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The main theme of the Torah reading אָמַר Emor (“say,” Leviticus 21-24) is the otherness of the kohanim, the otherness of the priests of Israel. The priests are supposed to be separate.
But in the 21st century West, any kind of hierarchy is considered archaic. Many politicians live and die by the saying “past performance indicates future returns.” They gain and maintain their power by riding the wave of public opinion and riding a roller-coaster, bouncing back and forth between all kinds of different positions. Because for too many politicians, they maintain their power by not letting anyone know that they pretend to serve their constituents but primarily serve themselves.
The priesthood are called to serve God and God’s people but not themselves. They are supposed to model and demonstrate the otherness of the Kingdom of Heaven. But with a high calling comes a higher standard of conduct.
Critics of the Bible say that it’s unfair that someone who has some physical deformity can’t serve in a priestly role in the Temple — depicted as not being able to worship God. However, being born into a priestly family, even if one has some sort of deformity, does have its benefits, such as being allowed to eat the priestly allotment of the offerings — if one has lived according to the otherness of Heaven.
The priests and the offerings of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) are symbols of this perfection, the perfection of the Creator’s realm, a return to Eden of sorts.
Many modern scientists teach us that the world has come about from a procession of chance happenings. All that is basically blundered its way to progress, from one primitive life form to another.
Yet we see that our modern world, with its advanced computerization, automation, etc. are not the result of random blunders, but are actually the culmination of years, or even generations of intense care, planning and forethought. And the intellectually honest observer of biology and nature will see the same attention to detail and design that one sees in a computer or an airplane.
These instructions God laid out in Emor (and Vayiqra/Leviticus as a whole) for the priesthood reinforces the truth that God’s realm is highly regulated — controlled in forethought and perfect — and He provided the pattern of His embassy on Earth with similar precision.
Yes, our bodies have defects because the creation has been going downhill since the Fall (Rom. 8:20), when our first parents sinned and detached themselves from the Creator, we have that hope.
The Bible was written to give us hope. We have the hope that is foretold in the prophets about the Messianic era. This hope is repeated in the book of Revelation, where it’s foretold that the dwelling place of God will be with mankind (Rev. 21:2–4), that the “new heavens and the new earth” will be different from the Earth we live on now (Isa. 65:16–17).
The LORD’s appointments: Respect the Creator
There is the way that we can explore and examine the mechanisms of God’s creation, such as DNA, while being respectful to the Creator. But there’s also the way to explore the creation while being disrespectful of the Creator. Examples abound in our time of amoral scientists experimenting with God’s creation in ways highly disrespectful of the care and honor He put into it, such as cloning of sexually reproducing animals and even attempts to tinker arrogantly with human DNA. We all see this disrespect in various reproductive technologies such as abortion, surrogate motherhood and reckless fertilization of embryos for in-vitro fertilization. God is the Creator; man did not create himself.
God also authored His festivals, recorded in Leviticus 23. They are not Jewish festivals, nor are they Christian festivals. They are “The LORD’S appointed times” (Lev. 23:2 NASB). When God said, “I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts” (Isaiah 1:14 NASB), the problem was that God’s people weren’t respecting God’s otherness. His embassy on Earth (Tabernacle) was not treated as holy, because His people (temples of His Spirit, 1Cor. 3:16; 6:19) did not respect Him.
They wanted to worship Him in the same way the people of the nations around them worshipped the demons and false gods. Similar to modern man’s disrespect of the created biology, so too ancient Israel was disrespecting their Creator. They wanted to worship themselves, while pretending to worship God.
Today, people are trying to make the gospel “more relevant” and to make the Bible “more relevant” by dragging in false ideas from the world that speak of a completely different kind of God than the God of the Bible. They prefer the “God” who used evolution to create the heavens and the Earth. The “God” who blundered over and over again during billions of years before finally coming up with lifeforms that were viable.
The Bible reveals to us the opposite image of God. The Bible shows us a God Who exercised perfect forethought and planning. God said in the beginning that His creation was “good” and mankind was “very good” (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).
Law after my own heart?
When we compare ourselves to the Law of God, are we supposed to change it to fit our needs or change ourselves to be more in line with God’s law (Romans 7)? When we change the Law to make it conform to our needs, we pretend it makes us feel better, but it actually makes us feel worse. God is the same yesterday, today and forever.
When Yeshua spoke with the Syro-Phonecian woman (Mark 7:24–30: Matt. 15:21–28), He told her that He was sent to minster to the people of Israel. But she replied that even the dogs get the scraps and crumbs from their master’s table.
The testimony of God through Israel to the nations was supposed to make the people of the nations hunger for those crumbs, so to speak, that came off of the table of Israel.
But what had a number of the leaders of Israel in the first century done with their corruption and greed? Their conduct caused God’s name to be blasphemed among the nations (Ezek. 36:20–21). Rather than being hungry for the scraps from the table of Israel, they wanted nothing to do with Israel.
On the Day of the LORD, many will be very scared, crying for he rocks and mountains to hide them from the Messiah (Rev. 6:15–17). They will be life cockroaches running away from the light, because on that day, they will know how evil they actually are (John 3:19–20). But there will be others, who will eagerly grab hold of those who are in communion with God and long to follow them to the Promised Land too (Zech. 8:23).
There are those who have read the Bible many times and have gotten bored with it, just like one gets bored after listening to the same songs on the radio over and over again. After a while, you seek something new. But there are others, such as the Jewish Sages or some of the early Church Fathers, who get excited every time they read the Bible because every time you read a passage, you learn something new.
The appointed times act in a similar way, they’re reminders of the various aspects of God. but they’re also reminders of where we were the last time we were going through it. Just like with music, when you hear a song it brings back a memory of the first time you heard it. But that can be dangerous if the song’s lyrics are garbage, because a catchy garbage song can cause filth to linger in your memory for decades.
God has scattered His people, as crumbs all over the earth. People don’t have to take a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to meet God. If you are in tune with the Creator, then you can be the one to lead them from death to live, from sin to salvation. God didn’t blunder His way through Creation or through the Sacrifice of His Son for us. God only had one plan A. He did not have a plan B, C or D for His people.
The name of the LORD is precision, exactness, long-suffering, endurance, perfection.
Summary: Tammy