DAY 49

A DIFFERENT FACET

Leviticus 23 & 24 and Mark 1: 1-22

We start again, this time with Mark. The outline of the Gospel is similar, but it is also different. The four Gospels are like four facets of a finely cut gem. The gem is beautiful, but as you look through each facet you see rich and different dimensions. Before turning to Mark’s account, let’s quickly examine Leviticus.

While I have been deliberately, maybe even painstakingly, going through Leviticus fully, I may be growing weary of Leviticus, or possibly I have just come across something that earlier I had not taken to the time to understand. I am really wrestling with Chapter 23 of Leviticus. Many of the commentaries make the connection to how these festivals foreshadow the work of Christ Jesus.

So I have made yet another table of the Festivals, and then compared my table to other people’s analysis. Yet I want to be consistent with my approach to Leviticus and ask, “What are the principles God is communicating?” To that end Allen Ross points out that everything in this chapter is set in context of Sabbath. Not merely of “a day off”, but it signifies of day of “ceasing”.

If we think back to the first Sabbath it is God who takes this rest after completing His creative work. The Lord therefore asks his people to set aside one day a week of “complete rest”. For what purpose? To remember three things: the close relationship we originally enjoyed with him, the breakup of that relationship, and the restoration of that relationship.

Most of the Festivals revolve around the agriculture year, but they have an underlying theme: that Israel is God’s People and it is God who provides and cares for them, even when they wander away. God, in creating this new people gives them: Passover followed immediately by The Feast of Unleavened Bread. The first of the harvest is celebrated with First Fruits and then the full harvest is celebrated with The Feast of Weeks. The fall celebrations begin with Feast of Trumpets, continues into The Day of Atonement, and completes the annual cycle with The Feast of Booths.

I have mentioned (maybe too much) that God is creating a new people. We need celebrations don’t we? God know this and He appoints these festivals so that we don’t celebrate apart from Him, but with Him. Further that celebration is the celebration that we are God’s restored people – that is exactly what Mark’s Gospel proclaims.

You will quickly appreciate that Mark does not mince words. His Gospel is 50% shorter. Many scholars believe it is the first Gospel written. Its starts like a “cannon shot” by immediately proclaiming: “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Well there it is, Son of God. By now you have read Matthew’s Gospel and maybe you are thinking, “Well yes I know this”. Don’t rush though. While this Gospel is shorter, and while you are looking at the same gem, you are looking through a different facet.

What did you see in these short 22 verses that you didn’t see before? Certainly John the Baptist’s character stands out. Two things stand out for me. The first is Jesus teaching, “repent”, I am use to those being John the Baptist’s words. Jesus tells us “turn around” as well. The closing verse speaks of how people responded to Jesus’ authority; that caught my eye as well.

These people are Jewish, they have been focused on what you and I have been wrestling with, The Law, for their entire lives – enter Jesus – one who teaches with authority.

To follow the Law of Leviticus is to accept its authority. To follow Jesus will be to accept His authority. Listen to what one writer in the New Testament will come to appreciate about Jesus:

The old system in the law of Moses was only a shadow of the things to come, not the reality of the good things Christ has done for us. The sacrifices under the old system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship. If they could have provided perfect cleansing, the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshipers would have been purified once for all time, and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared …And so, dear friends, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. This is the new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us through the sacred curtain, by means of his death for us. (Hebrews 10:1-2, 19-20)

As we near the end of Leviticus, the Law, the image of the curtain in Matthew’s Gospel lingers…What is central to all, what is the gem, is Jesus the Christ.