You can be opening up your Bibles to the Book of Leviticus. The Book of Leviticus, this is the third book of the Bible. For those of you who have a pew Bible in front of you, you can turn to page 81, it should be found there. This morning, we're only gonna be looking at chapter one, verse one. And this morning's sermon is going to be a little bit different. This is not going to be an overview sermon. So this morning, we're not going to be looking at all the different parts of Leviticus. Rather, this is just going to be a mere introductory sermon. And so my hope is to whet our appetite for everything that's going to come after today's sermon. This is going to be an introductory sermon. is going to help us get into the book. We're going to be looking at some themes that go throughout scripture. And so the goal this morning is just to maybe first of all bring up some struggles that we all have with the book of Leviticus. So we'll look at some struggles and then we're going to look at the importance So the importance of the book of Leviticus. And then after that, I'm going to have a little bit to say about the solution. Okay. Now the solution is not going to solve all of our problems. The goal of this morning is not to answer all your questions about the book of Leviticus. I just want to give us a good perspective as we get ready to get into this book. So Leviticus chapter 1, verse 1, I'll go ahead and read our text. This is the word of God. The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we ask that you would give us understanding this morning that you would especially prepare our minds as we seek to enter the book of Leviticus. Would your spirit be with us? We pray in Christ's name. Amen. What continues after chapter one, verse one is 27 chapters. of the Word of God, of Scripture, that I think we have all found to be very difficult, very challenging. What do we make of the book of Leviticus? I think we all have many questions regarding this book. It's a difficult book for us to interpret. It's a different world. It's the strange world of Leviticus. And so what do we do with the book of Leviticus? I would imagine that there's a graveyard out there somewhere that is filled with Bible reading plans that have made it all the way through Genesis, and then have proceeded onward through Exodus, and then have come to Leviticus, and maybe they have ceased from there. Or maybe, at best, they're kind of hanging on by a thread. because the Christian knows that, well, this is the word of God, this is the holy, inerrant, infallible word of God, and so they press forward out of an act of duty, out of an act of obligation. And so maybe this is understandable. I hope that as we go through Leviticus, that this all changes, that we can see this as a glorious book. That's one of my goals for this congregation, is that we can see the beautiful, just the beauty that is found within this book, and to see ultimately how it exalts our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so that's the goal as we work through Leviticus. I mean, you can think of the Bible reading plan. We make it all the way through Genesis and our imaginations are just captured by the creation, by the flood, by the lives of the patriarchs on into the life of Joseph as he goes on down to Egypt. Then of course comes Exodus and we persevere through Exodus because we're learning of great events that happen there. God pulls his people out of the land of slavery. Then he parts the Red Sea and we see the people of God crossing through the Red Sea. God gives his people the 10 commandments at Mount Sinai and we're just captured by these narratives. And then we come to Leviticus and we just don't know what to do with it. Leviticus can be a great struggle for us. Well, let's talk a little bit about the struggle, not just how we say it with our mouth, but just the actual struggle that we have with this book. There's a lot of difficulties, and we could probably go on and on. And I don't want to stand up here and belabor the fact, but maybe I think it's good just to bring some of these things back into our minds to kind of get us thinking as we look forward to continuing throughout this book. One of the difficulties for us, I think, here as Americans in 2025 is that we see these are people who have a different lifestyle and different laws. a different lifestyle and different laws. We look at the lifestyle of this people and we see people that are wandering in the desert. Many of us have never lived in the desert. Maybe we've only passed through. But we see wanderers in the desert. It's hard for us to imagine going on a long distance trip without a car, without air conditioning, without knowing of the first stop we're going to take at the convenience store to pick up some coffee and maybe visit the restroom. These people lived in a different world, it seems. So we struggle to relate to these wanderers in the desert because that's just not really where we're at these days. We all have established homes with addresses. The mail comes to our mailbox every day. We're not moving around like these people. So for many of us, this just seems very foreign to us. So these are people that have a different lifestyle. Now just thinking ahead, maybe we should be thinking, there is a sense in which we are sojourners. We're pilgrims here on earth. And so just as these people were looking forward to the entrance into the land of Canaan, into the promised land, we also are waiting for entrance into our promised land. And so we need to keep that in mind. So maybe we can relate a little bit more than what we think. And we're going to see that as we continue, but there's a different lifestyle. There's also different laws. So these people, would have had, in many ways, maybe not in every way, certainly not in every way, but in many ways, they had a different law to live by. And we're going to see that as we work through Leviticus. We're going to see in chapters 1 through 7, we're going to have the laws of sacrifice, so the sacrificial laws in the first seven chapters. And we might struggle with that. We struggle with these laws because we just don't quite understand an animal had to die because of my sins. And so that's kind of a hard thing to wrap our minds around. Why did God orchestrate things like this? Like, did it have to be this way? I mean, he knows everything. He's omniscient. Couldn't God have worked things out another way where we didn't have to kill these poor, innocent animals? I mean, most of us, we have dogs and cats in our house. And that's the only kind of, there's another way in which we're different from these people. Many of us, we're not herders, we're not farmers, and so we don't know what it's like to have livestock, right? We don't know what it's like to grow crops. But these people appear to be very different from us because they have these animals and they're giving these animals as sacrifices according to the law of God. And that's a hard thing to wrap our minds around as people who typically only have dogs and cats, right? So we see there's a difference there. I mean, we learn in the laws about leprosy and the distinction that's made between the clean and the unclean. And our hearts are pierced when we hear the leper cry out, unclean, unclean. His leprosy was not healed. And so he has to dwell alone outside of the camp. And so why does God make it this way so that this person who has leprosy, a skin disease, why is it that this person has to live outside the camp in such isolation? I mean, what do we do for our Israelite brother? What hope is there? What kind of communication can we have with this person? I mean, is it their fault? There's all these kinds of questions that are coming to our mind. Leviticus seems like a strange world to us. And so there's a lot of struggles that we have. But you know, this is also an extremely important book for us to understand. It's very important because what Leviticus is going to do is it's going to lay a foundation for us to understand this whole idea of atonement. This whole idea of sacrifice. It's gonna teach us a lot about sin. So we're gonna be doing a lot of thinking through sin and how a sinner approaches a holy God. We need to understand that this book is ultimately showing us how sinful man comes into the presence of God. And so that's going to be the main theme of the book, is coming into the presence of God. And so it's important that we understand this. You know, this idea of the presence of God, sometimes we can struggle to think about it because we know on the one hand that God is omnipresent. And that just means that God is in all places at all times. God is omnipresent. But then scripture does uphold, and the two, they don't collide. We uphold them both. God is present in correlation to the way that he relates with man. He's present in different degrees. So sometimes he's present with man, other times he's not. And so we see the presence of God correlates in a relational way. Right? And so we're going to look into that even this morning. We'll look into that a little bit further. So this whole idea of the presence of God, how does man come into the presence of God? Because this is going to be the theme of the entire book of Leviticus. This book is going to highlight the holiness of God. So we're going to see why it is that sinners cannot just approach a holy God without there being a sacrifice. And in a little, we're gonna take a look at how God sets down the pattern for that. And so this book is highly important for us to understand. The Apostle Paul said in Romans chapter 15, verse four, he said, these things were written for our instruction. And so he's looking back at the Old Testament, he's saying, Christians, these things are for you. These are for us. we must understand what is going on in the book of Leviticus. We're gonna find that everything here, now it might apply differently to us than to the people then, but there is going to be something for us every chapter throughout this book. So we see that this is a very important book. It's a book that is highly theological. Leviticus might be one of the most theological books of the Bible. William Ames, he was a Puritan. He was defining theology. And he defines theology. Typically, we define theology as the study of God. And that's good. That's a good way to get things started. But William Ames defined theology as the doctrine of living for God. The doctrine of living for God. And the reason why I think this is helpful as we come to the book of Leviticus is that's just what we're trying to understand, is how do we live for God? How is a man made right for God? We're going to see that in the first half of the book. And then how do we maintain our relationship with God? We're going to see that in the second half of the book. So how do we approach God? How do we maintain our relationship with the Lord? Leviticus is a very heavily theological book. And so in that sense, it's very important for us. Leviticus is also a book that exalts the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is manifested in this book. What we need to do, there's two extremes that must be avoided when we come to a book like Leviticus, two extremes. So on the one extreme, we can't just come to a book like this and make constant connections to Jesus Christ the whole time without dealing with what is actually here for this people in this time. You know, some like to make that caricature, well, you can't find Christ under every rock. And I suppose I understand what they're saying. I still think it's a caricature. And I don't always appreciate it. But I think that I understand what they mean in that we need to understand what is going on to this people during this time. What do these laws mean to the Hebrew? That's what we need to find. But we can also go to that extreme. And we can only look at this book as if it's some sort of historical document meant for people back then, but not for people today. And I think if that's our interpretation of Leviticus, you might find that this book is boring, and you might find that this book is not applicable to you. And I'm here to say it is most certainly applicable to you. And so we want to guard against these two extremes. Think of it like this. Have you guys ever used those two-part epoxies, those two-part adhesives where you have the two tubes, and you Maybe you put it on a mixing tray and you mix them together and then you can use it to glue something to cause something to adhere to another object. Well, if you don't have both parts, you just make a mess and it doesn't do anything. And so we need both parts to this epoxy. You've got the resin and you've got the curing agent, the hardener, and you've got to have both of these to cause these things to stick. Otherwise, like I said, our understanding of Leviticus is going to be a mess and it's not going to do anything. And so we have to have both. We have to see Christ in Leviticus, but we need to do justice to what we see here that is for this people during this time, and how these laws apply to the people that would come after them. So we have to do both. We see Christ is exalted in the book of Leviticus. I think it's important when we come to the solution the solution to understanding this book. And like I said from the beginning, I'm not answering all the questions right now. I'm just whetting our appetite. But the solution is we need to see, if you think of the timeline of God's the timeline of redemptive history, okay? So you think the creation here, then let's just say we got the second return of Christ down here. And so what is happening in between? We've got the cross right here, we've got Leviticus way back here. We need to step in and we need to see Leviticus right here. Let's figure out what all has happened up to this point. So we need to kind of lead up into the book so that we can have a proper understanding of what this book really means. What does it mean that the theme of this book is to enter the presence of God or to see how sinners can approach a holy God? And so that's what I would like to do with the remainder of our time is just take a look back to see how we're led up into the book of Leviticus. On September 10th, let me back up, Leviticus chapter 19, God commands his people, he says, be holy for I the Lord your God am holy. And so we're given this commandment to be holy as God is holy. And that's quite the commandment. Those words were on the mind of a young missionary to the Native Americans. His name was David Brainerd. And in his diary, if you've ever read his diary and journal, he writes, this is on September 10th, 1742. And by the way, he probably made his way right around here. So it's possible if we're looking out there at the river, David Brainerd may very well have been out this direction. So he did come into this part of Pennsylvania. But anyway, September 10, 1742, he writes in his journal, he says, of his intense desire for God, his intense desire for God. And then he writes about how his impatience, he has this impatience to be conformed to God. So he has an intense desire for God, and he has this, holy impatience to be conformed to God. And I think that's a good entryway into what this book should promote for us. It should help us understand that we need to be a people who strive for holiness. Not for our salvation, not so that we can clean up our act and then God will save us or something like that. No, no, we can't work our way into heaven. But holiness is a theme that we see throughout this book. David Brainerd had a desire for holiness. And he knew it was nothing that he could earn on his own. He knew that it was all a work of the Lord. God had to do the work. And so we see that in the life of David Brainerd, and hopefully in the lives of you and of me, that we will have a desire to be holy as the Lord is holy. The first sentence in the book. The Lord called Moses and spoke to him. Generally speaking, this is where the book gets its Hebrew title. The Hebrew title of the book is And He Called. That's how we get the title of Leviticus. Now, Leviticus, the English word, that's just coming from the Greek Old Testament, so the Septuagint. And really what is being expressed there is that these are the Levitical laws. Now, as we go through Leviticus, you're going to find that the Leviticus doesn't say a whole lot about the Levites. So there's not much said about the Levites in the Book of Leviticus, but it might be more accurate to say that this is about priestly laws. As time went forward, The Levitical priesthood and the Levites and the priests, I should say, kind of got collapsed into one group. And even in the book of Hebrews, chapter 7, it talks about this, how it talks about the Levitical priesthood. But just realize that things kind of change as time goes by. The Levites and the priests, they kind of collapse into one group. But this book doesn't have a whole lot to say about the Levites. And so this is how we get our English definition, or our English phrase, or just saying the word Leviticus. But really, in the Hebrew, it means, and he called. And he called. So we see the Lord calling Moses to himself. And we see that God calls his people throughout generations. And so what we need to do now is we need to take that, take that understanding, and he called, We need to go back to the beginning, where God called another man. His name was Adam. And so we see in Genesis chapter 3, the Lord calling Adam, where are you? So God calls Adam. He says, where are you? Now, children, just know this. It's not that God didn't know where Adam was. I mean, it's kind of funny to think that it says there in Genesis 3 that Adam went and hid himself among the trees. What's interesting, God created the trees. You think God doesn't know where Adam is? Of course God knew where Adam was. And so God is not asking, Adam, where are you, because he doesn't know. So we need to realize that there's something being communicated here. And what's being communicated when God calls Adam, he says, where are you, is God is signifying to Adam and to us that Adam, after the fall, is no longer in the presence of God. Now remember, I'm not talking about God's omnipresence here. I'm talking about that presence of God that corresponds with our relationship to God, like I said earlier. Adam's relationship with God has changed since the fall. He's fallen. He sinned against his creator. And so there's a change in his understanding, his experience of the presence of God. So Adam, after the fall is no longer in the presence of God the same way that he was before the fall. Remember, Adam was created upright. So before Adam was a sinner, Adam was a man who was righteous. He was blameless. He experienced truly the presence of God. And then after the fall, no longer, Adam is excommunicated from the Garden of Eden. To the east he goes. The eastward direction, we need to keep that in mind. He's off to the east, but he's likely still in the boundaries of Eden. Because remember, God planted the garden in Eden. So here we have Adam being kicked out of the Garden of Eden because of his sin, and yet he's still within the bounds of Eden itself. His understanding, his experience of the presence of God has changed. Things are different now. His heart, his mind is darkened. Now, what does God do? What does God do to change things for Adam, to give him hope? It says that he clothed him with skins. Now, we know that we can't have animal skins without there being a sacrifice. And so we can deduce from scripture that God killed an animal to provide a sacrifice for Adam, to make atonement for Adam and Eve so that they could approach him, so that they could, to one degree, be brought back into his presence. Now this is critical that we understand this because God is setting a pattern. He's setting a pattern for mankind. He's saying, you cannot approach me, a holy God, Unless there is a sacrifice, atonement must be made. There must be a substitution. God is setting the pattern. Now, as we move forward and we get into the life of Cain and Abel, we see in this antediluvian world, this pre-flood world, okay, That sacrifice and this idea of priests, these kinds of concepts, the shedding of blood, this would have been normal. So this isn't really normal to us now, unless I guess you're a Christian or you're worshiping a pagan god where there's sacrifices. But to these people, this would have been very normal because of the pattern set down by God. Now because of the fall, we should not be surprised that there are pagan religions being formed from this. So you take a good thing, God shows us a good thing, a good pattern, you need sacrifice to approach me, and what do sinners do? What do we do with anything that God gives us that's good? We twist it, we pervert it, right? And so we shouldn't be surprised that in the ancient world, in the pre-flood world, or even shortly after the flood, there are polytheistic religions that are doing sacrifices. And so this was normal in this world. And we know this. We see it. You can think even in Leviticus chapter 18, it is assumed that the Israelites understand that there are sacrifices to Moloch. There are child sacrifices to Moloch. And so that's going to be a part of God's law to these people. Don't sacrifice your children to Moloch. Don't be like them. So it's assumed that these things were already happening. Now we have other priestly examples. You can think of how Potiphar, so Joseph's master, Potiphar, was the priest of On in Egypt. So the Egyptians had a religious system where there were sacrifices and there were priests. You can think of Moses's father-in-law, Jethro. He was the priest of Midian. So this is a normal idea. And it's interesting to think that it is likely that in these ancient times, the heads of households would have been priests. So you have Job, for instance, in Job chapter 1. Job is offering sacrifices for his children, maybe every day. He's offering these sacrifices because he knows to approach God, there must be atonement. Matthew Henry. suggests that Adam is clearly there with Cain and Abel in Eden as they are bringing their sacrifices to him. So let's look at the sacrifices of Cain and Abel. So you have Cain and Abel. When the time came, so when it was time for this, apparently there's some sort of time where you would bring your sacrifices. Cain and Abel bring their sacrifices to the Lord. Now, what's the difference? What's the difference in the sacrifice? We see Cain, he brings his sacrifice from the offering of the land. We see Abel, he brings his sacrifice from the best of what he has, the fat portion, it says. And what's happening here is we can see the heart of Cain and we can see the heart of Abel being manifested. See, Cain, out of his darkened heart, out of his darkened, unbelieving heart, gives what he gives to God, and God is clearly not pleased with it. We see the heart of Abel shining, as he gives the best of what he has to sacrifice to God. And so Abel, from a believing heart, from one who believed in the Lord, brings the better sacrifice that was pleasing to God. And so we see that Cain's sacrifice is rejected, Abel's is accepted, and then you know how the story goes. God comes up to Cain and is basically showing his displeasure. Well, what is Cain gonna do? Cain has the opportunity. Is he gonna follow in the footsteps of his brother Abel? Is he gonna repent of his sins, turn to the Lord, and give him the best of what he has, and offer a pleasing sacrifice to the Lord? Well, we know how the story goes. He does, and he takes his brother out in the field. He kills him. So the Lord says, Cain, you're going to be a fugitive and a wanderer. So we see Cain wandering off again, specifically to the east. Cain is sent off further away from the presence of God. And we see that in these times, Genesis 6 makes it clear that there is just a wicked generation. People are increasingly wicked. But we also see in the place of Abel, there's a son born to Adam. His name is Seth. And through the line of Seth, we come to a man named Noah. And it is through Noah that there would come relief. Noah was to give rest. So Noah is faithful in building and filling the ark. Interesting, we should keep in mind he was precisely obedient to all the precise commands that the Lord gave him. That's important as we come to Leviticus. We need to have precision when we come to the law of God, just the way that God prescribes it. We're going to be talking a lot about how God prescribes our worship. But anyway, back to Noah. He builds the ark. He fills it just the way that God prescribed it. The floods come. wipes away, destroys the generation. And then as the flood subsides, what is the first thing that Noah does when he gets off the ark? He sends up a burnt offering to God with clean animals, it says, all before we get to Leviticus. And so we see that sacrifices are normal. It's likely that Noah was like a priest, as the head of his family, offering a sacrifice to God. Well, the nations are formed from Noah. And of course, we have the incident at Babel, so the Tower of Babel. We know that after that incident, the people were dispersed. They're all over the earth, further away from the presence of God. We know there's hope because we see God entering into covenant with Abraham, saying that from him, there's going to be a people that would bless the nations. It will be a blessing to the world. But then we see Joseph come along and he's brought down to the land of Egypt. And there he dies. And so in Genesis chapter 1, you have the creation. You have God giving life to his creatures. And then we see, slowly but surely, life going away from the presence of God, all the way to chapter 50, verse 26, the last verse in Genesis, which speaks of Joseph's death in Egypt. It says he was embalmed and placed in a coffin. So we go from life to death. And then of course, again, and he called. And God calls Moses from the burning bush. And so there's hope. So in the book of Exodus, we see this change. We see in Genesis, this trajectory of life all the way to death. And then we see the people in the land of bondage and slavery being redeemed. So we're being taught of God as a redeemer in Exodus. So here, God is bringing his people out of the land of slavery with the intention to bring them into the promised land. He brings them to Mount Sinai. He gives them his law. He enters into covenant with this people. And remember, these people were multiplying in Egypt, and that's another important thing to keep in mind, because the way that people would approach God often was maybe on an individual or on a family basis. Now we see God working through community. Another important thing to keep in mind in Leviticus and really throughout the Bible as we move on to the New Covenant and the church and how we approach God as believers in a local church. So we see God is now calling his people to be a part of a community. And what is his purpose in all this? One of the key verses for understanding the book of Leviticus is we need to understand what God is actually doing with this people. Exodus 19, five and six. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine. So God here, revealing to his people his intentions, and he continues, he says, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. God's people are to be a kingdom of priests in a holy nation. Leviticus is going to explain to us how God is going to do that with this people. So as we come to these laws that are very unfamiliar to us, these things that we don't quite understand, we need to remember that God is creating himself a people that is to be distinct from the pagan nations around them. So he's forming this people, and he's creating a system to which these people can approach him, a system that I think oftentimes we think this is like a brand new thing. But really, as I just described, this whole idea of sacrifice and atonement goes all the way back to when Adam sinned against God. And God provides a way for Adam to approach him. So God is now showing us how we can approach God. He's going to do so with clarity through the Book of Leviticus. Things wind up in where we were at with our scripture reading, Exodus chapter 40, where we read of how the glory of God fills the tabernacle. And that's where we're left off right before we get into the book of Leviticus. The glory of God filling the tabernacle. God shows his people that he is, in fact, with them. And we see the grace of God in giving the law to his people when he gives them these laws that we see in Leviticus. This is God saying, you are different than the rest of the peoples out there. You are mine. You belong to me. I'm giving you my laws. I'm not giving them my laws. I'm giving this to you, my treasured possession. so that you can have a way to approach me. This seems to be what God is communicating. So the glory of God fills the tabernacle. We find ourselves in Leviticus. Really, just to give you some maybe geography or setting, the Israelites have been at Mount Sinai since Exodus chapter 19. and they're going to remain at Mount Sinai all the way through Numbers chapter 10. So what is on the horizon is they are preparing to enter into the land of Canaan. They're anticipating that this is going to happen quickly. Rest is on the horizon. Inheritance is on the horizon. But as we know, we know how the story goes in Numbers. They run into some issues. The Israelites revealed to us that they were not content with the Lord. And so we know that things fall apart. But right now, right now where we're at at Leviticus chapter one, verse one, there is anticipation of entering into the promised land. One of the things that we see when we understand the tabernacle is we understand that Christ in John chapter 114 took on flesh and he dwelt among us. And we can understand that word dwelt. He dwelt among us as he tabernacled among us. And so we see the Son of God taking on flesh, becoming a man like us, fully God yet fully man and tabernacling among us. The glory of God shown in the face of Jesus Christ walked here on earth. He tabernacled among us and he is the way into the presence of God. You see this tabernacle that we're looking at in Exodus chapter 40 had an eastern entrance. And so people, to come back into the presence of God, we're going west. We're going west to that eastern entrance. That is the way. The sacrifices are gonna be made at the door of the tabernacle. We know that Christ, in fulfilling all of these types and shadows, became that once for all sacrifice for us. And it is through Christ that we enter into the presence of God. Leviticus is going to make a big deal about God's holiness. Leviticus is going to make a big deal about the call for us to be a people who are holy. And I hope that as we work through this book, that you will be more dependent upon Christ and that you would have a greater zeal, a greater desire to be holy as Christ is holy. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we pray that as we work through this book, that you would give us wisdom and insight for this is the word of God and this book is certainly applicable to us today. Pray that we would rightly interpret it, that Christ would be exalted in our hearts. We ask this in his name. Amen.