the day we can leave just about anything on the curb, and the garbage collectors will haul it away. That is, if no one else picks it up first. That’s also the day when pickup trucks drive down the streets salvaging appliances, tools, scrap metal, furniture, and old electronics. Anything that can be repaired or reused is quickly carried away. My trash does become someone’s treasure.

I leave less on the curb these days. I donate my unneeded and unused possessions to thrift stores that support local charities, or I sell them online. As I’ve decluttered my home, I’ve been shocked at how much I’ve accumulated. Most of it finds a better home somewhere.

Right in the middle of guidelines for sexual purity (Leviticus 18) and honesty and justice in the community (19:11-15) is a prompt to help “the needy an the stranger” (19:10). Leave something in your field an vineyard for the poor to gather or “glean.”

How much is enough? How much extra do you have? How many folks could you bless with your abundance? Ask yourself that question before you rent and fill up another storage unit.

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

A lesson in cleanliness

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Curology on Unsplash

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 15.

“Supper’s ready!”

My brother, sister, and I all thundered down the stairs and took our assigned places at the dining room table.

“Did you wash your hands?”

My brother, sister, and I all scrambled for the bathrooms, one upstairs, one down, to wash our hands.

When we returned to the table, there were follow up questions.

“Did you use soap?” “Did you wash both sides of your hands?” Mom was no dummy. She knew we had much to learn about cleanliness.

So did God’s people in Leviticus 15. Here’s a whole chapter of instructions about washing and bathing that I take for granted. You can read all the details there. I have to remind myself that they didn’t have indoor plumbing with clean, running water. Even if I’m camping I usually have access to showers and a laundry room. Hygiene was different in the wilderness on the way from Egypt to Canaan.

When I traveled to Haiti to help with earthquake recovery in 2010, I saw the expansive tent city populated by hundreds of thousands of people outside of Port-au-Prince. There were no bathrooms or running water. Garbage was piled high. Sewage ran down the street. Clothes were washed in dirty streams. Survival meant there was little if any cleanliness, and a lot of disease.

Tent city

A community like that can’t survive. Without the oversight of the priests, I doubt that Israel would have survived very long either. God’s no dummy. He knew his people had a lot to learn about cleanliness, too.

I learned a lot about cleanliness during the Covid pandemic. I washed my hands more that year than ever before. Both sides! I reached for hand sanitizer at every opportunity. I wiped down everything.

By the grace of God we survived!

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Starting over

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Jed Owen on Unsplash

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 16.

Every spring my dad would dig up the small yard on the side of our house for a garden. Once spade full at a time, he turned over the dirt, littered with a few leaves from last fall and plant stems from last year’s garden. Once it was all turned over, he would rake out the big clumps until the whole garden was a smooth plot of dirt, reading for planting. Every spring, he started a new garden.

That’s how I picture the day of atonement described in Leviticus 16. There is a whole lot of detail about animals, water, blood, and fire that sounds so strange to us. But when it’s all said and done, “You will be clean from all your sins before the Lord” (Leviticus 16:30).

It’s an annual reset when you get to start over. It doesn’t matter what you did the year before. It’s a fresh start, a clean slate, an expunged record.

That sounds really good, doesn’t it? It’s nothing less than the gospel, the good news of forgiveness that ultimately comes through Christ. With him, any day is be a day of atonement. Enjoy it!

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Ew. That looks like mold.

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Nancy Hughes on Unsplash

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 14.

As soon as the water receded, they moved in. Volunteers from all over the country showed up and started mucking out homes that had been under three feet of hurricane storm surge water. Once the sheetrock gets wet, the mold will begin to grow in a humid Florida climate.

If you’re not familiar, “mucking” means ripping out any and all the walls that have been underwater. If you don’t do that, the mold will grow. It will grow behind the walls. It will grow quickly. It will contaminate the air in your home. Before you know it, you’re sneezing, coughing, and sniffing from the black mold growing in your home.

In the bible, it’s the priest’s job to deal with the mold in your home.

“When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as a possession, and I put a spot of leprosy on a house in the land of your possession, then the one who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, ‘Something like a spot of leprosy has become visible to me in the house.’ The priest shall then command that they empty the house before the priest goes in to look at the spot, so that everything in the house need not become unclean; and afterward the priest shall go in to look at the house” (Leviticus 14:34-36).

I’ve sat in homes that made me sneeze, sniffle, and cough. Maybe it was the cat. Maybe it was the garbage. It could have been the dirty carpet. Mold? Maybe. Maybe it was something else. All I know is that it wasn’t healthy.

God cares about your physical and spiritual health. And sometimes that means you need to clean up whatever is making you sneeze, sniffle, or cough.

Our church had to deal with some roof leaks. A member stopped attending worship, claiming that some of the carpet had gotten wet and moldy. We analyzed the air, replaced the carpet, and fixed the roof. That member never came back to church. Even though the pastor (the priest) said it was all good. Go figure.

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Some time off for mom

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 12.

When we lived in Iowa, a friend went into labor and gave birth to her third child on a Monday. We had seen her in church the day before and thought it was time, even though the doctor said she had a few more weeks to go. The family was back in church for the baptism the very next Sunday. I thought it was amazing that they didn’t even miss one Sunday!

That’s the exception, not the rule. It’s often few weeks before taking an infant out in public. Of course, we tend to be most cautious with our first child. We relax with number two. Number three and beyond? They’ll be fine.

The idea of maternity leave comes out of the early 19th century when many women went to work during World War I. However, God laid out guidelines for maternity leave during Israel’s exodus from Egypt. After the birth of a child, mom gets to set aside other obligations to bond with her newborn (Leviticus 12).

So why must a mother take off one month for a boy but two for a girl? (Leviticus 12:3-5)? The best explanation I read explained that greater honor was given to sons in that culture. A little extra time with a daughter would ensure a close relationship with her, too.

The sacrificial ritual described in this chapter is a nice way of welcoming a woman back into the community after some time away. Everyone will want to see the little one. These instructions assure that the mother will get attention, too.

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Are you going to eat that?

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by David Trinks on Unsplash

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 11.

At least once a month, lunch at the fraternity featured, “BLT – down all the way!” as Randy would mimic his favorite New York deli. I have to admit that we Gentiles made sure our Jewish brothers witnessed how much we enjoyed bacon as they settled for other leftovers.

I’m not saying they were devout. I only ever saw them go to synagogue on Yom Kippur. They didn’t eat pizza for the first three days of Passover week before they caved. None of my Jewish friends could explain the story of Hanukkah in December. But they drew the line at bacon and rare roast beef. I know, that’s not blood in rare roast beef, but that’s what they claimed they were avoiding. I would imagine they grew up in homes where those foods were avoided. (We Christians weren’t especially devout at college, either.)

Leviticus 11 is filled with dietary laws. Pork was unclean and off-limits for Israel. Swimming fish were fine, but shellfish was prohibited. It was OK to east locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers. What about lizards? Nope. No roadkill, either.

I find it interesting that holiness, at least in this context, was determined by your choice of food and contact with a dead animal. In hindsight, we know that may of these rules were for health reasons. They distanced God’s people from the pagan culture around them, who didn’t have as many regulations.

I read with interest those restaurants shut down by the health department. Sometimes, I’ll think, “Didn’t we eat there just last week?” I try not to think about that.

As New Testament believers, no foods are off limits (Acts 10). But I still try to distance myself from artificial sweeteners, chemicals, and processed food, along with too much fast food. I feel better, and feel better taking care of a body the bible calls a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Injured on the job?

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Image by Matthias Grießhammer from Pixabay

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 10.

I paid for my room and board at my college fraternity house by washing lunch and supper dishes each weekday. It wasn’t an exciting job, but some of the brothers and I found ways to make it fun.

One fun game involved stabbing at an empty milk jug with a large chef’s knife. I know what you’re thinking. No, it never crossed our minds that this was a stupid thing to do. When my friend Bob attacked a a jug, the tip of the knife caught on the edge of the metal counter, so that his hand slid up the blade, slicing all four fingers on his hand. After a bloody trip to the emergency room later, we were all a little wiser. It’s all fun until someone gets hurt, right?

“Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on the fire and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord” (Leviticus 10:1-2).

Ordination of the priests lasted a week (Leviticus 8:33). The job was important. But if you keep reading chapter 10, God reminds Aaron, that you didn’t drink when you were performing priestly duties. Is that what happened with Nadab and Abihu? Was their blood alcohol over the limit? Were they under the influence?

Theirs was a tough lesson to learn. The same fire that had consumed the burnt offerings (9:29) now incinerated two of Aaron’s sons. The Lord gave specific instructions for the burning of incense in the tabernacle. Here’s the first addendum: show up sober.

A friend of mine in new home construction told me that many of his crew was high or buzzed when they showed up for work each morning. Yep, those were the guys working up on the roof or on the ground brandishing nail guns and circular saws.

By the grace of God, I never had any pastoral work-related injuries. Although, I did climb a few ladders to work on a few roofs.