Leviticus 26-27 , Mark 2

Leviticus 26 starts out describing the life of the Israelites if they love and obey him: a utopia. Plenty of food, no wild animals, and enemies flee before them. And then it goes on to describe what life will be like if they are disobedient: the land will not be productive, enemies will eat their food, they'll flee before enemies that aren't even there, always looking over their shoulder. The land will get its sabbath when enemies carry them away and leave the land without inhabitants. I can understand why people would think that when bad things happen it is a curse from the Lord for disobedience. We know how this story ends. Israel is very disobedient and God causes other countries to carry them off. But all the bad things that happen are meant to bring them back to repentance. Even in the bad things, God means it for good.

In Mark 2 Jesus begins to let the teachers of the law know that he is God by not only healing but also forgiving sin. This is the story of the paralyzed man whose friends lower him down through the roof to see Jesus. Jesus healed many people. but why does he look at this man and say "Son, your sins are forgiven"? He must have known that this man needed to hear that, that he needed forgiveness. And then to prove his authority he also heals the man. Verse 12 says "This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, 'We have never seen anything like this!'" It must have been Jesus' preaching that caused them to give glory to God for this, or how would they know who to give the credit to?

And then, this man that claims to be God - he calls a tax collector to be his disciple and then eats with "sinners". He sure is breaking all the rules about what it means to be religious! I think that we, today's Christians, can learn from this lesson especially. I don't think that "sinners" should be our counselors and best friends, but they should be people that we spend time with and try to show them God's hope.

I do have a person that I work with often that I know goes to church because he thinks it will make his kids better people, but doesn't understand that we go to church to spend time with other believers and to celebrate this awesome God that we serve. If you take just the morality, you miss the real prize: our precious Savior. He himself is our prize. Jesus spent time with unbelievers and talked to them about what it meant to follow God. I've been feeling him call me to just have lunch and talk to him what and why I believe. It's kind of scary to do something like this! But this is part of training for a crown that lasts.