Lessons from Leviticus and Psalms
Chapters 1 to 7 inclusive contain instructions regarding the various offerings, sacrifices, oblations, and the laws regulating them. We have not space here to enter into detailed explanation of these services. We may not be able to understand in these times all the lessons they were designed to teach; but we may understand that sin was hateful in the sight of God; that those sacrifices and offerings were object-lessons to show this, and to reveal how it might be put away. Of course, the blood of these offerings could not take away sin; but they all pointed to the Lamb of God and His work in various phases by which the souls could be justified and God remain just. Chapters 8 and 9 are the record of the consecration of the priests. Chapter 10 contains a striking object-lesson as to the difference between the holy and the common, and the necessity of God's servants being clear-headed, temperate men. God is as particular now as then. Chapter 11 presents to us instruction regarding clean and unclean animals. This rests on no arbitrary decision. God pronounces unclean those in the nature of things unclean, and vice versa. But even the clean beasts were not the best of food. God's preferred food for Israel was the manna. Chapters 12 to 15 contain laws regulating uncleanness and leprosy, a horrible disease, a fitting type of sin. Psalms 40 to 46 speak or sing themselves into the experience of every soul. Forty is especially prophetic of Christ, who stood in our behalf, and is therefore for us. Psalm 45 is prophetic of the church; and the last psalm of the week looks forward to the time when the present regime of earth is over, beyond earth's shaking and trouble, to the better land.