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Leviticus Drives: God and Relationships with Men and Women

Chapter 14 in About God
this chapter by Jonathan E. Brickman.

Just to mention of the Book of Leviticus these days, can evoke a groan. We just don’t put ourselves in the shoes of the folks in that book very much. But there is a way to do so, and it gets easier every year in this day and age. It has to do with depression, in other words, the personal worthlessness and gathering death of soul, which human beings often experience.

The gathering death of the soul itself is nothing new. Before the first human sins were committed, the human beings were warned that they would certainly die if they did them. And they did die as a consequence ― but not immediately, not for a great many years, because the Lord did something. That something was not explained then and there, but in Leviticus it is. We’ll cycle back once we get there.

Leviticus comes after Exodus, and by this time, a whole lot of things have happened in the now-huge family (about a million people) of the man first named Jacob, whom God renamed Israel. According to God, they have done a lot of things well...and according to God also, they have done a lot of things which are evil, which are sins against Him. And He says something most extremely important to all of us in this chapter. He says that for those people, it was the life in the blood of animals sacrificed, which made atonement for their souls.

And since it is God who said that the life in the blood made that atonement for them, we shall consider that it was true. God does not ever lie, and He has quoted Himself Personally into that book as saying these things. Today it is popular to disbelieve His Very Words, and instead accept words in the book of Hebrews in which it is written that it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. We have multiple examples of God quoting people who are not God in creation of His Scripture, in 1 Corinthians 7:11, Matthew 9:8, and Mark 10:4. There are other very helpful teachings in Hebrews on this very topic, including the observation that the consciences of the children of Israel were not cleansed: but we shall not consider that anything the Lord has Personally said shall be untrue, and in Hebrews we do not have the Lord quoting Himself on this issue.

Once one believes and does not discard the Word of God where this is written, that the life given in the blood of those animals did indeed make atonement for the souls of those people, we can see something extraordinary. We can see their motivation, their inner drive, to sacrifice all those animals, and spill all that blood in the ways they were told to do. There was a whole lot of blood involved; just read any of certain chapters and you will see it. They spilt more blood and put out more gore than even the worst of so-called “superheroes” seen in movies these days. The ASPCA would want them all dead. But the children of Israel had overwhelming, profound and terrible one could say, motivation, from God Himself, to kill all of those animals in the prescribed way, and throw their blood all over the holy place like that.

The motivation was not unique to them. They had sinned, done evil things, against God and other human beings, over and over again, and the death gathered within their souls. It gathered, and festered, and built, worse and worse over time.

Most of the world, at that time, had no way at all to deal with the gathering death of the soul. But the children of Israel did. God had given them His laws, and for a great many sins, He promised to use the life in the blood of those animals, to atone for ― to eliminate ― that death, that sin.

So for the descendants for the man named Israel, for a very long time, they had a great thing possible. The boundaries of the Lord’s will for them were specific. Most breakages of His Will could be atoned by the blood in the sacrifices as He had specified. The Lord took death out of the soul, using the life in the blood of the sacrifice, if all was done according to His commandments. From a sense of personal death, to a sense of life and freedom from the sin. Over and over again. Many sins. A very large number of people did this, for many centuries, and God said this was His will and desire. The Lord required the sinner to carry the iniquity of some sins, and some required execution. But for a great many, He gave them a wonderful way, a path of freedom, of release, from sin, and guilt, and the gathering death that results. And this is also why the first man and the first woman did not die immediately after the first sin: the skins.

Much of Leviticus and its peripherals is written as strictly between the Lord and that family. But there is more there, many different statements He makes, which have no such limitation. These are profoundly helpful today. Whenever you see a high suicide rate, or report of depression epidemic, you will find strong attempts to deny, defy, or eliminate any or all of the above and other truths He has given.

All of this is therefore most worthwhile. Here we have the very reason for the sacrifice of Christ the Lord. His life, which was in His blood poured out in the world, is available to anyone who accepts that God is willing to write on our hearts the truths of good and evil, right and wrong, righteousness and sin. All we have to do is ask Him, and He will begin the writing, and the cleansing of the death from our soul, and the freeing of our soul unto joy and purpose for ever.