Leviticus 15-18: “You are not like everybody else.” When you read that sentence in what context did you hear it? Was it a statement of affirmation that you are special and are appreciated because you are different? Did you hear it in a mom’s voice reprimanding you and cautioning you? Did you hear it in a taunting way as from the mouth of a cruel classmate?

All through out the book of Leviticus the Children of Israel were being given instructions so that they could be clean and not like the inhabitants who had possessed the land before them. Everything from what they ate to their sexual relationships were to be different.

Leviticus 18:24″Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, 25and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations,”

God’s people were to be different because He was their God. He wanted them to not be infected by the ways of the former inhabitants. The former inhabitants worshiped any number of gods and would offer sacrifices anyway to them. God was very specific where they were to offer sacrifice to Him. That is why the Tent of Meeting was so important and specifically the Ark. The priest had to be clean and the people forgiven so that their relationship with a Holy God could be made right. Everything from the priests clothes to what he touched before and after the sacrifice mattered to God.

What can this mean to us? God is not just “The Man upstairs.” He is our Holy One of a Kind Savior. He isn’t to be put on the shelf until we are ready to acknowledge Him. We can’t escape His presence. Even His name is hallowed and precious. As His child we too are to be set apart from the fleshly desires and behaviors of our world. We are His and as such we choose to walk right before God in personal behavior as well as in our relationships with others. May we all examine our lives because “you are not like everybody else.”