Read all about it—God prescribed every detail of life for His chosen people, Israel.
Do read all of it, from the beginning of His relationship with them.
Don’t get bogged down or frustrated in Leviticus, and miss seeing the heart of God.
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So, we Christians are relieved to know we are not under all those laborious laws for every day.
We are free—we can eat what we want, wear what we want, do what we want any day of the week.
No one can ‘bring us back under a yoke of bondage” because “Christ has set us free.”

BUT
But wait a minute.
God wanted to be in charge of everything in their lives.
He wanted to be in control.
And He dictated the details.

Does God want any less in His followers today ?
Are we tempted to hold back on relinquishing every detail to God’s control ?
Are there some things we ‘take care of ourselves’ and make our own decisions ?
Do we basically live thinking the God of the New Testament is different than the God of the Old Testament ?
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Jesus kept the rules, and He broke the rules.
He observed the Jewish festivals, and He infuriated the religious leaders when He broke ‘their’ rules.”
Jesus asked them, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, to heal ?”
No answer, and Jesus healed the man with a shriveled hand.

You see, they took great pride in adding details to the laws of God, because then they were the only ones who could claim to follow all of them.

Church leaders (with authority and power) and church organizations fall into the same patterns today—communicating to the people that adherence to their structure of beliefs and practices makes them right with God.
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Jesus clearly drew the focus away from compliant actions, to repentant hearts.
Jesus fulfilled the expectations of the law, and He completed the promises in every detail by His permanent sacrifice—promises that previous temporary sacrifices left incomplete.

He raised the bar, gave new meaning to the law.
He increased the standards, from outward action compliance, to the heart—the source of evil—the root of evil—where our love is.

“Man looks on the outward appearance; the Lord looks on the heart.”
Jesus said,
“If any man looks at a woman with lust for her, he has committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.”
“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
“What goes in does not defile a man, but what comes out.”

And, further,
Jesus told Peter in a vision of assorted animals (clean and unclean), to kill and eat.
When Peter objected, God said, “What I have made clean, do not call unclean.”
Jesus’ whole mission was to provide and offer salvation to all, even ‘unclean’ Gentiles.
Then Peter was immediately told to share Jesus with Gentiles knocking on his door.
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Let us never become a slave to our freedom, and miss true liberty as a slave to Jesus.

I will make reference to a crude word in this brief article, because it is part of life for a couple veteran friends of mine at Church In The Park.

One friend is disabled and faithfully shows up every Sunday morning.
He sits in his car, and we always have meaningful conversations.
That definitely adds purpose to my showing up to sing and share Jesus.

We have another friend (Marine, 80 years old, with health issues) that I only met a few times, with deep, meaningful memories, along with his deep profanity.
The friend in the car has occasional contacts with the other, and tells me about their style of mutual vulgar interactions.

He refers to the other being an a_ _ hole—descriptive, but not derogatory.
I said, “Jesus loves a_ _ holes. Thank God !”
He agreed.

By the way, make a quick review of the people Jesus reached out to most graciously—those kind of people.
We should do the same, even to those who are not our kind of people.