Our sins affect other people, including our children and grandchildren or as Scripture says, “to the third and fourth generation.” We aren’t punished for our parent’s sins, but we have been affected by them. We suffer when other people sin.
The ancient House of Israel were so far gone, so utterly unrepentant that God’s only recourse was to send 90% of them to the grave and the other 10% into exile. The exile will end only when Messiah Yeshua returns to the earth.
What does childbirth have to do with leprosy? Why do new mothers and babies need sin offerings? How is leprosy connected to gossip and slander? In this study of Leviticus 12–15, we will be taking a step up and a step back the topics discussed. Some of it is unsettling, and it is easy to lose ourselves in some of the more distasteful details, while forgetting the important life lessons the Holy One of Yisra’el is communicating to us.
The seventh day of Chag Matzot (Feast of Unleavened Bread) is a memorial to the crossing of the Red Sea. It’s not only the zenith of most movies about Israel’s flight from Egypt but also a parable about every believer’s path to repentance, salvation and righteousness.
The people of Yisrael had a long history of forgetting what made them Holy. It was God who made them holy. They didn’t make themselves holy. They also lost sight of the fact that being declared tame or unclean doesn’t make one sinful or wicked either.
Yeshua’s frequently argued with the Pharisees over their emphasis on their man-made traditions over the plain word of scripture and how their man-made traditions were doing more to keep people away from God than brining them into God’s embrace.
Even after Yeshua’s death and resurrection, these false ideas about the inherent holiness of the Jewish people and the inherent wickedness of the Gentiles was hindering God’s goal to lift up, bring near, make clean, declare holy believers from the nations in the same way Heaven does for the “native-born.”
The relationship that God wants with you is a relationship that responds and grows. If we respond and grow, we are like a tree that will produce good fruit. If we don’t grow and respond, we won’t produce good fruit. The High Priest is supposed to encourage the relationship between God and His people produce good fruit for eternity.
When God commands one to do something, deviation from the instruction isn’t tolerated. The Torah reading צו Tzav (“command,” Lev. 6:8–8:36) includes detailed instructions on how the priests are to handle other people’s offerings, symbolizing their approach to God. The LORD told Aaron that doing this right matters, not just to the people, but to God.
None of the sacrifices or offerings of the Tabernacle or Temple of ancient Israel (recorded in Torah reading וַיִּקְרָא Vayiqra/Vayikra, Lev. 1:1–6:7) apply to us today, yet all of them apply to us today. That paradox comes to us because forgiveness for diverging from the Creator’s plan has always come to mankind the same way: the old way of life must die. Offerings of blood and food never accomplished that — and never were meant to.
So then, what’s the deal with all the detailed instructions in the Bible about killing animals, pouring and sprinkling blood, burning carcasses and bringing in offerings of produce? Yeshua the Mashiakh (Jesus the Christ) taught in parables, and the Word of God teaches through the parable of the Tabernacle.
Everything in the Tabernacle is both functional and beautiful, just as the LORD made mankind at the beginning. God made humanity to appreciate beauty, because He appreciates beauty. But He doesn’t want us to worship beauty. Worship belongs to Him alone.
None of the components of the Tabernacle are identified by their looks but by their works — what they do. Humans also are primarily defined by their works, not their looks. We know who Yeshua is the Messiah, not by His looks but by His actions and how they align with the pattern shown Moshe on Mt. Sinai.
In the Torah reading ויקהל Vayakhel (“assembly,” Exodus 35:1–38:20), the people were united in their desire to build the Tabernacle for the LORD, assembling so many donations for it that Moses had to turn donations away. In the Torah reading פקודי Pekudei (“account,” Exodus 38:21–40:38), these donations are accounted for and used to create the Tabernacle. The section culminates in God entering His new home.