LEVITICUS

Week 10

Chapter 24 Laws for lamp and showbread, holiness of God’s name

Chapter 25 Sabbath Year, Year of Jubilee

Discuss Study Questions Week 9

1. Sabbath:  If you are too busy all week to garden and you love to garden, would gardening be a celebration of the Sabbath?  Errands may be wrong, but what about picking up a movie, or driving to the beach?  Do you see how defining the celebration of the Sabbath can easily become legalistic?  What is the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law?

2. Pesach/Passover/ The Last Supper :

a.Read 1Cor 11:23-29.   Do you take the time and honestly examine yourself before taking communion?  Have you ever found yourself falling short?  What did you do to make yourself right with the Lord before taking communion?

b. Have you ever felt yourself enslaved to some sin, like unforgiveness or worry?    If He has freed you from that bondage, what did you feel, what did you do when  you realized you were free?

3. First Fruits/Easter  How has society tried to secularize Easter?  What do you do to keep the holiday commemorating when our Lord was raised?

4. Shavout/Pentacost: What is your attitude toward the Jewish people, especially those who have rejected Christ?  What can Christians, you in particular, do to reach them who seem so unreachable?

5.Rosh Ha Shannah: Feast of Trumpets: How has knowing , remembering that the Lord is coming back to get you changed your life?

6.Yom Kippur/Day of Atonement: Why didn’t the sacrifice of the animals, made by the Levites on behalf of the entire people of Israel work?  What responsibility does that knowledge place on us?

7.Succoth: The booth is made is to remind us of how temporary life is.  How can that help you in time of stress?  Open to the sky, it also remind us of God Himself, He Who made the stars, and that we are wholly dependent on Him.  Does such knowledge draw you closer to Him?  Do you reflect on these truths often?  Why/why not?

8. Simcha Torah/Happy Instructions: How often do you reflect on who and how you were before you came to accept Christ, His deity, sacrifice and resurrection? What are you able to do now you belong to Him that you couldn’t do before?

Chapter 24

I. Oil for the lamps: Verses 1-4 command the pure oil from beaten olives be keep burning inside the tent of meeting, but outside the veil at all times, forever.  It symbolizes God’s being ever present.  He is the Great I Am, eternal, ever present.

II. The showbread: versus 5-9 command there to be baked 12 loaves of fine flour that must be a sacrifice, one for each tribe, that Aaron and his sons, that is his descendants will eat over the next week.  The bread is to baked and brought every Shabbat.

III. Verses 10-16 Declares that anyone, whether an Israelite or a stranger, who blasphemes or curses God must be put to death.  God is holy.  His name is holy.  Orthodox Jews extend this to an extreme.  When the Masurite Jews added the vowel sounds to the Torah, they did so on all words but YHVH (yood hay vav hay).  It is the word we call “Jehovah” or “Yaweh”, but no one knows what the vowels were.  Today Orthodox call Him “Ha Shem”, “the Name”.   Taking His name lightly is a serious offense to God.  It reflects on a person’s respect for God himself.

IV. Verses 17 to 22 repeat the laws requiring the death of a person the taking the life of another person and the restitution required if someone takes the life of an animal.  People, in God’s image are beyond value.  Animals are not.

V. Verse 23 Tells that the people were obedient and stoned the man who cursed God.

Chapter 25

Chapter 25 is divided into two sections, first about the Sabbath year, the second about the year of Jubilee.

Verses 1-7 instruct the people about leaving the land fallow the 7th year.  It is a Sabbath for the land. They were to sow the ground for 6.  God allowed them to gather the produce that grew naturally for their food, but not for barter. Few of us know enough abut agrarian practices to know that in this day and age, they know that after a period of years of growth, they will deplete the land, even if they fertilize, etc. it.  The solution for commercial growers is to stagger the fields and crops, so there will always be crops to harvest.  God’s way is always best.

Verses 8-55 all deal with the Jubilee year.  

Verses 8-17 It is to be a release and return for all of the people and the land .  Everyone who has purchased land must return it to the original owner in the 50th year.

Verses 18-22  Is slipped between the two portions that deal with the buying and selling of land and setting the sales price. These verses tell how they should not worry that they let the land lay fallow for year.  He says the land will produce enough food for 3 years, the 49th year, the 50th year and the 1st year, while the crops are growing, before they can be harvested.

    Obviously, this could lead to people not wanting to buy after the first few years, knowing they will have to give it back. Yet, God takes that into account when He gives the details.  He is a God of details. He makes provision for the land to be reclaimed by either the person who sold it or a relative, based on a prorated price accounting for the years of lost income the new owner would suffer, plus 20%.  (verses 23-28)

    If it is a house in a walled city, the original owner or relative can reclaim it, buy it back, for the price plus 20% for 2 years.  After that it becomes permanent property of the new owner.  If the home is not in a walled city, it is to be treated like a field, be opened to be bought back any time, plus 20%, until the year of jubilee, at which time to goes back to the original owner. (29-31)

    The Cities of the Levites are the exception.  They can sell their houses, but not their fields. They will always have the right of redemption for their homes.  (32-34)  If they people took care of the Levites, as they should, none of the Levites should be in a position of needing to sell their homes.  

    Verses 35-43 tell that if a person of one of tribes of Israel is so poor he must sell himself to another, God tells them they must not abuse them, treat them any worse than a hired servant.  They, too, will be released in the jubilee year.  The purchase price, God tells them, must reflect just the number of years left before the jubilee.  Aliens from the pagan nations whom they have conquered or who have sold themselves to the Hebrew, these they can keep forever, even handing them down to heirs. (44-46)  

    Verses 46-54 describe a Hebrew selling himself to an alien. He must not be mistreated by the alien and must return in the year of jubilee.

    Verse 55 says why.  the land is His, the Hebrews are His, His servants.  

WEEK 10 STUDY QUESTIONS

CHAPTER 24

1. The eternal light, which you will find in all synagogues today, symbolizes God’s eternal presence.  We who believe have the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, within us, as Jesus promised in John 14.  The fruits of the Spirit are listed in Gal. 5:22.  Look them up.  When you are lacking in any one of them, what do you do?  What is the result?

2. The commandment about the showbread show us that it is not just out of thanksgiving and sin we make our sacrifices.  We have an obligation to support, provide for our clergy regularly.  Do you tithe?  If not, why not?  If so, what have your learned from your experience tithing?

3. How seriously do you view taking God’s name, Jesus’ name lightly. How do you respond when you hear God’s name taken lightly by others?  Do yo speak up when you are around others, or change the channel or leave the theater?  

4. What are the arguments for/against capital punishment?  Where do you stand?  Why?

CHAPTER 25

1. These commandments are for after they are in the Promised land, when they have cities and fields. Leaving the land fallow the seventh year must have been very hard for the Israelites generations after the manna in the wilderness, when God showed them they could pick enough manna on the sixth day to sustain them for the Sabbath. Are there any of God’s commandments that you avoid or do reluctantly, even resentfully perhaps?  How does knowing His ways are not only always what is right, but what is best for you affect how deal with His commandments?

2.  Unfortunately, the economy is such that people have foreclosed on houses because of economic hardships, not unlike selling one’s house back to the bank.  Yet, today we can only imagine the buying and selling of people to be slaves because we have the history of slavery in our country that is a blight on us.  If slave owners followed God’s commandment of treating slaves, would our attitudes about slavery be any different?  If so, How? Why/why not?

3.God says He will protect us because we are His servants.  How does it make you feel?