Isaiah 52-66: Restoration for the Transgressors

Okay, I know I dropped the ball again for a while on this blogging thing.  It's difficult to blog about these prophetic books because they kind of say the same thing over and over and while that's not a bad thing, it makes it difficult to feel like I'm saying anything new.  So my next several posts may be a bit shorter and cover larger passages, because I'm really trying to just point out what sticks out to me.

Anyway, so in chapter 52 Isaiah starts talking about the exalted servant of God.  And then in chapter 53 he talks about the suffering servant.  Jews believe these are two different people, whereas Christians believe both passages are referring to the same person: Jesus the Messiah.  I have always wondered what the Jews think about chapter 53, because the language is that of sacrificial atonement - that our sins, sorrows, transgressions, etc., are placed on this person, that he is a guilt offering, that somehow this bearing of our iniquities justifies us.  For Jews who believe that justification comes through keeping the Law and making animal sacrifices, what does this passage mean to them?

Recently, the thing that has struck me about Isaiah 53 is that it's not just our wickedness that Jesus atoned for.  Verse 4 says "Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried."  In the margin of my Bible I wrote this:  "Not just our sins, but our sorrows - not just our wrongs, but also our hurts.  Jesus knows what all of our pains, griefs, shame, trauma, feel like, because He carried it.  It, too, was nailed to the cross, which means it, too, will be redeemed."  To me, that is a very comforting thought.

The next three chapters are pretty positive: God's lovingkindness and covenant of peace can never be shaken, God offers mercy freely, God's boundless mercy is incomprehensible because God Himself is incomprehensible, being obedient to God will yield blessing, etc.

Following this are three chapters of warnings and judgments and stuff like that.  There's an indictment of rulers who don't acknowledge God as higher than them, and there's a call to fasting so that God will hear.  But as it is, the text says, God doesn't hear because the people's sins have created a barrier between themselves and Him.  I find the juxtaposition of these two verses very telling: 59:1 says, "Behold, the LORD's hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear."  Then the very next verse says, "But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear."  So it's not that God can't hear, but that He doesn't - I think He's waiting for repentance - He's waiting for us to turn from our wickedness in order to truly seek Him.  Because the thing is, people would cry out to God and stuff, but at the same time they were holding on to these idols and sinful practices and stuff, so it wasn't really God that they wanted; they just wanted a bailout.  And I think this is what I do too.  What I pray for the most is help when I'm in trouble.  I think I need to seek God for His own sake, not just to be my cleanup crew.

Chapters 60-66 cover a few different ideas, but I think they all are built around the central theme of the Day of the Lord, the restoration of Zion, and the redemption of man.  Someof the language is very messianic (or at least was used by Handel in writing Messiah): "Arise, shine; for your light has come, And the glory of the LORD has risen upon you."  Some of the language sounds like the book of Revelation: "No longer will you have the sun for light by day; Nor for brightness will the moon give you light; But you will have the LORD for an everlasting light, and your God for your glory," and, "the days of your mourning will be over," and (chapter 65) "behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the former things will not be remembered or come to mind."  Chapter 61 opens with the passage that Jesus read in the synagogue when He began His ministry: "The Spiri of the Lord God is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted . . ."

But at the same time that all this happy glorious stuff is going on, God also says that at this time He will judge the nations and will pour our His wrath on those who are wicked.  But to those who follow God, God will show mercy and compassion and will save them.

Chapter 65 reminds me of the book of Romans (actually it's quoted in the book of Romans), because it talks about God being found by people who didn't seek Him, while at the same time He is pursuing people who want nothing to do with them.  Paul says that this is referring to the Gentiles compared to the Jews.  All this time, God has been making appeal after appeal to the Jews, and they really couldn't care less what He has to say.  But when the gospel is brought to the Gentiles, they accept this brand new God that they didn't even know before.  But in this future time that Isaiah keeps referring to, the time when God makes a new heaven and earth, everyone will acknowledge God and everything will be great.  Even lambs will be safe in the company of animals that used to be their predators.  It just now struck me that this is the context of the verse, "Before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear."  Does that mean that this verse doesn't apply to right now?  Because it seems to me that God does and has answered prayers before they were prayed or even at the same time.  So if God is already doing that now, I wonder what this verse will mean about what things will be like in the future.

Anyway, so the chapter ends basically with a comparison between the future state of the righteous and the future state of the wicked.  It's very clear that everybody ultimately will see and know who God is and will bow before Him, but only some will share in His glory and joy.  For those who persisted in transgression, there is only agony and death, which really sucks. 

I think the message is clear - the message of this whole book - that God extends mercy and forgiveness to everybody (because He makes intercession for the "transgressors," who are the wicked people - that's all of us), but not everybody is going to participate in that.  Ultimately, God is going to come down and give everybody what they really want, and it's either going to be Him, or it's going to be Not Him.  It's a message to take God seriously, to take repentance seriously, and not to be complacent about the thought of God's judgment, because it's real, and it's coming.  It's a sobering thought, but only if you're living outside God's mercy.

Joshua 7-12: Six Chapters of War

Jericho is the first of many cities in the area of Canaan to be destroyed by Israel, and once it gets flattened, the Hebrews are chomping at the bit to go on to the next city.  But if you're at all familiar with the story, you know that they jumped the gun on this one.  It's a little town with a little name: Ai.

What happens is, in the case of Jericho (and several of the other cities), God told the people that they couldn't take anything from Jericho.  Not just that all the people had to die, or even that all the people and all the animals had to die, but they couldn't even take gold or silver out of the city.  So along comes this guy named Achan, and I'll give you three guesses what he does.  Yeah.  To be specific, he takes a lot of something: a mantle, two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weight fifty shekels.  A shekel is 9.56 grams, or a little over a third of an ounce.  200 shekels is a little over 4 pounds, and fifty shekels is about one pound.  Now, I don't know what the subjective value of these things would have been to that society, but right now, gold is being traded at over $1000 per ounce and silver at over $16 per ounce.  So if Achan had taken that amount of gold and silver today (I have no idea what a mantle is), it would amount to about $18,783 in gold and $1125 in gold that he stole.  That's if it were today.

So math aside, Achan screwed up, so after being found out and confessing, he is stoned to death - and not just him, but his family too.  Why is that?  I looked up some commentaries and one of them pointed out that Achan is the fifth generation after Judah, making him one of the older Israelites, maybe in his 50s at this time.  Based on that and the fact that God had previously commanded that no child was to be killed for the sin of their father, I think it is a safe inference to make that Achan's children 1) are adults, and 2) along with Achan's wife, knew about his sin and hid it from Joshua.  Being an accomplice to an evil - or just not saying anything - is sometimes as bad as doing the crime yourself.

So after this matter gets cleared up, so to speak, Israel goes on to defeat every tribe that is in the land God has promised them.  Different people try different things to defeat them, including making a sneaky promise, banding together with other tribes, and so forth, but nothing works.  A total of 31 kings, including the ones we've already learned about in Numbers and earlier in this chapter, are defeated by the Hebrews.

One of the kings mentioned, one of five actually who join forces in an attempt to stop Israel in its tracks, is named Adoni-zedek, and can you guess what city he is king of?  Jerusalem.  If you know any Hebrew at all, you probably know that the word "Adonai" means "lord," and you may also know that "zedek" means "righetousness."  Put those words together next to Jerusalem, and does this name sound familiar to you at all?  It sounds frighteningly close to Melchizedek, the guy Abraham met waaaaaaaay a long time ago in Genesis.  But this guy appears to be bad and definitely not in Israel's side.  Descendant?  Unrelated coincidence?  I have no idea but it's really weirding me out.

What do we learn about God in a chapter that basically is one war story after another?  I think we learn first of all that he was faithful to Abraham and the covenant he made with him and Isaac and Jacob.  I think we also learn that God is punishing the sins of the Canaanites.  Depending oon what city they go to, there are different levels of destruction that must be brought to the city; in some, every living thing is killed.  In others, every living thing is killed and none of the spoil can be touched.  In some, only the people are killed, and in the ones outside the promised land, only the men are killed.  I read this and I recall a passage way back in Genesis that I will paste here for you:

Genesis 15:13-16 "God said to Abram, 'Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.  But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.  As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age.  Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquty of the Amorite is not yet complete.' "

In other words, God had already given the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants, but he was going to give the pagan people in the land four hundred more years to repent and turn from their ways.  It seems from the context like they were just doing things a lot more immoral than what was going around in the surrounding areas, because God didn't call for any kind of conquest or judgment on any other tribes.  And I really believe that if these nations had  turned to God, he would have forgiven them.

And this in turn brings a passage to mind from 2 Peter.  Read it with the Canaanites in your mind:

"[B]y the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.  But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.  But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance" (3:5b-9).

God is patient with us - he is literally waiting for us to repent, and sometimes he withholds judgment in anticipation of that.  But there is evidently a point at which the time is up, when you either have repented or you are not going to.  The Bible says that today is the day of salvation - not tomorrow, not someday when you get around to it.  We don't know what exactly the Canaanites were doing that God disliked so much, but we do know that everybody does things that are wrong, and I even think everybody does things that are in rebellion of what we know is right.  And in the end, all sin separates us from God.  You cannot endure his presence unless you are no less than perfect.  I don't think it's because God is an Adrian Monk germ-freak afraid to get his clothes dirty; I think it's because our God is a consuming fire and everything that is not pure and holy already will be scorched when it comes into contact with him.  That's a problem, and that problem is what the nation of Israel was created to demonstrate.  The only way for us to enter God's presence is for something completely innocent to stand in our way - and friend, you and I will never be that.  No matter how good you become in your life, you can't erase the bad things you've done.  Only one person can do that, and his name is Jesus.  His blood is the only detergent that can wash the stain of our sins completely away.  All you have to do is take your dirty laundry to him and ask him to clean you.  The Canaanites had four hundred years to get things straight with God, and they missed the opportunity.  Don't let it pass you by.

Rewind - Genesis 3: Sin Entered the World . . .

Note: In reading over my blogs I've noticed a few chapters that got overlooked somehow here and there.  Genesis 3 is one of them. I think I'm going to make separate posts for each of these (I've only noticed one other so far).

Genesis 3 is about sin entering the world - the serpent deceives Eve and she eats, and then Adam eats, and the rest is history.  This is a loaded chapter. 

First of all, there's a tension between seeing and hearing - God gave a verbal command to Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree, but then Eve looks at the tree and sees that it appears good, so she goes with that.  We as humans, I think, are much more likely to believe our eyes than our ears.

Secondly, did you know that according to Jewish belief, Satan hasn't fallen yet at this point in the story?  They believe that Satan was specifically created to tempt man, so that he would have free will - the idea being that without options, you can't really be said to be making choices.  Ever since I heard about that, I've wondered if it is true.  The Bible doesn’t explicitly tell us who Satan is or what he was before he became God’s enemy; tradition tells us that he is Lucifer, the name Isaiah gives to the king of Babylon, but the text itself doesn’t say that, although it may well be true.  All we know is that his name means “adversary.”

Thirdly, Adam and Eve realize they're naked.  Donald Miller has an amazing chapter in his book Searching for God Knows What about the significance of this idea.  To sum it up, nakedness represents complete vulnerability.  We equate it with shame today, but it wasn't that way in the garden because Adam and Eve knew they were completely, wholly accepted by God and by each other; they had nothing to hide.  We lost that at the fall, that security.  Now we are always trying to cover up what we perceive to be our inadequacy; we're embarrassed of ourselves.  You know this is all a double entendre, right?  Nakedness is more than physical openness, it's every kind of openness.  We try to hide who we are from each other because we fear rejection.  In the same way, Adam and Eve tried to hide their nakedness from God in a symbol of their disobedience - they no longer could be completely open with Him; having broken His law, they had something to fear, and something to hide.  God is not at all put off by that.  And the beautiful thing is, He doesn't leave them like they are, even though they're being punished.  He clothes them with animal skins.  This is the first time in history that something has died, so it probably really freaked Adam and Eve out.  Something innocent died to provide covering for them, when God had said that when they ate of the forbidden tree, they would be the ones who died.  So they’re looking at the dead animals on their bodies and thinking, “Is this what was going to happen to me?”

What Adam and Eve did in the garden is what we all do.  I don’t believe that in a mystical, vaguely-Eastern way all humans were pre-incarnately present inside Adam’s body and every one of us chose to eat the fruit.  But I do believe that in each one of our lives, we take a shortcut – what we see over what we have heard, maybe – and we decide that our judgment is better than God’s.  Then when we screw up and we know it, we feel ashamed, inadequate, guilty.  We want to hide.  We try to cover up our wrongdoing by various means – good deeds, religiosity, denial, indifference, materialism, you name it – those things are leaves.  They’re a sloppy makeshift loincloth that is going to blow away at the slightest gust of wind, leaving us totally exposed.  But along comes God who sees who we are and what we’ve done, and He makes provision for us.  He doesn’t let us off the hook – no, when sin happens, something or someone has to die – and that someone was Jesus.  His death should have been our death, and would have been our death.  But now His body and blood give us covering for our shame and make us able to stand again.  It’s something we didn’t have to do and certainly didn’t deserve to have done.  In theological terms, that is called grace.

Numbers 21-25: Divide and Conquer

There's a lot of stuff in these five chapters so I'm going to try to say as much as I can in as few words as I can.  First, very quick summary.

• Chapter 21: we see the Hebrews conquer their first city, Arad.  The people get sick of walking around Edom (big country I guess) so they complain.  God sends fiery snakes that bite the people, and then as a cure Moses has to make a statue of the snake that the people look at and then they don't die.  Then we have two more military victories against the Amorites and Bashan.
• Chapter 22: the king of Moab gets scared of Israel, so he sends for a prophet named Balaam to come put a curse on Israel so that he can beat them.  On his way there, God puts an angel in Balaam's path that his donkey sees, but he doesn't see it.  The donkey freaks out and Balaam doesn't know so he beats the donkey until suddenly it starts talking to him.  After a heartfelt conversation with said donkey, Balaam decides that he'll tell the king whatever God says rather than whatever the king wants to hear.
• Chapters 23-24: much to the Moabite king's dismay, all Balaam can do is bless Israel - three times.  The king gets mad and fires him, and he goes home.
• Once the Israelites start moving in on the Canaanite territory, they begin to adopt Canaanite religion.  God gets really ticked off and there's a big meeting where Moses tells the people to kill the people who are not worshiping God.  Then some guy crashes the meeting by walking through the tent with a Canaanite girl, on their way to, um, talk . . . and a guy named Phinehas (son of Eleazar, grandson of Aaron) kills them.  Then God says nobody else has to die, and also there was a plague on the people, but it stops now because of Phinehas.

 So here are my thoughts.  First of all, the conquest of Canaan doesn't really start out like much of a conquest.  In fact, with Arad, it's their king who decides to pre-emptively strike on them as they're coming through.  Then with the Amorites, the Israelites send the same message to them that they sent to Edom: please let us pass through, we won't touch anything, we'll stay on the highway, we won't even stop for a drink break.  The king says no way and goes out to war against them.  And even after they were defeated, the king of Bashan decided to go attack the Israelites too.  So far, they haven't even been the ones making the first move, because this part of the land is not the Promised Land.  They're just trying to get through it to the other side.

Secondly, I love the story of Balaam.  I just think it would be so funny to have your donkey all of a sudden start talking to you - well, maybe not funny at the time, but it's funny to read because Balaam talks back to his donkey!  Now, I don't know if the text leaves out some details, like Balaam freaking out at his donkey talking to him, or if maybe this was something that he had experienced before, but it just makes me laugh to read that the donkey says to Balaamm, "What did I do to make you hit me?" and Balaam says right back "You're making me look stupid, that's what!" and she (the donkey is specifically a girl) says "Come on man, don't you trust me?  Have I ever freaked out like this before?" and he says "no," and then God lets him see the angel standing in the way.  And to top it off, God says to him, "why were you hitting the donkey?  Dude, if she hadn't tried to turn the other way when she saw me, I would have killed you and not her."

Anyway, I do find it interesting that Balaam, who is not an Israelite, seems to know the true God.  He even refers to Him as "the LORD [YHWH] my God."  God speaks to Balaam and Balaam prophesies accurately - that is, he says exactly what God tells him to say.  Now the third time he speaks, it almost seems like he's about to speak presumptuously, because it says that Balaam sees that it pleases the LORD to bless Israel, so the third time he doesn't go consult the LORD before speaking, as he did the first two times.  So I am not sure if that was the right thing to do.  But then it says that the Spirit of God came on him when he spoke, so I think his prophesy there was still real.  Go figure.

Next, the Phinehas thing.  So God has made it clear to the Israelites (see Exodus 20) that they are not supposed to worship any other gods, and that is exactly what they're doing for the first time since the golden calf.  This is very serious - again, Israel was not supposed to be a model government, but an example to the world (and to future generations like us) of how to obtain a relationship with the one true God.  Israel can't offer any kind of hope, any kind of message, to other nations if it is just like them.  So anyway, while Moses is discussing this with the people, this couple walks by, and the next thing we see is Phinehas ramming a spear through them.  Now, I always thought this was really harsh until my youth pastor asked this question:  how do you kill two people with one spear at the same time?  Answer: this couple is having sex right at this moment.  They've just walked right past all these guys talking about the severity of Israel's sin against God - everybody sees them - and they apparently have the audacity to go do this in apparently the middle of the day, not even attempting to hide it.  That is outright rebellion, the kind of sin described earlier in chapter 15 where we learned about unintentional sins versus sins of defiance.  And even though I wish these two guys didn't die, it actually kept a bunch more people from dying.

I want to talk about snakes last, so let's back up.  Now, these "snakes" may have been any of the various poisonous reptiles that inhabited these parts (or something supernatural); if so, we haven't heard a word about them until now, which means God was probably protecting the camp from them, and now He has obviously removed that protection.  Once again, this was a punishment for whining.  Now, you may wonder what is so bad about the gripe fest.  I mean, it wasn't Israel's fault that they had to go around Edom; and I'm sure it wasn't pleasant to be always on the move.  That's totally understandable to me.  But what's not so cool is when the people say this: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food."  That tells me that one, they have totally forgotten their distress in Egypt and how desperate they were to get out; two, they are totally ungrateful for all the miraculous ways God has provided for them; three, they are not acknowledging their own responsibility for being in the wilderness right now in the first place - they were the ones who decided they couldn't get into the Promised Land and would rather die in the wilderness than try - if they had just had faith in the first place, they would've been there by now instead of traveling around in a circle; and four, they would rather be slaves, with their sons all being murdered and being forced to work all day, in a land that they can never own, than trust that God was taking them somewhere.  Ouch.

So about the bronze snake that Moses makes.  That seems really weird, almost like he's making an idol - and in fact later on, we see that some of the Israelites start worshiping the snake statue.  But the symbolism and meaning behind this odd method of healing is really profound, and I don't have time to do it justice - I'll direct you to the third paragraph of this commentary for a really good and thorough explanation.  But basically, this serpent was a metaphor for Christ.  Jesus Himself tells us in John 3 that "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life" (vs. 14-15).  The image Moses made was of a serpent, in the likeness of the thing that was destroying the people, because Jesus came to earth in the likeness of sinful man.  Anybody who looked at the snake would live and not die from the bites, just as anybody who turns to Jesus receives forgiveness of sins and, rather than death, everlasting life.  I think this is really awesome.

Leviticus 16-22: Atonement and Holiness

I'm covering a lot of ground in one post here, and if you look at the chapters you might think, that's a lot of different subjects, but the more I've been reading and thinking, the more I see a very strong connection between them. I apologize if this is a little disjointed; unfortunately, it seems that I have the most difficulty articulating the most profound concepts.

In a nutshell, chapters 16-17 talk about Atonement Day, when once a year the high priest would enter the Most Holy Place and make a sacrifice to cover the sins of all the people, as well as sacrifices the people had to offer to the Lord. Chapter 18 lays boundaries for sexuality. Chapter 19 starts off talking about idolatry and then goes into a bunch of miscellaneous laws. Chapter 20 goes back to the immoral relations and then introduces the idea of clean and unclean animals. Chapter 21 is about how priests are supposed to be clean and the things they have to abstain from, and chapter 22 goes into more rules for priests and what they're supposed to do with certain offerings.

Some of the little things that stuck out to me:

God makes a connection between certain sins - human sacrifices and sexual immorality, namely - and the land. He says that the land became defiled when the pagan people did all these things, so it "spewed them out" - kind of like in Genesis 3 when God said that the ground was cursed because of Adam and Eve's sin. Paul says somewhere that the whole world is groaning, as if waiting for the day when it too will be redeemed.


There's a debate I've had on the Circle a few times over whether it is moral to lie in order to protect someone's life (think about Jew-smugglers during the Holocaust, or members of the Underground Railroad). The Bible says not to bear false witness or lie, but in Leviticus 19:16 it says "you are not to act against the life of your neighbor." That's kind of like "you shall not murder" expanded - even if you're not the one killing somebody, anything you do that acts against the life of your neighbor is sin. Regardless of your position on this particular argument I mentioned, I think this verse really shows that morality isn't always as clear-cut as we wish it were. And I think that points to the fact that really, it's about your heart even more than it's about your actions. If your heart follows God, then your actions will be right. So in that sense, it's really more simple than we think it is. Sort of a paradox I guess.

Certain sexual sins got the death penalty, whereas with others it says something like "he will bear his guilt" or "They will die childless" or "they will be cut off from among their people." The latter two are a little more self-explanatory, but I wonder what it means by simply "he will bear his guilt." And I do think it's interesting that we like to say sin is sin, it's all equal - and in a sense that is true - but the Bible also implies otherwise, that some sins deserve to be punished more than others.

Now, the thing that struck me the most while reading this whole passage, and later when I read through Matthew 4 and 5, is just the sheer complexity of this whole law system. Some of the rules seem a little weird, like don't cut your sideburns and don't mix two different kind of cloth. The priests especially had to stay away from a lot of things - they couldn't even touch a dead person unless it was an immediate family member.

A guy at my small group said once that the ceremonial law was really about making a distinction between the Jews and the Gentiles, a way of showing what holiness is. I think he had a point. The word "holy" means literally "cut off" or "separate." And when God brought Israel out of Egypt, He had to show them that they were no longer to live like Egyptians, nor like anyone else. He wanted them to be different, different in a very noticeable way.

God seems to have a thing against mixing. Don't mix fabrics, don't mix with other nations, don't mix different species in breeding. I wonder if the point of all that was to show that righteousness and sin don't mix. There is perfection, and there is sinfulness, and the two cannot go together. A lot of these things seem to be metaphors - not that the laws weren't literally followed, but that they existed to point to a spiritual truth. In this case, maybe they were pointing to God's nature as holy and separate from the world, from sin. He was calling His people to be separate too, not just for the sake of being separate, but so that the entire world could see that God is radically different from humans, unlike the petty humanoid deities they made up. You see, as much as people say that Jews didn't proselytize, I wonder about that. I think God was trying to make a statement about Himself to the world through His dealings with the Jews. Why did God send the plagues on Egypt? So the Egyptians would know He was God. What did Moses say when God said he was going to destroy the Hebrews? The other nations would see it. I think God was globally minded, even from the beginning.

Now, when I read Matthew 5, Jesus was talking about the importance of the Law and how nothing in it would be abolished, and how the people had to surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees in order to see the kingdom of God. In light of all the rules and regulations in these chapters here, that seems pretty insurmountable. But I think that, with the New Testament, we can see the bigger picture of what was going on: all those laws were there to show us how holy God is and how different He is from us. Jesus came and He kept the law, but more than that - He made it possible for us to have access to God. Under the old covenant, only priests could come before God, and only if they were flawless. The point is that none of us is really flawless, but Jesus opened the door to us all anyway. He kept the law in our stead, because there's no way we could do it all.

That's what atonement is all about. It's about Jesus doing what we were incapable of in order to make peace with us. So chapters 16 and 17, which are all about the blood of the atonement, serve as a picture to show what would later happen, how Jesus would cover our sins with His blood in order to make us holy. You see, God called the Israelites to be holy in what they did, but Jesus makes His followers holy by His own proclamation. That was the point from the very beginning, but the Old Testament was a picture, foreshadowing what was to come. We have to know who God is, have an idea of the infinite gap that separates us from Him, and understand what it was that Jesus saved us from, what it was that He accomplished by living a sinless life.

The Law is holy because God is holy. It shows us God's character in that His perfection is so complete, so utterly impeccable, that we can't even understand all the ways in which God is unlike us (perhaps like we can't really understand all the ways God demanded the Hebrews be different from the world). It shows us that God's demands are beyond our ability to reach - it shows us that we cannot meet His demands. We need a scapegoat to take our sins on Himself, and we need a sacrificial lamb to cover us with His righteous blood. So when God says to us, "Be ye holy, for I am holy," it is not our actions which accomplish this, but His. That was just a picture; the reality is that Jesus separates us and declares us righteous by the offering of His blood which wipes away our sins.