Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 30, 2022 | Leviticus - The Holiness of God

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January 30, 2022 | Leviticus - The Holiness of God · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning everyone.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to TBC.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't been to the cab in a while, welcome to the cab.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's nice to have you.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: My name's Connor.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh typically we have slides up here.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get rolling without it.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can see one of them right behind me.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, so we um I've I've been taking a little break, and that break has served two purposes.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: One is that we have had the opportunity to see the awesome series called Better Together that Alex and Jim did.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was a fantastic look at what it means to find unity in Christ.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And really the main reason that we know Christ and get to be with Christ is that we get to be a part of God's family.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: The other awesome part about that is that I had the chance to read a lot of Leviticus commentaries as we are getting started in the book of Leviticus.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Every spring we go through here at TBC an Old Testament book of the Bible, or at least we've done that for quite some time.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And last spring we looked at the book of Exodus, right?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: You've got Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus comes next.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And here is where I plant my flag and say that Leviticus has gotten a bad rap.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know it is the thing that has derailed your read the Bible in a year plans.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I know that it is confusing when it talks about mildew and houses and eating shellfish and camels and things like that.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I get it.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It can be confusing at times, and especially because as people of the new covenant, right, with Jesus, we're no longer under the law of the old covenant.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are often questions that come up with what do I have to gain from the book of Leviticus?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pretty intense book on top of that.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I am going to be using the word blood so much during this series that it will make the Red Cross blush, okay?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is going to be, I'm really excited about it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of thing that gets me jazzed.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: But honestly, there is the question of why should we be going through the book of Leviticus?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: For two really important reasons.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: The first is for the sake of Bible literacy, and the second is for the sake of Bible worldview.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Two unbelievably important ideas for Christians to have today.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about Bible literacy, really what we're getting into is Paul speaking to a young Timothy in 2 Timothy, says, all scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, an Old Testament scholar, understood that even though Christ had come and by this point in time had ascended to heaven, had resurrected and ascended to heaven, that there was still immense value in understanding every bit of God's word.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't important just because God wrote it, but moreover, because God placed every single one of those books and chapters and verses, which they weren't divided into verses at the time, but nevertheless, that God placed all of those things for his people to understand.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: They still were able to edify and sanctify his community.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's true even today.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Leviticus still has the power to do these sorts of things.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And beyond that, it's important for us to understand the entire Word of God lest we become sort of deficient in our knowledge of the Bible.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: If I went to a breakfast joint and ordered a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, and the the waiter or waitress says, I'll be right back.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let me get that for you.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they return with an orange scented marker, okay?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I would be confused.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: If Hannah and I are trying to plan a vacation, she says, you know, hey, I love the Rockies.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love it if we could go to Colorado.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, babe, I've got you.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a Colorado Rockies baseball hat.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: They they give off the scent of the original, they they reference the original, but they are not as good as the real thing.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And in this way, even though, if you want to take my terrible illustrations, fresh squeezed orange juice or traveling to the Rockies, it takes more work than the second one, but they're far better.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Far better.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Unless we develop like biblical scurvy, right, and just only, you know, read the verses of the day or immediately flip to the New Testament, where there are things which I admit are often easier to apply to our daily lives.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: We sort of are like the person who just eats sugar every day and doesn't get anything else that is needed for life.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: God's entire word is valuable for us.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when we talk about that sort of thing, we're speaking of biblical literacy.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Most Christians today struggle to know the entire breadth of the Bible, and therefore they do not have as strong of a relationship with God as possible.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: So Leviticus is really going to help us do that.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of beauty in it.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: The second reason we want to look at the book of Leviticus is for the sake of our Bible or biblical worldview.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say worldview, I just mean like, what is the lens through which you see the rest of the world?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like when things happen to you or to other people, when you see what is going on in our culture, when you have thoughts in your head, or you even listen to a, like come to church and listen to a lesson on the Bible, how do you process those things and how does that influence your life?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Your worldview should be shaped by God.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And critical to the book of Leviticus, your worldview should be shaped by something called God's holiness.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now we know that God is holy.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: God has told us that he is holy.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: By his works, by the things that God does himself, we can see that he is holy.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: But when we talk about God's holiness and what it really means, it's kind of hard to describe.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: But it's important that we understand, lest we turn God into this sort of profane and common creature, which he is not.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Holiness is hard to describe in a sense because though we are made in the image of God, right, and there are many things that you and I can do to emulate in some way God's character, such as love and patience, there are certain things that we can't do without divine intervention.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those is be holy.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because of our sin nature, because of the decisions that you and I like to make on a daily basis, we are unholy creatures.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a problem because we worship a holy God.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: A holy God who made us to be holy, but yet we said, no, thank you.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: God, we're gonna do our own thing.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And holiness, even beyond that, it can be difficult to describe because you really just sort of dive into synonyms.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: You say, well, God is sinless, he is sacred, he is set apart.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And all of those things fall under the umbrella of God's holiness, yet they do not fully describe him.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: God is all goodness personified, he is holy.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we see his holiness, right, when we see God's holiness, we understand that that should also create a response within us.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: That our worldview, right, the things that we think are right and wrong, good and evil, should be affected by his holiness.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the book of Leviticus, let me tell you right now, is going to talk about God's holiness a lot.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's basically the thrust of the entire book.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a holy God who wants to be with an unholy people.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And how does he go about doing that?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: The book of Leviticus.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: But this response to God, it should stir something up within us.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: It should make us want to become more holy.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem is that in our world today, we often like to shy away from God's holiness because it can make us a little uncomfortable.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are components of his being all good, all right, the perfect judge that make us sort of uneasy.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: A good litmus test for this is the story of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: These two individuals were sons of Aaron, the brother of Moses, and Aaron was the high priest for the Israelites.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Nadab and Abihu had been consecrated to be priests for the nation of Israel.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And almost immediately as their ministry began, they offered, the story is not very long.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: We've got about three verses in Leviticus 10.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: It just says that they offered unauthorized fire.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: They offered something that was a part of the priestly work, which was fire at the altar of God, something we will talk about during this book.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: But whatever they did, in some way, they profaned the altar of God.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: They treated the Lord with disrespect.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: They did not listen to the things he had told them to do, and they showed a carelessness for God's commands, and did not show reverence to the creator of the universe.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in response to that, God sent fire down from heaven that consumed Nadab and Abihu before the entire nation of Israel.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: How you feel about that story is going to draw a direct line to how you feel about God's holiness, his righteousness, his justice, and frankly, the sinfulness that exists in our own world.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because God was right to do this.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: God was right to strike them down because of the irreverence they had for his holy altar.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And our wrestling with that, that statement, is going to come out through the book of Leviticus as we look at this book, which uncompromisingly asks God's people to try and live a holy life, because he is holy.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: If we want to know what it feels like to enter into the holiness of God, we can look at Isaiah 6.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: In the year that King Uziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and the hem of his robe filled the temple.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Seraphim were standing above him, that's a type of angel.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: They had each had six wings.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: With two they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew, and one called to another.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of armies.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: His glory fills the whole earth.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is the heavenly refrain.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: The foundations of the doorways shook, Isaiah says, at the sound of their voices, and the temple was filled with smoke.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Isaiah, being brought into this space and his call to ministry, responds this way.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Then I say, Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of armies.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: This phrase, I am ruined, is kind of hard to translate.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: It basically means he has been cut down or he has been silenced.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah, brought into the throne room of God, immediately recognizes and is made aware of his own sinfulness.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: There are these processes that your body has called an autonomic sakes.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what happens when I try and bring up medical things.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Autonomic nervous system.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: You have an autonomic nervous system, and the reactions within that nervous system are sort of unquestioned.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: They are automatic.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, like when you go into a bright room, your pupils dilate.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you sneeze, you close your eyes.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are things that happen to our body when we are sort of brought into a stimulus that we don't consciously react to, but our body unconsciously provides a response to.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Every single example we look at in the Bible of where somebody is able to witness God in his glory looks something like this.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: That they understand in a moment, like all of the ideas of, man, if I could give God a peace of my mind for what he did to my life, if I could just talk with him and ask him why he did this, if I ugh, and this the hand-wringing and the fish shaking is silenced when we stand before the creator of the universe.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a component of his holiness, and it's an aspect of what it feels like to stand before God.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And every single one of us eventually is going to stand before God in his kingdom.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: When God calls us home, right, or Jesus returns, all of us, everyone in this room, everyone on the live stream, everyone that doesn't even hear what I'm saying, is going to stand before God and give an account.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's important that we understand and recognize God's holiness.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon, a uh uh famous theologian in the 1800s who had a way with words, says, the most spiritual and sanctified minds, when they fully perceive the majesty and holiness of God, are so greatly conscious of the great disproportion between themselves and the Lord that they are humbled and filled with holy awe and even with dread and alarm.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: We recognize that even though God desires to have a relationship with us, we are not on the same playing field.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Without his divine intervention, we don't get to have community with him because we like to rebel against him.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: So once more, what should it feel like to enter into the presence of God as we walk through the book of Leviticus?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is sort of a, frankly, this is kind of a primer as we spend the next nine weeks.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Next week, actually, we'll be uh Jeremy teaching for big weekend, but then beyond that, we'll go on a nine-week stretch where we are going through the book of Leviticus.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: As we do that, the theme of God's holiness is going to come up a lot.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: How we feel about it is going to impact our ability to consume the book of Leviticus to God's glory.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But how should it feel to be in his presence?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever gone to Washington, D.C.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: and visited the tomb of the unknown soldier, you might get a glimpse.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know that 24-7-365, there is a soldier who does not speak, who walks back and forth guarding the tomb of one who died for their country but went unidentified.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Who's deserving of the highest respect because of the sacrifice that they made?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've ever been there, you know that there's just silence.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can hear the footsteps, the clacking of the boots on the pavement as these individuals walk back and forth, sleet and storm morning and night.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: There is a reverence and awe that is brought to our minds because we know that there is something about this space that is deserving of our respect without anybody telling us to be quiet or to pay attention.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's something about I went there when I was a child and my parents took me, and I don't know if you've ever taken a child to Washington, D.C.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the most child-friendly place to go on vacation, right?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whole lot of museums, whole lot of statues.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I remember this place.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember even though we might have stayed a little bit longer than I wanted to, even I, as a child, was sort of brought um to a moment of silence because of what was going on.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: My last comment on having a biblical worldview and understanding God's holiness is this.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, a good way to kind of grasp it.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been around somebody who is a really good baker, you know that when they bring something out of the oven that they have baked, that they typically, if they've done it enough, they know what ingredients were missing or what went wrong in the recipe if it doesn't come out the way that they were hoping.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: They say, you know, this needed more baking powder, this needed more eggs, needed a little less flour or oil.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: They are able to look at it and discern what needed to be done so that it comes out proper the next time.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: When we look at our relationship with God, there's a certain critical eye that needs to be applied to it as well, and there's a component of our relationship with God that we need to apply in the right measure.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those ingredients that is often left out of our relationship with God, or often neglected, at least, is recognizing his holiness.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: There was heresy in the early church because people wanted to say that the God of the New Testament was different than the God of the Old Testament.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that's not the case.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: They are one and the same God.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: His nature does not change.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: The same God that showed um cast Nadab and Abihu down in fire in Leviticus 10 is the same God that heals the leper as Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as we hold all of these things in concert and build up the areas that are weak, our relationship with God gets stronger, and we are better able to understand who He is and how we should respond to Him.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, with all of that being said, what does Leviticus say and how can it help us?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, to that end, in Leviticus 11, verses 44 through 45, God says, For I am the Lord your God, so you must consecrate yourselves, basically make yourselves holy, and be holy because I am holy.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God, so you must be holy because I am holy.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the main idea, that's the thesis point.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is Leviticus.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: God is holy, he is goodness personified.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And because we worship that God, not because he's all powerful, not because he knows everything, not because he can be everywhere at once, but because he is holy, we worship him, and out of that response, we are also supposed to be holy, as he says.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: In this phrase is also nestled God's two greatest desires that we would be holy and that he could have a relationship with us.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, those two things are mutually exclusive without divine intervention.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so the whole book of Leviticus is about God giving instructions to his people in a certain culture, in a certain context, in a certain time period, so that they would be able to be holy, act holy, and could have a relationship with him.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And some of those instructions were difficult and hard.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay, because ultimately it brought them closer to Jesus.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that this these two verses show us is the motivation that we're supposed to have, the reasoning that God gives for why pursuing this course of action is valuable.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: The first reason is because I am God.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you're the creator of the universe, you get to say because I said so.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: If ever you guys create the heavens and the earth, you know, put the sky, the sun in its orbit and all of these things, you get to call the shots.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: God says, because I am God.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like a parent, right?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Who says, quit throwing spaghetti across the table.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Share your toys with your brothers and sisters.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: There is an inherent authority present there in that relationship that does not need to be explained.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: The parent gets to call the shots most of the time.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to God, God gets to call the shots.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: If we stopped right here, said, For I am the Lord your God, because I'm your God, you should be holy because I am holy.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is justification enough.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: We do not need more than that.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: But God is gracious, and just like every parent and frustrated child knows, that because I said so does not go very far in the home, God gives another reason.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God.
• 22:21
  unknown: Right?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Leviticus is presented near to the time of Exodus, when they're near Mount Sinai and they are given the law.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're certainly in the desert through all of Leviticus, and they are working with the tabernacle.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Those who are hearing the words of Moses and Aaron and the priests during the time of Leviticus are the exact same people who were rescued from slavery and bondage in Egypt and were brought into freedom.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: They are heading towards the Promised Land, though they are not there yet.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the rules of Leviticus are supposed to apply as well when they arrive in the Promised Land.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: There are many references in this book to something that should be applied throughout the generations, just as God will continually remind the Israelites of what he did to them.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: But within this here, and in the mind of the Israelites, right, of the culture that they are in, those people, that context, there are three sort of other ideas that are brought to bear here.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that they are reminded of God's power, right?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: I brought you out of the land of Egypt.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was by my hand that Pharaoh was subdued.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was by my working that you were rescued.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't anything that you did.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was by my power.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites are reminded of his power.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that they are reminded of is of God's promises.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can go all the way back to Exodus 3, Moses in the burning bush, and he goes to Moses and says, I want you to go and let my people free.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to rescue them.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And God makes all of these promises to his people, one of them being that he would bring them out of Egypt.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so they are reminded once again of how God is faithful to his promises.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Of how he has never, ever given them a reason to doubt.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that continues through the rest of the Bible.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: God is faithful to his promises.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Another reason why pursuing holiness is a fantastic goal.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And third and finally, it shows and reminds the Israelites that he has a plan for them.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: He has power, he's faithful in his promises, but he had brought a people who were lost and wandering figuratively for 400 years as slaves and given them purpose.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: He gave them a plan.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that plan was an eternal plan.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: That through those people who were wandering in the desert, Jesus Christ was going to come from them and was going to save the world.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Through the Israelites, all nations were going to be blessed.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: So for all of these reasons, everything sort of comes together.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: God says, be holy because I am holy.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do it because I have the authority, frankly, to tell you that you need to be holy and should be holy.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: But also just a reminder that I've given you every reason you could ever want to pursue holiness.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am not one to be afraid of, in the sense, but rather you understand that holiness is ultimately what we will be, we will be holy in heaven.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so we are just trying to get as close to that here on earth as possible.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: So how do we accomplish it?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get there?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, part of that is going to be the next nine weeks in Leviticus, but some of it comes today.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: We look at Leviticus 10.10, we see this message from God speaking to Aaron.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: You must distinguish between the holy and the common, and the clean and the unclean, and teach the Israelites all the statutes that the Lord has given to them through Moses.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: This passage comes in our Bibles seven verses after, and in actual time, a short period after Aaron's sons are killed.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: God speaks to him and says, Aaron, basically, this has happened, this has happened to your sons, and the takeaway from your sons being silenced because of their irreverence is that you must distinguish between the holy and the common.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: There is an or priority list that is at work here, and Aaron, you must teach the people that they must also have these priorities.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh they're walking really close to the edge of the road, and I was watching them carefully, and uh I saw about I don't know, 50 feet as I had slowed down before, the little girl darted out into the road.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the the father grabbed her very quickly and pulled her back.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um I slammed on my brakes, we were stuck, everything was fine.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as I kept going and and I passed by, I saw the the father sort of bend down to his child's level and and essentially scold her, tell her out of his fear, out of his you know, worry for what had happened, out of his desire for her safety, um, how important it was that she understood this lesson that she can't just go darting into the road.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there's there's a component of that here, where the the moment for comfort wasn't right then, because a greater lesson needed to be understood that um, and a priority that for this child, right, they can't go just running into the road, and for Aaron, that and whatever the unauthorized fire was, and whatever it was that Nadab and Ambihu did, that God termed determined that they should be struck down, that the Israelites needed to distinguish between these things lest something similar happen to them.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the narrative of the Bible, as we continue in the Old Testament, is that the Israelites failed to do this pretty frequently.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, the blessings and curses that come at the end of Leviticus, for God's saying, Hey, we've got a covenant here, we sort of made this deal, and if you don't follow through with it, these things will happen.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, those things happened because they were unable to do this.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: That does not have to be our story, but it was the story of the Israelites.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh two things I would like to leave with you as we uh wrap up this sort of intro to Leviticus, a book that I think is really going to help us draw closer to God, understand him more, appreciate his holiness, and uh develop sort of a more balanced biblical worldview.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Two things that I think we can take away.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that to the lost, God's holiness is shown in his judgment.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the second is to the saved, God's holiness is shown in his grace.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: To the lost, to those who don't know Jesus, because we do, we do live in a new covenant time.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: We do live in a time where uh God has sent Jesus, who is going to be found throughout the book of Leviticus.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: He sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, our unholiness, so that we might be holy in the sight of God, something we did not deserve.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: To those who know and trust in Jesus, it's a different story.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: But to those who are lost, God's holiness, right, which is his goodness personified, and is also tied directly and critically to his judgment, is that being a good God means that evil cannot be condoned.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so part of God's holiness, his nature, the reason we worship him, is that he is going to punish sin.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like Nadab and Abihu, no matter how severe you believe that punishment to be, that is what God is going to do to those who have rebelled against his kingdom, who have rejected Jesus Christ.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this is hard.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: If this was the end of the story, God is still holy.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's grasp that for a second, right?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: If the second part of this is not here, God is still holy because of his goodness and because of, as Romans 3.23 says, we've all sinned and fallen short of God's glory because of what he is going to do to evil.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: That makes him good.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, the story does not end there.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: To those who are saved, who know Jesus Christ, God's holiness is shown in his grace, in his goodness to us.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I know you have a really hard time with being holy.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not very good at it.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Easily not one of your top five skills.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, I am going to do all of the work for you.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because you cannot manage this on your own, I am going to do it for you.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if you believe in me, if you trust in me, I'm going to make you holy.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: You will be declared holy.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: You will be with me forever, where there will be no more crying or no more tears because evil has been trounced once and for all, and you get to experience the blessing of the community that was originally intended.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: But know this to those who are saved, the greatest determiner of our relationship with Christ here on earth is going to be how we respond to God's call to holiness.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is not how we are saved.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're clear on that.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: But in this life that you've got left, in the sort of window that we've been given, missed, as God calls us, the greatest determiner of your relationship with God on earth is going to be how you respond to his holiness.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: The decisions that you make based upon what God has said to realign your worldview with what God says is good, because our world is not good.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is not the world that God desires for us to be a part of or to consume, and we are supposed to be lights in that world.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: So our ability through this series to conform ourselves better to the image of Christ, to God, to holiness, is going to determine how effective Leviticus is in helping us draw closer to Jesus.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: I know that the idea of God's holiness can weigh heavily, and it should to a healthy amount, but know that God did not end with judgment, that his holiness leads us to his grace because of Jesus Christ.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: That as in the next time we come into the book of Leviticus and we start looking at the offerings, we're going to see even how at the beginning of the Bible, God was telling his people that he was going to make a way for them to have a relationship.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's go ahead and pray.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, for Jesus.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for his sacrifice.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, as we look at the sacrifices in the Old Testament, as we'll look at all the ways that you provided a path for the Israelites to be holy, God, we I pray that you will help us to get a better sense of your character, of your nature, and to just draw deeper in our fellowship with you.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I also ask that you would help us as we go through this series to examine our own life and see where we have sort of stepped away from your holiness, whether because of comfort or greed or selfishness or whatever it is, Lord, and we need to be realigned to your purposes and your mission.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Father, by the power of your Holy Spirit that rests within us, please help us to see these things and to make those changes in our lives and to not just walk through this world aimlessly because we technically know you, but God don't appreciate you or have respect for you.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: God, I ask these things in Jesus' name.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as we go forth this week, please help us to just consider what it might look like to be committed to holiness.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week, guys.