day no. 14,495: no earthly authority is absolute

Psalm 82

God is the Judge of judges. Just because you own a gavel doesn't mean that you get to invent new justices. Those in places of authority need to bear the weight of the responsibility that comes with the position. Those who use or abuse the position for personal gain will find themselves judged by the Judge of judges. The buck does not end with them. No earthly power is absolute. In other words, every earthly authority has an Authority. God is the Father of fathers, the Husband of husbands, the Master or masters, the Shepherd of shepherds, the Judge of judges, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords.

day no. 14,494: life and death

Leviticus 24:22
You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God.

Principles apply to all peoples at all times. They do not change with the times or by location. God's Name and human life are to be respected. If you take another's life, your life was to be taken. If you take the Lord's Name in vain, your life was to be taken. Two things you must take seriously: God, your Creator, and your neighbor, His creation. To decry either is to invite deadly consequence.

day no. 14,493: honey flows from the rock

Psalm 81

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven in simply letting people do whatever they want, when He lets go of the leash and lets our eager legs flee from His presence. It is not freedom we find in fleeing His side, but slavery to sin. The leash we resented as a limitation once loosened provides only the opportunity to enslave ourselves elsewhere. We find that servanthood is so entrenched in our DNA that we find it wherever we go and what we find in wandering is more ruthless masters than the One who previously held our leash. Honey flows from the Rock that anchors the other end of our leash. 

day no. 14,492: necessary festivity

Leviticus 23:44

Thus Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed feasts of the Lord.

This chapter is chock full of days off, offerings of first fruits and festivals of feasting. God likes holidays - literally deriving its meaning from, "holy days." On these days, you rest. You do not do ordinary work. It is set aside to focus on our extraordinary God. On these days you bring the first and best to the Lord your God, who is the first and best of all things you possess. On these days you eat and feast with friends and family with thankful hearts for the provision and privilege to live as a citizen of God's Kingdom. These feasts were appointed. They were mandatory. Ain't no party like a Leviticus party because a Leviticus party is mandatory! You MUST rest. You MUST bring your first and best. And You MUST feast and eat with eyes towards Heaven.

day no. 14,491 continued... the son of man whom You have made strong for Yourself

Psalm 80: 17-19

But let your hand be on the man of your right hand,

    the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself!

Then we shall not turn back from you;

    give us life, and we will call upon your name!

Restore us, O Lord God of hosts!

    Let your face shine, that we may be saved!

God has made men strong so that they would bring Him glory. In other words, men are made strong by God for God. We are blessed with strength in order to help carry the burdens of others. We are made strong in order to shoulder the weight of responsibility that comes with being the head of our households. We are made strong in order to endure difficulty for the glory of God. We are made strong by His strength. If we pursue strength, our veracity fails. If we pursue God, we have His hand upon us. His hand provides us with strength. He pumps godly blood and adrenaline through our veins providing life and energy to keep our face to the plow and our hope in Heaven. He shines His face upon men so that they may reflect His light.

day no. 14,491: callista sister is 1 year old today!!!

Happy Birthday little girl! 1 year in the books. I'm so glad God gave me the privilege of being your dad. I'm so excited to get to know you. I wonder what your voice will sound like and what you'll want to talk about. I also wonder what you will look like. You look so much like your sister Penelope did at your age. She is adorable, so you are on a good trajectory. Happy birthday lil lady. I love you and I like you. Always have, always will. No matter what. Forever and ever. Amen!

day no. 14,490: God is Chief Shepherd

Psalm 80

God is a Shepherd. He is THE Shepherd. He leads us with the rod and the staff. He protects the flock from its enemies from within and without. He chases down wandering sheep and fights off ferocious wolves.  God is also a Gardener. He is THE Gardener. He began by planting a Garden in Eden and set man in place to work it. He plants, waters, shines His sun down and produces and gathers fruit from His creation. He tends to His garden and knows the difference between wheat and weeds. He knows what to gather to the bonfire and what to gather to the fruit basket. He empowers plants to produce fruit. He enables sheep to stand upright.

day no. 14,489: I am the Lord who sanctifies you

Leviticus 22:31-33

So you shall keep my commandments and do them: I am the Lord. 32 And you shall not profane my holy name, that I may be sanctified among the people of Israel. I am the Lord who sanctifies you, 33 who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God: I am the Lord.

Repetition in this chapter quickly reveals its theme, "I am the Lord who sanctifies you." Do not forget who is doing what. The Lord is sanctifying you. It is the Lord's desire to do so. And the end result is sanctification. It will happen because the One doing it said so. Don't lose heart. He is sanctifying you. He brought a people out of Egypt to be their God. He brings people out of slavery to sin to be their God. He sets them apart for the privilege of setting Him apart in their hearts.  

day no. 14,488: children of God but in the world

Psalm 79

When God's children begin acting like the world around them, their loving Father will often bring swift discipline. When they find themselves devastated and humbled, they turn back to Him. But what is the expectation that He will receive them back? Why when we have acted just like those on whom destruction awaits should we be treated any differently? The difference is one of enemy and friend, stranger and child. God disciplines the children in whom He delights and they, though they wander, are welcomed back when they repent. God often works wonders in order to win them back to Himself.

day no. 14,487: unblemished behind the veil

Leviticus 21:16-17, 22-23

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 17 “Speak to Aaron, saying, None of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God. 22 He may eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy things, 23 but he shall not go through the veil or approach the altar, because he has a blemish

Nothing with a blemish could pass through the veil into the direct presence of God. These priests were not kept back from most duties, but of this privilege they were restricted. The shadow was fulfilled in the substance of the unblemished High Priest of God, Jesus Christ, who entered through the veil on our behalf so that the blemished may now have direct access to God.

day no. 14,486: that blessed arrangement

Leviticus 21:13-14

And he shall take a wife in her virginity… he shall take as his wife a virgin of his own people

The holiest of God's holy people had wives. It is an error to assume that being single is more holy than being married. It is arrogance to forbid the clerical class from marrying. 

day no. 14,485: the Words and works of God

Psalm 78

The primary task of every generation is to relay to the next the Words and works of our great God and Savior. We tell of what He has done for us and we teach what He has commanded us to do. We do not forget one or the other. To remember His Works without teaching His Word ends in a license to sin. To teach His Word without remembering His works ends in hopeless despair or arrogant pride. We must remember Who God is, what He has done and what He has told us we must do in response to Who He is and what He has done.

day no. 14,484: set aside and set apart

Leviticus 20:22-23

You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. 23 And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I detested them.

God actively set His people apart in the plagues that were visited upon Egypt. In each and every plague, a clear distinction was made between Egypt and Israel. And now that God has rescued His people out of Egypt, He is setting them apart in consecration. The reason He is displacing people groups before Israel is to create a set apart people, a city within the city, a nation within the nations pointing to God. If the people God rescued now turn back to the practices of those people's God removed, what would be their confidence of being permanent fixtures in the land?

day no. 14,483: fair weather friends

Psalm 77

We've all been there before, can't sleep, mind spinning, full of more questions than answers and worried what the future might bring. It can be the most difficult thing in those moments to remember how God has come through in the past. It can seem like unfriendly ointment that stings more than comforts. But we must not forget in the darkness what we've seen in the light. We must remember that behind the storm cloud is a bright, warm sun. This too shall pass but in the meantime, will we consider God? Or do we only remember Him on bright, sunny days? Or do we then also forget Him and go about our business as well? Perhaps the storms are God's grace for recalibrating souls prone to wander.

day no. 14,482: gray highlights

Leviticus 19:32

You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

The elderly are always in danger of being ignored. They can be as much work as infants, but they don't carry with them the same societal sympathies. Here God upholds the value of the elderly and assigns honor to them.

day no. 14,481: partiality can go both ways

Leviticus 19:15

You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

Injustice is almost exclusively thought of in terms of the latter. Our script defaults to a rich, influential person getting away with murder because they are rich and influential. And that certainly is in view here. That is injustice. But so is being partial to the poor. To assume that poverty is closer to verity is to make an equally unjust determination, only in the opposite of the typical direction. The poor are no less sinful in essence than the rich, although they have less access and opportunity than the rich. Either way, justice is a matter of principle, not of socioeconomic position per se. 

day no. 14,480: unsportsmanlike conduct

Leviticus 19:14

You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

If you cuss the deaf, they cannot hear it. If you set a trap for the blind, they cannot see it. You have an unfair advantage and must take extra precaution to ensure that your freedom does not trip them up. 

day no. 14,479: pay day

Leviticus 19:13

You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning.

It is robbery to withhold something you owe from someone. If you owe someone a day's wages, do not wait to pay them until it's convenient for you. If they are a hired hand, put their payment in their hand at the completion of their assigned task.

day no. 14,478: every last drop

Leviticus 19:9-10

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. 10 And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.

What we often times call thorough, God calls greed. What can often be justified under the pretense of "waste not, want not," can, in fact, be the sin of hoarding. Here we see God instructing His people to be less exacting in their harvesting in order to provide for those who have no fields – the poor and the traveler-through. 

day no. 14,477: razing and raising

Psalm 76
God is so great that the stouthearted melt before Him and the humble arise. He turns the might makes right of the world into puddles of incompetence and the meek into permanent fixtures in His home. He razes the arrogant and raises the humble.

day no. 14,476: categorically indifferent

Leviticus 18:22

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. 23 And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.

It is a sin to treat categorically different things as though those categorical differences did not exist. It is a sin to treat darkness like light, to treat bitter like something sweet, to treat evil as though it were good, black as though it were white. God creates sharp, clear distinctions and it is the utmost treason to redefine them down to gray because it is more to your liking.

day no. 14,475: sister wives

Leviticus 18:18

And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.

What a kind provision God here provides. You cannot marry living sisters. It clearly would be cruel to your first wife to take a second wife at all, but that cruelty would only be compounded by taking a second wife who is the first wife's sister. But God doesn't rely simply on that fact to discourage, He takes ownership of it and says not only is that a sin against her, it is a sin against Me. If you do that to her, you don't just have her tears with which to contend, you have to contend with God Himself. If your first wife dies, this does not prohibit marrying her surviving sister. That is neither a sin against your late spouse or against your God.

day no. 14,474: principle and place; text and context

Leviticus 18:1-5

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God. 3 You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. 4 You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. 5 You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.

God didn't bring Israel to Egypt in order for them to become like Egyptians. And now God is leading them out of Egypt and into Canaan, but not for them to now become like Canaanites. It goes to show that we must always be careful to be guided by principle and not place, by the timeless Biblical text and not our current context. 

day no. 14,473: horn of plenty

Psalm 75
It is not inherently problematic to have a horn of boasting. It becomes problematic when you begin to toot your own horn. The horns that give praise to lesser things will all be destroyed and those that blow them along with them. But the horns of the righteous will endure forever. This is because one is only righteous if he trusts in the alien righteousness of God on his behalf. That song will play all the live long day, that note will carry on for eternity. 

day no. 14,472: lifeblood

Leviticus 17:11

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.

Life belongs to God. He is the Author of all life. Blood is a symbol of that life. That is why blood is required for sacrifice. Someone has to die. Blood must be spilled for sin. Without blood, there is no atonement. Someone or something must die for our sins.

day no. 14,471: self-defense

Psalm 74

God can defend Himself. He made the world and everything in it. He doesn't fear the insults or insolence of men. But we see His Name despised, His Word rejected, His temple violated, His world polluted, and His people abused. It is hard to watch someone you love be mistreated. The psalmist loves God and can't stand to see Him blasphemed. The prayer is that God would rise and make Himself known thus restoring the grandeur of His majesty and vindicating the loyalty of His faithful in the sight of all.

day no. 14,470: propitiation and expiation

Leviticus 16:9

And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering, 10 but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

We need to be justified and sanctified, forgiven of sins and set apart from our sins in newness of life. The blood of the sacrificial goat makes atonement for our sins by bearing the penalty of our sins as a penal substitutionary atonement. The goat that is sent out to die in the wilderness bears our sins and takes them far away from us. We see both propitiation and expiation taking place here. We are justified by the sacrifice and separated from the guilt and shame of having sinned in the first place by the scapegoat. We are forgiven and made clean. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, our Savior, who bore the weight and penalty of our sins on the Cross and took them far away from us, burying them in His tomb, cleansing us from their shame. 

day no. 14,469: like a bad dream

Psalm 73

The wicked are like a bad dream. Very troubling, but gone in an instant. As quickly as waking up ends your dreaming, so the wicked will end when God returns. While you're dreaming, it seems real, but the second you wake up, even their memory often disappears. In the blink of an eye, everything will change.

day no. 14,468: not my shocked face

Leviticus 15:31

“Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.”

The shocking part of this chapter is not that God considers certain things about us unclean, but that our uncleanness doesn't have to be a permanent state of identity and that He provides a way to be made clean again so that we can enter His presence without negative consequence. That is His desire. He isn't trying to keep people out, He wants them to come in and it should not surprise us that coming into His presence accompanied great attention to details.

day no. 14,467: the body follows the head

Psalm 72

Solomon understands the weight of responsibility he has as the king. He knows that as he goes, so go the people of God over whom he has been given charge. So he prays for honor and wisdom and favor. It may seem selfish for the king to write a song for others to sing proclaiming their desire for the the king to be blessed, but to people who see their fate tied to the integrity of their king, this prayer makes perfect sense. God has made men heads. It is an inescapable concept which means it is not a matter of whether, but which. It is not a question of whether man is head, but which kind of head will he be. Will he be a good and godly head or will he be a lazy and godless head? Either way, still head, judged as head, responsible as head. 

day no. 14,466: clean and unclean

Leviticus 13-14

14:57 This is the law for leprous disease.

God makes sharp, clear distinctions between clean and unclean. To be clean is not the same as being unclean. These two chapters highlight the distinction as it applies particularly to infectious diseases of skin, clothing and construction materials. 

Some might object to these sharp distinctions by ignoring their existence. Others attempt to remedy the situation by switching the diagnosis -- calling clean things unclean and unclean things clean. But of particular note in these distinctions, that both overlook, is the restorative element. The distinctions are diagnostic, but what follows is medicinal.

God could have merely handed down distinct, static categories, but He provides a path of redemption, of change. Unclean things can become clean things. They are not forever unclean. They can be restored and a path of instruction is here provided to keep the clean from soiling themselves.