True & Beautiful Things About the Bible--Old TestamentNäide

Leviticus: He Wants to Be with Us

Leviticus is the book we rationalize jumping over. It just doesn’t relate to us today.

While it’s true that as a follower of Christ, we don’t live in the world of Leviticus, it doesn’t mean we can ignore it. In fact, what is most beautiful about the Bible is found in the core message of Leviticus. Simply this: God wants to be with us.

Think of the lengths God was willing to go to have a relationship with us. Leviticus lists long and serious detailed instructions of how to approach Him. Everything about it reminds us that He is not like us. He is holy and awesome and dangerous. If there was anything the ancient people of God knew well it was that we are not to treat God lightly. They learned how our sin devastates our relationship with our Creator. But that God made a way for every sin to be atoned for (paid for)—even the sins that we didn’t knowingly do. And that’s not changed.

When Jesus Christ died for our sins, He did away with the need for these Leviticus instructions. At least part of what Jesus meant when He said, “It is finished,’’ was the completion of the whole Leviticus system, including the need for bloody animal sacrifices and priests to be the mediators between us and God. We now can come boldly to God because Jesus’ own blood paid for our direct access. Everyone who believes on the name of Jesus Christ can come directly to God through Him.

Leviticus still teaches us to take our relationship with God seriously. We can also learn how much God is into the details of our lives—what we say, what we wear, what we do, what our relationships with each other are like. These things matter to Him.

We live in God’s universe. God made a way to be with us like He’s always wanted, through His Son, Jesus Christ. He put His Son, Jesus at the center of it and tells us to enjoy a full and satisfying life because of Him.

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh. . . . Hebrews 10:19-20

Next: The deadly attitude we all face