Leviticus chapter 26-27

God’s message to me: The Sabbath is important to God. Whether it is the traditional Sabbath(the last day of the week is Saturday)or the New Testament Day of worship(Moved to Sunday by the first century church because Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week). This is an important and holy day which must be respected.

Promises: Follow God’s commands and you will have prosperity, victory against overwhelming odds, peace, health and long life. Ignore God’s commands and He will break your pride. He will allow all manner of trouble to come until your pride is broken and you repent. He will go so far that the surrounding nations will be astonished at the pain you experience. He speaks of having bread from the work of 10 women and still not being satisfied. I have to say I see this in the obesity epidemic. In Somalia, the black hawk down incident had us running when no one was chasing us. How many outbreaks of E. Coli and Salmonella have swept across this nation in the past couple years, tainting our food, and striking fear in our hearts.

Commands: Follow God’s commands. Keep the Sabbath Holy(considering how often this is repeated throughout the bible you would think people could understand. It wasn’t that long ago that most businesses were closed on Sunday. Some still follow the Sabbath as Saturday. These people do still close their businesses and take the day off work. What happened to the rest of us? Do New Testament Christians think they are exempt from one of God’s most important and repeated laws?)

Timeless principles: God blesses those who obey Him and turns His back on those who, unrepentantly disobey Him.

How can I apply what I’ve learned: OK, this should be obvious. Keep the Sabbath Holy. Go to church. At the very least your should take this as a day of worship. This isn’t a day of work either.

Remember that the Israelites were farmers. Even on the Sabbath, the cows need milked and you need to make sure the sheep don’t do anything stupid. Maintenance is expected. God maintained His creation on the 7th day. Beyond those basics, though, this is a day of rest and should be treated as such.

more to learn for in-depth study: The Sabbath is exceedingly important. Not only the 7th day of the week but the 7th year and the Jubilee. You can see in this passage that the land would lay desolate and make up for it’s Sabbaths when the people were removed for their sins. You see this enacted later in the captivities suffered by Israel. Each period of time in which the people ignored the law is followed by a period of captivity during which the Sabbaths were made up for as the land rested with the Israelites in captivity elsewhere.

tomorrow we begin the book of Numbers and cover chapters 1-3

Exodus chapters 31-33

Somehow, I managed to lose the application portion of the study notes in my last several posts. It has returned in this one and should remain. For clarity and spelling I write these studies on a word processor then paste them to the website. The format for the study is in the word processor and I forgot the “apply what I’ve learned” portion before. Now it’s there so it should remain.

God’s message to me: God is always with me. I need only picture Him resting in the pillar of fire and smoke somewhere nearby to understand that He is always looking over me. This should be my comfort because He is there to protect me. It should be my fear because He will not fail to notice when I sin.

Promises: God does not forget His promises. The children of Israel did an incredibly stupid thing just a few dozen feet from where they could see God was sitting. Despite the fact that they deserved death God spared them to fulfill his promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In truth, God didn’t need Moses to remind Him of that promise but, the principle of prayer is set here. God does know our need and His own promises but that doesn’t mean we have no need to pray for them to be fulfilled. It maintains a rapport with God.

Commands: Keep the Sabbath. The first chapter of this study is completely about the Sabbath. In fact the Sabbath keeps coming up. God created the world in 6 days and on the seventh day he rested. He made that day a Holy day of rest. He maintained his creation, He designed the livestock so that farmers would still have to milk the cows and collect the eggs, but the serious work, planting fields, building shelters etc. , this work He commanded should cease on the Sabbath that the day be a day of rest.

Timeless principles: 2 points. 1) A day of rest is vital to the body for the purpose of stress relief. By giving ourselves a time to decompress we extend our lifespan. 2) There are 7 days in a week. Each day is 24 hours. That gives us 168 hours in a week. We sleep 7-8 hours a day that leaves 16-17 hours available to work. Giving up that 16-17 hours is giving a tithe of the hours in the week to God.

How can I apply what I’ve learned: FIRST, keep the Sabbath. Second act as if God is nest to me all the time, because He is.

more to learn for in-depth study: SABBATH=Saturday or Sunday? The Sabbath is the last day of the week. The Jewish week begins and ends the same as everyone else’s so the Sabbath is Saturday. The Jewish day begins at Twilight and ends at the next Twilight so the Sabbath begins around 6pm Friday and ends about 6pm Saturday. The Apostles and disciples of Christ began to change the day of worship to Sunday in memory of the resurrection. Matthew 28 “In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week... And the angel answered and said unto the women ’Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. he is not here: for He is risen, as He said...”

Some would argue that it is improper to worship on Sunday when the Sabbath is Saturday. For those who cannot reconcile the idea I would argue that it makes a good case for the two day weekend. Resting on the Sabbath and worshiping on the first day, or on both days. Shouldn’t worship be an everyday habit? Remember that the key is God set an example from the beginning of the world. Showing that a day of rest is necessary and commanding us to take one as well. Consider that the priests of Israel and pastors of our churches work on Saturday or Sunday, depending on our religion. The Levites replaced the city guard and military units on the Sabbath so that they could take a day of rest. For these ministers of God, the day of rest had to come at another time so that they could do God’s work on His Holy day.

How Stupid Can People Get: The children of Israel watched as the Lord sent plagues against Egypt. They Were led by God in the form of a pillar of fire and smoke. They watched as He drowned the Egyptian army in the sea. They followed Him, in the form of the pillar, to the mountain where He gave Moses the law. God rested on the mountain so that the mountain appeared to be engulfed in fire and smoke. He spoke to the nation from the mountain so that the entire nation was made afraid and begged Moses to speak with Him and relay the message because they were afraid to hear God. Moses went into the smoke to receive the message of God and while the Fire and Smoke that marked God’s position rested on the mountain and the Light of God’s glory shone within that fire and smoke the Children of Israel decided to make an Idol.

God is with us everywhere and all the time. Nothing we do is hidden from Him, ever. This particular case was especially ridiculous. The Israelites knew God was there. They had heard Him speak and the entire mountain shook at the sound of His voice. They had seen the wonders and miracles. They watched as the Pillar became a smoky cloud for shade in the day and returned to being fire for light and warmth at night. This happened every single day. There was not a reason in the world that they would think anything other than that God was on that mountain looking over them.

Standing at the feet of God(for all intents and purposes), they demanded that Aaron take over(because Moses was gone), that he make them an idol to worship, and that he lead them in worshiping the idol. Then they not only worshiped and had a feast for and sacrificed to a false god and idol but, in the obvious presence of the Almighty God that had delivered them from so much they gave the idol credit for their salvation. No wonder God wanted to kill them all. He settled for having the Levites kill about 3000 of them.

The first copy of the law was written on stone tablets by the hand of God and, having encouraged God not to destroy the Israelites in anger, Moses threw a fit and broke the tablets. The second set of tablets were carved by Moses. In both cases it was a WRITTEN RECORD. Just a reminder that we are not dealing with things that were written hundreds of years after they happened.l.,,,,,,,,

Exodus chapters 19-21

God’s message to me: God created all law, both criminal and civil, understanding His law makes other laws understood and give you a basis to judge those laws for their good or evil.

Promises: Honoring your father and mother brings the blessing of long life.

Commands: 10 Big Ones

1) You shall have no other gods before me
2) You shall make no carved image to bow down to
3) You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain
4) Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
5) Honor your father and mother
6) You shall not commit murder
7) You shall not commit adultery
8) You shall not steal
9) You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
10) You shall not covet anything that is your neighbor’s
There is more, I put it in the in-depth study

Timeless principles: Everyone claims to want God to speak to them. When they do hear Him they fear Him. Most will prefer to have someone else pass His message to them because they can’t handle hearing them themselves. The fact is, it’s a lot easier to ignore the message from a man without fear. When you hear it directly from God the penalty for ignoring it becomes all to clear. People can’t handle the that idea. That’s why they go to church on Sunday morning then let their bible collect dust all week. It’s easy to forget what the preacher said when your out doing things you shouldn’t. Ignoring God is much harder. Preachers might misinterpret, they might be overzealous, they might be just plain wrong. When you hear it directly from God you are (as a friend wrote on his blog) without excuse.

more to learn for in-depth stdy: Guod neither needs nor desires any icons. In fact He commands us not to make any image to be with him. He went so far as to command that the alter of sacrifice be made of dirt and not carved ornately. Any stone alter was to be made of uncut stone with no engraving. nothing was to be made ornate or symbolic for worship because of the potential of making the symbol more important than God. This problem continues today as great works of architecture and art are created with the goal of Honoring God and end up being admired and worshiped above God. How many times have you heard about people praying to a statue or image because it appeared at random or the statue cried. The second commandment condemns this.

Slavery was a 6 year term at best. On the seventh year the slave was freed unless he chose to stay . if he chose to stay he was, essentially, part of the family. A man selling his daughter did so as a bride. if the purchasing man did not take her as wife he had to give her back and had no right to sell her to anyone but her family. If he took her for his son then they followed tradition. She might go to another son and if she had no opportunity to raise up an heir with one of the boys then she would live as if she had been widowed. Multiple wives was common enough in those days but all the wives had to be treated equally. Fail to treat your earlier wife as well as before and she had the right to leave. No payment, no divorce no nothing, just split because you treated her unfairly.

Homicide is Homicide. Kill a man and you will be killed. The death penalty dates back to Cain and Able, though God gave Cain a reprieve. If it wasn’t a planned ambush you might find appeal in a city of refuge but, if premeditation is proven, the appeal is lost and you get killed. Kill your servant/slave. You’re still facing punishment. Cause a miscarriage or premature birth ending in the death of the child, you get put to death.

Honor they father an mother goes farther here. Curse or Hit your mom or dad and you face the death penalty.

Civil penalties are covered. If you hurt but don’t kill you owe the man for lost time when he recovers.

Cause a premature birth but don’t kill the baby. The husband gets to decide your punishment in addition to the judge fining you. If the baby is harmed but not killed, the eye for an eye principle. Any harm done to the baby will be done to you.

Mess with a bull and you get the horns but, the bull gets stoned to death. if the bull was in the habit of attacking and the owner didn’t try to keep it secured then the owner can get the death penalty. He may avoid the death penalty by paying a redemption. Whatever amount is ordered, that is what he pays or else he dies. Slaves can be redeemed for 30 shekels of silver.

If you dig a hole and don’t protect it you are liable for the cost of animals that fall in it. If Your bull kills another animal you split the money for the live bull and split the remains of the dead animal. If you didn’t restrain a bull known to attack then, you must replace the dead animal.

Reading assignment: Exodus chapters 22-24
Since I forgot to mention it yesterday, look at Exodus 17:14. As you can see God commanded Moses to put things in writing even before He wrote the 10 commandments. Oral tradition is not the only history the Israelites had.

Genesis chapters 1-3

God's Message to me: Gen 1:26-28 man has dominion over all the earth and everything in it to subdue it.
Chap 2 god sanctified the sabbath (7th day, Saturday) as a day of rest.
The first job of man is to cultivate the land and control his environment.

Promises: God has provided for my needs.

Commands: I am a steward of what God gave me. It is there for me to use. I am to subdue it (place it under my control) and cultivate it (adjust it to produce better and more efficiently).
Keep the sabbath holy. God takes rest and so should we.

Timeless principles: The world around me is for me to use for my needs. I was given dominion over it all to use it.
Even God takes a rest.

How can I apply what I've learned: We are to cultivate as gardeners. Stripping the land as looters with no attempt to keep it useful is wrong. Leaving the land untouched and untended is wrong. Managing the land and it's resources for our benefit is what God made us to do. The resources were put there for us to use.
Remember that God didn't create little worker robots that just keep going. We are supposed to rest on a regular basis.