Leviticus 22:17-23:14

Leviticus 22:17-23:14

The rest of Leviticus 22 reviews the sacrifices, and again this seems to just be a repeat. There are a few additional conditions mentioned, but basically it reminds the Israelites to bring their best to God. They were not to cheat Him out of their best sacrifice by sacrificing a deformed animal. Part of living a holy lifestyle is giving our all to God and not just part of our lives.

Leviticus 23 introduces some new material, looking at the different feasts that the Israelites were to celebrate throughout the year. The most important one, which was not really a feast, was the Sabbath. Every seventh day, the Israelites were commanded to rest, to do no work. This was to help them focus completely on the Lord and not on the busyness of their lives. Just as God took a day of rest to look at His creation, we too should take that day of rest to focus entirely on Him. He is the reason we are alive and can work on those other six days. At the very least, we can give Him one day in which we focus on Him rather than on the things of this world that can easily bog us down.

The first feast mentioned in this chapter is Passover. On this day, God expected His children to remember the protection He had given them when they left Egypt. Now the generation being spoken to in Leviticus was the very generation that had once been slaves in Egypt. For them, this feast had personal implications. It was a way for them to express their gratitude to God for delivering them from the Egyptians. But God also wanted it to be a reminder to future generations of His provision. The purpose of this feast was to bring glory to God for the way that He had protected His children in the past and His promise of protection in the future.
The next feast is about bringing the first fruits of the land to God.

Because God had blessed them in having all that they had, He expected the first of their crops (or anything else) to be given back. This is similar to the idea of tithing. Everything that we have in life is a gift from God. We have done nothing to deserve it, for it is only because of Him that we even had the opportunity to obtain it. The least that we can do is give a portion of it back to Him. For the people of Israel, they were supposed to give the first part of it back, whether that be animals, crops, or anything else in life. So when thinking about tithing today, I think a good practice would be to make the tithe the first “bill” that we pay. Now we should not view it as a bill or an obligation, although it is commanded. Instead, our tithe should be something that we give joyfully back to God. But by making it the first “bill” that we pay, we hold to the idea of the first fruits in giving back the first portion of what we have earned.

Matt