Levitcus Alive!

By Ke Russo

How big is God? Surely, he is big enough to fill the cosmos, but is he big enough to fill your life? Journey through a rarely read, ancient document and delve into the holiness of God. Take an enriching journey through the book of Leviticus. Discover how big God is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Harbor Press
• Release date: Jun 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386054115

Book preview

God Shows Up Even on Golf Courses

I want to tell you a story, a story that took place on a golf course many years back. My wife and I had moved to a suburb of a large, northern, metropolitan city so that I could work with a small church in that community. It was a bitter cold December when we moved there, and this was unlike any place I had ever lived. In my past, I had lived in smaller towns and farming communities and had grown used to seeing lots of countryside. Now, even though we lived in a small suburb of this city, one suburb just blended into another which blended into another. Stop signs and village signs were all that distinguished one town from the next and all those towns from the city. I literally lived in a small town in the middle of millions of people. Of these millions of people, the only person I really knew was my wife. I barely knew the sixty people in the small church where I served.

As time passed, I tried to find my place in that little church and in the surrounding communities. I scared many of my neighbors as I went from door to door to introduce myself to them. It is safe to say that they did not know what to do with me just as I did not know what to do with them. However, when springtime eventually arrived, and the weather turned warm, I escaped to the only countryside that was nearby—the local golf courses. I loved to golf, but people play golf in foursomes, and I did not know three other people who I could invite to play with me. If golfing was going to be my escape, then I had to learn to play with strangers. Undaunted by the challenge, I cleaned up my clubs and went out to the courses. When I signed in for tee times, the starters would put me with two or three other players. My round of golf would then consist of trying to enjoy the round while playing with strangers as my golf balls flew wildly into the woods that lined the fairways or while my tee shots rolled all of four feet. I actually enjoyed the lonely treks into the woods to find my golf ball as I found myself away from the watching eyes of my partners and amongst some trees again.

On one such outing, the starter put me with three men who were total strangers to me but who seemed to be very good friends with each other. This quickly became obvious by how hard they laughed at the off-colored stories they shared with one another. They went from one crude conversation and profane joke to the next. Literally every conversation and joke was filled with profanity. Every bad shot was followed by another string of profanity and more profanity-laced ribbing.

Being a preacher, I did not enjoy the conversations and jokes, but I tried to be friendly with my new golf buddies while we went around the course. As I walked down the fairways, I would walk alongside whoever might be going in my direction, asking them questions about their lives. These bits of conversation tended to have less cursing in them. I enjoyed the golf more, and they saw me as being friendly enough as a result. One of the men happened to have an interesting nickname—Flash. While walking down one fairway with him, I asked him how he got his nickname. Did your mother give it to you? I naively asked. He chuckled and then matter-of-factly said, No, I used to be a dancer before my back went out. Thankfully, I was nearing my golf ball, and that brief conversation ended.

Somewhere around the middle of the round, it dawned on these three men that they did not know anything about me. They had been telling me about themselves, but nobody had thought to ask me anything about myself. Finally, while we stood at one tee box, and I prepared for my turn, one of the men asked me the question that men always ask one another, What do you do for a living? I calmly replied, I’m a preacher. Everyone immediately got quiet as they stood there in shock. Then all three of them started to profusely apologize for all the profanity and started saying things like, We didn’t know you were a preacher. I just politely responded, Don’t worry about it. If you don’t mind using profanity in the presence of God, why would you worry about using profanity in front of me? I’m just a preacher. It took my three friends several holes to finally hit a good golf shot again, and there was a dramatic drop-off in the profanity during the rest of our round together.

Now you may think I had been unduly cruel to respond to those men the way I did. Unless you are a preacher, you have no idea how many times such encounters occur when people are themselves until they discover you are a preacher. That day on the golf course I began to wonder why those men did not have a problem using profanity in front of God. Was God not on the golf course as well? Of course he was, but they never considered that. Their view of God was too small.

Truthfully, if we could be honest with each other, we all probably have too small of a view of God. How often do we go through a week without giving any thought to God being in our midst? How many decisions do we make that we know God would not like, but we make them anyway? How often are we in places we know God would not want us to be? Would our language and topics of conversation change if we truly believed God was listening in? What movies would disappear from our shelves? What lies would never be told? What relationships would we handle differently? If God was as big in our eyes as he really is, our lives would change dramatically.

I ask you to take a journey with me. Take a trip with me to discover how great and awesome God is. Go with me into the world of the holy and see the Holy God for who he really is. If you will do this, I promise you that you will come out on the other end with a greater understanding of God. Your view of God may be too small now, but he will grow tremendously bigger in your eyes when you complete this journey.

Every journey has a starting place, and if we are going to take this one together, we need to start from the same place. Our starting place is somewhere few people have visited, so prepare yourself for some excitement and discovery. You may find your heart bursting with joy as you gain insights to God you never had before. We start our journey in one of the most exciting places you will ever visit. We start in that wonderful book of the Bible that we call, Leviticus.

I think I already know what you are thinking: Leviticus? Are you kidding me!

How many people have committed themselves to the noble goal of reading all the way through the Bible in one year? Perhaps you have. You started out strong in Genesis with the account of the creation and Noah and the ark. The genealogies were a little tiresome, but you hastily read through those. Reading Exodus went well for the most part as you read about Moses, the burning bush, the plagues and crossing the Red Sea. Of course, the Ten Commandments story was good reading, and you probably imagined Charlton Heston cowering on the mountainside as he received the commandments from God. Then the reading got tougher in the latter half of Exodus as your mind started to zone out with all the laws and the specifics about the tabernacle. By the time you got to Leviticus, your aspirations of reading through the whole Bible in one year were almost dead in the water. If you survived Leviticus, you gave up the ghost in Numbers, and your noble dream was dead, buried, and quickly forgotten as you secretly vowed to never do that again. Perhaps you tried to salvage some benefit from your efforts and skipped over to Psalms or to a gospel in the New Testament. Maybe you just gave up all together and sat your Bible back on the shelf to gather dust for a while longer. Leviticus, indeed!

Yes, indeed! Leviticus is the starting place for this journey. Let me ask you a question: What do you know really know about God? Perhaps the more important question is: How much time have you spent getting to know God? Perhaps you have heard people, especially preachers, throw out some big words to describe God, words like: omniscient, omnipresent or omni-benevolent. Maybe you can relate to those words, or maybe you can’t. Many people like to say that God is love. In fact, there is a verse in the Bible that says, God is love (1 John 4:16). It is kind of hard to argue with that, wouldn’t you say? We can definitely say that God is love.

We would do well to dig deeper though because God is not just a one-dimensional being. When he was younger, my son played a video game in which all the characters are one-dimensional. They look like pieces of paper that move around, and when one of the characters changes direction, it looks like a piece of paper being flipped over. The characters in the game have no depth. Does that sound like God to you? You may have become so focused on God being love that he has become one-dimensional in your eyes. However, there is more to God than love.

After 9/11, I remember driving in a large city and listening to talk radio. The female host of the radio show was angry about a sentiment that she had heard from numerous people. Apparently, some religious people were saying that God was responsible for the terrorist attacks and had brought judgment upon our nation for our sins. This talk show host took exception to that and argued passionately against such a view. She said something like, My God is a God of love, and the God I know wouldn’t do things like that. Now I am not sure where these particular religious people got their information, and I do not agree with them, however, I don’t agree with the radio host either. I wanted to call her and ask her if she had ever read the Bible, especially the Old Testament where there are stories of God wiping out whole nations—men, women, children and even babies—because of the sins of those nations. Obviously, there is more to this God of love than just love, and we make a huge mistake if we make him so small that he is a one-dimensional character.

There is a verse in Isaiah 6:3 that states that God is holy, holy, holy. The whole verse says, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory. When a writer in the Bible writes something three times in a row, he is not just stumbling with his pen but is emphasizing a point. Isaiah recorded this proclamation spoken by the angels about God. They proclaimed to him, and he proclaims to us: You better understand that this God is holy!

When was the last time you gave any thought to God being holy? Does the holiness of God ever pop up in your conversations at work or around the dinner table? What happens when a God of love is also a holy God? I am not sure about you, but I have not crossed paths with many people who have considered that question. If our loving God is also holy, holy, holy, then we ought to consider that this other dimension of God’s character is significant.

While you are pondering this, let me ask you another question: Did you know that in 1 Peter 1:16, the apostle Peter wrote to all who would call themselves God’s people, It is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’? So, we must also understand God is holy because we are called to be holy like him. If we do not understand his holiness, we cannot know who we are meant to be. Do you want to take a guess where Peter got this idea about holiness? The words he quoted are from an Old Testament text. Thousands of years before Peter breathed his first breath, Moses wrote, Be holy, because I am holy in Leviticus. In fact, those exact words or some form of them are written in six places in Leviticus in the NIV. In all of Leviticus, the idea of holiness is mentioned close to one hundred times. Maybe holiness needs to crop up in our thinking and in our conversations a little more.

If you and I want to make sure that our view of God is not too small, we need to understand what it means for God to be holy and for us to be holy. The starting point for our journey is Leviticus as we wrap our minds around this idea of holiness and try to understand it better. There is no better place to start, so grab your Bible and try something new. Turn to the book of Leviticus and read it. Read it slowly. While you are reading it, write down or mark every place where you come across the word holy. This could be the beginning of Leviticus coming alive to you as you discover how relevant this book is to your life.

It could be that this journey seems beyond your ability. I hope you will not give into that thinking. You may or may not be a regular church-going kind of person or a very good Bible student. That does not matter. This God who is both loving and holy, among other things, is reaching out to you. He always has. He will help you with the journey. While you may be comfortable with his love, his holiness should also draw you to him. Holiness is a remarkable quality of God that he shares with us. Even though holiness may seem beyond your reach, don’t worry. If you listen to God, he will help you be holy like he is holy.

Chapter 1

Arrowheads

If I could choose any place I wanted to live, I would choose a place isolated in the mountains. I would love to wake up every day and see the grandeur of the mountains, hear the chirping of the birds, and watch an eagle fly by or see a bear ambling off in the distance. I remember once taking a family road trip over the Rocky Mountains in late spring. It was exhilarating for me to drive on a winding road through snow-capped mountain peaks. As we came over the mountains and started to descend on the other side, we passed through a high meadow with green grass and wildflowers. Elk grazed in the meadows. A fox crossed the road in front of us. The whole meadow was surrounded by snow-capped peaks. Also, in that meadow were a few houses. People actually lived there! I thought, Wow! This would be a great place live.

In that sense, God and I are different. I would pick a home far away from the masses of people. God, on the other hand, has always chosen to live right in their midst. A very strong connection exists between God and people. I suppose when he decided to make people in his image, that connection was bound to happen, just like the bond between parents and their children. Typically, that bond is immediate and life-long. Because of this connection that God feels toward us, he has always wanted to be in our midst. This becomes abundantly clear in the part of the Bible that we call the book of the law. We see this bond as God chooses to walk in the garden with Adam and Eve. We see it also as God makes a covenant with Abraham, and with Abraham’s son, and then again with Abraham’s grandson. This desire was plainly and emphatically pronounced by God when he brought Israel to Mt. Sinai and made them his people.

God’s desire to live among the people he created can really be seen if you know something about arrowheads. People who live in places that once were inhabited by Native American Indians hundreds of years ago come across relics of those communities like old arrowheads. These relics have stories to tell, messages for the ones who find them. If the finder knows how to read the message, he or she can enjoy a wonderful discovery that goes far deeper than just finding an old arrowhead.

Would you believe me if I told you that you can find ancient arrowheads in the Bible? They are there, and there are lots of them. In the first books of the Bible, the part we call the book of the law, there are some very special ones. Many who have found them have been blessed by them. I hope you will be blessed, also. One of those who found a whole collection of these arrowheads is a man named David Dorsey. Not only did he find the arrowheads, but he understood the stories that they tell.

For us to understand the arrowheads’ messages, we first must know some basic things about how the Bible was written. We also need to know a few things about the book of the law. If we know these things, we can understand the messages behind the arrowheads, so let’s take a quick look at some of these basic facts.

First, most people normally think of the book of the law as the first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They believe Moses wrote them. However, if you read Joshua 24:26, you will find that the book of Joshua was part of the book of the law. Remember that because the first thing we need to do is see the first six books of the Bible as one work—the book of the law.

Secondly, we need to know that neither Moses nor Joshua wrote the book of the law on their own. The Holy Spirit guided their writing (2 Peter 1:20-21). We could really say that God wrote the book of the law. This is important because God is the one who made and left the arrowheads behind for people to find.

The third basic fact we need to understand is that the Spirit of God wrote different parts of the Bible in different ways. He varied his style, and he had many reasons for doing this. You may not have thought about it or been able to pick up on the different styles, but reading the Bible can make you aware of them. The Psalms read differently than Genesis, Matthew reads differently from Proverbs, and Song of Songs reads differently from Revelation. Most people like reading the stories more than the genealogies, and probably, you like reading the poetry better than the laws. Perhaps you like reading the gospels better than the prophets. Already you know something about the different styles and structures that God used in writing the Bible.

One of those styles concerns these arrowheads. I believe God really liked these arrowheads because he made a whole lot of them. These arrowheads have a couple of technical names: inverted parallelism or chiasmus. (If you want to have fun with somebody, try inserting the word chiasmus into an everyday conversation. You may not have a clue what you are talking about but neither will they, and you’ll sound smart.) Instead of using the technical names, let’s just call them arrowheads.

When God had one of his writers make an arrowhead, it was a craft. The arrowhead was balanced. It had a broad end that tapered off to a sharp point. Without that sharp point, the arrowhead was pointless (pun intended). God’s writers were skilled craftsmen, and with his help, they made these arrowheads. They were crafted by writing one set of thoughts on one side of the arrowhead, starting at the broad end, and then they worked their way to the point. Once they reached the point, they sharpened it by writing corresponding, parallel thoughts as they worked their way back to the broad end.

By using these arrowheads, God directs the reader to the point of the arrowhead, where its message lies. If you find one of these arrowheads in Scripture, you want to pay attention to the tip because it contains the message that God wants you to know most of all.

Now, these arrowheads in the Bible are not real arrowheads, so how would you recognize one when you saw it? It requires some training to spot them. It took craftsmanship to make them, so it will take skill to recognize them. However, these arrowheads have a certain look about them that will help you find them. A very simple arrowhead will start with some word or bit of