Day 30: God Equips the Called

Today we read Exodus 4-5, Leviticus 4, and Psalms 46. In this story, we learn how God is going to equip Moses with his Shepherd's staff and his brother, Aaron on this rescue mission. We also try to unpack the enigmatic story about a bridegroom of blood in Exodus, chapter 4 with Dr. Carmen Imes. Like a foreigner in a foreign land, we visit Leviticus, a culture far different than our own and consider what we can learn about atonement. For me, it brought to light how casual and nonchalant we, or I should say, I, can sometimes be about sin. I know it’s wrong, but here, in Leviticus an animal was slaughtered for sin to pay the cost and cover over the sin in order to allow God to dwell in their midst. While this ritual reads gruesome and weird to a culture like ours, it puts front and center the weightiness of sin and the cost is alienation and dislocation from God. Dr. Tim Mackie makes the analogy to going to a restaurant and realizing after we ate that we forgot our money. Yes, opps, but we still owe the restaurant for the meal we ate. So we ask our friend to “cover us.” Even if we do not mean to sin, there is a cost. Dr. Tim Mackie also points to the rituals we have today with trash, placing them in certain places and taking them out. In Leviticus, God was giving the people a way to take out their sin and the only way is through innocent blood standing in the gap, covering the cost. If you do not already know, Leviticus happens after the people of Israel are freed from slavery by God and then someone quite immediately drifts into idol worship at the end of Exodus. Atonement was needed for the Hebrew people and it is needed for us, but we know because of what Jesus said at the last supper (Luke 22:7-23) and what He did through His death and resurrection, He stands in the gap, He paid the cost to cover us. If animal sacrifice causes me to squirm, my heart is gutted everytime I think about what Jesus did for me, for us, in order to have us back to dwell with us to restore and redeem us to the blessing and our role of being a blessing to others.

Resources:

Dr. Tim Mackie and John Collins, https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/exodus-1-18/ 

Dr. Tim Mackie and John Collins (2017) Torah Leviticus Q&R, Episode 5, Bible Project. Podcast: https://bibleproject.com/podcast/leviticus-qr/ 

Dr. Carmen Imes, Exodus Class - Exodus 1-40, (14 hours) Bible Project. https://bibleproject.com/classroom/overview/exodus-overview/ 

Pollard, William (1996) The Soul of the Firm. Harper Business. 

Credits:

Podcast music by Stockaudios from Pixabay. Speaker, Dr. Rachel Bodell. Podcast Sound Engineer, Alan Darling. Podcast Artwork, Will Gerard.