Reading God's word beginning in Leviticus 1 and verse 1, then the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting saying, speak to the sons of Israel. And I think I'll stop there. This is the word of God. Please be seated. All right, now, last week, I focused on that expression, the tent of meeting. And I showed you from Exodus 29, the reason it's called the tent of meeting is not just because God said he would meet with Moses there and speak to him, which he did. And remember, this book, the book of Leviticus, contains more of God's direct words than any other book in the Bible. Most of it is words that God spoke to Moses and Moses recorded by inspiration is given to us. But God said not just that he would meet with Moses at the tent, but that he would meet with all of Israel. And that's why I spent so much time talking about the premise that fellowship with God is central to biblical religion. God was the one who instructed them to build the tabernacle so that he could meet with his people there and have fellowship with them. And before we go on, just one additional application, and it's something you hear a lot, but I think in connection with this idea of fellowship with God, beloved, fellowship and communion between persons requires communication. By definition, it requires communication. That's why when we this summer were thinking about marriage, one of the things I stressed, if a husband and wife are going to have an intimate, loving union, as God intends, it requires working at communication. And that's why the word and prayer are so essential in the Christian life, in biblical religion, because those are the means of communication. God speaking to us in the word. in our responding and speaking to God in prayer. And so prayer is not merely or mainly just a way to get our needs and others' needs met. Now, it is that. And we're told that we're to pray, we're to make our needs known, and we're to pray for one another. And that's a great blessing, but it's not primarily just that. And the Word is not just a guidebook for life, though it is that. But it's not just, how do I deal with this problem? How do I get from here to there? It's not just that. More importantly, they are means of personal fellowship with the living God. Remember, Jesus said, my sheep, hear my voice. And that's what we should pray for and long for when we read the word, when we hear the word preached and taught, Lord, let me hear your voice speaking in there. And when we pray, we should be not content just to go through the motions, not just to go to church. Not just to read our Bibles and to say our prayers. We should do that, but we ought to be seeking to actually meet with God in those activities. And if we're going to church and reading our Bibles and saying our prayers, but not having some fellowship with God, then ultimately we're missing the point. Remember, even Absalom wasn't content to live in Jerusalem without seeing the king. After he was exiled and brought back, he was able to live in Jerusalem, but he didn't have access to David. And then he had his servants burn Joab's fields to get Joab's attention so that Joab would see that he had the right to see the king. And you and I ought not to be content to live in Jerusalem, to come to church and all that and less without being able to see the king himself. So personal fellowship is central. Remember in Jeremiah 9.23, The Lord through the prophets said, let not a wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me. So that ought to be our great goal in our spiritual and religious life. Well, let's go on to the second point here, and that is that sovereign grace is foundational. If fellowship with God is central to biblical religion, sovereign grace is foundational. It underlies biblical religion. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, by sovereign, I mean free and voluntary. It speaks about God taking the initiative, not because He has to, not because He owes it to me or to any man, not because it's His duty to do so. I think it was a Frenchman, and I'm sorry I can't give you the name, who said, God will forgive, that's His job. Somebody spoke to him about his sins. He said, God will forgive, that's not His, I mean, that's His job. You know, that's not His job. God's job is to punish sin. As the great governor of the world, who's given to man His perfect law, His holy law, to whom we owe our love and our obedience and our worship, God's job is to punish sin, not necessarily forgive it. Now He does, praise the Lord, He does forgive it, but not because it's His job, not because He has to. but because He freely has chosen to do so. And by sovereign, I'm stressing this freedom. It's something God does because He chooses to, not because He has to. He's just as free not to do it. And by grace, I mean that it's not based upon any good in us. In fact, it's in spite of all the badness in us, in spite of what we deserve, in spite of the fact we deserve His judgment and His wrath, He graciously forgives. And so my point is, this sovereign grace, God's freely, in spite of who and what we are, Bringing us into fellowship with Himself is the foundation of all biblical religion. Now, how do we see it here in this passage? Well, I think we see it because God is the one who calls and summons Moses. The Lord called to Moses, and He summoned him. He spoke to him from the tent and said, Go, speak to the sons of Israel. And He's going to give them instructions as to how they can approach Him in order to have fellowship with Him. It was God's initiative to make this fellowship with him possible. And remember, God was the one who sent Moses against his will to bring the people out and to bring them to Mount Sinai. God was the one who said, build me a tabernacle so that I can dwell in the midst of you. Neither Moses nor Israel could have demanded these things from God. God, you owe me, get down here and deliver us from Egypt. No, it was because God, at His initiative, undertook to do these things graciously. And my point, beloved, that it's not true just as we look at God's dealings with the people of Israel, but it's true from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden. God came saying, Adam, where are you? Now, you know that God knew very well where Adam was. That's a rhetorical question. It's a question that's asked not to get information, but to make a point. God was the one, when Adam heard God, he and Eve, for the first time, experiencing guilt and shame and fear, had hidden, and God comes seeking them out. It was God, when He got their confession of their sin, who gave them promises of a Savior. It was God who symbolically clothed them, who made a covering. They couldn't make a covering that was adequate to cover their nakedness, but God did. Not judging them the way they deserve, but graciously seeking them out. providing for their needs. It was God who called Abraham out of idolatry. Now recently many of us have read Genesis chapter 12 and those wonderful verses that describe the call of Abraham. The Lord said to Abram, go forth from your country, from your relatives, from your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will bless you and make a great nation of you and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. But do you realize that God called Abraham out of idolatry? Genesis 12 doesn't say that, but in Joshua 24, at the end of his life, Joshua's speaking to the people of Israel, and he says, Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham, and they served other gods. then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river and led him through all the land, etc. He describes our situation as being idolaters, serving other gods, and then God made Himself known. He took the initiative to call Abram and to make those promises. In Deuteronomy 7, where Moses is preparing the new generation of Israelites to cross the river and possess the land. He says, You're a people holy to the Lord your God, for the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set His love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. It is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath he swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love." He traces their choosing not to them and anything in them. In other places he'll say you're not only fewest in number but you're a stiff-necked people. It wasn't because of some good in them, it's traced back to God. It's because God loved you and chose you. And it's so in the New Testament as well. Again, my point in doing this is showing you it's not just here, but it's throughout the Bible, throughout redemptive history. Jesus told his disciples in John 15, 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit. In 1 John 4, John says, And this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. But especially in Ephesians, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly places with every spiritual blessing in Christ, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, the praise of His glorious grace." And so again, Paul traces the salvation of the Ephesians and all of us back to God Himself before the foundation of the world, His sovereign grace. And that's why in heaven, beloved, Listen to what John says as he looks into heaven and sees the angels and the saints worshiping around the throne. This is Revelation 7, verse 9. After this, I looked and behold a great multitude that no one can number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice. What are they crying out? Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. Nobody's saying, right here, I did it. I knew a good deal. I recognized a good deal when I heard it and I came and believed. Now, in a sense, it's true. We do come and we believe. We repent and we believe. But ultimately, the reason why we do is traceable to God's gracious initiative. They're ascribing salvation to God. He's the one who gets all the glory because from start to finish, salvation is His. There's a wonderful illustration in Ezekiel's prophecy. Ezekiel was sent, I mentioned this briefly this morning, largely to rebuke the people of his day because of their idolatry and their unfaithfulness. And the Lord speaks to him in chapter 16 and he says, Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations. And say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites. Your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite." In other words, you've got an unsavory past here. As for your birth on the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were your eyes washed, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. All the usual things that they would do for a baby, that a loving, caring mother would do for her baby when it was born, says none of that was done for you. No, I pitted you to do any of these things out of compassion for you, but you were cast out in the open field, for you abhorred on the day that you were born. And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, live. I said to you in your blood, live. And he goes on to talk about how he cherished this. And again, he's using an analogy, a metaphor, but notice the picture. Here's a helpless baby cast out, no demands, and He simply passes by in His grace. says live. And he talks of how he took her for his bride and then she later rejected him as a picture of their idolatry. But you see here the grace that's implied in God's choosing and saving his people. By way of application, brothers and sisters, let me just say that this is a fact upon which you and I should reflect often. The fact that if we are in fellowship with God through Jesus Christ, that ultimately it's because of His doing. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, God is faithful by whom you are called into fellowship with our Lord Jesus Christ. If you're a Christian tonight, ultimately you have God to thank and God to praise for. And so that ought to be something upon which we meditate often with wonder. It's amazing that the great God should love sinners and save us. We should meditate upon it with humility. Now, you sometimes hear of people being accused of proud Calvinists, and there may be reasons why Calvinists think they have a basis for pride, but I always think a proud Calvinist is a very inconsistent Calvinist. If we understand Calvinism, it cuts away any reason for pride. I mean, the fact that God should choose us in spite of all the reasons why He shouldn't, it should fill us with profound humility. It should also fill us with praise and thanksgiving. It should be a constant matter of our thanksgiving and praise that He has seen fit to include us in His family and to bring us, to make us His children in fellowship with Himself. It ought to be a great encouragement and comfort and a source of confidence Paul in Philippians 1, writing to the Philippians, said, I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. You know, there are some who say that, well, okay, God does the first part, but it's up to us to complete the work of salvation. We have to continue, and there's a sense in which we do have to continue. The Bible says we have to persevere in believing, but at the end of the day, if it weren't for His grace, I wouldn't have any hope, but the fact that He has called us ought to be a great encouragement that He who began a good work in us will complete it, too, the day of Jesus Christ. And it ought to be a motivation to pursue personal fellowship with Him because that's what He's called us to. That's what He's chosen us for. That's the whole point here in Leviticus. He's called these people. He set them apart to be His holy people and He's going to dwell in the midst of them and they're going to have fellowship with Him like no other nation. And the whole point of Leviticus is to explain how that's possible, how that's going to happen. And so it ought to be an encouragement to us. that this great God has seen fit to call us into fellowship with Himself. And so, I've done this very briefly, but I've tried to make the case that if fellowship with God is central to biblical religion, that foundational to it, the only way that's possible is not because we could take a vote and we could have a referendum and make God do it, but because He has chosen to Himself. at his own initiative. And that brings me briefly to the third point here, and that is that mediatorial ministry is essential to biblical religion. Notice, now the word mediator means a go-between. Someone between two parties, and it generally implies two parties who are at odds, who are hostile to each other. Someone between them to try to reconcile them and bring them back into fellowship. And notice here that God is working through a mediator. God called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting saying, you go speak to the sons of Israel and say to them and Moses is going to be the one who receives God's word and he goes and speaks it to the children of Israel. Now, why didn't God just tell Israelites himself? He did it with the Ten Commandments. He spoke those words audibly Himself from heaven. Maybe you don't remember why. This is Exodus 20, 18. After God had spoken the ten words, it says, now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid or terrified. They trembled and they stood far off and said to Moses, you speak to us and we'll listen, but don't let God speak to us lest we die. And so the people stood far off and Moses drew near. They themselves now had some sense of the greatness of God, the God that they were dealing with, and they were overwhelmed by it, and they had a sense that we need somebody else to be between us. And so they themselves asked that Moses would serve as a mediator, and God agreed and said, yeah, actually, that's a good plan. Earlier, Job in Job 9, it said, as he was wrestling with all that had befallen him, he was crying out, there is no arbiter, no umpire between us who might lay his hand on both of us. He said, I need somebody. I need a go-between between me. God is so great and I'm so small. I need someone to mediate between us. He had a sense of the need for that. Beloved of the New Testament says, there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. And we see in Jesus Christ a perfect mediator, the one perfectly equipped because He is at the same time Almighty God and one of us, the only one equipped to be our go-between, to bridge the gap between us and God. And that, from the beginning, is part of how God has dealt to bring people into fellowship with Him, is through a mediator. It's interesting, we'll go on and see in chapter 1, He talks a lot about a priest. In the Old Testament, there were several mediators. The king, in some sense, was the one who ruled for God. The priest, the prophet, was the one who revealed God's will. Andrew's having a bad night. He may wish he had a mediator before it's all over here. Mandy's having a bad night, too. But this need for a mediator in Leviticus 1, as we go on, God's going to begin to talk about the priest. The priest was a mediator who would mediate between God and men. And that's another essential part of biblical religion, is the mediator between God and His people. In our day and time, we read about Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice, and I'm sure we'll read about Senator Hillary Clinton doing the same thing, going and traveling around the world to meet with different parties, sometimes maybe parties that we have disagreements with, sometimes two nations. And the point of these meetings is to try to bring them together. And the Bible tells us that we need a mediator because we're at odds with God. We've incurred His wrath through our sin and rebellion and that we have, He's provided that mediator in our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, this goes very much against our modern American democratic humanistic mindset. Why do I need a mediator to approach God? Why can't I simply approach Him on my own when and how I want to? I mean, we tend to think that way. for several reasons. First of all, because we tend to have too inflated a view of man. We tend to think too much of ourselves. I mean, after all, we've put a man on the moon, and we've put a space station and a Hubble telescope in space, and we've discovered cures for many diseases, and we've done remarkable things, skyscrapers and so many other things. And so we tend to have too high, too inflated a view of ourselves. God ought to be glad if I want to have fellowship with Him. He should be grateful if I want to approach Him and worship Him and so on. That's how we tend to think. But it's also because we have too low a view of God. The reason we think so highly of ourselves is because we don't think nearly of God as we ought to. You see again and again in the Bible when people begin to get a glimpse of God as He really is, whether it's the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai, or whether it's Isaiah in the temple when he sees the vision of the Lord high and lifted up, or even the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration when Jesus is revealed in His glory and they go face down when men begin to see God as He really is, then they realize why they are small and need a mediator. when we recognize His infinite greatness, that He's just so much incomprehensibly bigger than we are. The psalmist in Psalm 8, when I consider thy heavens the work of your fingers, what is man that you care for him or the son of man that you think about him? And especially when we consider His awesome holiness. the fact that He is a God who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. Our God is a consuming fire. And when we consider God's greatness and His holiness, then we begin to realize why it's not our place to approach Him as we want, when and how we want to in our terms. We don't dictate terms to Him. No, we need a mediator. And we can praise God that He has made personal fellowship possible. He didn't have to do it, but He has done it. by providing an all-sufficient mediator in our Lord Jesus Christ. As I mentioned, in His person as the God-man, He's perfectly suited to be our mediator. And in His offices as prophet, priest, and king, He's made a perfect sacrifice for us. He is able to reveal God to us because He is God, He knows the mind of God, and He's able to rule over us as well. And that's why, beloved, Christianity alone is the true religion. Now again, that sounds offensive to modern ears, to be so narrow, to be so exclusive, to say this is the way and the only way. But it is, and there's a reason why. It's not just that I happen to be a Christian, and I want to write off everybody who thinks otherwise. It's rooted in the nature of God Himself, because God is who He is. great and holy, and we are who we are, small and sinful. And we can't approach Him. We can't demand anything of Him. And He has seen fit to provide a way, but there's only one way. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me." Now that's Jesus' words. And that's why Jesus' mediatorial work, not just Jesus teaching, not just Jesus doing good deeds, healing the sick and feeding the hungry. We praise God for that. It's wonderful. But that's not the centerpiece. It's Jesus on the cross. Jesus suffering and dying. That's at the heart of biblical Christianity. And it's the heart of the gospel. That is the good news. You take that away. What good news do we have to tell people? But in the gospel, we say God has provided a way that you can have fellowship with Him in time and eternity, and all you have to do is receive that gift by trusting in His Son. And so, beloved, you and I need to take full advantage of this God-given mediator in our life and our walk with God. How? Well, I mentioned, I alluded to it briefly when we talked about question 87, in our initial faith and trust in Jesus Christ. If you've never given your heart and your life to Him, if you've never put your faith in Him to save you, it's one thing to say, I believe that Jesus is a Savior. I believe that He's the Savior, but it's something else. Martin Luther said many people are lost because they can't use personal pronouns. They can't say, He's my Savior. And so the first thing is to realize that, like all the rest of us, you need a mediator. God is so great you can't approach Him on equal terms, and He's provided the mediator in Christ. And so, say, Lord Jesus, be my mediator. Forgive me. Give me a new heart and help me to know and love God and to walk with Him." And so that's the first thing, if you've never done that, by that initial repentance and faith and coming to Christ as your mediator. But then there's, as I said earlier, a continual using Christ as our mediator. Beloved, you and I never outgrow our need for Jesus Christ. Now, I don't know what heaven will be like. Certainly, part of the glory of heaven, we won't struggle with sin, we won't have temptations around us, we won't have temptations inside us. So we won't need forgiveness then the way we do now. But I'm confident, again, as we look into heaven, we see the redeemed praising the Redeemer for their redemption. But certainly here and now, every day, every moment, we continue to need a mediator. We continue to struggle with sin. We need forgiveness. We need strength and grace. And so we have to, day by day, hour by hour, continue to look to Jesus Christ. But as we do, we will find in Him everything we need to walk with God. And in prayer, Jesus said, "'Hitherto you've asked nothing in my name. Ask, and it will be given to you that your joy may be full.'" That's why we pray in the name of Jesus. What that means is, Lord, I'm not offering these prayers based on my merit. You shouldn't answer just because of anything in me, but because of Jesus, because of His merits, I'm asking. and not just our prayers, but even more importantly, His prayers. Part of what He does as our mediator is to continue to pray for us. at the right hand of God, where all of His prayers are answered. He is one mind, one will with the Father, so He never prays anything that's at odds with the Father's will, and He prays for your and my salvation, our preservation from the devil and from sin, and our strength to persevere until He gets us safely home to heaven. as our mediator king, our priest king, he reigns at the right hand of God, ordering all things for our good. And so, as I said at the beginning, why study the book of Leviticus? Well, one of the many ways it will help us is by enabling us to understand and appropriate more fully Christ's work as our mediator, through whom you and I have fellowship with God, which is the heart and soul of biblical religion. So, I hope these three principles will be helpful to you, and I hope you'll see them worked out as we begin our study, Lord willing, next week in this first chapter of this great book. Amen.