March 2, 2012 Reading Notes

March 2, 2012 Reading Notes

http://www.esvbible.org/devotions/every-day-in-the-word/

Leviticus 25:47-27:13

Although the subjects of these remaining chapters in Leviticus seem kind of random, you'll notice that the year of Jubilee ties them together. These are rules of redemption of persons from servitude, and the redemption of vowed people or property are explained now in terms of the special condition of the year of Jubilee. Chapter 26 might seem out of place, until you notice the references to the Sabbatical year. This year is very connected to the year of Jubilee. Not only was the Sabbatical year the way to determine the year of Jubilee (7 Sabbatical years + 1), but it was the basis for gauging the faith and obedience of the people.

The weekly Sabbath and the Sabbatical year were an incredible way to see if the leaders and people truly understood the love and power of God. If you didn't have faith in the Lord and understand His love, you didn't have the freedom of heart to rest on the Sabbath and celebrate Him. If you didn't have faith in the Lord and understand His love, thereby having the freedom of heart to rest on the Sabbath and celebrate Him, there was no way you would celebrate the Sabbatical year. How could you depend on God and celebrate Him for an entire year? If you didn't have this kind of faith and love and joy in God, the year of Jubilee would make no sense whatsoever. This required incredible faith in God and dependence on Him. We know that Israel never celebrated a Sabbatical year, and we have no mention of them ever celebrating the year of Jubilee.

I was thinking yesterday how hard it is to convince people to read their Bibles every day. It is even harder to make a requirement for people in a church to hold to a set of standards. For example, what if every leader in a church (besides having to maintain the standards in 1 Tim. 3) had to read their One Year Bible every day and pray, if they had to be doing something to reach out to their neighbors, if they had to be in a home group, if they had to be in a discipleship cell where they were mentored and they had to lead a discipleship cell where they were making disciples? Some of these are really personal things for the Lord, having nothing to do with the church per se, and three of these are "church" things. If you had these as requirements, you probably wouldn't have any leaders. Even if you could justify these in terms of what disciples should be doing in a church or following the Lord in the harvest, there would be an outcry regarding forcing people to follow these. Who has the time for all of this? Who has the right to make this a requirement? No leader or pastor would be so silly as to require people do these. Read Luke 14:25-35.

Now imagine that you are a king in Israel, even King David, and you're coming up to a Sabbatical year where you will legislate and enforce allowing the land, the nation, to rest for an entire year. Even though it was written in the Word, no one had the guts to require it. There would have been abuse and rebellion. Yet, the entire nation drifted into disobedience, and the warning given in chapter 26 came to pass. There is a cost to following Christ as a disciple in the harvest, but no one wants to require it. I was reading this morning, "If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead."

Lev. 25:47-55

Vs. 47-54 If a man had to "sell" himself to serve another because of poverty, he could be redeemed or ransomed by others or by himself. The basis of this ransom price would be calculated according to the year of Jubilee. This law was a benefit to those in debt or who were very poor.

V. 55 The basis for the redemption and freedom of the people was that all of the people belonged to God and were to have been His servants.

Think about Jesus being our redeemer, saving us from our slavery to sin and judgment. He Himself was our redeemer and our ransom price. Oddly enough, we'll see this in the NT today.

Leviticus 26

Leviticus 26 is a very interesting chapter. The book is almost at an end. Much has been laid out as a foundation to understanding what is "holy and common" and "clean and unclean." There will be many more laws to come to govern different situations, but God is saying in Leviticus that the people should behave differently because they know God's care and love and power.

Now the Lord is giving them the positives of walking as they have been told to walk and negatives of not walking as they have been told to walk.

In terms of Bible study, a guy named Traina came up with a "law of proportion." What he means is that it is good to notice the proportion of text given to something. For example, in Genesis, in the last words to his sons, Jacob gives much bigger blessings to Judah and Joseph. You notice the size or proportion of text given to them in comparison to the other brothers. (In Numbers, you will see a surprising event that you can link back to Jacob's words to Judah and Joseph.) In this case, in chapter 26, we have the blessings given for obedience and curses given for disobedience. Notice the proportion.

Vs. 1-2 This might seem random, but these commands focus on the nature of God and the people's worship and dependence on Him. Since He saved them out of Egypt with such might, feeding them in the desert, this shouldn't inspire fear, but rather faith and love.

Vs. 3-13 These verses are the promises of blessing if they obeyed. The covenant God made with them with Moses was conditioned on their obedience. Notice the promise of verses 11-13.

Vs. 14-33 These verses are the promise of judgment if they disobeyed. Notice that God will bring judgment in degrees, hoping they will repent, and then if they don't He will increase the judgment. Look for this structure throughout this section. Verse 18 is the first of these increases. Notice the "if you…sevenfold" scheme of this. God is really trying to show the people mercy. This judgment of the people in the land ends with their exile.

Vs. 34-39 Now the importance of the Sabbatical years comes to light. God is telling them how important this faith and obedience (or lack of it) will be. The Sabbath and the Sabbatical year were a gauge to measure their true faith and love. Even after the exile, God would pursue and chasten them. In fact, the 70 years of exile were because of the number of sabbatical years they had missed in the 490 years they were in the land, organized under a king.

Vs. 40-46 God is already making provision for Israel to return from exile. When you read Daniel's prayer in Daniel 9, it is obvious, for a couple of reasons, that he had read verse 40 and the rest of this section. We'll talk about this verse when we get to Daniel's prayer.

V. 42 Even though Israel would break the Mosaic Covenant, God was still bound to them by the covenant He made with Abraham. The true object of faith in God, even under the Mosaic Covenant, was God's promise of redemption as given in the promise to Abraham. Paul says this in Roman's chapter four. It is because of God's promise to Abe that Israel will be restored and will fulfill their destiny as a witness to the nations.

V. 43 Notice again how important the Sabbatical year was as a gauge of the peoples' hearts toward God.

V. 45 This again is the promise to Abraham.

Lev. 27:1-13

I don't know if we want to try this in church, but who knows, it could be a hit. People could dedicate other people or animals to the service of the temple. For example, Samuel's mother dedicated him to the Lord. People could be given to the Lord for service. This is also how some of us try to get Jephthah off the hook in Judges 11, when he says he will dedicate or sacrifice the first person who runs out to meet him when he comes home. He was hoping it would be a servant, but it was his only child, his daughter. Since human sacrifice was forbidden, it is hard to imagine he sacrificed his daughter. But in this chapter, it is saying that those "given" to the Lord, could be redeemed, bought back. He could have gotten his daughter back for a mere 10 shekels, pocket change. If she wasn't sacrificed, it means that the strength of his vow was, in his own eyes, irrevocable.

Regarding the animals, the Levites still needed to eat something more than the sacrifices. The Levities also farmed the land around the cities they lived in and needed animals, like donkeys or horses, to bear burdens and plow fields. People could donate or vow an animal to their use. If it was vowed, they could "redeem" it, unless it was for sacrifice. When this continues tomorrow, we'll see that this redemption price was also geared to the year of Jubilee.

The symbolism that God was building into Israel with all of these laws, regarding the year of Jubilee and redemption, is all pointing to Jesus.

Mark 10:32-52

Vs. 32-34 The threats against Jesus were so real that the twelve feared and were amazed at Jesus' resolve. Note that Jesus was always aware of His disciples and ready to give them His time. When He saw they were terrified about what was waiting for them in Jerusalem, He took them aside and told them again of His coming death and resurrection.

Vs. 35-40 In the request of James and John, notice that Mark fails to mention that their mother was with them when this request was made. Tradition has it that Jesus' mother and the mother of James and John were sisters. They might have thought they had an "in" because they were related. Notice that Jesus mentioned suffering and that James and John were ready to suffer. James would be the first of the twelve who would die and John, according to tradition, was the last.

Vs. 41-45 Notice here that when Jesus sees that the other disciples are upset, He teaches the disciples. There is no rebuke, but positive, forward teaching. And out of this we get one of the greatest verses in the NT for the disciple, Mark 10:45 "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

The model for discipleship was Jesus, in His serving, in His suffering, and in giving His life as a ransom for others.

What Jesus is saying here is directly connected to what we read in Leviticus today. Jesus is that redeemer, that ransom price and that substitute, all rolled into one.

Vs. 46-52 Here we have the story of Bartimaeus again. Remember that there was an old and new Jericho connected by a two-mile road filled with beggars and merchants.

V. 47 Whenever you hear someone calling Jesus the Son of David, it means they had great faith.

V. 50 Notice that the blind man throws off his cloak. A cloak was a very important possession to a beggar. In fact, in Deuteronomy, God will give official legislation regarding the cloak of a poor man. For Bartimaeus to cast off his cloak was risky business, unless he fully believed he was about to talk with the Son of David, who would rule Israel and heal its blind.

Psalm 45

I've got to admit that I do better with "crying out" psalms than I do with this one. Is this one of David's marriages or is it one of Solomon's? No clue.

If you are given to typology, that is, an event or person in the past, suggesting another event or person in the future, you could imagine this might have something to do with Christ and His bride, the church. I say this because if you read the first chapter of Hebrews, where the Son is being described as the ultimate message from God, right in the middle of this, you find Psalm 45:6. (Heb 1:8). I don't know how many lines of correspondence you can draw, but I do know this. When we disciples are done with our work in the harvest, there will be this huge party called the marriage supper of the Lamb. This is where the church, the bride of Christ, will be eternally joined to Christ. It'll be a great party and feast, and I'll be off my diet on that day.

And now for some wedding dance music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdIHeWu5MYU&feature=related

Proverbs 10:22

There seems to be something bad or stressful to be found in everything. I take the idea here as learning to be totally immersed in God as our love and our life. In those brief moments I've had where I've understood this, there was no sorrow and I felt rich. I think our closeness to the Lord is the goal, not absence of irritants.

Now just for fun, the German Bible has a variant reading, hinted at in the ESV. In German it says,

Der Segen des HERRN allein macht reich, und nichts tut eigene Mühe hinzu. (LUT Proverbs 10:22)

Isn't that interesting? Oh, sorry, The blessing of the Lord alone makes one rich, and nothing you do yourself adds to it.

If you’re reading along and don’t have a One Year Bible, click on this link http://www.esvbible.org/devotions/every-day-in-the-word/. If that doesn't work, go to http://www.esvbible.org/devotions/ and click on “Every Day in the Word.” 

I'm writing these comments to and for those who are following a One Year Bible and interested in growing deeper as a disciple, following Jesus in the harvest. My hope is to see the growth of a discipleship culture in the church. Groups of 3-4 disciples, meeting weekly, encouraging each other to follow Christ and work to reach out and make disciples who make disciples. The Bible itself is the most universal manual we have and key to our growth and service in Christ. Nothing keeps us more focused on why we are here or what we are to be doing. My comments are only meant to provide some explanation of the events or to show the flow of God's plan of redemption. My comments are in no way exhaustive, but are designed to keep us focused on Christ and our role in His harvest. My hope is that the people in these groups will grow in Christ and be willing, after a year, to find 3 others to meet with and encourage in their growth as disciples, disciples making disciples in the harvest.

If you would like a more descriptive commentary that is still readable and concise, I'd recommend the Bible Knowledge Commentary. It's keyed to the NIV, so the result is, the commentators are constantly telling you what the Greek or Hebrew is. That never hurts.

I am not endorsing any particular One Year Bible; in fact, I read something you don't, die revidierte Lutherbibel 1984.

Anyone reading along with us is welcome to do so and is encouraged to take their own notes and make their own observations. If the comments made do not agree with your particular tradition or understanding, that's OK. Nothing I've written is meant to criticize any point of view, but only to express the truth of what God has written to us, as I understand it. Send comments or feedback to dgkachikis@gmail.com.