Dear Saints,
One of my enduring memories is a tour I took of the Louvre in Paris. I saw many famous statues I’d only seen in pictures … for example, Winged Victory of Samothrace and Venus de Milo. It was amazing to see how the artist was able to take a piece of rock and make it look so life-like. Of course, when looking at Winged Victory without its head or Venus without her arms, you realize they’re just statues … life-like maybe, but not alive.
The Book of Leviticus follows Exodus chronologically. After God gives His Law, the Ten Commandments to Moses and Israel on Mount Sinai, He gives Moses a more detailed explanation of what these commandments entail as Israel prepares to put Egypt fully behind themselves and enter the Promised Land, currently occupied by the Canaanites. Leviticus begins by telling Israel how they’re to come near to God in worship through atonement for sin. Then, beginning in Chapter 17, God tells His people how they’re to live holy lives, according to His Word, in response to His grace. God has selected them as His children. As part of His family, God lays out how they’re to act. And it’s much differently than the Egyptians they’ve lived amongst for over 300 years and the Canaanites they’re going to be living amongst. They’d worship a true, living God who could hear them, act for them, live among them, and keep them in His presence forever … as long as they responded to His love by showing their love and trust for Him alone. Unlike the gods of Egypt and Canaan, mere statues created by other men … the true God was, is, and always will be living and active in His creation … ruling it in accordance with His statutes found in His Word. Israel was warned, “I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 18:4b-5) Live by statues … or statutes?
Statues, inanimate creations of man, built to represent man’s ideas about what a god might be, are incapable of doing anything. But they were the guides Egyptians and Canaanites trusted in. They may appear life-like, but they aren’t alive. Instead, inspired by Satan, these idols, and the ideas they represent, lead one away from trusting the one true God – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Living by statues, leads one to become statue-like … eternally dead.
The one true God is alive! He makes things happen! God wants His people, and all people to be alive … like He is. Unlike Ra, Baal, or Molech, our living God descended into our lives to free us from the power of Satan – sin and death. Jesus, lived among us … suffered and died for us … and rose to new life to save us from sin and death, bringing us forgiveness and eternal life. Living, in response to God the Father’s love for us, by His statutes found in His living Word, leads all who believe in His Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to eternal life. Thanks be to our ever-living God … Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
In Christ,
Pastor Jim