Biblical Theology Season 2, Session 3: Leviticus | Josh Feaster

Well, we can get started. Just a couple notes. If you didn't get a handout, there's handouts at the back there. And in the back, I included a few pictures that might be helpful to you. So these come from the ESV study Bible. There's a picture of the tabernacle and the court. So you can kind of get a picture. We're talking about Leviticus today. So we're talking a lot about sacrifice and the priesthood and God dwelling with man. And so this is kind of giving us a picture of what it might have looked like. Obviously, we don't know exactly, but through some of the instructions that we're given in the Bible, plus some artistic license, the ESV study Bible created these very nice pictures that might just help you get some perspective of what we're talking about here when we're talking about the priest making sacrifices. And then on another page, you have just the tabernacle. And so you can kind of see the two different sections of the tabernacle, the holy place, and then the most holy place. So that's just for your reference. And perhaps later, if we have time, I might talk about it a little bit. But let me begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much that we get to study the book of Leviticus. And it's just an amazing book and I pray, God, that you would communicate that to us today. How amazing it is that you, a holy God, would well with man. And not just that you would dwell with man, but that you'd want to dwell with man. That you would make a way for you, the holy God, to dwell with among a sinful people. We thank you, God, that we know that ultimately this points to Jesus Christ, that he has done everything, everything necessary to bring us to you. And we know that one day we will hear the glorious words behold the dwelling place of God is with man. And we will see your face. And we long for that day, we pray that this book of Leviticus would make us long even more. For that day, we pray that this book of Leviticus would make us appreciate Christ, sacrifice more, Christ as our high priest more. Ultimately, so that all glory would go to him. So please lead us to worship through this time and grant us understanding by your spirit. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. All right. Well, the book of Leviticus is what we're talking about today as I mentioned. And the book of Leviticus, I know it's not everybody's favorite book. A lot of people get stuck here in their Bible reading, right? We got a, you start the year off. I'm going to read through the Bible in a year. You plug, you go through Genesis. You're like, this is awesome, right? The genealogies might have been a little hard, but you get through Genesis. And then you get to Exodus. So exciting, the first 12 chapters. And then you get to the parts where now we're learning about the tabernacle. And it's tabernacle instruction. And then it's tabernacle construction. And you're like, wow, this is a lot about the tabernacle. And then if you make it through that, then you get to Leviticus and you're like, oh, I just can't do it. And then you flip to the New Testament, right? That is too many people's story. And it's unfortunate that that's our story, because really Leviticus is awesome. Like, and I hope that's what we come away with today. That Leviticus is awesome. And though it might not become your favorite book to do in your daily devotions, I hope that it really becomes one of your favorite books in the Bible as far as just what's happening there conceptually, because it's glorious. It really is. And so that's just a little teaser. But to begin with, we'll talk about the title of Leviticus. So obviously, as we've talked about before, the titles are part of the paratex of scripture, which means that it's not inspired. This is something that was added later. We have a title of Leviticus now. And for us in English, we call it Leviticus. And that comes from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And so they called it Luticon, which means pertaining to the Levites, which is an unfortunate title. Because really, like, if we think of Leviticus as only matters that the Levites, the priestly class we're concerned with, then we've missed the book of Leviticus. Because this is not just about what matters for the Levites. This is what matters for the whole nation of Israel. So Leviticus is though what we're going to call it, because that's what we call it. And then in Hebrew, their title is Vayikra, which is the first words of the book, which means "and he called," meaning "God called." The opening words of the book is "and God called from the tentative meeting." So they just call it that. And you'll notice that's kind of a lot of the names of Hebrew books. It's like the first word of the book. That's what they title it. So we will talk about this book of Leviticus. And it's interesting when we consider the genre. The genre of Leviticus, it's kind of interesting to pin down. Because in reality, what might surprise you is like, this book is like the majority of it is God speaking. So a lot of times we miss that. We miss that. This is actually God talking to us. And it's like probably the book that has the most direct speech from God in the Bible. So God's, this is the most times you're going to hear like direct speech that God has spoken just in succession in the Bible, which is amazing. And so we, we can call it narrative discourse, meaning like it's like it's narrative. And God is instructing in the midst of this narrative. It's interesting because Leviticus kind of, it really actually picks up exactly where Exodus left off. And so here though, it's like the whole story slows down. And we just get God speaking to Moses from the tent of meeting. And so what goes on in this book, what is it about? It's really about how Israel, sinful Israel, Israel who, when God was making the covenant with Moses on the mountain or with them on the mountain, Israel was down the mountain worshiping a golden calf, right? How can this Israel live with God who is holy? Who's holy, holy, holy? How can they live with this God and not die? Right? God was ready to wipe them out from the face of the earth in Exodus 32 and 33. So how is it that they can live with God? Right? That is the question. And that's what Leviticus is about. It explains how Israel can live with God and not die. And really, Leviticus gives us this picture of a return to Eden. That's really what we'll see by the end of Leviticus is that God's design in Leviticus, in all the sacrifices, in all the regulations for how they're to live and worship, the goal is to bring them back to Eden, where God himself will walk with man. And this is instruction also for how Israel can fulfill their calling to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So as they live with God as they worship Him and are conformed more into His image, they will fulfill their role to the world as being a kingdom of priests, showing the world what God is like and being that holy nation that God has reserved for His own possession. So the context, as I said, we are picking up exactly where Exodus had left off. So you remember God in Exodus redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt. God entered into a covenant relationship with Israel as a nation and God gave them this role to be a kingdom of priests. And He said the amazing words that He Himself will dwell with them. I will be your God and I will dwell with you. And it's going to be through this tabernacle. Remember at the end of Exodus, just so many chapters on how to construct the tabernacle and then so many chapters on how they actually constructed the tabernacle according to all the instructions that God had given to Moses. And so God Himself is going to dwell with them. But then Exodus ends on a cliffhanger. Do you guys remember that? Exodus ends on a cliffhanger. If you remember Exodus 40 versus 34 to 35, it says then the cloud covered the tent of meeting. The place where man will meet with God. And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it. So we're left with this question of how can the tent of meeting or how can the tabernacle which is filled with God's glory, which Moses cannot enter? How can it ever become the tent of meeting? Right? If Moses who's able to go and see in a sense like God on the mountain, if he can't enter the tent of meeting, then how can anyone ever meet with God in his tabernacle on earth? And so Leviticus answers this question. Actually, if you if you look on, or where did I put it? If you look on, oh yeah, I have it right here. If you look a couple bullet points down, Leviticus picks up right where Exodus left off. Leviticus 1-1 says the Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. So it's like we're still in this narrative from Exodus and it's like we're just picking up, right? So you leave on the cliffhanger. It's like a TV show episode, right? You're like, oh my gosh, what's going to happen, right? And then next episode picks up right where it left off as though there didn't skip a beat. And here we are. God calling to Moses from the tent of meeting and says, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, when any one of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd." And so this gives us a clue. How is the tabernacle going to become the tent of meeting? It's going to be through sacrifice. Through sacrifice. That is how man will be made fit to meet with God. What's interesting is that Leviticus uses the word tabernacle only three times. And the tent of meeting is used 43 times. Whereas when you look in Exodus, they're a little bit equal, where I think tabernacle actually wins out by like 10 extra uses than tent of meeting. So here it's really emphasizing this is the place where God will meet with man. That is the essence here. And it's also called the place of God's holiness and the most holy place. So this is also giving us a picture of God is holy. And everything that comes to him must be made holy, right? Simple man cannot encounter the holy God and not die. Something needs to happen, and so we see animals being sacrificed in the place of man. But really this is the purpose of Leviticus. It teaches Israel how they can live in the presence of a holy God and enjoy intimate fellowship with him. How Israel can live in the presence of a holy God and enjoy intimate fellowship with him. And this is important. So Leviticus we often say one of the main themes is holiness as you see here. But holiness is not an end in itself, right? It's not God calling Israel to be holy just for the sake of them being holy. God's calling Israel to be holy so that they can have fellowship with him. Like God really does desire communion with his people. And this is why Leviticus is so glorious because we see the heart of God that in Leviticus he's removing every barrier to fellowship with himself. If you think about it like that, God is making a way for man to once again meet with him as they did in the garden. So we're going back to Eden in Leviticus. It's glorious. So the the themes as I said holiness is a huge theme. You're going to see holy all over all over Leviticus as you read it. And you'll hear this refrain over and over again to Israel. You be holy for I the Lord and holy, right? Over and over you'll hear that or something like that. And what does that mean holy? What does it mean that God is holy? What are we talking about? Well, there's really kind of two two definitions to holiness. And the main category of holiness is that which is set apart or unique. So holiness God's holiness refers to how he is incomparable. There's nothing like him on the earth. He's in a category all of his own, right? Even among the heavenly beings God is still called holy, holy, holy, right? That's what the the seraphim in heaven who are holy themselves. That's what they're calling God. So we're talking about a God who is so other, so separate from his creatures. Set apart, right? That's the idea. But also within that is moral purity. That everything that is holy is also pure. God's holiness he is absolutely pure. There is no shadow of turning within him, right? He is light and in him there is no darkness at all. We're talking about God as being absolutely holy, absolutely morally pure. And so as God's people, Israel is called to be holy themselves. They must be holy. They've been set apart exclusively for God's use. So when we're talking about something other than God that's holy, we're talking about that being set apart exclusively for God's use. If you're a holy people, you exist for God and for Him alone. If you are one of the holy instruments in the tabernacle, you exist for the service of God and for Him alone. You're not to cook with the same things that you use in the tabernacle in your own house, right? No, it's supposed to be for God's use only. So that's the idea of holy. And also we must be morally pure. God's people, Israel, must be morally pure. And we see that throughout Leviticus in especially the latter half. And so really everything in Leviticus, the sacrificial system, the laws about cleansing, the laws about being holy, living a holy lifestyle, worshipping in the festivals. It all tells Israel how they can maintain their set of partners from the world and be morally pure. Be pure before God so that they can have fellowship with Him, which brings us to the next theme is that we could really say one of the main themes in Leviticus is fellowship with God. How man gets to meet with God. And so I already mentioned how that's really the goal of holiness. A great author, Mike Morales, says in his book, who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord, a biblical theology of Leviticus, he says, the Leviticus is often characterized thematically by holiness. You see this in the footnote. It is preferable to discern holiness not as an end in itself, but rather as a means to an end, which is the real theme, the abundant life of joy with God in the house of God. Glorious, right? That's the ultimate goal of holiness in Leviticus. And so of course, when we're talking about holiness, we also know that on the flip side, whenever we see God as holy, we see whatever sinful, it's God's holiness exposes that which is sinful. And so Leviticus really shows us the seriousness of sin that if man's going to meet with God, something has to die, right? Something has to die. And so we see that in this sin is serious. It's against God himself. Sin is not just like I messed up, like I made a mistake. It's actually personal against, it's like it's a personal action against God, right? Sin is contrary to him. It's walking contrary to God's laws. It's a rejection of his rule over your life. So it has serious consequences. It ruptures man's relationship with God, which of course we saw in the garden, right? Man exiled from the presence of God in the garden. We see it ruptures man's relationship with one another. We see it immediately after the fall, cane-killing able, right? We see that it deserves God's judgment, death, right? And it provokes God's wrath. This is the seriousness of sin that we see in Leviticus. And the only way to deal with sin is God's way, which is amazing. Like Leviticus is not how Israel drummed up some ideas in order to gain God's favor. Leviticus is God's instruction to Israel. This is how I will make atonement for your sins. This is how I will provide for you for your sins to be atoned for, which is amazing, right? When we come to God, we come to God because of his initiative. It's not something that we work our way to get God's favor. It's no, God has made a way for us to have a favorable relationship with him. He's the one that has provided the blood on the altar to make cleansing for our life, which you see here in Leviticus 17-11, that we see the significance of atonement through blood. This talks about how blood cleanses. For the life of the flesh is in the blood. And I have given it for you, which is such great words. God's like, I've given you blood on the altar to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. A life needs to be sacrificed in order for your life to be spared. That's what we're seeing in atonement. Also in atonement, we're seeing forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins. The sacrificial animal is kind of functioning as a ransom payment. The animal's life is the ransom price for your own life, for your own sins to be forgiven. The animal's slain so that you can go free. And the result is that you're forgiven. Leviticus 420 and the priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven. That's the result when atonement is made forgiveness is granted. And then we also see that there's an extra element that we don't often think about, which is cleansing. Atonement provides not just forgiveness, but it also provides cleansing. It has the effect of making clean that which is unclean. And so we see this in one of the rituals that the priest shall make atonement for the woman, and she shall be clean. So the atonement doesn't just provide forgiveness. It provides cleansing as well in Leviticus. And so that's interesting when you project forward and you think about Christ's sacrifice. And that's why you see about how we are cleansed, we're washed by the blood of Jesus, and not just forgiven. It's also cleansing. The goal of atonement, as I said, is to make the sinner fit for God's presence. To make the sinner fit for God's presence. In other words, the goal of atonement, why has God provided blood to make atonement? It's because he wants you to have fellowship with him. This is the goal of atonement. So it's just glorious. I hope you're getting this. Like, oh man, Leviticus, I'm ready to start it in my devotions tomorrow, right? Amazing. So the outline of Leviticus, the outline of Leviticus is something like this. So the first 15 chapters is about how man approaches God. And ultimately, it's going to be through sacrifice, through the priesthood, and through ritual cleansing. Those are the first three sections. And then we get to basically the pinnacle of the book, Leviticus, which is the day of atonement. The day of atonement is the most significant day on Israel's calendar in a sense. This is the way that man can dwell with God and not die. The day of atonement ultimately provides for that, as we'll see. And then the second half of the book, we could kind of categorize it as living for God. Though I'm not exactly happy with this outline 'cause it doesn't capture quite everything, I think, but I think as a whole, we could say living for God is something of the idea of the last half of the book. And so, we see within the last half, we see laws about holiness. How Israel can live as God's holy people, the ethics, the how are you to live as God's people being His laws? And then we also see some laws for the priesthood that they're held to an even higher standard as the ones who actually minister at God's house. And then the last part, before we get to really the blessings and the curses, we see these festival rituals. Basically, Israel's worship calendar and God explaining how He wants to be worshiped throughout the year in Israel's calendar. And then the last section is really, Israel has a choice. They get to choose Eden or exile. Really, that's like the two choices at the end. And of course, all the book of Leviticus is working towards them choosing Eden. It's like God has made the way, right? They don't have to be perfect to have the Eden, right? God has made a way for their sins to be atone for. It's just live according to God's prescription, including His prescription for forgiveness when you do sin, and you get to enjoy God in His presence. So, and then the last part is the section on some voluntary vows and offerings, which somebody has a neat idea as why that might be at the end, which I'll share at the end. So, this is the outline of Leviticus. Approaching God, the day of atonement, living for God, and Eden or exile. And if you look towards the back of your handout, I have, before the tabernacle pictures, this cool little outline of Leviticus, it's like a pyramid, if you guys can see it. So, this shows that there's some parallels going on in the book of Leviticus in, like Moses composed it in such a way that you have sort of this sandwich structure where Leviticus 1 to 7 and Leviticus 23 and 25 are parallel. They're both talking about rituals. We got ritual sacrifices in 1 to 7. We got ritual feasts in 23 to 25. And then in Leviticus 8 to 10, we have things about the priesthood, along with Leviticus 21 to 22. And then we get to laws about purity, ritual purity in 11 to 15, moral purity in 18 to 20. And then that brings us to the middle of the book, which is the day of atonement. And so, we really, Moses composed the book in such a way that the day of atonement is central. It's central to the book. And really, it's kind of neat because the day of atonement brings us into the tabernacle of God, behind the veil, into God's very presence. So, it's kind of taking you on this journey into the presence of God. And that's the center of the book. Israel brought into God's presence. And so, we kind of see through that structure, this is like a message that Moses is sending to us, as readers, saying, I'm bringing you to myself, right? And it's going to be through this atonement. All right, so let's get into it. So, I have an overview here. We'll just kind of walk through the major sections of the book. And so, the first section, as I said, verses 1 to 15, will be about approaching God. And so, the very first thing that God says, from the tent of meeting, two Moses, for the book of Leviticus, is this, Leviticus 1-1. The Lord called the Moses, spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, "Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, "when any one of you brings an offering to the Lord, "you shall bring your offering of livestock "from the herd and from the flock." So, as I said earlier, the way to approach God is going to be through sacrifice. Through sacrifice. This is the pathway to fellowship with God. This is how the tabernacle will become the tent of meeting. And as I said, it's just showing God's desire to remove all barriers to fellowship with him, right? God wants his people to come to him. They can't in their sinfulness. So, God's going to make a way for their sinfulness to be, for their sin to be atone for. And God provides five types of sacrifices here in the book. And we see there's burnt offering, grain offering, fellowship offering, purification offering, and guilt offering. And quickly, we can just see a few of the purposes of each of those offerings. So, the burnt offering, the idea is atonement and propitiation for just general sinfulness so that the sinner will be accepted by God. Those are some of the words that come out. You get this idea of, it'll be a pleasing smell, a pleasing aroma to the Lord. And that's what we see that Noah sacrificed after the flood. It was a pleasing aroma to the Lord and God vowed that he would never destroy the earth in the same way again. And so, we see this sort of propitiatory nature to the sacrifice, meaning God's wrath is satisfied. So, this kind of sacrifice satisfies the wrath of God. And it provides atonement, which means forgiveness, cleansing, accepted by God. The grain offering, the purpose of this, the several purposes, it's to thank God for the first fruits of the harvest. It also has this idea of a memorial portion, which we think might have to do with inviting God's favor, inviting God to remember you with favor. And it's also this idea of reaffirming the covenant before the Lord. So, you see here, there's no atonement, right? There's no atonement in this. And so, not all the sacrifices were for making atonement. Some were Thanksgiving, reaffirming the covenant. And we'll see this next one's really cool. The fellowship offering, also called the peace offering. And this was neat because this was the only offering that Israel was allowed, the people of Israel were allowed to eat up. So, all the other ones, the priest got a portion of some of it, not the whole burnt offering. That was strictly all for God. But the, some of the other offerings, the priests were actually allowed to eat portions of it. But only in the fellowship offering is the worshiper who brings the animal allowed to eat. And so, the idea of this is that the worshiper gets to celebrate a meal with God. That's the idea. Eating, sharing a meal with God. That's why we call it fellowship offering. And it's not just with God. It's often with his family or with his neighbors. And so, just really neat, the best parts of the offering, which were the fat, the fat was given to the Lord. And then the rest of it, they got to enjoy together, which is just so cool, right? This picture of a meal with God and your neighbor. It's like, yeah, it's like what we get to worship together, you know? Yeah, I don't know what to like in it too, but it's pretty cool. And so, the purpose, there were a few purposes. You could do this as a thank offering to God. You could do this as a payment for vows or a free will offering just because you're like, I love you, God, I want to give. So, very cool. The purification offering, also known as the sin offering, and sin offering is the older term. And you'll probably see that a lot in your Bible heading sin offering. But really, sin is not the only purpose. So, it might be better to call it a purification offering because it also does cleanse of ritual impurity, not just moral impurity. Meaning that it's not just for sins. It's also for just being ritually impure, which is not sinful in itself. So, the purpose is to make atonement for a specific sin, so the worshiper can be forgiven, and the tabernacle cleansed. So, this is an interesting idea here. So, when Israel sinned, something about their sinfulness, and the tabernacle being in their midst, their sinfulness kind of contaminated the tabernacle in some way. We don't know exactly how that works, but it's real that somehow their sinfulness caused the tabernacle itself to be needing cleansing. And that's the same case with uncleanness. The purification offering made atonement, so the worshiper can be cleansed of uncleanness. And when we look at the day of atonement, we'll see that the tabernacle is being cleansed of the uncleanness of the people as well. So, maybe that's not just on the day of atonement. We'll see that in a few places. So, uncleanness, if you remain in your uncleanness and don't cleanse yourself, it can lead to God expelling Israel from his presence. We'll get into that in a few chapters here. The inauguration of the priesthood is the next major section. So, one to seven was sacrifice, and then now eight to 10 is how the priesthood was inaugurated. So, God has ordained that there'd be a mediator between his worshipers and himself. And that's gonna be through the priesthood, the Levites. And ultimately, the greatest mediator in Israel would be the high priest, which will get to his significance on the day of atonement. But what goes on in chapter eight is the consecration of the priest. They're being set apart and being cleansed and being sanctified, made holy, so that they are fit to serve in God's presence in his house, right? to be right up close with God. So there's greater stricter rules for the priests than there are for the average common Israel light. And amazing thing, chapter nine, God accepts the priests offering. So we see this amazing moment where Moses and Aaron, verse 23 of chapter nine, are able to enter the tent of meeting. And they're in there, right? Remember, like Moses was not able to enter it at the end of Exodus, and then sacrifices are offered. The priests are consecrated. And then now it's like they get to enter the tent. So pretty cool. And then they come out of God's presence in the tent. And what do they do? They bless the nation of Israel, right? So it's like God has them come in and then sends them out to bless Israel, meaning that, and then God reveals his glory to the congregation. So meaning that the tabernacle has now become the tent of meeting through the sacrifices and the priestly mediators. So it just shows God's design works, right? It's amazing to see that. Like God himself will meet with man through his prescribed means here. And then chapter 10, unauthorized worship, Nadab and Abahiu, Aaron, the high priest, owns sons at this very spectacular moment. Like, seem to get caught up in this like, ah, I wanna worship God. And what do they do? They offer what the Bible calls strange fire, unauthorized fire. They tried to worship God in a way that God had not prescribed. And fire comes out from the Lord and consumes them. It's like in this very moment of like getting to celebrate, yes, man gets to meet with God. It's also like, you gotta do it God's way, right? God is holy. Like, you can't just approach him by any means that you want. You must approach him by the way that he wants. And there's even a hint that maybe they went behind the veil and offered incense there. Because when we get to Leviticus 16, we see this idea that like, Moses is telling Aaron like, God's telling Moses like, hey, tell Aaron not to enter the most holy place at any time. Here he says, "The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they drew near before the Lord and died. And the Lord said to Moses, tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time into the holy place inside the veil before the mercy seat that is on the ark so that he may not die." So it kind of clues us perhaps that's where they went, right? Since all these connections to that moment, perhaps they went behind the veil and died. But the idea here, it God is holy and he must be approached on his terms. This brings us to the purification rights in chapters 11 to 15. So these are, this is about ritual cleanliness. And so I'll hopefully help you guys get an understanding of what this means. So there's kind of two categories. There's clean and unclean. And these are conditions and they're fluid. You can go, something that's unclean can be made clean. Something that's clean can be defiled and become unclean. And what's clean is fit for God's presence. And I'll get to a contrast in a section about that which is holy. But just for now, just think about this. Clean is fit for God's presence. Unclean is unfit for God's presence. And so common and holy, this is the idea now. So within the category, I have a little diagram there that should help. Within the category of common, there are clean and unclean. So if you guys look at that table at the bottom, there's clean and unclean. And then there's a whole separate category which we call holy. And holy is that which is set apart from the common. That which I said earlier is reserved exclusively for God's use. And so there's this fluidity to all these conditions. So that which is holy can be profaned and returned to a state of the common. Where then it's gonna need to be sanctified again. Or if it's polluted entirely, perhaps even destroyed. It just depends on the situation. And the common can become sanctified or consecrated and be made holy. So Morales has a helpful little explanation here. He says something that is holy must remain exclusively in God's realm, in the sacred space. Living for his will alone or else be destroyed as to prevent common or profane usage. So the average Israelite was common and they could either be clean or unclean. And by God's grace in setting Israel apart, Israel as a whole was generally clean because of their covenant with Yahweh. And the priests had been sanctified so that they were now holy. So they went from the clean people to being sanctified to now being holy. And so the ways though the Israel could become unclean through different means. Like chapter 11 describes through contact with unclean animals or through childbirth or through skin diseases or through bodily discharges. And so scholars debate about what is the logic behind what makes somebody unclean, right? Why is this, they're this idea of uncleanness? And we know for sure that it's not necessarily sinful, right? It's not sinful for you to have skin disease. It's not sinful for you to have a bodily discharge or especially to give childbirth to children, right? This is God's, God delights in that. So and it's not a sin to touch an unclean animal. But perhaps it's because of the association of that particular thing with the fall. So a lot of these things that make you unclean are associated in some way with death, right? Disease or the fall in the sense that like, this is not the way it was meant to be. Man was not meant to have bodily discharges and scabs, right? Not in the way that the Leviticus describes. Childbirth, I'm not exactly sure, but maybe we know childbirth was not meant to be the painful bloody mess that it is, probably, right? We know that that's part of the curse. And then as far as the unclean animals go, you guys can come to me with your theories. But I think it's this. I think that really a lot of these animals, or some of them at least have to do with the unclean idolatrous nations. So Leviticus 20 gives us some idea of this. If you look at the quote there, God says to the nation, it says, "You shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I'm driving out before you. For they did all these things, and therefore I detested them. But I have said to you, you shall inherit their land." And what they did was a lot of idolatrous things and a lot of sexual immorality. And he says, "And I will give to you this land to possess a land flowing with milk and honey. I am Yahweh your God who separated you from the peoples. I've separated you from the peoples. You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean." So he's saying, "Because I've separated you from them, you shall therefore separate the clean from the unclean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or bird or anything with which crawls on the ground, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean." He's like, "I've set certain animals apart for you to consider unclean." And part of that, as they do that, it helps them remain separate from the nations. It helps them remain this distinct people that have been set apart for God. "You shall be holy to me for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine." Okay, so that's some of the idea there. Separate from the people so that they can be God's alone. So if something becomes unclean, it needs to be cleansed. And there was a danger to something becoming unclean. And I'll explain that in a second. The unclean, here's the danger. The unclean and the holy cannot meet. If they do, the unclean must be destroyed. So therefore, the unclean sinner cannot meet with God. He must be cleansed first before he can meet with God. And so here I have this little diagram and I'm going too slow here. So this gives this idea of a geography of holiness in a sense. So at the center of Israel's camp was the tabernacle. And at the center part of that, we could say, "Is the most holy place." God's presence was central to Israel in their geography. And from that, you have the holy place and from that, you have the courtyard and from that, you have the camp of Israel. And outside of that, you have the wilderness and the nations, the realm of the unclean, the realm of sin and death and separation from God. So that's some of the idea. And we'll get to a little bit of that in the day of atonement. But as I said, unclean is plus fellowship with God equals death. And so there's some quotes there. And then this next one is important. Defiling God's dwelling place leads to death. Listen to Leviticus 1531. This is page six, if you lost. Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleannesses lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that's in their midst. So if Israel remains in their uncleanness, if they don't follow God's prescribed means of becoming clean again, then what happens is they defile the presence of God. They defile the tabernacle of God, I should say. And what is God going to do? He's going to bring them to death. He's going to put them to death. And this really is what leads us to the day of atonement because the day of atonement makes provision for these kinds of this defilement of the tabernacle. The day of atonement was one day a year. It was the only day the high priest could enter into God's very presence behind the veil and offer blood on the the the the Ark of the covenant on the mercy seat there itself. And what this did was he would provide you to make atonement for the people and the tabernacle. So not that the tabernacle sinned but it had become defiled by the the people's uncleanness and their sin. And so it's sort of an intensive purification offering in a sense. And it's for the sins of the entire nation whereas we looked at sacrifices in in the first few chapters and it's like those are for individuals and here it's this is for the entire nation. It addresses all the sins of Israel that might not have been dealt with through the regular sacrifices. And really we could go into detail but I want you to get the idea of the two goats here. So after Moses or after Aaron the high priest makes offering for himself and for his household Aaron was to take two goats and these would deal with the sins of the nations, the nation of Israel. The first goat would be a purification offering. So this goat would be slain and its blood would be brought inside the veil and sprinkled on the mercy seat in the tent of meeting on the altar and then on the tent of meeting and then on the altar outside. And this was to cleanse the house of God and everything that that belongs to him. And the result here it says, "Thus he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins and so he shall do for the tent of meeting which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses and he shall sprinkle some of the blood on the altar with his finger seven times and cleanse it and consecrate it from the uncleannesses of the people of Israel." So you guys get this idea, right? Like the their sins and their uncleannesses had to be spread, the polluting effect spread to God's house and it had to be cleansed. That's what the first goat did. And then the second goat was a what we call the scapegoat. And this goat, Aaron was to lay both his hands on the head of this goat and he would confess over this goat all the iniquities of the people of Israel and all their transgressions, all their sins and he shall put them on the head of the goat. We get this idea of imputation here, right? It's like God's crediting all the sins of Israel to this goat. Now the goat is carrying the guilt for Israel's sin. And then what happens? This goat is sent away into the wilderness and if you remember in sort of the geography of holiness, the place of the wilderness is separation from God, exile from God, the place of death. And so the goat is sent away expelled from God's presence to this realm of death. So within this, within the day of atonement, we get this idea of expiation where sins are removed from you and that's something that Jesus does for us, sins are removed from us, imputation where it's sins are transferred to a substitute, right? Our sins transfer to Christ and substitution. The substitute takes the punishment that I deserve. What's the punishment that I deserve? Banishment away from the presence of God, right? Israel because of their sins deserves to be cast out of God's presence. But because of this substitute, they get to remain in God's presence and enjoy fellowship with him. And it's effective. So God promises that when Israel does this, it's going to be effective. On this day, God says atonement will be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins, right? Amazing. God has provided a way for man to be made right with him. So this is the way that Israel will get to live with God through sacrifice, through cleansing. And living for God really dominates the next part of the book, really. And Moses begins this section about how to be holy, how to live a holy life. But again, holiness is this idea of being set apart exclusively for God's use. And because God has chosen them, because he's redeemed them in the past, they need to live a certain way now, right? It's kind of the indicative versus imperatives that we see in like something like what Ephesians or Romans, right? We get what God has done and what how now you're to live in light of what God has done. That's some of the idea here in Leviticus. And really, it gets at all areas of life, worship, Israel's to abstain from everything associated with idolatry. There to be pure and their sexual relations, marriage between a man and a woman only. And love for neighbor, how to live as image barriers of the just God who rules over them. And then we get to the section on laws for the priesthood. And we get this idea that those who serve the Lord must be holy. And there's a hell to a higher standard of holiness. They represent God to the people and the people to God, therefore the priest must be holy. And sorry, I'm flying through these. But festival rituals is the next one. This gives us the idea. This is like Israel's worship calendar. They had to celebrate the Sabbath every week, right? Which is not a chore, it's a gift. And then they had feast days, seven feast days throughout the whole year that they would celebrate. And the idea with that is that God controls Israel's time, right? God is Lord of all and all of Israel, even their calendar. And so there to make their life revolve around worship of God, right? The way that they scheduled their time throughout the year, it's revolving around worship. And really, that's this whole idea of this last section. We're living for God, right? Israel is now to live for him, worship him, be his image bearers. And so the Sabbath was really a day of worship. And so were the feast days. Israel got to assemble together, to meet with God at the tent of meaning. So this was like not just a holiday, you celebrate at your home with your family. This was like all the nation coming together to celebrate, or at least the men in some of them, and they get to celebrate with God together. And these feast days reminded Israel of who God is as their provider, their redeemer, their covenant king. It also helped Israel respond, rightly, to God in dependence, because some of these have to do with God providing food in worship, remembering what God has done to redeem them from Egypt, right? The Passover would help them worship. And in obedience, that there to live before this holy God in obedience, worship should lead us to obedience, right? The more that we see God, the more, and you can get to this at the result of worship here at the bottom, the more that we behold the glory of God, the more we're transformed into his likeness, right? We know that from the New Testament. We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to the next, 2nd Corinthians 3, 18. And so as Israel will be held the glory of God, Sabbath after Sabbath, festival after festival, God was transforming them into his likeness, making them the holy nation that he's called them to be, right? So this is how Israel will end up being the holy nation, through God's prescribed means. So Israel then is left with a choice at the end here. Will they choose to obey God and be the holy nation that he's called them to be, enjoy fellowship with him, or will they be unfaithful, live their own way, and end up being sent into exile away from God's presence? And so we see that the promise for obedience is like amazing. Like the world hasn't seen this since Eden. He says that the land will produce abundantly. He says there's going to be peace in their borders, right? Israel will have peace with their fellow men. They'll, God himself will expel all the dangerous animals from Israel. And God will make Israel fruitful and will multiply them. Does that ring a bell, Genesis 1? And the ultimate goal, God will dwell with His people. Listen to Leviticus 26, God says, if you obey, and remember it's not perfectly, it's not obeying perfectly. It's just obeying truly and making use of God's appointed means for sin. If you obey, God says, I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not uphore you, and I will walk among you and will be your God and you shall be my people. You guys remember the last time God talked about, the Bible talked about walking, God walking with man, right? There's two other times. One was Enoch walking with God, right, and the other one, and Enoch was taken into the presence of God. The other one was in Genesis 3, right, where we see God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. right? And so we're getting the sense of we're going back to Eden. If you obey Israel, if you obey, you will be brought back to Eden. And that's their choice. Eden or exile. You guys can look at this table later. You can see some of the parallels between Genesis and Leviticus and how it's really telling us Leviticus is going back to Eden. But the curse is for unfaithfulness are terrible. And it's actually a longer section than the other part. There's just like 10 or 11 verses on the blessings. And then the curse is it's like a whole bunch of verses. And it's talking about panic, it's talking about disease, defeat by enemies, occupied by enemies, droughts, famine, attacks from wild beasts, pestilence. The land will become uninhabitable. So it won't produce abundantly and it'll actually become uninhabitable. Nobody's going to want to live there. And they'll be exiled into the nations away from God's presence in that sense. And so this is really kind of a, it's scary when you have sort of all these verses about exile, right? And then we see that also when we look at Deuteronomy and we're like, okay, it seems like this is actually what's going to happen, right? And actually that's kind of what is what they're getting at here. Moses like, this is what's going to happen. This is what's going to happen. This what's going to happen. Obey, obey, choose faithfulness. And they don't ultimately, as we'll see. But God promises forgiveness, which is amazing. So even after God brings all of these, these curses on them, God promises that he will not utterly destroy Israel. He says that he will forgive exiled Israel when they confess their sins. That's what that's his requirement. A broken and contrite heart before him. And he will bring them back into his land because he'll remember his covenant with Abraham. And so we're left with this Eden or exile. And then there's this last section, this last chapter that ends with voluntary vows and offerings. And a lot of people don't really know what to do with this. Some people just call it an appendix. One commentator was helpful. He said this. He said that this is where true worship leads. So true worship of God leads to freely giving yourself to God. And that's what we're talking about when we're talking about voluntary vows, making promises to God and making voluntary offerings to God. Goldberg says, no true worship can end without presenting ourselves and our substance to the Lord who provides all our benefits. So really, this is the, we could say the goal of Leviticus is for God to dwell with man and for man to offer himself freely to God. That is what we're left with here at the end of Leviticus. And so the last thing I want to talk about here is just how Leviticus, and this is going to be too brief, but how Leviticus relates to Christ. How Leviticus relates to Christ. And so this is a table from a helpful book Matthew Barrett wrote. It's an Old Testament introduction. And here's just some of the ways that Leviticus relates to Jesus. There's so much more we can talk about and I feel bad not talking about more, but this is what we got. So selection of an animal. The animal was to be perfect, blameless, right? And so Christ was the spotless lamb. Christ was without sin, right? He was the spotless lamb that was sacrifice. So this is emphasizing Christ's active obedience. He was righteous. The laying on of hands before the animal sacrificed, the imputation of sin, as we talked about, right? The transfer of guilt to the innocent. Christ, right, became sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God. Number three, the killing of an animal by the offer. This is the death penalty of sin. Christ died for the ungodly, right? Christ died as a substitute for the ungodly. And the use of blood, right? Hebrews talks about how there can be no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood. And so Christ blood was the ultimate sacrifice that took away all of our sin and guilt and cleansed us entirely. Burning of the whole or part of the offering talks about consecration, the whole thing given to God. Christ was given to God. We could say that, you know, he was a sweet smelling aroma to God, right? Christ's offering was. We know that Christ's propitiated God's wrath made us in a favorable standing before God. Christ suffered outside the camp. There are sacrifices that had to be burned outside the camp. And sacrificial meal, the peace offering, the fellowship offering, right? It's this idea of reconciliation with God. You got to enjoy a fellowship meal with God. You're reconciled with him. You get to enjoy him now. And then we now that we've been justified, right? We have peace with God. We've been reconciled to God. And this is all through Jesus, right? And as I said, there's so much more. Like I would, it'd be amazing if we could go through and just talk about it, but maybe next time when we go through this deeper, but we could really think about Christ as our high priest, right? Offering himself as the sacrifice that would take away all of our sins, like it's glorious. And him now, interceding for us, still as our high priest, right? Him pronouncing God's blessing upon us. Jesus is amazing. Yeah. Oh, praise the Lord. Wow. Yom Kapoor is today. It was a song that they often read on the day of the challenge. Wow. That's amazing. Okay. It's what we're preaching. Yeah. Very exciting. Cool. Well, let me say a quick prayer of thanks to God and we'll be dismissed. Father, we praise you for this book of Leviticus. We praise you, God, that it's your desire to bring us to yourself that through Christ's sacrifice, we get to be brought to God. And we thank you, God, that you have done it all. You have made the way. And we are just recipients of your grace. Help us to enjoy your grace today. Enjoy the freeness of forgiveness that we have in Jesus. And may we praise you and extol you for the the lavish grace that you've given us and for Christ who is our great high priest and the once for all sacrifice that has taken away all of our sins and made us fit for your presence. We thank you for this all in his name. Amen. Amen. You guys are dismissed. Thank you.