Well, good morning. How's everybody doing today? Good, thank you for your faithful attendance. It means a lot to me after I've spent hours preparing during the week that you actually come and listen. So thank you very much. Just by way of setting the stage for this morning, It's been a while since we've mentioned, you know, a broader perspective. It's easy to get into the nitty gritty of a passage in a book, but yet not have a good framework for the overall view, the bird's eye view. And so, basically we want to remember that the theme of Leviticus is holiness is essential for being in God's presence. All right, that's our overall theme. Do you remember back to the days when you were dating your wife? I can remember, you know, Linda and I didn't date very long before I asked her to marry me, but I can remember after we got engaged, she was living in Campus View Apartments, and we would say goodnight. after having devotions down in the CVA basement, well, the first floor. And it wasn't really a basement. But anyway, we would say goodnight. I would go back to my car in the parking lot. she would come out on the balcony and wave. And I'd wave and we'd blow kisses to each other. That's as far as we got towards kissing each other. And, you know, basically I would get in my car and all the way home, I would think, I can hardly wait until I don't have to wave goodnight to her. I can hardly wait till I get to live with her. And of course, that is the privilege that we have as believers. We get to dwell, not just in his presence, but his presence dwells in us in the form of the person of the Holy Spirit. And someday in glory, there's going to be the marriage of the Lamb. Everything's looking forward to that. And that's what we need to do day by day is to anticipate that marriage of the Lamb and the marriage supper of the Lamb when all of God's program comes complete in all of history. And we and Israel are joined together as the people of God. What a wonderful time that's going to be. And so that's what we are looking forward to as we look at the book of Leviticus. Just as God had a certain way that he could dwell with his people, So it is with us that we maintain fellowship with the Lord. It's just not enough to be saved and then check in with the Lord once every few years. No, we are saved, and then we live in His presence, and He lives in us. And so this is the Lord's grace to Israel, not a bunch of lists of do's and don'ts and do this or I'll give it to you, I'll judge you for disobedience. No, this is grace. And then in Leviticus 1 through 10, We have been looking at the fact that God can dwell with mankind only through sacrifice. Sacrifice is God's gracious program for his people at this time in human history, in the Old Testament dispensation. But it's still many lessons are there for us as well. So here we go. Let's go back to Leviticus chapter 6. Let's see, somewhere I've got the clicker in my pocket. Somewhere. Ah, here it is. Ta-da. And we've been looking at the specific sacrifices through the importance of how the priests were manipulating and responsible for the offerings. All right, so we've been looking at the grain offering. Let's see, this is not advancing, Ben. There we go. Now, the portion of this sacrifice was not burned. That was not burned, was to go to the support of Aaron and his sons. We looked at this last week. Whoever touched this grain had to be holy. In other words, this was one of those most holy sacrifices. The priests were to model for Israel what it meant to reverentially guard what was holy. And so they were to be taught the difference between what is holy and what is not. And then they were to teach Israel that concept. To be holy is to be distinctively great. It is to be separated for devotion and service to the Lord. Even inanimate objects like grain and sacrificial meat could be said to be holy in the sense that it's set apart exclusively for God's purposes. Of course, the New Testament tells us the same thing concerning us. We are to be holy. We are to be living sacrifices, holy to the Lord. That means our lives are not our own. We've been bought with a price. Therefore, we need to glorify God in every aspect of life. We get ourselves into trouble when we start thinking, well, something in my life is mine. And we forget the fact that we are to be entirely devoted to Him. Now, of course, that's a noble goal, but we all struggle with that. In other words, we're tempted to, for instance, think some time that we have is my special time. This is mine. It's not the Lord's. And so in this time, I get to do, you know, fill in the blank. The whole world just can go away and I can enjoy my special time. Now that's a little bit, I don't know, there are some hunters in the congregation. If you are a hunter, you recognize the fact that It's easy to get thinking that way about your time in the woods during deer season. You can say to yourself, oh, I love being in the woods. I love deer hunting. There's the excitement of it. I never know when a deer is going to appear. And I'll get the chance to harvest this and stick the venison in the freezer. And oh, it's just wonderful. And I have friends. And they take this to an extreme, in my opinion. And I have to guard myself that I don't get thinking to myself, now all during hunting season, my time in the woods is my time. No, it's the Lord's time. The Lord has it for me and for you to make sure that we're doing what he wants us to do with every hour we have. Time's the one thing that once it's gone, it's irretrievable. You have so much time, I have so much time. None of us knows just exactly how much time that is. Every once in a while, You see, say, a celebrity that just died suddenly, or you could be on the road and have a traffic accident, and in one instant, you're in eternity. Nobody knows how much longer we have to live, and the older I get, the more keenly aware of that I am. So we are, every aspect of our lives ought to be a model for anyone who wants to watch what we do with our time, how we devote ourselves to the Lord, and everything has to come under submission to His leadership and His will. Wow, that's easy to say, not so easy to put into practice. All right, the priests also had what we call a continual grain offering. And this was something related to the high priest himself. Let's take a look at Leviticus chapter six, verse 19. All right, so gotta go back to Leviticus from Romans. And this text says, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, this is the offering that Aaron and his sons shall offer to the Lord on the day when he is anointed. Remember, only the high priest was said to be the anointed priest. At one point, there was a ceremony where oil was poured on his head. Kings, prophets, and the high priest in the Old Testament were said to be anointed. On the day when he is anointed, a 10th of an ephah of fine flour. A 10th of an ephah was, according to commentaries, they disagree here, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 cups of flour. Hmm, that's not an inconsequential amount, especially since it was fine flour. As a regular grain offering, half of it in the morning and half in the evening, it shall be made with oil on a griddle. You shall bring it well mixed in baked pieces like a grain offering and offer it for a pleasing aroma to the Lord. The priest from among Aaron's sons, who is anointed to succeed him, shall offer it to the Lord as decreed forever. The whole of it shall be burned. Every grain offering of a priest shall be wholly burned. It shall not be eaten." Now, that's not the way it was with every single offering. Of course, we know already, we've seen it already, that the offering was a way to support the priests. So they got a portion of some grain offerings. They got a portion of some meat offerings that were not burnt offerings. Burnt offerings were burned completely. But in this grain offering, no, it was entirely devoted to the Lord. And basically this reminded the high priest himself and every single priest in the priestly order that they were just like every single Israelite. Sure, they had an elevated position of representing man before the Lord and ensuring that all sacrifices were done exactly as they should have been. But although they had that exalted position, they were no different from an average Israelite. They were all sinners. They still needed to offer sacrifices for themselves and then for Israel. They couldn't get up on their high horse and say, whoa, look at me. I'm a priest. I've been set aside. I'm in the Aaronic priesthood. Wow, I must be really special. No, you're no different from any other sinner in Israel. It's God's grace. So don't get up on your high horse. That's a temptation for us as well. to get up on our high horse and think, oh, we really are somebody. Or we would see somebody out and about in our daily lives. And I'll never forget one time, my son and I went into a quick stop. I bought some gas. We're going in to pay. And it was right after 9-11. And I had a tract in my pocket. It was a 9-11 tract, and it went along the lines of, has this got your attention? You know, basically, there's a day coming when the ultimate 9-11 occurs, and you stand before God to give account for how you lived. And there was a guy working in the quick stop, And he had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and he was completely, he looked a little bit like a caveman. Very long hair, very disheveled, big bushy beard, could almost see the fleas hopping around in there. Tattoos everywhere, you could see exposed skin. Nothing but tattoos. Piercings. Boy, that hurts. hurt to have piercings like this. But anyway, I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, you know, I need to give him this tract and give him a word of testimony. He may be like this simply because he's desperate to find meaning in life and he's so far been unable. So I took the tract out of my pocket, handed it to him, gave him just a quick word of testimony that Christ came to save sinners, which we all are. Would he read the tract? I've had some cashiers in like quick stops or in a store take the tract, look at it, and throw it in the trash can under the counter. Whoa. I've even asked certain cashiers, why did you do that? You just threw away a little tract that will have a message for you from the word of God, where you can know how to be saved. And they just look at me and laugh. Not this guy. He looked at that tract and he said, oh, Wow, thank you very much." And as my son and I were leaving, he was standing there, nobody else was in the store, he was standing there reading it, avidly reading it. And I thought, Lord, just because I look a certain way gives me no right to look down on somebody that I think, you know, is somehow less than me simply because he doesn't know you. And we better watch out. There's no room for pride. God hates pride, he hates it in us as much as in anybody else. All right, next, the purification or sin offering. Chapter six, verse 24 through 30. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron and his sons. Have you noticed that's a recurring statement? speak to Aaron and his sons. They need instruction on how carefully they must guard the sacrifices they offer to the Lord. This is the law of the sin offering. In the place where the burnt offering is killed, shall the sin offering be killed before the Lord. It is most holy." In other words, the sacrifice itself can never touch anything that's ceremonially unclean. And we're going to get to a whole section of Leviticus in the not too distant future that's going to show us lots of things that can make us unclean. As a matter of fact, living makes you unclean. Anything associated with childbirth, anything associated with death makes you unclean to have contact with it. If you eat, you have the potential of eating the wrong thing. If you breathe, just go through the normal biological cycles of life. That can make you unclean. Wow. But anyway, the priest was to guard the sacrifice, that it not come into contact with anything that was ceremonially unclean. It is most holy. Verse 26, the priest who offers it for sin shall eat it in a holy place it shall be eaten in the court of the tent of meeting. Whatever touches its flesh shall be holy or must be holy. And when any of its blood is splashed on a garment, you shall wash that on which it was splashed in a holy place. You can't just send it off to the dry cleaners. No, no, you wash it, you are holy. It has to be washed in a holy place. and the earthenware vessel in which it is boiled should be broken. But if it is boiled in a bronze vessel, that shall be scoured and rinsed with water. The blood of the sacrifice that was most holy is also most holy. Every male among the priests may eat of it, not just the one who offered the sacrifice. It is most holy. Once again, the dual repetition. This is set apart, nothing unclean. No regular Israelite can eat this, only the priestly lineage. but no sin offering shall be eaten from which any blood is brought into the tent of meeting to make atonement at the holy place. It shall be burned up with fire." All right, so once again, it's the priest's duty to guard the holiness of each aspect of this sacrifice. And as believer priests today, we must guard the purity of our lives as living sacrifices to God. Look, defilement is everywhere today. You almost hate to see spring come because that means it's time for advertisements on TV. to start getting more revealing of female anatomy. Or you drive down this, I haven't seen one of these billboards in a while, but there used to be billboards for suntan lotion, and there'd always be some bikini-clad woman on there who's been putting that suntan lotion on her and now she's getting a tan. You have to just kind of go like that as you drive by the thing. Everywhere, online, on TV, social media, books, everything, potential defilement. This doesn't happen, separation from defilement doesn't happen automatically. We have to do this consciously. And sometimes we fail at that. Something pops up, some video on Facebook, and you sit there and watch it, and you think, no, I shouldn't have watched that. Time to confess. The guild offering. All right, so here we are now going over to chapter seven. This is the law of the guilt offering. It is most holy. All right, another most holy sacrifice. In the place where they kill the burnt offering, they shall kill the guilt offering and its blood shall be thrown, probably better splashed against the sides of the altar and all its fat shall be offered. Okay, so once again, let us remind ourselves that the fat was considered a kingly portion, a royal portion. And so it is with all the sacrifices, no fat was to be eaten by the priest or anybody else. The fat tail, the fat that covers the entrails, the two kidneys with the fat that is on them at the loins, the long lobe of the liver that he shall remove with the kidneys. The priest shall burn them on the altar as a food offering to the Lord. It is a guilt offering. Every male among the priests may eat of it. It shall be eaten in a holy place. It is most holy. Same refrain here. The guilt offering is just like the sin offering. There is one law for both of them. The priest who makes atonement with it shall have it. And the priest who offers any man's burnt offering shall have for himself the skin of the burnt offering that he has offered. All right, so basically the priest must guard this sacrificial meat. None of it can touch anything unclean. Whoops, wait a minute, I want to make a point here too. Notice that the skin of this offering, oops, guess what? Won't advance again. I tried to go back, but wouldn't let me. Notice it's the hide of the animal is for the priest who offers the sacrifice. And that was important because, remember, the priests did not have their own land. They had cities they could live in. but they were pretty much at the mercy of their fellow Israelites being faithful in bringing these sacrifices. And even the hides had quite a, oh, how should we say, practical aspect to them. What do we use hides for today? Well, guys use them for belts. Not long ago, my wife suggested that I choose a kind of belt made by a company, and it's made out of bison leather. It's got a big silver buckle. you know, kind of appeals to my wish to be a cowboy, which I never have been, although I did get to teach horsemanship at a 4-H camp for a couple of summers. That's as close as I ever got to being a cowboy. Growing up, oh, I'd love to be a cowboy. Well, anyway, so I've got this bison leather belt, and it's guaranteed for life. In other words, if it ever breaks or cracks or whatever, then I just send it back and get a new one. That's pretty impressive. Of course, there were probably no bison in ancient Israel, but you know, it's important to use leather, not just for belts, but also for things like keeping liquids in. So it could be water in it, you could put wine in one, it'd be a wineskin. They were used for containers for larger amounts of agricultural products. So it was essential that they have this. Okay, so. The priest shall burn this on the altar as a sacrifice to the Lord. The guilt offering is just like the sin offering. The priest who makes atonement with it shall have it. And the priest who offers any man's burnt offering shall have for himself the skin of the burnt offering to make all these practical, everyday things he needs. that he has offered and every grain offering baked in the oven and what is prepared on a pan or a griddle shall belong to the priest who offers it. And every grain offering mixed with oil or dry shall be shared equally among all the sons of Aaron. And this is the law that is going to be applicable to all the priests. So this is the way God has intended for the priests to be, to have their needs met. So as I say, the hide of the burnt offering went to the priest who offered it, but then these grain offerings cooked, went to the officiating priest, but the uncooked grain belonged to all priests. All right, so anything that had been baked in an oven or on a griddle or in a pan, that was the priest's part of the sacrifice that he could use not to starve to death. But then the flour part that had not been cooked, that would be distributed to whoever needed the flour. And then they would use that to survive as well. And by the way, this provision extends to the New Testament as well. So if you would please go over to 1 Corinthians 9. 1 Corinthians 9. Verses 13 and 14. Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offering. In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. Notice how for Paul, everything always has its Old Testament basis. And so what do you do to show that that people who are preaching the gospel or who are pastoring churches today, how do you understand the importance of us supporting them? Well, here you go. Just as the priest lived off of the offerings that God's people brought to the tabernacle, so it is not somebody else's responsibility, it is our responsibility to make sure that we are generous with with pastors. Before I came here as a teacher at Bob Jones University, I taught for five years at Maranatha Baptist Bible College, now Maranatha Baptist University. During four of those years, the Lord laid it on my heart at the insistence of some of my colleagues that we begin a church and I would be the pastor and these people were wanting to have an expository pulpit ministry. So we started off. And I made nothing at first as a pastor. Then some of the deacons thought, well, you know, really we need to pay him something. Well, somebody said, he's already got a job. Well, yeah, I did. But it would have been kind of nice to have a little extra money because my job didn't earn me a very big salary, frankly. And so they started paying me a little bit. Well, then somebody got the idea, we're not paying him enough. We'll pay him a little more. And so at one point, I was earning the whopping salary of $400 a month as the pastor of this church. One of the deacons came to me one day, rang my doorbell. He said, I want you to know I was not for raising your salary. Oh, well, terrific. Thanks for sharing that. What's the purpose of that? I think he wanted me to not be the pastor anymore. But whatever the case, God's people can have a tendency to be sort of stingy. And that's not us, hopefully. So. Anyway, we see the continuity between what might otherwise seem to be an unimportant statement about the importance of priests being supported in the Old Testament tabernacle system, but see the way Paul is applying that to today. Paul is doing that for our admonition and to instruct us how we too can apply Old Testament principles and concepts to our dispensation today. We have to be careful how we do it, but Paul is our teacher in this regard. All right. Basically, these kinds of things are very instructive for us. We need to be doing that on our own during the week. As we read Old Testament passages, let's always be thinking, how does this apply to me today? And if for no other reason, Certainly, we see over and over again how glad we should be that our high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, didn't need to make sacrifices for himself. He had no sin, but when he did die on the cross in our place, he did so once for all. We don't have to go to a tabernacle to offer a sacrifice. We don't have to go to mass or to a confession before a human priest. No, no, no. That's all been taken care of. All right, we have a once for all perfect sacrifice that is the antitype of all these Old Testament sacrifices that were anticipating the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. That's the gospel. That's what we proclaim. There is once-for-all sacrifice from sin through the blood of Christ, that perfect sacrifice that our high priest himself offered. Wow, what a message of good news we have. And for anybody who is, as we've been talking about this morning, Pastor Reimers talked about, Jewish individuals who, many of whom have turned their back on Christ as their Messiah, we need to let them know that their Messiah has already come. And even though in Judaism today there is no sacrifice, there is no temple, there is no Levitical cleansing from sin, there is the shed blood of Christ, the once for all payment for sin. And we invite all people, Jew and Gentile, to share in that reality. Let's rejoice today that we have such a sacrifice for sin. Let's pray. Our Father, we're thankful for your word that instructs us. We're thankful for our Savior, his willingness to die on Calvary's cross. that we might receive forgiveness of sins so that we might dwell with Him and He in us in perfect fellowship, in harmony, in joyous fellowship, and help us, I pray, we would guard our lives so that no aspect of sin would mar that fellowship. I pray for zeal for that, and I ask in Jesus' name. Amen.