Reading for today
Old Testament: Leviticus 13, 14, 15
New Testament: Mark 7
Thoughts from today’s reading
Leviticus 15. This chapter deals with the laws of cleansing for men and women. The number of things they had to observe to mark their uncleanness was quite a lot. Things they touched or people they touched would become unclean and would have to be washed. I can imagine friends avoiding an unclean person during their customary uncleanness.
This chapter allows us to understand better the predicament of the woman with the issue of blood for 12 years. You can imagine the amount of things she made unclean in that time? It is possible that her house would have become a no go area to everyone. She was not meant to be in public let alone to touch a Rabbi. It was truly great faith she had to reach and touch Jesus and be cleansed completely of her plague.
Mark 7:8-13. We see the conflict between tradition and the word of God. Jesus had to quote scriptures from Moses and Isaiah to expose the error in the thinking of the Pharisee’s.
Religion and religious practices have the potential to mislead us into thinking we are doing those things in service of God if they are not rooted in the word of God.
The only way to expose these things is to be students of the word and to always go back to check the scriptures whenever we have heard a sermon.
Prayer
1. Father I thank you that the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed me from the sin nature and I do not have to engage in physical cleansing practices to receive forgiveness from you. Thank you that continual faith in Jesus allows me to walk in righteousness and the blood cleanses me when I stumble or fall so I can get back into a right relationship with you.
2. Heavenly Father, I give your word the first place in my life above every tradition or religious practices of men. I seek your word daily as man shall not live by bread alone but by your word. You have warned that in the last days false doctrines will seek to deceive your children to pull them out of the faith. I thank you for grace to be counted worthy to stand strong and hold on to the love of the truth in the face of every lie.