Why in the world I'm up before 10 on a Saturday, I am not sure but alas here I am. I made some coffee and muffins and sat down with my Bible. I read some of Paul's letters and then decided to pick up something from the old testament; lucky me, I had left off in Leviticus. I was reading about the feasts and sacrifices and thinking about how crazy that would be if we still had to abide by those laws today. I thanked God for sending us His son as our forever sacrifice. I do wonder though, if God has waited to send Jesus, would we still all be farming? Would there have been a "delay" in the advancement of technology?? It just created a very interesting picture in my mind.
But, thinking about "what if's" is not always something great, and I kept reading. In the back of my head I was thinking about this book I had been reading "love is an orientation" and how the author explains how to look at New Testament passages without completely ignoring the old law. And I get to chapter 24 of Leviticus, when a person blasphemes the Lord, and is held in prison until the Lord has clearly spoken to Moses. (which is also awesome - how many times could I make a better decision if I waited for the Lord to clearly speak to me instead of just jumping to conclusions or deciding for myself what I should do). And then God spoke and told the village to take him outside the walls and stone the man who blasphemed. hold up God. Wait just a cotton pickin' minute (that's what I thought to myself). You, the God of grace, abounding in love, slow to anger, and full of mercy want them to stone this guy just cuz he called you a name?? And I thought I had a problem with jealousy!! Then I started to think about how angry God really is in the old testament - flooding the earth, banning Cain, making women barren, telling people to take an eye for an eye and creating lots of laws. For cry eye, no wonder people think so poorly of Him at time. (don't worry I got good things out of this...just wait). And I realized that God kinda used the animals and the sacrifices as scapegoats. As a person sacrificed the animal, I think God allowed his anger on that person (for their wrong doings) to also be released. Maybe that is why there were so many different types of sacrifices, cuz people did a lot of things that were wrong and that upset God. But I can only imagine the way that God might have felt- after making a beautiful creation and all these people only for them to hate each other and not love Him. Not to mention that God was doing this all on His own from heaven - sure He had the angels and the trinity has always existed but there was nothing tangible for the people to see. How could God show His love if he was constantly disciplining. So then God sends us His son, Jesus, to be that tangible something. TO show us the compassion that God has, to show the love and the grace and the mercy and all those things that can be difficult to show through discipline. But Jesus does more than that. Not only does he show those things, he is the ultimate and biggest scape goat. God was able to take out all of his anger at the world, all of his sadness, all of his discipline out on one person. One man to take on the sins of the world - what a responsibility. What a man Jesus was to be able to take it all. To realize that he, Jesus, was helping his Father to illustrate love, and show the world how great God truly is. After the new covenant is made God still disciplines us but look at how different it is from the old testament discipline. Because God is able to look at us through his son now. God was able to say everything he needed to say, more or less.
Just the other day Rob and I were talking. And though I have been trying to release many harboring thoughts, i still have some. I still have anger and hurt that I've held on to. So he has given me an exercise to try, that is essentially the same as what I just mentioned above. To take an stick like object and to go out where no one else is around. To say positive affirmations, that are the opposite of the the anger and hurt, and to hit the ground as hard as I can each time I say those positive affirmations. TO use the ground and the stick as my scapegoat, to take it out on something that can handle it. I can just imagine God, up in heaven, every time something horrible happened to Jesus, each lash of the whip, of God crying and saying "I love you", "I want what is best for you", "you don't need your addictions", "I will help you stop selling yourself" and thousands and millions of other positive affirmations about His son and His people and His creation.
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