Leviticus 22:1-16

1 Then the LORD said to Moses, 2 “Tell Aaron and his sons to treat with respect the sacred offerings that the Israelites have consecrated to Me, so that they do not profane My holy name. I am the LORD.

3 Tell them that for the generations to come, if any of their descendants in a state of uncleanness approaches the sacred offerings that the Israelites consecrate to the LORD, that person must be cut off from My presence. I am the LORD.

4 If a descendant of Aaron has a skin disease or a discharge, he may not eat the sacred offerings until he is clean. Whoever touches anything defiled by a corpse or by a man who has an emission of semen, 5 or whoever touches a crawling creature or a person that makes him unclean, whatever the uncleanness may be— 6 the man who touches any of these will remain unclean until evening. He must not eat from the sacred offerings unless he has bathed himself with water.

7 When the sun has set, he will become clean, and then he may eat from the sacred offerings, for they are his food. 8 He must not eat anything found dead or torn by wild animals, which would make him unclean. I am the LORD. 9 The priests must keep My charge, lest they bear the guilt and die because they profane it. I am the LORD who sanctifies them.

10 No one outside a priest’s family may eat the sacred offering, nor may the guest of a priest or his hired hand eat it. 11 But if a priest buys a slave with his own money, or if a slave is born in his household, that slave may eat his food.

12 If the priest’s daughter is married to a man other than a priest, she is not to eat of the sacred contributions. 13 But if a priest’s daughter with no children becomes widowed or divorced and returns to her father’s house, she may share her father’s food as in her youth. But no outsider may share it.

14 If anyone eats a sacred offering in error, he must add a fifth to its value and give the sacred offering to the priest. 15 The priests must not profane the sacred offerings that the Israelites present to the LORD 16 by allowing the people to eat the sacred offerings and thus to bear the punishment for guilt. For I am the LORD who sanctifies them.”

REFLECTIONS

On the one hand, I’m so glad I’m not a priest in the Old Testament, and that we don’t need to follow all these rules about being clean or unclean, because Jesus has come and provided true cleansing. On the other hand, I was thinking about verse 1, and the command to “treat with respect the sacred offerings that the Israelites have consecrated to Me, so that they do not profane My holy name.” We no longer bring grain offerings or fellowship offerings to the tabernacle, to be consecrated to the Lord. But that’s because by his grace, Jesus has consecrated our whole selves and our whole lives to God, and because of that, we are called to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God” (Romans 12:1).

That means, I don’t want to be less concerned with consecrating myself to God than the Israelites were. I want everything in my life to look like Colossians 3:17: “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”