March 12, 2017 Chris Dolson Series: God and Israel: Origins Message: The Sacred and The Secular Main Idea: We can be holy through the one sacrifice of Christ. Purpose: Two-fold purpose: why we don t think tattoos are taboo anymore (many of the rules in Leviticus no longer apply to us); and how the sacrifice of Christ changes everything. Text: Exodus and Leviticus Going Deeper Holy apparently comes from the Semitic root that means to cut. Hence its basic meaning is to separate or to make distinct (as in to cut off ). Most fundamentally, as a divine attribute it claims that God is other and set apart from everything else, that he is in a class by himself. God is not just quantitatively greater than us, but qualitatively different in his greatness. He is transcendent, infinitely about or beyond us. The true God is distinct, set apart, from all that he made as the only truly self-sufficient Being. All his creatures depend on him; he alone exists from within himself. And the true God is distinct, set apart, from all that is evil. His moral perfection is absolute. His character as expressed in his will forms the absolute standard of moral excellence. God is holy, the absolute point of reference for all that exists and is good. Across the board he is to be contrasted with his creatures. At heart he is a glowing-white center of absolute purity. Holiness, 13 Thomas Trevethan, The Beauty of God s I. Introduction The discussion of animal sacrifice in Leviticus is foreign to the life experience of modern Westerners; most people simply don t have categories for what s happening here. Not only is Leviticus difficult for us to relate to, some of the verses seem unfair and wrong: - e.g. Leviticus 19:27 28; Leviticus 19:19; Leviticus 20:9 - But some of the verses make a lot of sense (Leviticus 13:40) Reading Leviticus can be a very frustrating experience. - We can t relate to it, and the parts we can relate to sound awful. Leviticus puts the L in legalism. - Many people who have dropped out of Christianity, or who are just actively opposed to Christianity, are happy to point out that Christians don t obey most of the laws of Leviticus. Therefore we are all inconsistent and hypocritical when we use the Bible to point to the prohibitions of same sex behavior and yet don t enforce the other laws of Leviticus. They say, How can you say that homosexual relations are wrong and yet you break all kinds of other rules in the Bible? You are just hypocrites. None of us like that label. When I hear others accuse Christians of not being consistent because we don t follow most of the laws in Leviticus I get frustrated. - When people say that, they are demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding in the grand narrative arc of the Bible and I wonder if those of us who are responsible for teaching have done a poor job of teaching. Today God does not expect us to keep the system of legislation that he set up in Leviticus. We can t. - We don t have a Tabernacle or Temple. The sacrificial system of Leviticus has been replaced. Just because we can t keep the Levitical code, that is not the same as saying that we don t have anything to learn from the book or from the legislation. - It can help in our understanding of the gospel and the role that Jesus should play in our life. 1
In today s message we just scratch the surface of Leviticus and to try to explain why those rules were given to those people at that time then end the message by talking about how this all fits with some things that we know about Jesus. II. Leviticus outlines procedures that were essential for approaching a Holy God. Leviticus 1:1 The LORD called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. - This phrase calls attention to what is happening in the larger narrative of the Bible. - God is calling to Moses from the tent. Moses is not able to go into the tent because God is there, and it is filled with his glory. Leviticus begins by pointing to the problem at the end of Exodus. (Exodus 40:34-35) - The way the book of Exodus ends helps us to understand the way the book of Leviticus begins. - God had to call from the tent of meeting because Moses could not enter the tent. Numbers 1:1 The book of Leviticus symbolically unlocks the door of the tent of meeting. - By doing the procedures of the book of Leviticus Moses and the priests are able to access the presence of God and enter the tent of meeting. The purpose of Leviticus is seen in the literary design of the Torah. - Leviticus begins by pointing to the problem at the end of Exodus. - God has taken up residence in the tabernacle, and Moses cannot enter (Exodus 40:33-35) - Leviticus 1:1 assumes this fact: And God called to Moses from the tent - The following book of the Torah begins by assuming the resolution to this problem: Numbers 1:1 And the Lord spoke to Moses in the tent. The book of Leviticus is about God opening up a way for his rebellious people to live in proximity to his holiness despite their sin and rebellion. Tim Mackie - Everything in Leviticus is about this. God is providing a way for sinful people to be in his presence. - He is Holy, and the people are sinful. How can the two be together in the same place? The book of Leviticus answers that question. To understand the book of Leviticus we must start where Exodus left off. III. The Sacred Space (Tabernacle) and Sacred Personnel (Priests) and Sacred Times (Sabbath and Feasts) God wants to dwell with his People in the Tent of Meeting. The reason all of these things are important is that God is Holy and Israel s sin has defiled the camp. We tend to think that sin is not such a big deal. We just gloss over it. But sin is a big deal. Sin (doing things the way we want to do them) introduced death and destruction into the world (Genesis 3). Sin is awful, and it makes God want to leave. IV. The Sacrificial System We have a holy God who wants to live among a sinful group of people. - People sin, and that is like vandalizing God s space; so how can they live together? - That is why God established the sacrificial system. What the Sacrifices Provided: - A way to turn the people from sin. - A way to remind the people of the hard cost of the debt they owed. - A way to cleanse and purify the community (specifically the temple) from the infectious nature of sin. - A way to maintain God s presence with his people. 2
This is all well and good, but most of us still don t see why all of those animals had to die. Leviticus 17:11 The blood was a symbolic substitute. - This animal s death was not just a reminder of sin s tragic consequences, its life was also offered as a symbolic substitute. - If sin vandalizes God s world with death and pain, God has every right to make me face the just consequences, but this God loves me and does not want to kill me, and so this animal s life is symbolically offered as a ransom payment that covers for me. - The word cover is the literal meaning of the Hebrew words kipper/kopher, which was later translated into old English as atonement. - This went further, because the Israelites also saw the blood of an animal as a symbol of the animal s life itself (see Leviticus 17:11). - Since blood represents life, or the opposite of death, its sprinkling around the temple would act like a detergent. It can symbolically wash the temple of death (the natural result of sin) and defilement. The end result is that God s presence stays squarely in the midst of the people of Israel. The blood was a deterrent. - For the Israelites, cutting an animal s throat and watching its blood (that is, its life) drain from its body was a visceral symbol of the devastating results of their sin and selfishness. - The stakes are high. Human evil releases death out into the world. - When an Israelite cheated their neighbor or stole a donkey, they would be tempted to think it s not that big of a deal; multiply that wrongdoing by tens or hundreds of thousands of people, and you get a violent and corrupt community. - This animal s symbolic death is a physical symbol of what s really at stake: the life or death of the community. V. Laws of Ritual and Moral Purity Another difficulty that we have when we read Leviticus is all of those laws about all kinds of things in the last part of the book. Laws of Ritual Purity - Israel was called to honor God s holiness by a cultural symbol system of ritual purity: these practices express the core values of separating the unclean/impure from the clean/pure/holy, which are themselves symbols for life and death. Leviticus 10:10 A person became ritually impure by coming into contact with substances the Israelites associated with death and decay - (e.g. Certain animals and dead bodies Leviticus 11; Child birth Leviticus 12; Mold and skin diseases Leviticus 12; Genital discharges of males and females Leviticus 15) - In Israelite culture, each of these was associated with death (losing bodily fluids, skin disease, pigs were sacrificed to Canaanite gods, etc.) which violates God s essence. Being ritually impure was not sinful or wrong. What s wrong was violating the symbolic system and entering God s presence in an impure state. Ritual impurity was a normal part of life for all Israelites, and a temporary state that ended after purity rituals of waiting, washing, and sacrifice. Laws of Moral Purity: - Leviticus 18-20 Israel was also called to moral purity: God s holiness was to transform all areas of their lives. - Israel was to be different from the nations that were around them. They were to be distinct. - Leviticus 18:3-4, Leviticus 20:26 God gave them laws that set them apart from the nations around them. These laws covered all kinds of different behaviors and were wide in the scope. 3
- Food (Leviticus 11), Health (Leviticus 13-15), Sex (Leviticus 18), Agriculture (Leviticus 19), Community relationships (Leviticus 19), Social Justice (Leviticus 19) VI. The Great Reversal The book of Leviticus, like the rest of the Old Testament, is only one part of an unfinished story. The sacrifices are like a flash-forward. - All these symbols pointed forward to a sacrifice that would be so powerful that no other sacrifice would ever have to be offered, that will change everything forever. - The writer of Hebrews puts it best: Hebrews 10:1, Hebrews 10:11 12 - Jesus was both a priest and a sacrifice. He offered himself to God, and because he was perfect his sacrifice completely covered the sins ever committed by anyone for all time. After Jesus life, death, and resurrection, the earliest Christians all went back and re-read books like Leviticus with brand new eyes. - They began to see how the accomplishment of Jesus was the reality to which all of these sacrificial symbols were pointing all along. - They began to put together things that he actually did. Things that actually happened began to make sense to them. They could see that he was the great reversal of the sacrificial system. They would have remembered what happened after he gave what we call the Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 8:1 3) - This man comes up to Jesus and his body is riddled with death. His skin is covered in death. - As long as this man has this disease, he cannot go near the tent of meeting; he is not even allowed in the camp. He s been told he would contaminate it, defile it. - Jesus stands in front of him and touches him, and instead of Jesus becoming unclean, this man is transformed, healed by his encounter with Jesus. The power of God s kingdom, God s very presence, his holiness is a healing transforming power that moves toward people who have been defiled by death and sin. In the days of the Levitical legislation: if you touched something that was unclean, you became unclean. Jesus reverses this principle. When he touches someone or something, it becomes clean. God is holy and therefore cannot be in the presence of sin, but that is only part of the story. - God is holy, but because he loved us, he became a human being to live among us. - In Jesus, God does not avoid sin, he moves right towards it. - Sin and death do not defile God s presence, just the opposite: God s holiness brings life. There is nothing of human death or sin that can overpower God s holy love. - This story culminates in the cross and resurrection. Where Jesus takes into himself the sin and pain and death of the world and lets it do its worst kill him. - But his holy love is stronger than death, and for those who reach out to Jesus in faith, his holiness has healing, transforming power. This is good news. It s news that there is a force stronger than your sin. - Some of us are wrestling with a destructive, addictive habit; or we re agonizing over a stupid choice we have made; or we think that we re not good enough to be in God s presence. - We ve chosen to avoid church, avoid other Christians. - We think that we need to stay away because of our failure. We have this idea that our failure and sin are more powerful than God s holiness and that we are defiled people. If we think that we are wrong. Jesus disagrees. - Our sin, our uncleanness is not a threat to him. My sin is not contagious to him. 4
- He is more powerful than my sin. His holiness and love can touch me and make me clean from my sin. (1 John 1:7) VII. Communion. Confession. Bring your struggles. Bring your sin. Name it. Grab onto Jesus and trust that his love for you is stronger, more powerful than your sin. 5