1 God s Word about Life s Blood (Leviticus 17) 22 nd November 2015

Transcription

1 1 God s Word about Life s Blood (Leviticus 17) 22 nd November 2015 This morning we re looking at Leviticus chapter 17 and a small portion of Peter s 1 st epistle. It would be good to have your Bibles open at Leviticus chapter 17 There s an outline in the bulletin to take some notes if that helps you Let me pray first Intro Last Monday morning was a morning of contrasts My day began by attending my daughter, Samantha s, 30 week ultrasound and getting my first glimpse at my future grandson Technology has advanced a great deal from when my kids were born and I got a nice photo of my future grandson s face as we left the surgery all very moving and exciting! From the ultrasound, Samantha and I drove to meet Heather at the vets where she was waiting with our beloved cat Mittens who had been very sick for some time and we decided to have her put down Certainly a morning of life and death moments all in the space of an hour or so! And that s what we are dealing with here in Leviticus chapter 17 Life and death moments Because of the original sin of Adam and Eve we all inherit sin Page 1 of 12

2 2 God s perfect justice requires that someone pays the price for sin and that price must be death! As we ve seen so far in this book of Leviticus God had a way for the ancient Israelites to have their sin dealt with And that was by animals being offered as a sacrifice and killed instead of the person who committed the sin The animal becomes the substitute for the sinful person and takes the sin and guilt instead of the person This might seem unfair to us But we should see it as God showing mercy on human beings and allowing something else the animal to take the blame and punishment And in any case how are we God s sinful creatures in any position to tell God our Creator what he should do? And as we hit chapter 17 There are couple of things wrong with the way the ancient Israelites are making these animal sacrifices They are not following God s instructions Problems with the Sacrifices [Powerpoint 1a Heading/Problem 1] Problem 1 is that the Israelites are not making the animal sacrifices at God s holy sanctuary as they are supposed to Page 2 of 12

3 3 They are supposed to bring the animals for sacrificing to the Holy Sanctuary and have the Priest make the sacrifice for them because that s the priest s job a job given to him by God Instead some of the Israelites were, bypassing the priest - and making the animal sacrifices themselves - away from the sanctuary in the open fields (see v5) God will not stand for this disobedience and says that the people who do this will be disowned and cut off from the rest of the Israelites Sin separates people from God! Problem 2 is in verse 7 because the Israelites are making these animal sacrifices outside God s sanctuary they are presenting the sacrifices to a goat idol (some translations say goat demons) instead of God [Powerpoint 1b Problem 2] The point is they are not presenting the sacrifices to God but to an idols or false gods And the Holy God is a jealous God and won t stand for this disobedience and the people who do this will be disowned and cut-off from the rest of the Israelites Sin separates people from God! Problem 3 is in verses 10 to 16 and is to do with the people eating the blood of animals Page 3 of 12

4 4 And there are 3 scenarios here: a) eating blood of sacrificed animals (v10-12) and b) eating blood of hunted animals (v13-14) and c) eating blood of animals found dead or torn up by other wild animals (v15-16) [Powerpoint 1c Problem 3] Why is eating blood (or drinking it for that matter) such a problem? Well apart from the fact that drinking animal blood was a practice of the nations surrounding Israel and God requires Israel to be holy and different and separate to other nations V11 gives 2 really important reasons why they shouldn t eat blood And v11 is the key verse in the whole chapter in fact the whole book! If you remember nothing else about this series on Leviticus remember chapter 17 verse 11 as it is so rich in meaning! [Powerpoint 2 verse 11] 11 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. So there are 2 reasons why blood is so important The first reason is that blood is life losing blood leads to loss of life. When blood is shed life is terminated. Blood carries the essence of life. When your hearts stops pumping blood your life ends or when your blood flows from our body and that flow isn t stopped you will die! Page 4 of 12

5 5 The second reason that blood is so important is because God meant for the blood of the animal to be used to give atonement for the people By atonement we mean covering over of sin so it can t be sin anymore and bringing peace between God and a sinful person So God has a special use for the blood of the animal to fix sin so the people shouldn t be going around eating and drinking the blood! It is not appropriate for the people to make use of blood in any other way than the way God intended. Life blood belongs to God God won t stand for this kind of disobedience and the people who do this will be disowned and cut-off from the rest of the Israelites Sin separates people from God! Applications for us Whenever we read God s Word we need to first see what His Word meant to the people who were there at the time in this case the Ancient Israelites wandering around the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land which we have just done! Then we need to see what it means for us today here at Toukley So I d like to give 4 applications for us today: [Powerpoint 3 Application 1] Firstly, we have a Unique and Holy God who requires proper worship His rules in this chapter confirm his requirements for us to obey His commandments Page 5 of 12

6 And in particular that we regard Him as the only true God and that we should 6 not have any other idols or gods in our lives So is God the first priority in our lives? if not, who or what is priority in our lives and why? Are we making God jealous by being unfaithful to Him and putting other things in our lives ahead of Him? God deserves and requires our undivided and undeviating loyalty The Israelites had started their own D.I.Y. worship away from God s sanctuary away from God s people and away from God worshipping other idols and gods and being influenced by the nations around them? There is a warning here for us not to do the same thinking we can stay away from God, and stay away from worshipping here and stay away from God s people and then the danger is we become like the world outside and slowly drift away from Him The 2 nd application for us is that this chapter says something important about the sanctity of life [Powerpoint 4 Application 2] While God may have given permission for humans to kill animals in order to eat and in order to sacrifice Page 6 of 12

7 This permission is qualified by verse 11 which makes it very clear on the 7 importance of life life is in the blood of the creature And this permission should not be seen as a blanket permission to kill other human beings After the flood, God linked the permission of killing of animals for eating with the warning about the importance of human life and God said this to Noah: 3 Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. 4 But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. 6 Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind. With the exception of occasions when God commands people to kill others for His judicial reasons or valid reasons of warfare like self defence of a nation. God alone has the right to give life and take away life. Why? Because all human beings are made in God s image! The 3 rd application for us is the meaning and importance of blood [Powerpoint 5 Application 3] Page 7 of 12

8 Verse 11 our key verse says God gave blood as a way for people s sins to be 8 atoned for in other words a way for the people s sins to be fixed The animal s blood brought forgiveness as Heb 9:22 says without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness When it comes to us today the NT is clear that our sin still deserves death (Rom 6:23) just like it did for the ancient Israelites But in the same way that the sins of the people were placed on the animal who was killed and sacrificed instead of the sinful people God has provided us with a special sacrificial lamb and all our sins are placed on that sacrificial lamb and that lamb was killed instead of us that special lamb is of course - JESUS In our NT passage 1 Peter 1:18-19 describes Jesus this way 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of [Jesus] Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. So Peter is saying our sinful life which we inherited from Adam and Eve which is leading us to death and separation from God that sinful life has been redeemed What does redeemed mean? It means regaining or recovering something in exchange for a payment So when we are redeemed our life is regained and recovered from the death that our sins deserved And the payment for this redeemed life was made by the precious blood of Jesus Page 8 of 12

9 Jesus lost his life and paid for us to have our life back! 9 Why is Jesus blood precious? Well it is blood that belongs to God s son who came back to life 3 days after His death - and lives forever It is blood that belongs to someone is perfect and never sins and always obeys God And it is blood that takes our sin away once and for all and gives us forgiveness But the importance of Jesus blood doesn t stop there The value of Jesus blood far exceeds the litres of animal blood that were shed on the altars of God s sanctuary in Ancient Israel - Because, Jesus blood is perfect and so it continues to clean us and purify us Here s how the apostle John puts it in 1 John 1:7: 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. And again the importance of Jesus blood doesn t stop at forgiving us and purifying us In our Growth Groups this week some people struggled with Jesus words from John 6:53 53 Jesus said to them, Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Page 9 of 12

10 10 Before we start jumping up and down and saying Jesus is contradicting what Leviticus 17 says about not eating or drinking blood We need to understand that Jesus is not being literal here Think of it this way If I have the whole of William s Shakespeare books in my bookcase at home and I never open one the books they remain in the bookcase unread and external to me. But if I one day pick up all his books and read them through, from cover to cover, and absorb them and their meaning now all his stories and plays stick in my memory bank and become part of me. Once they were external to me now they re inside me and I can feed upon his wonderful words And it s the same for us with Jesus as long as he remains a character in a book or a character in history He is external to us But when Jesus and what He has done and what He teaches enters our hearts we can feed upon the life and strength and vitality that He gives us. When Jesus said to eat His flesh and blood He was telling us to feed our hearts and our souls and our minds on His death, His resurrection and His teaching As we do this we will become more like what Peter describes in 1 Peter 1:22 22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. Page 10 of 12

11 Eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Jesus life and teaching eating and 11 drinking the spiritual food He gives us - will leads us to love each other more deeply So, friends, we need to feed off His every Word and grow more like Him The fourth application is God s Amazing Grace [Powerpoint 6 Application 4] Grace can be defined as a free gift from God of undeserved kindness towards sinful people In our key verse verse 11 which you re never going to forget I hope! God says - I have given it [blood] to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar The blood that God gives to release people from their sin is not their own blood it s the animal s blood! In the same way the blood that God gives us to release us from our sin is not our blood but Jesus precious blood. That s God s grace we didn t deserve and we didn t earn it God gave it to us as a free gift! From the beginning to the end of the Bible the message remains the same God does not require from us what we cannot give but graciously overcomes our weakness and sin and spares us by providing an alternative sacrifice in our place. That s amazing grace! Page 11 of 12

12 12 Conclusion I began this morning with the events of Monday morning last week Our daughter, Samantha, already knows she is having a baby boy She s even got the name picked out The baby boy will be called Cruz I informed her that Cruz was Spanish for the Cross! She didn t know that God did though! He knows everything! And he knew, as Peter says in our NT reading, before the creation of the world that Jesus precious blood would be shed on a cross so that we could have forgiveness so we could have hope of life forever with Him! Let s pray! Page 12 of 12