Feb 23, 2025
LEVITICUS 7-8:
In
yesterday’s reading in Leviticus, we heard about sin and guilt
offerings and about the ordination offering for priests. In today’s
reading, it sounds to me that for repayment offerings (repayment
being a sin which would usually be intentional), the person
offering the sacrifice would not be entitled to receive any of the
meat.
In today’s reading, Lev. 8:17,
we read that “He (Moses) took the rest of the bull, including its
skin, flesh, and intestines, and burned it
outside the camp, just as the Lord
had commanded.
Note
that there are many times in Scripture where it says that one
leader or another performed some large work, but it is clear that
they ordered that the work is done. (An example would be statements
like King X built the city of Y.) It would have taken Moses a long
time to burn up the skin, flesh, and intestines of a bull, so it
seems to me that we should understand that he didn’t do this by
himself.
PSALM 13:
David starts Psalm 13 by crying out “How long?”
and ends with a note of praise. We can be thankful for his
difficult experiences which give us these Psalms.
LUKE 9b:
Yesterday in Luke we heard of Jesus sending out
his disciples, and afterward the feeding of the 5,000. Peter
rightly declared what position Jesus was filling. Jesus predicted
his death. He said that some standing there would not die before
seeing the Kingdom of God. Perhaps he meant his three disciples who
saw the transfiguration because His kingship was clearly
foreshadowed there.
In yesterday’s reading, we read again Jesus’ statement about what it takes to become his disciple. The metonymy that Jesus coined is to ‘take up your cross’. As I said before, this means that we make the decision to follow the Lord no matter what, even to the point of death by crucifixion. Differing from Mark’s account of this statement, Luke adds the word ‘daily’. That decision I just explained, that taking up of our cross, its a daily commitment.