Friday, June 27, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Leviticus 19-20
- Secondary Reading: Psalms 74
Key Verse
Leviticus 19:33 — “And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him.”
Devotional Thought
It is late June, and across the northern hemisphere the fields are beginning to whiten for harvest. It is fitting, then, that Leviticus 19 opens with the command to leave the corners of the field ungleaned, to leave the fallen grapes for the poor and the stranger. The God who calls Israel to be holy is not abstractly holy; His holiness works itself out in the ordinary economics of grain and wages and honest scales. He tells the farmer not to squeeze every last shekel from his acreage, tells the employer to pay the hired man before the sun goes down, tells the judge to weigh the poor and the mighty in the same balance. “Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy.” The refrain echoes through the chapter like a bell, and each time it rings it is fastened to some concrete act of mercy or justice. Holiness, in Leviticus, is not a mood; it is a way of treating your neighbor.
And the neighbor, strikingly, is not only the Israelite. Verse 34 commands, “the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The memory of slavery becomes the engine of hospitality. God’s people are to be holy because they were once helpless, and God heard them. They are to love the sojourner because they know the ache of being a stranger. The same logic runs into the New Testament, where Christ takes up this very verse—”thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”—and makes it the second great commandment.
Leviticus 20 then sets the boundary stones. Molech worship, the dark idolatry of child sacrifice, is to be cut off from the land. The chapter catalogs sexual sins with blunt severity, not because God is squeamish but because He is separating a people from the surrounding nations whose practices He calls abominable. “Ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.” The language of separation is strong, and it is meant to be. God is forming a people who belong to Him.
Psalm 74 comes alongside as a lament from a later generation that has seen the sanctuary burned and the carved work broken with axes. The psalmist cries, “We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet.” And yet, in the middle of the ruin, he remembers: “For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.” Thou didst divide the sea. Thou didst cleave the fountain. The day is thine, the night also is thine. When the visible signs are gone, the psalmist anchors himself in what God has already done. That is where Leviticus and the psalm meet: the holy God who redeemed Israel from Egypt is the same God who will not forget His covenant, even when the sanctuary lies in ashes.
Reflection
- Where in your own week is God asking you to leave a corner of your field ungleaned—some margin, some profit, some convenience—for the sake of the poor or the stranger among you?
- The psalmist laments that he no longer sees the signs of God’s presence. When the visible evidences of God’s work seem absent from your life, what past deliverance can you remember and preach to your own heart?
Prayer
Holy Father, Thou art the LORD who brought Thy people out of Egypt and who calls us to be holy as Thou art holy. Teach us to love our neighbor not in word only but in the leaving of corners and the paying of wages and the keeping of just scales. Give us hearts that remember we too were strangers, and make us generous toward the poor and the sojourner among us. When the sanctuary seems broken and no prophet speaks, turn our eyes back to the sea Thou didst divide and the rivers Thou didst dry up. Arise, O God, plead Thine own cause, and let the poor and needy praise Thy name. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Psalm Verse
Psalms 74:1 — “O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?”