AP

Leviticus 3:9-11   From the fellowship offering you are to bring a food offering to the LORD: its fat, the entire fat tail cut off close to the backbone, the internal organs and all the fat that is connected to them, both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which you will remove with the kidneys.  The priest shall burn them on the altar as a food offering presented to the LORD.        

My background in Civil Engineering makes it a challenge for me to get my head around Moses’ verbal description of how the Tabernacle was to be bullt ‘exactly as the LORD commanded’.  I had been more accustomed to reading plans and diagrams!  I have never studied anything like Biology or Anatomy – so I would be out of my depth trying to identify the ‘long lobe of the liver’ or the ‘kidneys’ if I was among Aaron’s sons!  My ‘engineering’ brain wants to picture exactly what’s going on as I read today’s verrses, so I find it all very frustrating reading.

Hard as it is, I still plough on faithfully through Leviticus for this month (and Numbers next month) every year, because I am reminded again and again what Jesus, my Lord and Saviour, endured and achieved for me by coming to this despairing, sinful, broken, messed up planet Earth, and giving his life on the cruel cross as the Once-for-All Perfect Sacrifice, bearing all the shame and punishment that is my due, and by this means giving me open access into the presence of my holy God, my Heavenly Father, and re-instating me into his family – the family for which I had been designed to belong to in the first place!

“I lay my sins on Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God; he bears them all and frees us from the accurséd load.  I bring my sins to Jesus to wash my crimson stains white in his blood most precious till not a spot remains.  I lay my wants on Jesus, all fulness dwells in him; he heals all my diseases, he doth my soul redeem. I lay my griefs on Jesus, my burdens and my cares; he from them all releases, he all my sorrows shares.  I rest my soul on Jesus, this weary soul of mine; his right hand me embraces, I on His breast recline. I love the name of Jesus, Immanuel, Christ, the Lord; like fragrance on the breezes, his name abroad is poured” (Horatius Bonar).  And all this means that I don’t have to do an apprenticeship in butchery to work out how to offer sacrifices for my sin – Jesus has done it all for me.  

While ever Leviticus and Numbers lead me to reflect like this I’ll keep on reading them for as long as the Lord wants to keep me here … and, Lord, please forgive me for complaining about part of your inspired Word! 

– Bruce Christian