Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 13, 2022 | Leviticus - The Burnt Offering

Transcript

February 13, 2022 | Leviticus - The Burnt Offering · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: So glad you guys could be with us this morning.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I am super excited because we are continuing our series in Leviticus.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We are now going on a run here of Leviticus.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And over the next nine weeks, you are going to learn a lot about Leviticus.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to it.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you will too.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Before I go any further, though, I do want to draw your attention to we've got this little tabernacle back here, this curtain.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: That was Carol Mamaliti, and she did a really fantastic job.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I just kind of want to draw attention to that because she does a lot of our set design with Jeremiah, and she's really talented.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyhow.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: But we were talking about the book of Leviticus.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And two weeks ago, we sort of had an intro to the book of Leviticus, also sometimes called the book of holiness.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that is because as we look at the book of Leviticus, we understand a lot more about one of the characteristics that defines God, which is his holiness.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's the reason that we worship him, because he is set apart, he is perfect, he is good, he is righteous.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Leviticus comes along, third book of the Bible, because God's people really love to not listen to him, okay?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: But God really wants to have a relationship with his people who are by nature unholy.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so Leviticus comes along as a way, a method, sort of a path that God provided for his people so that they could have a relationship with him.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to kind of take a step back here for a second.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to, if you want to close your eyes, you don't have to, but I want you to picture for a moment that you are an Egyptian.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you are a former Egyptian slave.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: You were born into bondage in the nation of Egypt, and you grew up with the understanding that it was your job to serve the Egyptians, to make bricks for them, to um be able to basically do whatever they wanted you to do.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And as the population of your people began to grow, they would kill your children.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: They would whip you if you uh took too long or talked too much or didn't make the quota of bricks that was required.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was a hard, hard, brutal life.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And your generations, generations of your people had lived in subjugation to the Egyptians.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then this guy comes along named Moses.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses is an outsider.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's been gone for a while, and even when he had lived in Egypt, he had grown up in Pharaoh's house, and he comes along giving you an impossible future, saying, You are going to be free, you're going to be a nation of your own people, and you're going to be set apart from the nations because you belong to God.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so through the book of Exodus, we get to see this unravel as God, through the hand of Moses, rescues the Israelites, rescues you all from the hand of slavery and leads you out into the desert.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: But as you go out into the desert, into this space that is dry and barren, you come upon one of your first stops is to a mountain named Sinai.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And at this mountain, a whole lot of different things happen.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: God actually comes to visit you and your people, and you get to see him sort of up on top of this cloud, shrouded in majesty, as your leader Moses goes up to meet with God and commune with him and some of your elders for over a month.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, you make a golden calf.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why'd you guys do that?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But when Moses comes back down, he has instructions from God.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Instructions for a tabernacle.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Instructions that are going to be for you and the entire nation as you head on towards the promised land.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you've also seen later on as the tabernacle gets built and you are adjusting to this life, previously a slave, now a redeemed, revived people, you see your leader periodically go into this tabernacle to commune with God.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those times Moses comes out, he has a set of laws for you, a set of rules and regulations.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: He says that they are so that you can communicate with God, you can have a true relationship with God, you can be able to understand who it is that rescued you out of bondage and who it is that you're supposed to worship.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: He said, All of these things drive us towards that purpose.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And as we genuinely get into the first verse of Leviticus, that's how it begins.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: That the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, tent of meeting also being the tabernacle.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how we get the name Leviticus sort of goes through this winding path of Latin and Greek and then into English.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the original Hebrew word for this book of the Bible is the exact same word that is used for this phrase, which is, and he called.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the book of Leviticus is actually a reference to God initiating a relationship with Moses and his people, the way he has always done.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: It has never been us that sought out God first, but it is God seeking us out, helping us to understand how it is best that we can live our lives.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so the Lord calls out to Moses and gives him the law of Leviticus.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: God was initiating the relationship even back then.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as we go on in the book of Leviticus, for those of you who have been reading it, you know that then it's a lot of laws and regulations.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of different rules and services and sacrifices so that the Israelites, God's redeemed people, can truly be set apart.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And a question comes up here that is a genuine and good question, which is A, why do we need to learn about the law?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And B, what good is it for us today?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there are three really clear reasons that God gave the law to Moses that also apply to us today.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that it reveals his holy character.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: We did talk about that quite a bit two weeks ago, but nevertheless, it's worth repeating that when we look back at the law, even as New Testament people, right, those who are living in light of the sacrifice of Christ, that we can still understand these eternal truths about God that were presented in his law.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And even though we can eat shrimp now, it doesn't mean that everything that was said back in the book of Leviticus no longer happens now, or is what I want to say, it is uh no longer germane to our feelings today.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: The way that God feels about sin back then, the way that we see him react to sin in the world, the way that he sort of sets up the penalties for sin helps us to see his holy character even today.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is that it sets the nation apart.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: There are some of the laws that were there so that they could commune with God, but there were some of the laws, in fact, the lion's share of Leviticus is so that the nation of Israel would look different than every other nation that surrounded them.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because they were God's people and they were supposed to be a light unto the nations.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'll discuss that in a couple weeks here, especially when we get to the part about being clean and unclean.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: That some of those rules that we don't understand are partly because other cultures around them were participating in those ideas, and so by separating them from those cultures, they weren't going to intermix and begin to worship false idols.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, that God's law exposes sinfulness.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the beautiful things about God's law, and also the most painful, is that it would show the Israelites every single way in which they fell short of God's commands.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're reminded of that in the New Testament.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says in Romans 3.23 that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Even though we are not beholden to all of the marks of the law, now as new covenant people, we can still see how when God gives a command, none of us are free from the penalty of sin.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have all decided to rebel against him, and all of us are in desperate need of Jesus.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: So because of these reasons, God gave the law.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And because of these reasons, the law is still valuable for us to look at today.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the New Testament, right, we have to put ourselves in the context of those who were reading the New Testament.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now we get to look at our Bibles, and we've got, you know, all of these books and letters and things that were written about that time.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: But to the church in Acts, right, that to the apostles that had just seen Jesus die, their whole Bible was the Old Testament.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't call it the Bible, but that was their holy text.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so we sort of have, it's only in our modern time and our modern culture where we've looked back sort of with these dispersion against the Old Testament law as this archaic and obscure and unnecessary thing that's just kind of like weighing down the front half of the Bible.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: In reality, the New Testament talks about the Bible in glowing terms.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Galatians 3.24, Paul.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, by the way, who is a man raised as a Jew and then was a Pharisee, his education was in the law.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: He says, so then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: He says the law was serving a purpose.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: That purpose was fulfilled when Jesus came, but nevertheless, the law was significant.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And though now we know Jesus, we can still learn much from the law and how it was pointing towards our Savior.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: He also is sort of undergirding this idea that even back then, with the law, and as you read about all of these regulations, that they were still justified by faith.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Those who were offering a bull at the altar were justified by faith that it was a forgiveness of their sin, it was an atonement, and God recognized their faith.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't actually the blood of bulls, as the book of Hebrews tells us, that forgave them of their sin.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was still God working through the measure of faith.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was just the method kind of of application was different.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now the same thing applies.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: We are saved through our faith in Jesus.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: But interestingly, and to sort of dive deeper into this, the word that Paul is using here in Galatians 3.24 is um pedagogus, which is like where you might think of the word pedagogy.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: It means teacher or tutor.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is saying the law was not just this archaic system of rules.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was a teacher for us.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was pointing towards these things.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning we're going to look at the first passage of Leviticus, and we're going to look at burnt offerings.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'm going to try and endeavor to show you is that this entire system can be read in one of two ways.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Either you look at it and say, boy, they had a lot of rules and regulations for how to sacrifice a bull.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or what I hope we're heading towards is, man, because I have the revelation of the New Testament, because I know about Jesus, I can look back on these moments and see how even then, over a thousand years before Christ came on the scene, God was preparing the hearts and minds of his people to be ready for a Messiah.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we can appreciate what was done back then, pick up these sort of kernels of truth that are scattered throughout the book of Leviticus, and say, Man, God was showing his people something back then that he's still trying to show his people now.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: A last point before we go on is that the people, or I should say that God's people love the law.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want to reinforce this one last time.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 19, 7 through 11, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and keeping them there is great reward.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking about Leviticus.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is the stuff they're talking about.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, in our modern day Christianity, that is so averse at times to discussing aspects of Old Testament law, we should appreciate it, what God was doing through it, and how we can learn from it today.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, on to Leviticus.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been reading, you know that the first five chapters cover the different sacrifices, and the next two chapters cover the same sacrifices in a slightly different order.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: These sacrifices are the five main sacrifices that God instituted for his people, and they served different functions.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Over the next couple of weeks, we're going to cover some of these sacrifices.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to be focusing on the burnt offering.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: But here are some things we know, and then here are some, here's a bit of speculation.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: What we know is that the first five chapters of Leviticus, God gave to Moses to give to the Israelites.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Moses would walk out of the tabernacle.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: We read that his face was glowing after he would meet with God and he would have to cover it with a veil so as not to like spook people who were didn't know what to do with that information.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: But he had been in the presence of God and God had told him to communicate this to the Israelites.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so God is instructing Israel not only on sacrifice, but it's important to see that like this is their culture, right?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: They are a theocracy.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is their government, this is their culture, this is their community, this is the way that they are living their life and structuring their society, are based on these first five chapters.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Leviticus 6 through 7, again, is the same thing, but this time the audience is the priests.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you have been reading Leviticus, you know that there are portions of it which seem to uh repeat each other quite a lot.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Even the passage on the burnt offering in Leviticus 1 just kind of seems to go over this sort of repetition.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because part of this was for the priests so that they could memorize these ideas.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was easier for them to memorize the sacrifices if there were portions of the text that were repeated frequently.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so as you go through Leviticus and you're like, I think I've read that before, it's because it was by design, so that somebody would be able to memorize it.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: But here is where we have a little bit of speculation.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: As you might notice, the peace offering in Leviticus 6 through 7 is dropped to the end.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole lot of ideas for why these two lists are slightly different.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: One is that some people say that these first three sacrifices were voluntary and the last two were mandatory.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't really work because even these voluntary, so-called voluntary sacrifices were mandatory at different parts during the year.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Some people say it's because certain sacrifices were given for the purpose of communion and then in communion.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Others say it has to do with the language of the aroma that was provided at the sacrifice.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And still others say that for the priests who were reading this list, this has to do with how frequent the sacrifices were given, that the burnt offerings were first because they were done most often, and the peace offerings were done the least often.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really know.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: But what we do know is that sacrifice was integral to the identity of the Israelites.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's important to note, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the other question that we would ask is did sacrifice begin here?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, did Moses just walk into the tabernacle and God says, okay, so there's this thing that you need to understand, and it's going to involve some animals, right?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is gonna be new and this is gonna be a little bit different.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, but or is does sacrifice have a long history with God's people?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: The second answer is true.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Were there sacrifices before Leviticus?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there were quite a few.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about Adam and Eve in Genesis 3.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: The fall of man, in that same chapter, it says that in order to cover their shame, they are pro God provides them with animal skin.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not communicated explicitly in the text, but an animal had to die in order to give up its skin, its hide.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: The first sacrifice was in the same chapter where sin enters into the world.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: That there was a penalty for our mistakes, that something was going to have to take that punishment if it wasn't going to be us.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Cain and Abel, uh, just the chapter right after Adam and the children of Adam and Eve, it's the first murder in the Bible.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that there's a conflict between these two brothers is because of a sacrifice that was offered unto God.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And judging by the fact that Abel knows the right kind of sacrifice to give to God, it must have been communicated to him in some respect, because he is honoring to God and the things that he provides, whereas Cain, not so much.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I put a little asterisk next to these two because technically we don't use the word burnt offering to describe what they did.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's more of an inference.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: But when you get to Noah in Genesis 8, Noah actually provides the first burnt offering.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses, being the one who wrote the first five books of the Bible, is probably helping us to draw some of these conclusions using similar language.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: But Noah is the first one to provide a burnt offering, far before Leviticus.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham, in Genesis 12, it says that he constructs an altar, and though it doesn't say that he killed an animal for sacrifice, the Hebrew word for altar literally means place of slaughter.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you okay, you do the math there.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: In Genesis 22, Abraham understands the significance of a worthy sacrifice when he is called to provide Isaac on the altar.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob, his son, without an animal at Bethel, uses his the stone that he had been sleeping on.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why he used a stone for his pillow, I do not know.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: But he used that pillow and poured oil out on it as an offering to the Lord, as a sacrifice, it says in Genesis 28.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And lest we forget, remember, you guys are all still Egyptian slaves, so you would know this.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: But Moses, the argument that him and Pharaoh are having beyond like letting my people go, is whether or not they can go out into the desert and sacrifice.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: This was a part of God's people.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: This was integral to their identity.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it is our sort of American culture that rails against this idea.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's two main reasons why we often struggle with the idea of sacrifice.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: There are two main reasons why we think about this the way that we typically do, once more as this sort of arcane and weird procedure.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: First one, like I, well, the two reasons are because of our culture and because of our pride.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about our culture, we typically consider what we do to be normal.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we consider everybody else who does something besides that to be weird.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of how we work.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a lot of parts of our American culture that are weird too.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: We pardon turkeys on Thanksgiving.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is peanut butter and jelly.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: We eat a like a hundred hot dogs to celebrate the 4th of July.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: We wear Gene Code jeans.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: We rely on a groundhog to tell us about the weather, right?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: There are all of these things that we just go like, oh yeah, you guys don't do that.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: But then when we look back at a different culture, we say, man, that's weird.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand that.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it can become an obstacle to our faith because we look back at the Israelites not as people who, in their own context, understood this well and thought of sacrifice for well over a thousand years as the best way to communicate with God.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the New Testament audience who understood that context, then thought of Jesus as the sacrifice of the Old Testament.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: We typically think of Jesus as the one going to the cross, but don't like as much the language of sacrifice.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a cultural distinction.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it is going to be one of the obstacles to us understanding Leviticus is we sort of have to dive in deep to see how they were seeing the world to appreciate what was going on.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: The second reason that we struggle, though, with the idea of sacrifice is because of our pride.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: We hate the idea that there would ever be a situation where God would call us to account for the things that we have done in this world.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: So often, the way we view sin is far.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Far less severe than the way that God views it.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: That is why when we look to Leviticus and we see that some people died for their sins as a way to protect the Israelite community, we go, oh my gosh, God, what were you thinking?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how could you be so cruel?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: How could you be so harsh to them?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, God, in what way was that just?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: That is because our own pride, there's a cognitive dissonance that we don't want to admit that we are as sinful as we truly are.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: There was an article that came out Thursday in the Wall Street Journal titled, Here's Why I'll Be Keeping My Shoes On in Your Shoeless Home.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this wasn't even an opinion article.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to read to you an excerpt of this.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: If I read the whole thing, it would look like I was roasting the author.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the author says, If I will remove my shoes if they are covered in snow, mud, blood, condiments of any sort, lava, excrement, concrete dust, or biomedical hazardous waste.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't really need to be told to do so.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: But barring shoes outright just to keep your floors clean is bringing a gun to a pillow fight.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Turns out there's already an effective, old-fashioned way to achieve your goal of a clean floor while neither insulting my hygiene habits nor endangering my delicate, vulnerable, long-suffering feet.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's called a doormat.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: The author says later, it's as if the host is saying, Welcome to our home where your filth is filthier than the filth we already have all over our floors.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: To add to the ignominy, next comes the physical challenge of actually taking off the shoes.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Unless there's a thoughtfully placed stool, bench, or chair at the entrance of the shoeless home, shoot visitors are required to lean against the wall to take off their shoes.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, once shoeless, feet are utterly vulnerable to myriad household threats.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Chair legs, bedposts.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you walking around your host's bed?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: But bedposts, door jams, dropped knives, random Lego pieces, and God forbid, anyone has been playing jacks.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Think for a moment about the pride that it takes to be invited into someone's home and they say, Hey, if you don't mind, can you take off your shoes?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, the scandal.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am offended that you would ever think that I am so dirty that I might need to do something before I come into your home.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you need to change so that I don't have to do this any longer.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: I am inconvenienced.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is a huge hassle.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't really provided me a means to do this that makes me comfortable, and so you know what?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just not gonna do it.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds a lot like our relationship with God at times.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: God has every right to set the rules of engagement for us.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we go to God and say, really?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a hassle for me.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really want to do this whole thing.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if uh I think you should probably change.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I know that you've invited me over and you've paved the way and you've initiated the relationship, but actually, uh, this is a little too much work for me.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's the second obstacle in us getting over the idea of sacrifices.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you this: if you want to understand Leviticus, if you want to understand God's character better, you need to get to a place where the idea of sacrifices, even though we don't do it today and we are not commanded to do it today, seems reasonable to you.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Until you get to that point, Leviticus is gonna be difficult.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because there is a lot about understanding God's perspective that goes into us appreciating what He's trying to tell us in this book.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, that was my preamble.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: The passage in Leviticus 1.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go over a section of this this morning.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, as we do it, um, talking about the burnt offering, here's what I want you to think about.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about what we've talked about, that there are eternal truths presented in this passage, and I'm gonna pick them out for you in a second, but I want you to sort of play the game yourself and see if you can pick out knowing about Jesus, knowing about the revelation of Christ in the New Testament, what God was telling his people, how he was preparing them, and uh how he was showing them not only what was coming in the future, but how they could understand a healthy relationship with him.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, Leviticus one.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the Lord.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Then he shall kill the bull before the Lord, and Aaron's sons, right, Aaron, Moses' brother, this is the priests.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron's sons, the priests, shall bring the blood, and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the priest shall burn all of it on the altar as a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh, if you've been reading Leviticus, this sounds like a lot of Leviticus.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there's one quick note I want to make before we sort of break this down, and that is that a burnt offering technically is all the offerings.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is distinguished here and the way that they're describing it, but even the other offering, the sin, the grain, the uh purification, so on and so forth, all of the offerings were burnt.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when they talk about a burnt offering here, this is more of a general offering, which is then shown even further how beyond this passage, God goes to say that if anybody would offer a burnt offering, it does not have to be a bull, but it is what their income allows for.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: God did not discriminate against any person.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted everybody to have a relationship with him.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so, though I did not include all of that, this section is typically just repeated once more, but with a different animal.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the other component is that when you read about burnt offerings in the Old Testament, this is the most common kind that was provided.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, for instance, uh, in the book of Job, which chronologically comes before the book of Leviticus, it says that Job offered a burnt offering for his children every single day.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: For the penitent and faithful Israelite, this was a frequent activity that reminded you of your relationship with God.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And to that end is what we're going to explore because how does this remind us of God?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing, if his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, this reminds us of sacrifice.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: You see, if you were going to bring something to the altar, it was from your possessions and it was supposed to be valuable.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: You were pretty much, all of you pretty much were ranchers of some kind or supporting the industry of animal husbandry.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea that animal sacrifices were required is once more a cultural difference because that is what almost everybody had and everybody could offer up.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: But what was expected was that what you brought to the altar, when you said, I want to, God has initiated this relationship with me, now I'm going to go to Him.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't come empty-handed.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: I come with something to offer.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: This component of sacrifice is still part of our relationship with God today.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Once more, though we do not offer sacrifices, we are still supposed to be sacrificing and offering up to God things of value.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Our life, our finances, our time, our relationships.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: We see that God desires for us to offer up our skills and our talents and to use everything about us to further his kingdom and to honor him with those gifts.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: This was the first component.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: The second, as it goes on, is that that bull was supposed to be without blemish.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: This should hopefully be one of those things that if you've read the New Testament, you're sort of sort of cranking back in your head, what was it about being free from blemish that was so special?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, two things.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: One, you're going to hear that a lot more in Leviticus, and it's because entering into God's holy place was supposed to be representative of the heavenly realms.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: The tabernacle, the book of Hebrews tells us, is a replica of something that is in heaven.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: God literally gave Moses and the builders kind of the architectural plans for something that lives in heaven where God dwells, so that it could be on earth and his people could commune with him in that space.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And just as when all of us who know Christ will be in heaven with God someday, free from all of the disease and decay and blemishes that have marked our life because of the curse, so it is that the sacrifice that enters the temple and is given unto God is supposed to represent purity there as well.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the point.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is that it was supposed to represent purity.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately for us, this is how we are reminded of Christ.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: That he was the sinless sacrifice, that everybody else had rebelled against God and deserved punishment.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus was the pure sacrifice, never having rebelled against God, not deserving death, yet willingly going to the cross, so that all of us who have made mistakes can be forgiven.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: God was setting this up back in Leviticus.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Third, he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then he shall kill the bull before the Lord.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember, um a couple months ago we went through a series called church words and we talked about atonement, how atonement was making right a wrong.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: But notice here who is touching the animal and who is killing the animal.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: There is a component of identity that was reinforced with the bull.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: You bring the sacrifice, you put your hand on the head of the animal that must die because of your sin, and then you are the one that kills it.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: The priest is there that will sort of help walk you through the ceremony.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: The priest is there is going to take these different elements and put them on the altar and is keeping the fire stoked and a whole lot of different things.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: But you are the one that has to kill the animal.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: That visceral reaction to what it means that blood is shed because of a willing decision that you made is probably something that rested deeply within the emotions of the Israelites.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And today, as we think about Christ, we also have to understand that it is our sins that pinned him to that cross.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And our identity is not only in Christ now, because we are heirs through him with God, and that we are going to inherit the heavenly realms with him because we have been seen as sons and daughters of the King, but also that our identity is tied to Christ because he had to die for our sins if we were going to be forgiven.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: God wanted the Israelites to understand this identity, that it was their choices that were making this necessary.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, Aaron's sons, the priests, shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth out of five lessons that we can take out of the burnt offering is that there was a constant reminder, if it was not clear enough from what had to happen to the animal, that death is what the penalty was for sin.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: That for those who walked to God, a sorry didn't really cut it.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Even though today in our relationship with Jesus we can go to him and ask for forgiveness and repent of our sins and be forgiven, we still have to recognize that every single one of our sins is flowing through the cross to God.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Every single decision we make to rebel against God is still deserving of death, but is covered by the blood of Christ and then is reconciled with God.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Think about if this was something you had to deal with daily, not just once a week when you come to church.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: But this was something that you had to reconcile with constantly.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: That the penalty for your sin was death.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: And yet God continually, out of his love, was overcoming that obstacle because he loved you, because he cared about you, because he wanted to have that relationship with you.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: It strikes a somber tone, but it is then rectified when we see the reaction.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the priests shall burn all of it on the altar as a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: All of it was burnt.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: The burnt offering was different than some other offerings where portions would be kept for meals and things like that.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: But everything that you came with that day to bring to God was put on the altar and it was burnt and it was gone.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this pleasing aroma that it talks about, it has quite literally nothing to do with the fact that this probably smelled like steak, and has a whole lot more to do with the fact that God was satisfied by the decision that they had made to give him a sacrifice.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: That God does not literally, you know, care specifically what the smell is, but that he was pleased with the sacrifice.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And today, this is what it looks like when we go to the cross and accept the blood of Jesus.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: All of our sins are burned up on the altar.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that we have done to rebel against God, every single thing that we have chosen to do because we think we know better than He does, is placed upon the altar, or rather now the cross, and it is given up to God.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is burned away, it is no longer there, and we can have a true fellowship with him.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: God initiated this relationship, and as we follow through with it, as we accept Christ as our Savior, saying that he was the one who died for me because I didn't want to do it myself, that through that process we are we see that God is satisfied by the atonement, he is pleased with the offering, and we get to have a relationship with Him.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the burnt offering is doing all of these components, and it is ultimately providing peace.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: We get to have peace with God.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Something that people have been searching for for a long time and have not found as they wrestle with the difficulties of this life and know that a component is missing, know that peace can be found with God.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: So finally, what is the takeaway from the burnt offering here?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: There are eternal truths, and what are they?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: The burnt offering is a reminder of our eternal relationship with God and our desperate need for Jesus.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: The burnt offering was God showing his people what the eternal relationship was going to look like.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: The method was different, the meaning was not.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: Every part of my life, my culture, the economy, the government, every single component of my life revolved around God and understanding that He loved me and that I needed His help.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: What would it look like to be reminded of this thing?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: To not just sort of, you know, go through the one-page devotional each day that sort of makes us consider God for five minutes, but to have every part of our life revolve around him.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then also that it would remind us now, as we are a new covenant people, who aren't held to the law any longer, because as it says in Matthew, Jesus came to fulfill the law, not abolish it, that we now look to Jesus for all these same things.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we think about our sinfulness, the fact that God was showing us the need for sacrifice and the purity of the sacrifice, that our identity is in Christ, that the penalty for sin was death, but that ultimately he provided a way to peace, as we consider all of those things, know that today it is found through Jesus.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is not found through a bowl, it is found through God Himself.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: So as we continue in the book of Leviticus, we're going to look at this in different respects and how we can become people who are holy as God is holy.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go ahead and pray.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you that for as long as we have been around, you have been initiating a relationship with us.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have been seeking us out.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: You have been telling us that you want to know us and God love us and have a relationship with us.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: God, thank you that you provided the way for that to happen.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: We have done nothing to deserve it, but by your grace, you have provided a way now through Christ.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: And God, I ask that you would help us as we consider, Lord, all of the ways in which we constantly try and run away from you, what it might mean to build a life around you instead of our own desires.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I thank you for burnt sacrifices.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Though they're no longer needed, I thank you that they were were a reminder to your people of your eternal character.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: And God, I ask that as we go through this book of Leviticus together, and as uh we as a church read this book, that you would help us to try and seek out these elements that tell us more about you and how we can love you even more.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right, have a great week.