90 Day Bible Challenge – Day 15

YAY! Another week completed! I hope you all are getting as much out of the readings as I am. Though I have to confess something to you. I hate to admit this but my eyes started to roll back in my head at the prospect of reading Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy in a single week. You know, all that stuff about offerings and tribal counts had me a bit apprehensive. But I was pleasantly surprised with how engaged I was. Two themes seemed to blare out at me: ministry and relationship.

Let’s talk a bit about ministry first. What immediately got me was the work of the priests. Talk about a full-time job! Now those guys really couldn’t do anything else. All those rules. I can’t even imagine. Reading those passages made me appreciate the simplicity of life we now have with God because of Christ. And, poor Moses! I found myself wanting to smack down the Israelites a time or two myself, until it occurred to me that I’m probably more like the Israelites than I am like Moses. Talk about an “ouch” moment. Anyway, my hat is off to ministers who serve over congregations, large and small. No doubt the hardest part of ministry is dealing with the people God put under your leadership.

Now let’s talk a about relationship. As I was reading this week, I saw two kinds of relationships. One was based on knowing and adhering to the rules and the other on personally interacting with God. When you think about it, the Israelites had to keep their mind stayed on those rules, if they had any hope of keeping them. And in keeping their minds on the rules, they were also keeping their minds on God. I do think this was God’s intention all along. He wanted an on-going relationship with the Israelites and set out to establish one. In Numbers, we even see that He set Himself up, literally, as the center of the Israelites’ lives. He put the tabernacle in the middle of the camp. The priests were in a circle close around it. Then the other tribes were in an outer circle, beyond the priests.

Then you had the relationship that was based on interacting with God that was modelled in the way Moses interacted with Him. That relationship was not based on the rules, since it existed before the rules were given; it was based on the Moses-God interaction. So we had two kinds of relationship in operation at one time, or did we? Are they really different relationships or two sides of the same relationship? What do you think?

Enough from me. We had good reading this past week and I’m sure we’ll have good reading in the coming week, starting with Joshua, one of my favorite books. Now tell me about your week and what you’ve learned.

One more thing, I had a long trip this week so I did a bit of listening to the Bible on CD. I was unsure how it was going to work, but it was a very positive experience. You might want to try it if you’re on a long trip.

Until next week.