We're going to be taking up a book of the Bible that has been the cause of more crash and burns through yearly Bible reading calendars than any other book of the entire Bible. It has on its landscape the bones of many well-meaning Christians who set out to read through Scripture. Alright, Leviticus. And even Rindy, when I told her where we were going to start preaching, she's like, oh, why? However, the full story of this is, some time ago, working through my project, I discovered this thing called the Holiness Code. And it's found in Leviticus chapter 17 all the way through 26, actually. Sometimes, some people say 18 through 26. And it's called a code, I think, because it tells us or it told the nation what they were to do to live in such a way as to be distinct from the rest of the peoples they were living around, thus holiness, the holiness code. And you will find a menagerie of things in there about all kinds of stuff. sexual purification and dietary law, all kinds of things that they're supposed to do. And so that kind of started out on it and I thought, wow, that's really hard. I studied it for about two weeks and then I moved on. That was probably about two years ago, okay? And so recently, as we were getting near to the end of Romans, looking through Romans 6, 7, and 8, I'm asking God, what do we do next? It's the famous, what do we do now, Lord, right? And he said, well, you got to be careful about that, but I was strongly compelled again towards Leviticus. And I said, what else you got? Okay. And I sought the Lord diligently and prayed and said, Lord, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to preach about. And it kept coming back to Leviticus, to which I would say, well, surely there's something else, you know, and this went on for a long time. Well, so we're in Leviticus. Okay. I have been like Jonah belched up onto the sea of obedience. I am there in the stomach acids of a whale. Okay, and here I am. And I just want to say that of all the sermon series over the years of preaching, I've been preaching since around 1994. I've ever done this one probably, this is probably one that scares me the most. It's probably the most difficult. I'm very intimidated by it and I feel very underprepared for it. Very inadequate for it, although I have done my level best. See, I was told once, if you're really intelligent, you can read something and remember it for the rest of your life and just call it to mind any time you want to, okay? Well, I'm not an intelligent person, so I read a lot, and I listen a lot, over and over again, and I'll pick up just enough to live, okay? So if I were an air fern, I would have one leaf on my little, branch. But we're gonna be in the book of Leviticus, in which case, how many of you have ever died when you hit the book of Leviticus when you've tried to read through the Bible? Yes, admit it. You know you have. It's done it. Yes, you're right. Especially when you get to the part when it talks about how to inspect a leprous sore and what the color of the hair looks like in the middle of the sore. And you're thinking, my, do I need to know this? Okay. Or mold in a tent. or on a wall, you know, and that's all in here. And I just want you to know, I have no intention of of over laboring a leprous sore. But what I have discovered is there are themes that roll through the book of Leviticus, major themes. Even the way the book is laid out is amazing. And what I have I've been astonished to learn is So if you have a red letter version of the Bible, you know the words of Christ in red, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and all the words of Christ in red, and you're like, wow. Well, if the Old Testament had something like that, it would be Leviticus. Because it is the book where God gives the most direct commands of any book. It would be read nearly through and through. So in Leviticus, we have a wonderful book of Christ. And I couldn't help but change my view as I've went through the introduction of this thing of just to celebrate the glory of Jesus and what he's given us. And we go back to the shadow of what Leviticus taught. So I have no idea how this is going to go. I am not so foolhardy as to say here's going to be our structure and outline because you know me and and I'm going to say it will be a series and I'll do my level best to finish it. but we'll just see what happens, but so far I've just stuck on verse one, okay, and chapter one, and then we'll see what happens next. So, our holy God prepped us, I think, good and well for understanding just how holy God is and how seriously he takes it. And I think that was kind of the way God kind of nudged me, nudged, walloped me into the book of Leviticus. And so, it prepared the way. So, our holy God then as seen in Leviticus. This is the introduction. This is going to be in chapter 1 verse 1. And so, in honor of God and His Word, let's stand and read verse 1. Just verse 1. So, you don't have to stand very long. Now, the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tabernacle of meeting, saying, Notice verse one, the Lord called to Moses. We have here a picture of the intimacy that this book is desiring for us to know. He calls us to himself. It's an amazing thing. Let's pray. Father, be with us as we look into this amazing book of grace. This provision that you made to your people so long ago, sitting at the mountain of Sinai at the base, separated as they were from you, you provided the way for them to come near. Oh, call us today, just like Moses, in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. Before I get into Leviticus, what about the validity of the Old Testament for instruction? People say today that we don't really need to study the Old Testament. How many of you ever heard that? Have you ever heard that? I mean, preachers are saying it more and more these days. A lot of what we might call the cool hip Christian young ones are saying we don't need the Old Testament today. One of the most probably public statement by a very well-known preacher down in Texas, Andy Stanley. Huh? Georgia? Oh, he's not from Texas? Same thing. Anyway, but no, Andy Stanley, which is the son of Charles Stanley, hate to say that for Charles. Anyway, he said that the time has come for the church to unhitch its wagon from the Old Testament. Now, he's got a very large, what's the name of it? Do you know? North Point. It's a huge, large church. So you can imagine If someone like Andy Stanley were to say, we need to unhitch our wagons from the Old Testament, what is that communicating? We don't really need it anymore. There's a lot of things in there that we just, we don't need, it's harsh or whatever, I don't know. But Romans 15 in verse four says different. For whatever things were written before were written for our learning that we, through the patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope. So what is it telling us? That those things were written before, obviously referring back to the old covenant, those old scriptures, We need to study those so that we can have hope, we find hope in them, all right? 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 says, now all these things happened to them as examples and they were written for our admonition. So we study what happened in the Old Testament because they're written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. They lived the life. We talk about faith, they demonstrated it. We talk about cause and effect of sin, they certainly demonstrated it. We read about David and how he's doing so well, and you're just intrigued by how the Lord has handed the kingdom over to him, and then suddenly he took a midnight stroll on the roof, and you're like, no, don't do it, David. And remember, we're no different than David. But then we recall how God restored David, and we see the beauty of that. 2 Timothy 3.16, here it is. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. Does that mean just all in the New Testament? Is that what they were referring to? No, it had not been all compiled yet. So all Scripture referring to all that God has given is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. And I do believe the word complete here is the Greek verb pluromo, meaning a once and for all act finished, completed. You can't add to it. It's finished. It's done. You are complete in Him. Therefore, all Scripture, all of it, Old and New Testaments, both are that way. Now, I did recently, I've met two people when we've been going out on visitation. I should call it outreach still, huh? Megan gets so confused by, why are we visiting them? It's a good question. Outreach, it's called Visitation Oklahoma. Visitation equals evangelism in Oklahoma. That's how that works. But outreach, now I don't know what you do if you're in the hospital. I don't know what we call that. I think we call that visitation too, because that's just how simple we are. Okay, but anyway, I was talking to this one person. I would go to their house and I'd say, you know, hey, we're from Northridge. We're out to see if people know what the gospel is. And she was very quick to tell me, well, we read from both the Old and New Testaments. I mean, that's the first remark. I'm like, okay, so I know enough by now to know what are we getting into here? I know there's something here. Well, turns out they were part of a break off. There's a lot of break offs that really what they were were Judaizers. I'm not meaning to be ugly. It's just the biblical term for those who still believe you have to keep the law and Christ. That's all that was about. So when when they say we keep the Old Testament and the New Testament commands, boy, they weren't going to get off. See, the word commands is also really close in following their So, for a lot of people then, when you mention Old Testament, do you read the whole Bible, do you read the Old Testament? Oh, you're going to take me back and you're wanting to look at, see if I have a leper sore. No. And then cast me off as a leper and say, unclean, unclean. No. they don't understand, because somewhere there's been a disconnect in the last 40 years, I guess, that the Old Testament doesn't matter very much as much as the New Testament does. And in fact, to me, okay, I do view them like two wings of an airplane. Which one would you rather be without, I guess? The one reveals the other, and they complement, they're meant to go together. You don't separate them, if you take away The old covenant, or if you take away the Old Testament, the old testimony of what God did and how He worked through those people, the story of creation all the way through, you would not understand the new. How would Christ be so beautiful, right? So, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. Now, for those people who say, well, doctrine divides. Yeah, that's why the cults always mess with it. OK, because it's the fundamental truths that do not change. Doctrine matters. When you open your mouth to talk about Jesus, you're speaking doctrine. The question is, is it right? Is it sound? So if you only have a linear side of it, then, you know, this couple that I was talking to on their porch, their doctrine was not sound. They were wanting to put me back under the law and add Jesus to it, okay? Recently, it happened with another lady, too, on the porch. But all Scripture is given, and we are complete in Him. The New Testament writers, now get this, included approximately 250 express Old Testament quotations And if one includes indirect or partial quotations, the number jumps to more than 1,000 in the New Testament, referring to the Old Testament. It can therefore be asserted without exaggeration that more than 10% of the New Testament text is made up of citations or direct allusions to the Old Testament. 10%. And in fact, when Jesus was teaching, what did he quote often? The Old Testament. Yes, he did. He certainly did. A lot. And in fact, Leviticus to boot. Okay, he did too. So there's a lot of Old Testament in the New Testament. How can we say we need to unhitch our wagons from it? How would you do that? I don't know how you would do that. I like how the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith kind of substantiates this, the infallible rule of interpreting scripture is the scripture itself. Well, how do we know that to be true? Because we're just coming back here to Romans 15, 1 Corinthians 10, 2 Timothy 3, and we're seeing that the New Testament is referring to the old scriptures in the Old Testament, right? Okay, so the infallible rule for interpreting scripture is the scripture itself. Therefore, when there is a question about the true and full meaning of any part of Scripture, and each passage has only one meaning, not many, and that's meaning, well, I think this is my idea, and then I have my idea, and I have my idea. It's not like that. What does the Scripture say it means? It must be understood in light of other passages that speak more clearly to it. That's how you understand it. So, if you have a verse that's making a claim, and you think you understand it, and you find something later in the New Testament, or even all the way back to the Old Testament, and they're saying the same thing, then you know you're probably pretty good in being sound in what that is. But if your idea differs from what those other Scriptures are saying, then you clearly have this verse wrong, and you have to back up and modify, and you have to change and adjust yourself to the Scripture. The supreme judge for deciding all religious controversies and for evaluating all decrees of councils, opinions, and ancient writers, human teachings, and individual interpretations, and in whose judgment we are to rest is nothing but the Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit. In this scripture, our faith finds its final word. See, a confession of faith is simply a distillation of all of those main fundamental doctrines. It's a place to go to to say, this is what we believe. Because I'll tell you what, if you go out and talk to some around and you say, we believe in the Old and New Testaments, they're going to say, well, we do too. And they have nothing to do with biblical Christianity. We say, well, we believe in the Old and New Testaments and that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Levitical system. That might cause them to go, how exactly? Okay, so now we're getting into the, we are getting down into the marrow of what we believe. So that's why I like what it says about scripture, interpreting scripture. And really that's where the problems arise, isn't it? Whenever we're dealing with false religions and false teachings. They can espouse what they believe, They can use scripture to do it, and generally do, but only to a point. But then when you come along and you say, yeah, but the scripture says of this scripture over here, and then it even goes all the way back over here, and both of those don't say that, then you have the blank look, and the, well, that's just what we believe. Okay, so. And so what we have to do is become, when we become students of Scripture, we have to understand that we are taking both Old and New Testaments together. And when we're talking about doctrine, we're talking about that which all of it says about that subject, and it has to agree. Augustine, the new is the old concealed, the old is the new revealed. I kind of like that. You kind of have to be careful when you get down into little pithy little statements, but it's true. We often say the word shadow and substance, don't we? Shadow, substance. The new is the old concealed. The old is the new revealed. R.C. Sproul wrote, the famous statement by St. Augustine expresses the remarkable way in which the two testaments of the Bible are so closely interrelated with each other. The key to understanding the New Testament in its fullest is to see when in it the fulfillment of those things that were revealed in the background of the Old Testament. So when we read through the book of Leviticus, you're going to be thinking a lot about the book of Hebrews. Because, as it has been said, the book of Hebrews is the Leviticus of the New Testament. You can't do anything when you read the Leviticus, but to see Christ now. And you can't imagine what it would have been like for those Israelites receiving this to think, wow, how are we gonna, how will the, that's a lot of work. It's a lot of work to remain pure. It's a lot of work to remain clean. This is what I gotta do. And you can imagine living under that. What a yoke, right? And we think, boy, I'm thankful for Jesus, who is my perfect sacrificial lamb, whose blood never stops running and cleansing for me. And I can approach God now, boldly, as Hebrew says, again, see, and I can do so confidently because of Him and what He's done for me. So, the Old Testament points forward in time, preparing God's people for the work of Christ in the New Testament. So, I guess you could say I'm making an argument here that the Old Testament's really, really important, and it's vital, and it's even foolish to think that it's a question that we should somehow not pay attention to it. Hebrews 10, verse 1, for example, and substantiating Augustine's claim, for the law having a shadow of good things to come." Now, do you see that? The law having a shadow of the good things to come. Okay, that's future, forward. And not the very image of the things can never with these same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year make those who approach perfect. And we know it's talking about the blood, it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to atone for sin. You see, the blood has to match the severity of the crime and the sin. And it was a temporary thing that God used under that Levitical system to atone for sin, to point us to the one to come, the Lamb without spot, the Lamb without blemish, that would die once for all to atone. that those who by faith receive Christ Jesus will never be unclean again, because he never stops cleansing. His blood never runs dry, it never grows old, it's perfect. So, Jesus then makes us perfect. We can approach God now. That's the beauty of seeing this symbolism in Leviticus. In Colossians chapter two, Verse 16 and 17. So let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a, what does it say again? A shadow of things to come. A shadow of things to come. But the substance clearly says right there is of Christ. So you probably ask the question, well then why study Leviticus if we have Jesus now? Well, first of all, some thoughts I have. There is no other Old Testament book that demonstrates the holy presence of God among his people more than Leviticus does. And that's what you get when you read verse one of Leviticus. Now, the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tabernacle of meeting. He called to him specifically. This is right on the tail end of Exodus chapter 40. As I heard one preacher say, you might even, if it would help you, you could say this is Exodus 41. It's just picking up. Moses is out here and God is in there. How's he gonna get in there? How are they gonna get in there? God was up there on the mountain. Scary. Now God's down here, in the middle of the people. 19.2 of Leviticus says, you shall be holy for I the Lord your God is holy. For the Lord your God is holy. Leviticus is about God's desire to be among his people and the absolute necessity of cleaning, or I'm sorry, of cleansing and purity in order to come into His presence. So do you understand that? Do you see the significance of that? The absolute necessity of cleansing and purity. Now we talked about those who stand before God require a covering, right? We go all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had fallen, they had sinned, and God provided a cover. The blood was shed. Thus, we have the proto-Levitical, if you would, system being brought into play. There must be a covering for sin. God is holy. We are not. We are sinful people. Did you know right now, you may be having a good day. Sometimes I'm having an off day, right? And maybe you're kind of crabby or just moody or whatever. I don't know. Does anyone here get irritable at all? Husbands don't have to answer that, I'm not trying to set you up. Okay, so, but we do, we get irritable, sometimes it's the husband that's the irritable one, you know, grumbly and stuff. But you know, if you're having a good day, you wake up, and all the birds are singing, and the sun is shining on your face, you're like, this is a great day, I've not yet messed up, right? You could go to the furthest, highest mountain you could possibly find, and climb, and sit there all by yourself, and still sin. It doesn't require anyone else. It happens internally. And it could be as simple as, climbed all the way up here and so, being ungrateful even, I don't know. But God desires us to be among, God desires to be among his people. And we must have not only cleansing, but we must have purity. And we must have that in order to come into his presence. That's why he says in Leviticus chapter 10 and verse 3, by those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy. So I want you to think about that this evening, or perhaps even before we close today when we pray. When you pray, I don't know of any other act that we can do as people, both physically and spiritually, of drawing near to Jesus than, well, we draw near to God in the name of Jesus, right? I don't know of anything else we can do than prayer to do that, right? When you draw near to God, He says He must be regarded as holy. I want you to think about that. So here I am, I'm coming to kneel down to pray. I am approaching God. And I just read Leviticus that if I do, he must be regarded as holy by those who draw near to me or come near to me, I must be regarded as holy. How are you there? There are two guys that we're going to meet in Leviticus later on that decided to do it their way. Nadab and Abihu. It doesn't say what they did exactly except they offered profane fire before the Lord. It doesn't say anything about how that worked. But clearly it was in total defiance and disregard and disrespect for the holiness of God. So they came before Him not regarding Him as holy. And they got, well, it says they were consumed by fire, in which case, a lot of times, that can be translated as lightning. Okay, and there they were. Now, when you go to pray, I just want you to think about, just try to imagine. You're drawing near to the same God. Same God, He hasn't changed. Oh, by the way, I know I've said it a lot, but the same God of the Old Testament, the same God in the New Testament. Okay, so there you are, you're drawing near to pray or to praise. Have you regarded Him as holy? Now, on this side of the cross, we come to you, Lord, in Jesus' name, covered by the blood of the Lamb. I come before you because of what Christ has done, and I am accepted. See? And I often say that because I understand what God requires to come before Him. I also have to admit, on occasion, more than one, or many, that I've sometimes strolled into the presence of God. Anyone here ever stroll into the presence of, yes, thank you, thank you. We're not thinking this way, are we? We don't think we're not thinking that way. One of the things, you know, you hear me talk about biblical revival and we study the Puritans, we study the great movements of old and even all the way up to the Hebrides of the 40s. The kind of prayer with which these few people approached God was not strolling in. They approached. As if Leviticus. Chapter 10, verse three was emblazoned upon their soul. By those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy. And they came in the boldness of Christ, their Savior, as God's final revelation to man. And they came desperately longing for that nearness. that meeting place that that tabernacle offered. See, now that's different, isn't it? Now, when you go pray tonight, are you gonna think that way? Here I come. People say, well, let's just stop and pray about it real quick. Mm, mm-mm. We can do that, I mean, but we got, I think we have to really go back and rediscover the, the gravity of what we're doing. So he goes on to say, and before all the people, I must be glorified. Well, that's the other part of it. I must, before all the people, I must be glorified. So clearly what Nadab and Abihu did to die by a lightning strike, I wonder if it was sustained. I wonder about that. You know, like a bug on one of those things, it stays there and it just, I don't know, but I know this, whatever they did, they did not regard God as holy and they did not glorify Him. Okay, back to the prayer deal real quick. Have you ever drawn near to God in such a way that you know you weren't glorifying Him? You weren't bringing glory to Him even by the way you approached? I know I have. I've even preached sermons like that. It's by Jesus' miracle of forgiveness on my life that I'm not carbon. When we stand and JT gets up here and he does that thing that he does and gets us into the song and we begin to sing and worship and praise the Lord. Are we offering praise that's meant to glorify God? Or is it empty of us? It's just as though we've pulled the chain until it's over. Because that kind of stuff would get you killed in Leviticus. See, you're saying, what are you trying to do, man? Scare us? But I'm trying to get us to understand that we have been so far removed from what the shadow is that the substance becomes maybe not as special. See? So, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. Do we mean that? Or are we like, praise the Lord, you know, praise the Lord. I wonder what the leftovers will be like on Sunday. Praise the Lord. See, and I'm just saying that kind of attitude under this time and this dispensation of the Old Covenant would get you killed. Because God said, I must be glorified by all those who come near. And then he finishes up with this, and that you may distinguish between the clean and the unclean. Because in the book of Leviticus, clean and unclean is a repetitive theme over and over and over again. Clean, unclean, clean, unclean. Or if you want to, holy, unholy, holy, unholy. Now you think about all the different things that's promulgated in our life, in our culture, in our society today in the name of Christianity that is seemingly holy but is not. Self-serving, narcissistic, and has nothing to do with God and has everything to do with us. And then finally in verse 26 and 12 of Leviticus he says, I will walk among you and be your God and you shall be my people. Who here wants God to walk among them? Are you crazy? No, because if you're just reading the book of Leviticus, are you ready for that? I see, I forget, I preached a series of messages on do we want God here? Do we want God now? And I forget the third one, but the eminence of it. Do we realize what we're, God, we want you to be in the middle of our home. Thank God for Jesus. Because there's a lot of things in our homes that aren't real good. We live there. We're people. We make mistakes. We mess up. We say stuff we shouldn't. We get in bad moods. We're irritable. We're controlled by how much sugar we had. Or not. Or wish we had. And all of this stuff happens in our homes. When you have a... I mean, even anything on TV or anything can come in and you say, we want God in our home. Under this book, under this dispensation of the Old Covenant, what they had to do for God to walk among them was real. They were to be distinct. A distinct holy people. Well, lastly, Leviticus is an awesome prefiguring of Christ as the final mediator between God and man, because it says in chapter 17 and 11, for the life of the flesh is in the blood. How about that? And I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. You're going to ask why Jesus had to die for sin. Take him here. Well, I didn't know what was in there. Well, now you can. And build on it, because he is that. It's a beautiful book. I got to hurry. I'm always afraid I won't have enough stuff, and I always got more than you need. Four things that happen when you study Leviticus for more than 10 years. This guy needs a trophy. He's Jay Schuyler's PhD. He got his PhD in, I think, Old Testament studies, and named Leviticus, wrote a commentary on it. But he wrote these four things down. You hunger for God's holiness more frequently, and when you read Leviticus, you will. I'm gonna come back to that. You fear God more greatly. I mean, we just read a few things, and I'm saying, when you go pray tonight, you remember what God said about it, and you thank Jesus a lot more than you might, right? You love Jesus more deeply. You love your neighbor more fully. This is cool. I thought maybe we ought to do this. I'll ask you when I read the story if you guys want to try this out, okay? Imagine the entire church trying this for a week. So he taught a seminary class and he said, I once taught a semester-long seminary class on Leviticus. Wow. Yes, people actually did sign up. One of the last assignments of the class was to follow as many of the laws of Leviticus as possible for an entire week. This is, of course, something many Jews do regularly, even today, but for the Gentile seminary students, most of whom had never seen, or most of whom had never thought twice about having bacon with their eggs, that just seems wrong not to, but this was a daunting task, okay? I mean, you get an egg McMuffin, they put stuff on it, right? During that week, the students had to keep a journal of their experience and turn it in to me. There were understandable frustrations. One student noted, Leviticus 19.19 says not to wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. This has to be a lady. That wipes out my entire wardrobe. Men don't say wardrobe. So that wipes out my entire wardrobe with the exception of a pair of polyester track pants. This is going to be a long week. That's what she wrote. Because she had mixed fabrics and you can't have mixed fabrics, okay? But by far the most common theme, he writes, of the journals went something like this. Now get this. This is why I'm reading this to you guys. Every day I found myself focused on thinking about ritual purity and impurity. Partway through the week, I realized that I was thinking about these things all day long and in every aspect of my life. And that's when it hit me. God cares a lot about our purity and holiness. Not just from a ritual perspective, but also from a moral perspective. All day long and in every aspect of life, the Lord wants me to pursue purity in my heart, in my life, and in my actions. He wants me to reflect His holiness in all that I do. I have been treating holiness way too lightly, they wrote. Oh Lord, help me to be holy. That's the kind of prayer you begin to pray when you soak in Leviticus. Do you think we, you see how following that made them more aware? And that's what the purpose of those things were to the Leviticus, to the Israelites. It made them hypersensitive and aware to how distinctly different they were supposed to be. The structure of Leviticus is, I'm gonna say simple, it's not. Now, this may or may not mean anything to you, but the structure of Leviticus is written as a chiasm. And the word chiasm comes from the Greek letter chi, because they don't have an X per se, they don't say X, it's chi, so chiasm. It looks like a squiggly X, like a couple of strands of DNA a little bit. But what you have is a compare and contrast in a way of writing that causes you to see the beauty of the sides of the similarities. One through seven, notice, ritual sacrifices is what we're gonna get into. The trespass, all the offerings and stuff. But then if you get it to the end of the book, chapters 23 and 27, you have a ritual calendar. The sacrifices, the calendar of the feast days and stuff. And then back over here, you have the ordination of priests. But then in 21 through 22, you have the qualification for priests, right? And then in 11 through 15, you have the laws about ritual purity. And then in verses 18 through 20, you have the laws about moral purity. And sandwiched right in the middle of it all is the day of atonement. There's only one person that can hold all that together, Jesus. And see, I don't know how you can look at this and not see Jesus in the middle of it all. It's a beautiful thing. I got that off the Bible project. Structures Leviticus, the structure Highlights three main solutions to the relational rupture between God and Israel and you're going to stand a little bit about that in a second So there's we're going to be talking about rituals priests and purity think of that rituals priests and purity you think that doesn't sound very interesting That doesn't sound like just trust me and we'll follow along together. It's it's going to be a fascinating journey because all of those things combined to get us close to God and in Christ we have that and The name of the book, how about that? You might like this. The first word of the book serves as its title, which was the Lord called, or in the Hebrew it would simply be called. So it's Vayiqra is how you say that, Vayiqra. That's the Hebrew title of the book, Vayiqra, not Valkyrie. or victory, but Vayikra. Now, the English title Leviticus is borrowed from the Latin Vulgate translation, which in turn had adapted it from the Septuagint, which would be of or relating to the Levites, Leviticus, if you will, and the early Greek version of the Pentateuch. But the Hebrew title is he called or called Vayikra. Now, the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tabernacle of meeting. So what do you think the theme of the book would be then? Holiness. Holiness is the major theme of Leviticus. The word holy occurs 152 times in 27 chapters. Kedosh. That's a lot. Dr. Randall Smith, when I've been reading, says holiness, and I love his definition here, holiness is distinctiveness from the world's pattern based on a biblical worldview. That's what you get out of Leviticus. Holiness is distinctiveness from the world's pattern based on a biblical worldview. So for them, OK, they didn't take bacon with their eggs. I don't do a lot of things that others do around me. I don't have dietary laws, but what I do, I mean I might, it depends, right? Because if my goal is to be distinct and Christ-like, I may not do what the other group or what others in the group are doing because of it. And that's going to make me, well, it's going to give me distinctiveness from the world's pattern based on a biblical worldview. Well, hey, Mickey, everyone else at the table had marijuana in their hand. Why didn't you? Well, first, I didn't know that was going to happen. And second, I don't do drugs. Why not? Because I have a biblical worldview. My body's a symbol of the Holy Spirit. I'm supposed to reflect Jesus Christ. Why would I do that? Well, you're in the wrong place. Tell me about it. Okay, that's happened to me before. Not that part, but I'm just saying. How you live is going to show if Christ is real in you or not. So try to remember that holiness is distinctiveness from the world's pattern based on a biblical worldview. So the first problem Leviticus seeks to overcome. In Exodus chapter 40 and verse 34 and 35, we begin with this. The cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tabernacle of meeting. Because the cloud rested above it and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And I'm thinking, he was just on the mountain with all the stuff and the scary thick clouds and fire. all the shaking he was just there and then now he can't go in I've read everything there is to read well obviously not but all I have on trying to explain this I don't know why he wasn't able to enter except for the fact that this little tabernacle this tent was small and God in what we call the Shekinah glory, filled it up. There wasn't any room for Moses in there, okay? Now, there's a lot right there we've gotta stop, but the point is Moses is on the outside, okay? God's on the inside. How does Moses ever get there? Because, funny thing is, if you go to Numbers, Chapter 1, it says, now the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the tabernacle. So he went from out to in. How did that happen? Because of Leviticus, because of the covering. Sinful man has to be covered. Moses was a man. He'd come down off the mountain. What did they do? They broke the covenant before they even got delivered. Moses himself had anger problems. He smoked the rock. So he smoked. Pull out your King James lexicon. Strike. Okay. He struck the rock thrice. And he was not permitted to go into the land after all that with all those people. I probably would have had another meltdown. Point is, Leviticus makes the way, the beautiful way. The first problem Leviticus seeks to overcome is God is here, man is over here. The tabernacle, if you know anything at all about how this worked, was directly in the middle of the camp, surrounded by the tribes. He was directly in the middle. God wants to be in the middle of our lives. And Leviticus shows that so well. But he's also holy. So it's like the Evangecube. How does a sinful man come to know a holy God? Well, through Christ. And what we see in Leviticus is a picture of Jesus showing up. All of that to bring us nearer. So what I see is the theme of holiness and the great desire of God wanting to be with His people. So you can't leave this and think, well that's just Old Testament hard stuff. That doesn't sound hard to me. That sounds encouraging to me. God wants to be in the middle of your life and He's made the provision, Christ. You have to have a covering because He's holy. As we begin to embark on this journey, we're going to begin to look at all the different offerings. There's five of them. Amazingly enough, the Hebrew names from them are actually way more interesting than the English ones. And they give a lot more insights to them. But we're just going to see how this goes. but I will not spend too much time on things that aren't of, well, gosh, I gotta be careful there. We're just gonna do it as best we can. And notice the overall theme of God wanting to be with us. It's very encouraging. So how about this to close? Who all here wants to try to take this next week and keep as many of the Levitical laws as possible? and keep a journal, and then get up here on Sunday and see how you've done, okay? Right, who wants to do that? No, no, okay, all right. Do what? I don't think I can, because see, I have baldness and I've already disqualified. So, no, I don't know if that's true, but if I could leave you with this thought, when you go home tonight to pray, Think about how you can do that. Because guess where that dwelling of God is now? If you're in Christ, it's in here. That that was in the tabernacle? And when you say, oh Lord God, thank you for letting me come into your presence by the blood of Christ, my covering. I beseech you, whatever you want to say, but that's how you're there. Now try that on. You have to have a covering.