August 25, 2024
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in selections from Leviticus and Galatians? Here’s today’s reading:
Leviticus 5 (NIV)
1“ ‘If anyone sins because they do not speak up when they hear a public charge to testify regarding something they have seen or learned about, they will be held responsible.
2“ ‘If anyone becomes aware that they are guilty—if they unwittingly touch anything ceremonially unclean (whether the carcass of an unclean animal, wild or domestic,……Continue Reading
Leviticus 5
Leviticus 5
Steve and Camy
Read Leviticus 5 and 6. Comment on Leviticus 5:1{If anyone sins because they do not speak up when they hear a public charge to testify regarding something they have seen or learned about, they will be held responsible.} NIV. In other words people are to be honest and come forward or they will be guilty of sin themselves. In the KJV It reads: {And if a soul sin, and hear the voice of swearing, and is a witness, whether he hath seen or known of it; if he do not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity.} The KJV keys in on swearing while the NIV speaks in general terms. Perhaps the word swearing is not the cuss word but used as swearing in when a person gives testimony. That`s probably the swearing in term. God bless.
Leviticus 5
Leviticus 5
What this chapter makes clear is that it matters what we actually do rather than what we intended to do. But we also recognize once again the reflective nature that God calls even believers today to, of evaluating our lives and bringing it before God in light of His assessment and not our own. How merciful God is to provide a path of cleansing and forgiveness. And it hit me in reading how expensive sinning in the Jewish context would be in bringing these sacrifices. And it led me to thinking how much do our sins cost us and whether we can develop a casual attitude toward it because it doesn’t. It definitely cost Jesus, but may we show our appreciation for His payment to choose against sin and for Him and His will for us.
Leviticus 5
Leviticus 5
Again, we have a depiction of the manner through which God made a path for people to be forgiven their sins…including even sins committed unintentionally. Sinning cost people something in the OT. If anyone committed a breach of faith and sinned unintentionally, it cost them a ram. I wonder if this costly grace helped to discipline and motivate the people to follow and obey God? Not only because they loved God, but because they knew that sinning was costly…and the grace of God was costly. They would lose something of material value in order to be forgiven.
But now, we have Jesus, right? Jesus paid it all! All to Him I owe! Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow…goes the old song. Pretty easy to sing those words on a Sunday morning and then go out into the waiting world and forget all about it. Still have all my possessions. Still have my cars. Still have my bank account…sure, maybe a little lighter because I gave some away…but still…what does following Jesus cost me? That song says “all to Him I owe”. Wait? Grace is free. I don’t owe God anything! Do I?
Well, Jesus said that it will cost me everything. Jesus said that if I am to come after Him, I must deny myself, pickup my cross daily, and follow Him. That if I seek to save my life I will lose it, but if I lose my life, for His sake and the gospel, I will save it.
God’s grace is free…but it is not cheap. But I’ll tell you what, I lived the vast majority of my professing Christian life living as though it was absolutely dirt cheap, and that because it was so cheap, I didn’t owe God anything – how could I owe God anything? Grace was free to me! But grace, while it is indeed given freely to us, is not cheap. It is so costly that God Himself had to become a man, lower Himself down to our level from His infinite glory, and come live in the muck and mire of a fallen, broken, sinful mess of what we have done to His creation. And at the end of that life…He took on the sins of the entire world, died a death we could never die, and was raised, the first born of the new creation, so that He might be the first born of many brothers (and sisters).
Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship starts with a chapter discussing what we have done with God’s grace, and the perils of taking infinitely costly grace and making it cheap. I share an excerpt here for anyone that is interested…God bless!
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“This cheap grace has been no less disastrous to our own spiritual lives. Instead of opening up the way to Christ it has closed it. Instead of calling us to follow Christ, it has hardened us in our disobedience. Perhaps we had once heard the gracious call to follow Him, and had at this command even taken the first few steps along the path of discipleship in the discipline of obedience, only to find ourselves confronted by the word of cheap grace. Was that not merciless and hard? The only effect that such a word could have on us was to bar our way to progress, and seduce us to the mediocre level of the world, quenching the joy of discipleship by telling us that we were following a way of our own choosing, that we were spending our strength and disciplining ourselves in vain – all of which was not merely useless, but extremely dangerous. After all, we were told, our salvation had already been accomplished by the grace of God. The smoking flax was mercilessly extinguished. It was unkind to speak to men like this, for such a cheap offer could only leave them bewildered and tempt them from the way to which they had been called by Christ. Having laid hold on cheap grace, they were barred forever from the knowledge of costly grace. Deceived and weakened, men felt that they were strong now that they were in possession of this cheap grace – whereas they had in fact lost the power to live the life of discipleship and obedience. the word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works.
Wow Pastor I was thinking the same thing about cost as I read this chapter, there were so many times where they were given alternatives based on cost it appeared these offerings could not have been cheap. Imagine if in addition to the emotional cost of our sins each time we had a monetary cost. While some sins end up with monetary reprecussion, what if we had a figurative “swear jar” for every sin…it may be eye opening for how often it happens!