“Say to them: ‘Any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice and does not bring it to the entrance to the tent of meeting to sacrifice it to the Lord must be cut off from the people of Israel.
Leviticus 17:19 (NIV)

A lot has changed in the last 40 years. I among the last of those who will remember growing up in a world without personal computers and smart phones. I have so many great memories of spending entire summers outside with friends, neighborhood kids playing games, and just making up stuff to do. I rode my bike everywhere, including places I wasn’t necessarily supposed to be, just to explore my world. Then there were entire days at the swimming pool. The only screen my family had was a giant console television in the living room. There were a total of four channels to choose from for most of my childhood. I was excited when it rose to five somewhere along the line.

The dawn of the Technology Age changed life drastically. As with all such revolutionary changes in history, the progress comes with fallout. Jonathan Haidt and his team at AfterBabel have been on the forefront of studying and calling out the negative effects that smartphones and screens have had on our children. AI has prompted legislation regarding the creation and publication of fake nude or pornographic photos/videos of individuals which can instantly destroy a person’s life and reputation once they are publicly available on the internet. Technology has also afforded governments the ability to electronically freeze a person out of their bank account with a click and without a court order. When the prophet Dylan sang The Times They are a Changin’ I’m not sure he had any idea how prophetic his lyrics would be beyond his own generation and within his own lifetime.

I have also seen the massive changes in institutional churches. The Technology Age and the cultural shifts in its wake have seen the fracturing and implosion of all the mainline denominations who held sway over lives, churches, colleges, and communities for centuries. Here in rural America, countless country churches have closed their doors. My own local congregation, once a mainline denominational stalwart, has found itself an independent gathering of believers from an incredibly diverse spectrum of denominational backgrounds and traditions. This is forcing our gathering to reconsider everything that many comfortably believed and traditionally experienced in their weekly worship their entire lives. Everything I’ve just described may sound doom and gloom, but I actually see the hand of God in it. The entire Great Story is about a cycle of life, death, and new life. Old things pass away, and new things come. Something is being spiritually born again on a corporate community level, and I’ve been watching it happen in real time. That excites me.

Everything we’ve been reading in our chapter-a-day journey through Leviticus is as equally revolutionary for the Hebrew people as the Technology Age has been for the entire world. For centuries the Hebrew tribes had been doing pretty much whatever they wanted to do, however they wanted to do it. There was no set sacrificial or religious system other than traditions that had been passed down, and that might have looked different from one family to another. Now, the God of their fathers is in their midst. He showed up, made Himself known, delivered them from slavery, and He is always present in His traveling tent temple at the center of their camp. Leviticus is His guide for life and sacrifice.

In today’s chapter, God prohibits old ways of sacrifice. In some cases, Hebrews were making sacrifices to God on their own, in their own way, however they’d chosen to do it. In other cases, people made sacrifices to other gods who they’d learned about in Egypt or other cultures.

That was then. This is now. The Times They are a Changin’. God has told His people how He wants offerings and sacrifices done in His presence at His tent. He is creating a unified people who will be His representatives to the nations of the world. All sacrifices and offerings come to Him, and Him alone at the entrance to His tent. No exemptions.

In the quiet this morning, I see echoes of the same revolutionary recreation that Jesus prompted in His teaching, death, and resurrection. He radically changed the paradigm. The temple that replaced the tent was destroyed. He sent His Spirit to indwell every individual who believes and receives, making our very own bodies His temple. No longer do we go to a central location to be with God, we take God with us wherever we go. In addition, Jesus distilled all of God’s commands that we’re reading about in to two essential regulations. I am to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and I am to love others as I love myself. In the same spirit as today’s chapter, there are no exemptions. I am not exempt from loving others. I can’t go along with most of it and then have this little hatred, prejudice, or animosity on the side. Loving God means forgiving others as God has forgiven me. There are no exemptions because Jesus claimed no exemptions when His love compelled Him to willingly suffer and die for every human being.

In my spiritual journey I have had to embrace the truth that whenever I hate another person or refuse to forgive another person, I diminish and profane what Jesus did on the cross. What He did on the cross He did for me and the person I hate, judge, and condemn. My hatred, judgement, and condemnation is essentially me, in my pride, making myself god and pronouncing judgment instead of surrendering myself to Him.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.