Leviticus
Welcome! Today
we continue our series entitled Law and Grace, looking at the book of Leviticus
as a whole. As I explained last week, the reason we are going through the Law
is that it helps us to better understand grace, and in the second half of this
series we will go through the book of Galatians, using what we have learned in
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy to better understand and appreciate
the incredible gift of grace we have received through Christ.
Leviticus
is a big book; we could spend many weeks exploring it. My approach this week is
to first give a general overview of the book, and then say a little about each
chapter, focusing on what people of the Law really had to do and, also,
explaining how these things are hints of Christ.
The name
“Leviticus” comes from the Septuagint, the translation of the Old Testament
into Greek made a few hundred years before Christ. Leviticus means “of the
Levites,” and the Levites were set apart to serve as tabernacle caretakers and
priests. A significant portion of Leviticus focuses on what the Levites were to
do in their service to God.
Leviticus
picks up where Exodus left off. Here is a very brief summary of Exodus: The
Israelites have been freed from captivity in Egypt, crossed through the sea,
led by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, seen God
miraculously give them water and food, including the manna, and been given the
Ten Commandments and more regulations on Sinai. Through much of it they were
doubting and complaining, and at the time they were receiving the Law they were
worshiping a golden calf they had made. There were major consequences for this
sin, but eventually, a second set of commandments were given Moses on Sinai and
Moses brought them down, this time to a people who were at least outwardly
obeying God.
The
Israelites were also given detailed instructions for making a tabernacle and
its contents, a place where sacrifices would be made and God’s Spirit would
reside. The Israelites followed these instructions, and I mentioned last week
how it is often easier to follow “outward” commands than it is to give your
heart and follow God inwardly. Exodus ended with the glory of the Lord filling
the tabernacle.
The first
part of Leviticus involves the Lord calling Moses and giving him additional
instructions from the Tent of Meeting, the tabernacle. These instructions, for
the first 17 chapters, primarily deal with rules and regulations for sacrifices
to God. You couldn’t just worship God any way you wanted, because God is holy.
In fact, the holiness of God is a mostly unspoken theme that runs through the
entire book of Leviticus. These chapters describe five different offerings that
were to be made to God; three of these were what I will call “sweet” offerings,
sweet in smell or taste, and two had to do with sin and trespass. Some of these
offerings were of animals, but not all of them. Regarding the offerings of
animals, Leviticus 1:2 says this:
Speak to the
Israelites and say to them: ‘When any of you brings an offering to the Lord, bring as your offering an animal from either the herd or the flock. If
the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he is to offer a male without
defect. He must present it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting so that it
will be acceptable to the Lord. He is to lay his hand on the head of
the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for
him. – Lev. 1:2-4
Several
very important principles are revealed here. First, offerings were in fact offered, not taken. In other words,
offerings were to be voluntarily given. It didn’t have to be this way; God
could have just taken offerings by His force, but that was not what this was
about at all. Man had exercised his free will when he disobeyed God, and he was
to likewise exercise his free will to make it right in this manner prescribed
by God. God never forces us to love Him or obey Him; He seeks people who give
Him their hearts, people who choose to trust Him and live for Him.
The second
principle revealed is that it is to be an offering without defect. These were
the most desirable animals in the flock; these were the ones you wanted to keep
around, to breed. From a human standpoint, it was illogical to sacrifice these;
common sense would dictate that you sacrifice the ones that were most
defective, but God would not accept these. Note that the perfection of the
sacrifice was a symbol of the yet-to-come truly perfect sacrifice of Christ. It
was also costly; I think the requirement of giving up such a valuable animal
challenged people to rely not on their worldly wealth but instead on God.
A third
principle I see here is based on this curious requirement that the one making
the offering is to first place his hands on the head of the animal before it is
given up for sacrifice. Symbolically, laying your hand upon the sacrifice was a
transference of self so that the animal was dying in your stead. Certainly the
one making the offering would have a powerful emotional experience at that
moment, realizing that a living creature without sin would need to die in your
place so that you could be able to enter into right relationship with a
completely holy God.
The fourth
principle I see is that of atonement. In the Old Testament, the word for
atonement is kaphar which literally
means to cover over. This is in
contrast to the New Testament term for atonement which refers to putting sin
away; that is, the sacrifices of the Old Testament only covered over sin; the
perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ took our sin away! How thankful we should be
that this is the case!
God has always desired that we walk in fellowship with Him. God’s holiness has
always required that something be done so that we could be in fellowship with
Him, and in the Old Testament it was this sacrificial system, where each sin was
covered over with the death of an innocent unblemished animal. It became our
substitute, taking upon itself the consequences that we deserved. Again, this
was an imperfect system, a temporary system, pointing to the much better day,
our day, in which the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ in our place removes our
sin and completely restores our fellowship with God.
So
Leviticus Chapter 1 deals with the burnt
offering, one of the “sweet” offerings. Fundamentally, it was an offering
of consecration, of restoring one’s devotion to God. The desire of the person
was that he could glorify God; he would begin this process with the burnt
offering. The person would bring the animal to the priest, lay hands on its
head, and then slay it. Not the priests, but him, himself (Lev. 1:5). The
priests would bring the blood and sprinkle it on the altar. The person would
cut it up, and the priests would put the pieces on the altar and burn them up
completely.
How many of you like the smell of barbecue? This is what we are talking about!
The one offering the animal would smell these wonderful smells but not get to
eat any of it. The animal was completely “wasted” (from a human point of view).
Leviticus
Chapter 2 describes a second “sweet” offering, the grain offering, sometimes called the meal offering. The basic idea
is here:
When someone brings a
grain offering to the Lord, his offering is to be of fine
flour. He is to pour oil on it, put incense on it and take it to Aaron’s sons
the priests. The priest shall take a handful of the fine flour and oil,
together with all the incense, and burn this as a memorial portion on the
altar, an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the Lord. The rest of the grain offering belongs to Aaron and his sons; it is a
most holy part of the offerings made to the Lord by fire. – Lev. 2:1-3
Again, we
have talked about barbecue; now think about baking bread, or pizza – another
wonderful smell! There were several variations allowed in preparation, but
there were a few common requirements. First, no yeast or honey could be used.
No yeast, or leaven, because it has always been symbolic of sin; note that what
yeast actually does is break down the food; it is literally a kind of rotting.
This had no place in an offering to God, any more than a blemish on an animal.
Honey was forbidden, perhaps, because it would create an artificial sweetness;
in any case, it would mask the true aroma of the flour and oil. Another
requirement is that there had to be salt used as well. Salt in scripture is symbolic
of a preservative and as a revealer of truth; both of these were quite
appropriate in a sacrifice. The offering as a whole was symbolic as an offering
of service; the one making the offering was basically re-committing their life
in service to God instead of service to self. It could also be an offering of
first fruits, acknowledging God’s good hand in the harvest.
The third
type of “sweet” offering is described in Leviticus Chapter 3, the fellowship offering, sometimes called
the peace offering. The fellowship offering was an animal offering, but unlike
the consecration offering, some of the meat was cooked as food, not burnt up
completely. The fellowship offering was to restore one’s fellowship with God.
The idea, symbolically, was that the one making the offering and God would
“share” in the food. There was a deep understanding, a tradition, a cultural
belief, in many ancient cultures that sharing a meal with someone linked the
two of you together. Physically, this was true in a sense, because you both had
part of the same meal in you after you ate, and as they say, “you are what you
eat.” This is why a person would never share a meal with their enemies, because
they did not want to become one with them to any degree. This is also behind
the rules that Jews had even at Jesus’ time about refusing to eat with any
non-Jews. To eat with another was to fellowship with him in a deep way; and
this makes even more poignant the many times that Jesus ate with people, and who He ate with, even “tax collectors
and sinners”. Symbolically, Jesus was eager to fellowship with anyone willing
to fellowship with Him.
Chapters 4
through 6 describe two more kinds of offerings. For each of the first three
offerings, there are verses in Leviticus that describe them making a sweet
aroma unto God; that is not true for
these latter two types of offerings. These two kinds of offerings are for
restoring one’s relationship with God after sinning. One of these is called the
sin offering, and the other is
called the guilt offering, or
trespass offering. The sin offering is introduced in the beginning of Chapter
4:
The Lord said to Moses,
“Say to the Israelites: ‘When anyone sins unintentionally and does what
is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands — Lev. 4:1-2
There are two kinds of
sin, unintentional sin and intentional sin. This chapter deals with
unintentional sin. Note that unintentional sin is still sin. Ignorance of the
law or ignorance of one’s actions is no excuse. That is true in every modern
legal system, and it was true of God’s law. In this case, hands were again laid
on the animal prior to slaughter, and the blood was put on the altar, but the
fatty parts were the only parts burnt up on the altar. The rest of the animal –
good eating meat – was taken and burnt outside
the camp. By the way, even the first type of offering, where the entire
animal was burnt up, the skins were removed first, and could be made into
clothing or other items by the priests; but in this case, even the skins were
burnt up outside the camp. Even this detail points to Christ, who did not die
at the Temple , but outside the “camp,” outside Jerusalem
With Chapter 5 and the first part of Chapter 6, we begin to get into specific
offerings for specific types of sins. Not speaking up when you know something
and are asked to do so, touching things unclean, and taking oaths, each of
these was sin. Also mentioned were defiling any of the Lord’s holy things or
violating any of the Lord’s commands (including those in Exodus). The first
step was to confess the sin, and the
second was to bring an animal for an offering, the sin offering.
As explained in the
first part of Chapter 6, if the sin involved deceiving another person, an
additional required step was that he make full restitution; actually more than
full restitution, adding an additional fifth of the value. The offering in this
case was the trespass offering. Unlike the sin offering, the meat could be
eaten by the priests. The rest of Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 give additional
details about the five kinds of offerings, the burnt offering, the grain
offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, and the fellowship offering.
Leviticus 8 describes
special offerings for the ordination of Aaron (who was descended from Levi) and
his sons as priests. They put all the specially made garments on Aaron and then
anointed everything in the tabernacle with oil. They also anointed Aaron’s
head, and dressed up Aaron’s sons. Next was a sin offering, a bull, and Aaron
and his sons laid their hands on its head before it was slaughtered. Note that
Aaron and his sons were sinners like everyone else, and thus, needed the sin
offering before they could begin their priestly duties. (Only Christ was a high
priest who never needed any offerings made for His own sins, because He, and He
alone, was without sin.) Then there was a burnt offering, consecrating Aaron
and his sons, and a special ordination offering, and then they waited eight
days at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting before beginning their duties.
Leviticus 9 describes
the beginning of the priestly ministry. Now they made burnt offerings and sin
offerings for the people. Again they began by first having Aaron make a sin
offering for himself. They then went through the various offerings, and Moses
and Aaron went into the tent of meeting. Here is how the chapter concludes:
When they came out, they blessed the people; and the
glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. Fire came out from the presence of the
Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar. And
when all the people saw it, they shouted for joy and fell facedown. – Lev.
9:23-24
And they all lived
happily ever after, right? Wrong. Every indication is that Chapter 10 immediately follows Chapter 9. What happens?
Two of Aaron’s sons put fire in their censers, adding incense, and offering
fire to the Lord their own way, not in obedience to the specific demands for
sacrifices. The result is that fire went out and killed them. We don’t know
what Aaron’s sons were thinking – perhaps they just wanted to improvise.
Perhaps they wanted to draw some attention to themselves. Perhaps they were
drunk! I say this because a few verses later, seemingly out of the blue, God
warns Aaron and his sons to never have alcohol when they go into the Tent of
Meeting. We don’t really know. But if we think God is harsh, we fail to
understand the holiness of God. Our sin separates us from God. Our God is a
consuming fire. Only the righteous can stand before Him and live. For us, Christ
is our righteousness; it is certainly not in us, any more than it was in
Aaron’s sons. At that same time God also told Aaron the following:
You must distinguish between the holy and the common,
between the unclean and the clean, and you must teach the Israelites all the
decrees the Lord has given them through Moses. – Lev. 10:10-11
And so part of the role
of the priests was to be teachers, to instruct the Israelites laws about holy
versus common, clean versus unclean, and the other decrees they were to follow.
A detailed description of these rules begins in the following chapter.
Leviticus 11 gives
detailed rules about what creatures may be eaten and what creatures may not be
eaten, which are clean and which are unclean. The wording is interesting in
that in multiple places it says “unclean for you.” That is, the dietary laws
are not pronouncing judgment on the entire world, but only on the Israelites.
They are to be a people set apart for God, and one way in which they are set
apart is with regards to what they were allowed and not allowed to eat.
Leviticus 12 discusses
women and their purification after childbirth, and Leviticus 13 discusses skin
diseases, specifically, although not mentioned by name, leprosy. Leprosy was a
serious disease, and it could be spread. And so an additional role of the
priests was to examine skin abnormalities and declare them as clean or unclean.
There were specific procedures to follow after that. For someone who had
leprosy, their life was a difficult one:
The person with such an infectious disease must wear
torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry
out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He
must live alone; he must live outside the camp. – Lev. 12:45-46
These
rules continued into Christ’s day; the lepers Christ spoke to lived in this
manner. The purpose was to protect the rest of the people. Now, Leviticus 14
focuses on healing from leprosy. A priest served as a kind of health inspector,
looking at the situation and declaring it clean or unclean. Now the strange
thing about all this is that leprosy was incurable. Not so strange, if you look
forward to Christ. Christ healed lepers! And the lepers were instructed to
basically give the priests the opportunity to exercise Leviticus 14 and declare
these people cured. It is fascinating that a whole section of the law was basically
untested, unused, until Christ “broke the rules” and healed something that was
incurable. The issue of mildew, by the way, is also dealt with in chapters 13
and 14, and Leviticus 15 continues the health theme, dealing with people with
various kinds of bodily discharges. Jesus healed these too, by the way.
Now we
don’t have the time to go into the depth I wish I could go into here, but
Leviticus 16 focuses on the Day of Atonement. The summary of the chapter is
this:
This is to be a
lasting ordinance for you: Atonement is to be made once a year for all the sins
of the Israelites. – Lev. 16:34
Once a
year, on a particular day, the high priest would enter the holy of the holies,
the most holy place, past the veil, or curtain. This was a day of rest for the
people, but a day of a lot of work for the high priest. If I have counted up
everything in this chapter correctly, I come to about 30 animals he had to deal
with in one way or another, plus five baths! On this day he did not wear the
special priestly garments, but a plain linen garment. First he made offerings
for his own sin, and then he made offerings for the sins of the people. As we
know, this is highly symbolic of Christ, who entered the most holy place and
sacrificed for the sins of the people once for all with His own body, with His
own blood. So many details are symbolic – for example, the fact that the high
priest on this day had to work alone. He would go to the most holy place and
sprinkle the blood of a bull, and then he would also sprinkle the blood of a
goat. Interestingly, there were two goats, the one that was sacrificed and
another that was sent away into the desert. Prior to being sent away, the high
priest would lay hands on its head and confess over it all the wickedness and
rebellion of the Israelites. Symbolically, the goat would be carrying away the
sins of the people. Christ fulfilled the roles of both goats – He sacrificed
Himself for our sins, and He also carried away our sins.
In Chapter
17 God decreed that the Tent of Meeting was the only place for sacrifices.
There were also regulations given forbidding eating blood. By way of
explanation, it says,
For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have
given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood
that makes atonement for one’s life. – Lev. 17:11
Again this points to
Christ; He couldn’t save us by just hanging around for us, or doing a ceremony,
or something like this – He had to give up His blood; it is the blood that
makes atonement for one’s life.
Now my title for this
message was Sacrifice and Sanctification. Everything up until this point has
focused on sacrifice; the remainder of Leviticus primarily focuses on
sanctification. There is a repeated phrase that appears beginning in chapter
18. In fact, if I have counted correctly, it appears 54 times in chapters 18
through 26. What is the phrase? I am the
Lord. A significant number of these
times, it is part of the larger phrase; I
am the Lord, who makes you holy. And this is what sanctification is all
about. God wants His people to be holy. God is a holy God, and the unholy
simply cannot be in His presence, because to be with God, one must be holy as
He is holy. Romans 7:12 says,
So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy,
righteous and good. – Rom. 7:12
The
commandments in chapters 18 to 27, then, are about how to be holy, so that we
can have fellowship with God. The sacrifices were how the Israelites repaired
their relationship (a temporary system fulfilled by Christ), but the laws were
about how to be holy, to be righteous, to be good.
In chapter
18 God deals with holiness with regards to intimate relationships. Incestuous
relationships are forbidden as are adulterous relationships and relationships
with anyone other than someone of the opposite sex. In chapter 19 you see a
restatement of some of the 10 commandments, as well as miscellaneous other
laws. Some deal with the poor – for example, one is to leave the edges of your
field un-reaped so that the poor may gather from them. In this chapter it also
says to love your neighbor as yourself, and in fact, many of the laws can be
summarized with this statement, just as Jesus affirms in the New Testament. As
we spoke about briefly last week, the laws cannot be easily separated into
ceremonial versus universal laws; they are mixed together. For example, a law
forbidding the practice of divination is immediately followed by a law about
how to not cut your hair in certain ways. The way to understand the Law is that
it was a complete set of rules for the Israelites to follow. As for us, we are
Christians; what we need to follow we can find in the teachings of Christ and
the rest of the New Testament. But all Scripture is valuable for study – there
is great benefit in reflecting on the Law, all of it.
Chapter 20
deals with punishments for breaking many of the laws already described, plus a
few new ones on various topics. Chapter 21 and 22 provides detailed rules for
the proper conduct of priests, chapter 21 primarily on the priests’ conduct,
and chapter 22 on what are and are not acceptable sacrifices.
Leviticus
23 lays out in one place the seven special days, holy days: the Sabbath, the
Passover, Firstfruits (a festival at the start of harvest in which a sheaf of
the first grain is waved before the Lord), the Feast of Weeks (a holiday a week
of weeks after Firstfruits), the Feast of Trumpets (a day commemorated with
blasts of a ram’s horn), the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles (a
holiday celebrated by living together in booths). Each of these holidays has
their fulfillment in Christ. As for the Sabbath, we enter our rest in Christ,
Hebrews 4. As for Passover, Christ is our Passover Lamb, I Cor. 5:7. As for
Firstfruits, Christ is the firstfruits of those that slept, I Cor. 15:20; that
is, we are His harvest, and He is the first who is resurrected into life; we
will follow Him. As for the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the
Feast of Tabernacles, these are yet to be fulfilled, but we get glimpses of how
Christ will fulfill these in the Old Testament prophets and in Revelations as well
as prophecies in other New Testament books. The bottom line is that He will
fulfill them when He returns.
I am
running out of time, but let me briefly summarize the remaining chapters of
Leviticus. Chapter 24 begins with how oil and bread are to be provided
continually, the oil so that the lamps at the Tent of Meeting burn continually,
and the bread to be set out in two rows, 6 loaves per row, Sabbath after
Sabbath. The second part of the chapter describes rules for those who blaspheme
the Lord; they should be stoned outside the camp. Recall that Jesus was accused
of blasphemy, as was Stephen in the Book of Acts, who was in fact stoned.
We have
seen rules for keeping the Sabbath in Exodus. Chapter 25 of Leviticus describes
a Sabbath year (once every 7 years) in which the fields are to have a year of
rest, and the year of Jubilee (once every 7 Sabbath years, the year following,
making it once every 50 years) in which everyone is to return their own
property, if property had been leased, and those who sell themselves as
basically indentured servants are freed.
Leviticus
26 is divided into two parts. The first part describes rewards for obeying
God’s commands, and the second part describes punishments for disobedience. I
do note that the second part is about twice as long as the first part! And the
final chapter of Leviticus focuses on vows and dedications of items to the
Lord.
Whew!
That’s a lot of information! How do we put it all together? What do we take
away from it?
Again, we
can separate Leviticus into two parts: Chapters 1-17 that focus on sacrifice,
and Chapters 18-27 that focus on sanctification. Within the chapters on
sacrifice are the five kinds of offerings, the setup of the priestly ministry,
dietary laws, health laws, and the Day of Atonement. Within the chapters that
focus on sanctification are rules for purity in intimate relationships, rules
for loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself, rules for personal conduct
including the conduct of priests, the seven special holidays, Sabbath years and
the year of Jubilee, the rewards and punishments for obeying or disobeying
God’s laws, and rules regarding vows and dedications. An overarching theme in
the first part is that blood is necessary for sacrifice, and an overarching
theme in the second part is that God calls us to be holy because He is holy.
What was
it like to live under the law? What was it like to be a priest? It wasn’t easy.
It was bloody. There were constant reminders of the seriousness of sin, yet
there was a powerlessness as you watched your people, and even you yourself,
sin again and again and again.
I am
reminded that Christ said He did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it.
I am also reminded of Romans 13:10 which says that love is the fulfillment of
the law. We are not called to live by the Law handed to the Israelites, but we
are called to have our sin atoned for and taken away, and we do this in and
through Christ; we are also called to live holy lives (holiness defined by the
New Testament teachings, not the minutiae of the Law of Moses), and as we know,
we can only do this in and through
Christ as well. Therefore a proper response for us is to call on Him to be our fulfillment of this law, by being
our high priest, our sacrifice, our scapegoat, our teacher, our guide, our
everything. Recall how I explained that sharing a meal with someone linked the
two people together? In this light, reflect on Rev. 3:20 as we close. Jesus
says,
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone
hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with
Me.
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