Bible Study with Jairus - Leviticus 22

Leviticus 22 says that priests must be holy when they are offering sacrifices to the Lord. Those who are not holy can’t offer sacrifices to the Lord, nor can they eat the sacred offerings dedicated to Him. For example, verses 12-13 says, “If a priest’s daughter marries anyone other than a priest, she may not eat any of the sacred contributions. But if a priest’s daughter becomes a widow or is divorced, yet has no children, and she returns to live in her father’s household as in her youth, she may eat her father’s food. No unauthorized person, however, may eat it.” How can we interpret the meaning of these verses?
Our Bible studies are not a word for word explanation of the chapter we are reading because we can’t do this in just one or two hours. The focus of each of our Bible studies is to follow the leading and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Our fellowship is often closely related to our life and work from the past week.
As we have mentioned many times, our Bible study's goal is to have the Word of God speak to us and change us by giving us a fresh perspective and insight. Knowledge without being moved by the Spirit means the study wasn’t as effective as it should be. In other words, we may have understood the words being said, but we didn’t understand the Spirit behind the words. II Corinthians 3:6 tells us, “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. In today’s study, we’ll share the inspirations that the Holy Spirit encouraged us with, and hopefully, it will help you also.
In this week’s meeting, a lady shared an experience that she had recently. She made a negative comment to a colleague. On the one hand, as a Christian, she felt she shouldn’t have said it. On the other hand, the Lord showed her that this comment exposed her real spiritual state, which wasn’t very good. She felt awful about it and couldn’t find any inner peace during prayer. She brought this situation to our study in hopes of getting help from others.
The members of the study encouraged her not to be too hard on herself and realize that Christians are human beings who say and do things in the flesh. They encouraged her to confess to God, apologize to the offended person, and receive God’s grace.
The story looks like it has nothing to do with this chapter of the Bible, but it ties into this chapter deeply. Through experience, we recognize that when members of our study have problems in life or at work, sharing their stories often leads the Holy Spirit to show us how these experiences tie into the chapter we are reading, which helps us to go deeper.
What makes this woman sad is her lack of intimacy with the Lord. She’s often with her atheist colleagues who influence the flesh rather than the Spirit. She also feels bad about her Christian testimony. On the other hand, she felt like she prayed, and God didn’t listen, so she didn’t have inner peace.
As a Christian who is seeking a deeper inner spiritual life, the feelings she was experiencing are normal. Nominal Christians or unbelievers may feel like you are causing your own problems. A principle in the spiritual realm is that the closer we are to the Lord, the more sensitive we are. The Lord’s expectations are higher for those who are closer to Him. For example, let’s look at the temple in the Old Testament. Many ordinary Israelis could come to the outer courtyard to offer cattle and sheep sacrifices, but only the Levites could serve in the Holy Place. Only people who were descendants of Zadok could serve priests in the Holy Place. The other Levites could not serve as priests (Ezekiel 44:13). Taking it a step further, only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies once a year.
Leviticus chapter 22 is a case where the priest offers sacrifices to God and eats the sacred offerings knowing what to do to avoid defiling himself. You can’t just casually go inside God’s sanctuary and offer sacrifices. You must be holy. After being defiled, you need to be cleansed first before you can enter the sanctuary again to offer sacrifices.
This woman’s experience is closely related to what we mentioned earlier in chapter 22:12-13. These two verses say: “If a priest’s daughter marries anyone other than a priest, she may not eat any of the sacred contributions. But if a priest’s daughter becomes a widow or is divorced, yet has no children, and she returns to live in her father’s household as in her youth, she may eat her father’s food. No unauthorized person, however, may eat it.”
Deuteronomy 7:6 says, “The LORD your God has chosen the Israelites out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” (Deuteronomy 7:6, NIV).
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https://jbwm.org/bible-study-with-jairus-leviticus-22/