Can we Pick and Choose?

I have been reading in Leviticus this week.  It is so fun when you read a book that you know you have read before but it seems as if you have never read it.  I love that scripture is alive and it is fresh and new every time you read it.

Basically Leviticus is a book of laws.  It is funny that while reading it I say, "that's right, uh huh, no kidding, well is that really true now?"  I am questioning one law that is in the midst of others that I agree with.  I am a person like the apostle Thomas.  I like to know the reason.  I like to see the proof. (I can't wait to meet Thomas.  I think he has gotten a bad rap.  Today, we would call him practical.)

For example, in Leviticus 18:  You must never have sexual relations with a close relative, do not have sex with your mother or your sister or your granddaughter, do not have sex with your stepsister or your father's sister, do not have sex with your daughter-in-law or your brother's wife, do not have sex with both a woman and her daughter, do not have sex with a woman during her period.  I see a long list of things I agree with and one I wonder about the why not.  For the others I understand the reason, but for this one I don't understand the reason why?

Another example, in Leviticus 19:  Honor your father and mother, do not steal, observe my sabbath days of rest, do not spread slanderous gossip, do not practice witchcraft, do not trim off the hair on your temples or trim your beards, do not cut your bodies, do not mark your bodies with tattoos.  In my head I am saying, "of course, yes, okay I will go to church but I still need to do some laundry, this is hurtful, never, why can't a person shave, I would never cut my body--okay once I became blood brothers with my neighbor, I would never get a tattoo. 

You see, I am picking and choosing the ones to follow, just as all of us do.  We somehow think that we are better than God.  That we can interpret the good from the bad, the evil from the holy.  The problem is that we can't.  We start by justifying one of the laws written and soon we are compromising far more that we ever thought possible.

Let's consider the command to do no work on the Sabbath. (I know that Jesus said that we could do good on the Sabbath--Luke 14:5  Which of you doesn't work on the Sabbath?  If your son or your cow falls into a pit, don't you rush to get him out?)  It starts out that we do some laundry,  then we let our son go to his soccer game, and then our daughter has a ballet recital, soon we don't have time to go to church today because it is Grandma's birthday party, or we don't have time to go during football season, next we are only going to church on Easter and Christmas, and since we no longer pray at home we think that it is okay for us not to have prayer in school, and finally we take God out of our government and out of our lives. 

God knows people.  He knows that once we slide down the slippery slope that we will never be able to climb out of the pit we are in.

Lord, help me not to compromise.  Help me to obey all your commands.  Jesus said in John 14:21, "Those who accept My commandments and obey them are the ones who love Me."  Lord Jesus, I love you!  I will obey you.  Help me in my obedience.