Paul, before he started his ministry to the Gentiles, first had his message “reviewed” by the church leaders in Jerusalem. Paul, in humility, recognized the authority and the wisdom the leaders had. He also recognized God’s higher authority, that when he realized some of the leaders in Jerusalem were actually distorting the gospel, he called them out. Even to the extent of calling Peter – the one with the highest authority among the believers – out. He showed what it means to submit to the authority of man, except when it goes against the higher authority of God.

This part is beautiful and needs some chewing and digesting.. copy pasting for now:

“yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”
(Galatians 2:16-21 ESV)

Celebrations, victory, feasts that are not of the Lord are meaningless. They only provide temporary merriment. It is better to spend that time to be sorrowful, in repentance, in humility – and to acknowledge God’s sovereignty, recognize His authority.

Ever since the Old Testament, God has been telling people to look at the eternal and not the temporal. Long term vs. short term thinking.

With prophecy, the problem is that there will be people who will not believe. Just as how people ignored Old Testament prophecy, there will be people who will ignore New Testament prophecy. And there will be those, like many of us, who waver and sometimes forget. We need to be in step with our God always.

God’s commands, especially Old Testament Law, many times does not make sense if we only consider the What and not consider the Who and the Why. This is how Christianity should be – we should focus on the Who, then the Why, the What should come naturally.

For example, in Leviticus 17, if you kill an animal from the herd and not bring it to the tabernacle, you will be cut off from the community. Strange? Harsh? If a person does something like this the people know something is up. It is most likely that the person is reverting, slipping back to their old ways of idol worship. This is serious as it can spread and affect the whole community.

Not allowed to eat blood? At this point of Leviticus, we know that blood is important and quite possibly scarce because of the sheer amount of sacrifice required to make a whole nation, constantly, clean before God. Consuming blood then would
be an unnecessary luxury – there is no shortage of meat. It’s almost defiance, pride – “I can afford to eat blood because I am rich and have lots of animals anyway” Or “I don’t sin that much anyway”. It is a misuse of a key ingredient to establishing a relationship with God.

It is the same with Jesus – the misuse of the precious gift of His blood is a serious serious offense.

Blood is life – what a perfect metaphor –
without blood, there is death. Physical blood gives physical life. Spiritual blood gives spiritual life.