Those of you doing the one year through the Bible, are you about to bog down with all the junk in Leviticus? Kinda tough to slog through it, isn’t it? Like my bud, Pastor Jeff noted as we talked about it yesterday, it’s like the Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day, where the hero has to continually repeat the same day over and over until he gets it right. Every day from the middle of Exodus to where we are in Leviticus, it seems that the same thing is repeated time after time after time.

This is where most folks run up the white flag. “Just shoot me and get it over!”

But this is where the point is beginning to be made and it really starts to get interesting.

In the same reading today, in Psalms, I came across this: “Now that you have made me listen, I finally understand — you don’t require burnt offereings or sin offerings.” The emphasis is mine and is what I marked in my Bible. The mind-numbing detail, given, repeated and given again, is the way we as humans live our lives. You don’t talk to a child like an adult, you talk to him on his level. The Israelites were still pagans, ignorant spiritual kids. God had to go over and over and over what they needed to do to begin to be transformed.

If you have or have had little rug rats (“children” for the uninitiated), you know how you have to repeat the same thing a million times, well, at least a thousand times, to drive points of behavior home. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, don’t hit your sister!”

Every time I trudge throught this section of the Word, I find myself paying more attention than normal to the corresponding New Testament and Psalms passage. Is it a coindence that you find yourself slap dab in the middle of Jesus’ life during these days? Methinks not. The contrast between the law and the Christ is rather stark. Then you’ll see David making comments like the one above and you start to see what you may not have seen before.

My question is why in the world has God not zapped us into oblivion?

I’d heard a sermonette done by Tony Campolo called “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin'” and I came across it a few days ago. I thought it would be an appropriate piece to leave with you…