To understand the Jewish religion in the Old Testament, it is absolutely imperative that you understand the book of Leviticus. In order to understand at least the first part of the book of Leviticus, it is absolutely essential that you understand the last part of the book of Exodus. Now let me explain what I mean. The Book of Exodus is about the exodus from Egypt. It's the story of the plagues and the journey across the Red Sea into the wilderness. Then the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. But when you get to chapter 25, from chapter 25 to the end of the book in chapter 40, Moses gives the blueprint and construction of the tabernacle, but doesn't tell you what it's for. He just tells you, this is the blueprint, and that almost sounds like a duplication, and then they construct it bit by bit, piece by piece. It is the book of Leviticus, at least the opening chapters, that tell you what to do with the tabernacle. So to understand the latter part of Exodus and the first part of Leviticus, you need to put the two together. So let me back up and start with the last half of the last quarter of Exodus. And then I want to give you an overview of the whole book of Leviticus. What is it about? Well, let's go back to Exodus. The tabernacle, actually was a tent, and it was divided into two compartments. The first part was called the Holy Place, and the next compartment was called the Holiest of Holies, and there was a veil between the two to separate the two. In that first part was three items of furniture. In the last part, the Holiest of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant And in that little chest was the Ten Commandments, a copy of the Ten Commandments, and in that compartment was the presence of God. Now that tent sat in a courtyard. The courtyard was 150 feet long, and if you're like me, you don't judge distance very well, so let me remind you that a football field is 300 feet long, so it would have been half the distance of a football field. It was 75 feet wide. Now, a football field is wider than that, so it wouldn't have been as wide. It was a narrow courtyard. That whole courtyard is called the tabernacle. That tent in the back of the courtyard is called the tabernacle. Very confusing. It's like New York. Is that a city? Suppose I told you New York is in New York. Well, to a foreigner, that might sound very confusing, except one is a city and the other is the state. Well, the tent called the tabernacle is in the courtyard called the tabernacle. And you distinguish the two by looking at the context. That little tent in the back was only 45 feet out of the 150 by 15 feet. And it was 15 feet high. The fence around it was seven and a half feet high. Now you're going to get lost in all those numbers. Here's what you need to remember. As you walked in the courtyard, the first thing you encountered was a brazen altar where there were sacrifices. More about that in a minute. Only the people, the people could go that far, but they couldn't go any further. The next item in the courtyard was a brazen altar made out of brass, bronze. where the priest washed himself in a ceremony. Only the priest could go that far, the people couldn't. Then you come to this tent that I just mentioned, and once a day, the priest would go in the tent, in fact, twice a day, and light the candlestick, which was in that first compartment. Once a week, they would change the bread on the table, and then there was an altar of incense where they burned incense. Then, in the last compartment of the tent, was the holiest of holies with the Ark of the Covenant. Is that all in your head? It's because you saw the model I built, right? All right, then how do you put all that together? Well, spiritually, that probably signifies you have to, if the Lord is in the back tent, you approach the Lord first by a sacrifice, a blood sacrifice. Then there's cleansing. And then, well, Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus is the bread of life. And Jesus is our intercessor. So many expositors have said the basic outline of the tabernacle is simply that, that we're first converted and then we're cleansed. We get our feet dirty and we need to have our feet washed. And then there is communion with the Lord. That's the basic idea of Now, that takes us to the book of Leviticus. What is the book of Leviticus all about? If I had to choose a subject for the book of Leviticus, I would say you need to look at chapter 11, verse 44. and 45, where Moses records the Lord as saying, for I am the Lord your God. You should therefore consecrate yourself to me and you should be holy for I am holy. Neither should you defile yourself with any creeping thing that creeps on the earth. For I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You therefore shall be holy for I am holy. That is the message of the book of Leviticus. I'm holy, you are to be holy because I redeemed you out of Egypt and I am your God. The question is, what does he mean by holy? The Hebrew word simply means to be set apart. So the Lord says, you're to be set apart to me. And that means, of course, that you do those things that I tell you to do. So that the book of Leviticus is all those things that the Lord tells the children of Israel to do so that they will be set apart to him. To put that in historical context, he is saying, you are not like the other nations. You're set apart to me. You are to be my people. I'm to be your God. So you're not to act like them. You're not to participate in their pagan religion. You're to do things that relate you to me. Now, what are those things? And that encompasses the 27 chapters of the Book of Leviticus. Frankly, this book does not lend itself to a neat literary organization. The first time anybody ever explained a whole book to me all at once was Five years after I became a Christian, I actually was in seminary, and we had something called special Bible lectures in which they would bring in a Bible teacher, and he would take a book of the Bible and take two weeks of chapels to teach it. The first one I recall was Dr. Charles Feinberg, a converted Jewish fellow who's now with the Lord, and he taught the book of Exodus. Now, I'd been a Christian. I'd gone to a Christian college for four years. I'd heard preachers preach and they usually took one verse and departed from it. So I'm used to thinking of the Bible in terms of verses. He took the whole book of Exodus and put it in the palm of my hand, real simply. I'd never seen that done before. And he simply said, in the first part of this book, They were in Egypt. In the second part of this book, they were in the wilderness at Mount Sinai. And I'm sorry, the second part of the book, they're in the wilderness. And the third part of the book, they are at Sinai. And that is exactly what's going on in that book. They're in Egypt. There's the Exodus in chapter 12. And then they're wandering through the wilderness till they get to Mount Sinai. And then beginning in chapter 19, the Lord, they're at Sinai and the Lord gives them the law, gives Moses the law to give to them. And they go up to the top of, he goes up to the top of Mount Sinai and gets the law, not just the 10 commandments, but more than that. And he gets all the instructions for the tabernacle. But what just, I stood in awe. I saw the whole book in Egypt, in the wilderness, at Sinai. You got Exodus? Well, Leviticus doesn't lend itself to quite that kind of analysis. There are other books like this. Some books are easy to organize, others are difficult. Well, this one is a little tricky. Grappling with this, I am gonna make a suggestion. There are other ways to divide the book, but I'm gonna make a suggestion. The closest thing to an organizational principle in the book is the repetition of the phrase, and the Lord said, and the Lord said. And it's just a series of instructions. It could be called and has been called the manual of the Old Testament ritual. This is the manual for how you do all the things that constituted the Jewish religion in the Old Testament. All right, having said that, I'm going to try to simply organize all those rituals, all those commandments. I'm going to do it like this. It seems to me that in chapters 1 through 16, there are ceremonial laws Then beginning in chapter 17 and going through 27, there are moral laws. All right, let me repeat that. In one to 16, there are ceremonial laws, rituals, if you will. And in 17 to 27, there are moral laws. Now let me pause here for a second. I've said two things in the last few minutes. What's the subject of the book of Leviticus? Do you forget already? Holy, okay. Now I just gave you a two-point outline. So the idea is this, if you keep these ceremonial laws, you are holy. If you keep these moral laws, you are holy. To say that same thing another way, if you keep these ceremonial laws, you are separated to me. Nobody else does this, you do this. And if you keep these moral laws, you're separated to me. The Gentiles and the pagans don't do this. You do because you are the children of Israel that I redeemed out of Egypt. Now, having said that, I'm going to then go back and take each of these major points and put little sub points under them. For example, the first part of this book are the ceremonial laws. That includes the sacrifices, the priesthood, the difference between clean and unclean, and the day of atonement. Now I'm gonna go through these one by one so you don't have to remember all that. The first thing he does is he deals with sacrifices. As a matter of fact, He does that in chapters one through seven. Now, there are five sacrifices. I remember I told you a minute ago that the tabernacle was this big courtyard. When you walked in the gate, the first thing you encountered was the brazen altar. On that brazen altar, the people could offer one of five sacrifices. Now as I went through the book we went through these one at a time. What I'm going to do now is just summarize all five of them. The first was a burnt offering. The burnt offering was either of a bullock, sheep, a goat, a turtle dove, or a young pigeon. It was the only one of the five offerings where the whole offering was burned. It was completely, entirely burned up. The purpose of this offering is never clearly stated in the Old Testament. More about that in a minute, but the Old Testament just says there is a sacrifice called the burnt offering. The second sacrifice or offering could be called the meal offering. The meal offering was a fine flour or dried ears of corn. The fire only consumed a portion of the meal offering and the rest of it was given to the priest. I wonder if that's how the priest made up his meals. I mean, can you imagine a priest doing this all day and getting all these meal offerings and taking all that food home? That's like the church having a potluck and they send all the leftovers home with the preacher. At any rate, he got the meal, what was left of the meal offering. The third offering was called the peace offering. Actually, there were several different kinds of peace offering. There was a thank offering, a free will offering, and an offering for vows. It was either from the herd or the flock, and it could be either a male or a female. the peculiarity of the peace offering was that the breast of the animal was waved and the shoulder of the animal was heaved. Sounds strange, but the priest would take the breast of the thing and wave it back and forth, and then he would heave it up and down the shoulder. So that was peculiar to this particular offering. The breast and the shoulder went to the priest. So he's got now a pretty good meal coming, meat as well as protein. I mean, protein in the meat and then the flour and corn to go with it. The remainder of the sacrifice, except for that which was burnt, was consumed by the one making the sacrifice and his family, and there are some restrictions to that, but that's basically it. So the priest got the shoulder and the breast, some of it was burnt, and some of it went to the one making the offering, and he could take it home and he and his family could eat it. So, it's the only one of the five offerings in which the person who made the offering partook of it. It's the only one of the five. Number four, there was a sin offering. The sin offering was for sins of ignorance in the Old Testament. So, at this point now, the shedding of blood is directly connected with sin. It may be connected in the burn offering, but the scripture doesn't say that. Like it says, it even calls this the sin offering. The fifth and final sacrifice was the trespass offering. It was offered in case that you trespassed holy things, you were dishonest, a falsehood and a trust, robbery, deceit. those kinds of things. This demonstrated the need for restitution so that the sin offering was, you need to be forgiven before God, but if you committed certain sins among the people, you needed to restore them and make this offering. Now, let me ask you a question. What was the purpose of all these offerings? What did the Lord tell them was the purpose of all these offerings? And the answer to that is in chapter six, verse 15. Look at chapter six, verse 15. He shall take from it his handful of fine flour and grain offering with its oil and all the frankincense, which is on the grain offering, and shall burn it on the altar for a sweet aroma as a memorial to the Lord." Now that's the text that tells us what that offering and no doubt the others are for. They are a memorial for the Lord. Could the blood of the animal sacrifice take away sin? No. but it could remind them that blood had to be shed, a case of the sin offering. These were offerings that were memorials. Now, we are not under the Mosaic law, so we don't, what do we do as a memorial? Do we have any memorials? What are our memorials? What do we remember? That we as Christians have a memorial, things we remember. Yeah, we remember the death of Christ, so the Lord's Supper is a memorial. So what the sacrifices were to them, the Lord's Supper is to us a memorial. Okay, that puts these sacrifices in I think it's historical context. Now let me go beyond that a bit. After all, they were sacrifices, they were offerings. So the New Testament talks about offerings, sacrifices that we give, and it doesn't mention animals, it doesn't mention a meal offering, it doesn't mention a sin offering. because the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin, but it still tells us to give offerings to the Lord. So how would you like to know what our offerings are? There are several places in the New Testament that tells us. But turn to Hebrews chapter 13. Hebrews chapter 13 is one of the passages that mentions several in a row. So I'm gonna look at it. There are others. But look at 13.15. Therefore by him let us continually offer the sacrifice of, Now, if you didn't know the Old Testament, that phrase would sound a little odd. I mean, just think of somebody that has no idea about the sacrifices in the Old Testament, and you tell them, what you need to do is offer the sacrifice a praise. What in the world? You sacrifice money, you sacrifice your time. Why is praise a sacrifice? Well, you're thinking of the word sacrifice, is it costing you something? And the backdrop of the whole book of Hebrews is the Old Testament, and particularly the book of Leviticus. So what he's saying is, we don't take animal sacrifices to the tabernacle, but we do give sacrifices to the Lord. We remember him with praise. Keep reading. It says, offer the sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name. But do not forget to do good. That's a sacrifice. And to share. It's talking about money. That's a sacrifice. For with such sacrifices, God is well pleased. Now, back in the book of Leviticus, the first three offerings were said to be sweet-smelling offerings. And the last two, the sin offering and the trespass offering, were said to be non-sweet-smelling offerings. So the writer to the Hebrews says, you want to give a sacrifice that's sweet-smelling, well-pleasing to the Lord? Here's a list. Praise him. That's the fruit of your lips. Perhaps some of these offerings were to thank the Lord for his harvest. Do good. Give money. Those are sacrifices, offerings, if you will, that are well pleasing to the Lord. Those are sweet smelling offerings to the Lord. All right. How are we doing? So far so good? Ceremonial laws. First, sacrifices, offerings. Offering's probably a better word. You're gonna offer something to the Lord to thank Him as a memorial, as a remembrance of Him, of what He's done, so forth, or in the case of sin and trespass because of that. The second subdivision of the first part of Leviticus is the priesthood. Now, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time here, but verses eight through 10 give us the ceremonial laws for the priesthood. It talks about their consecration in chapter eight, the fact that Aaron and his sons entered into the office in chapter nine, and the sanctification of the priesthood in chapter 10. But what I want you to know remember is just this. We've looked at all the details. Right now I'm just trying to get an overview of Leviticus. And so first we have the sacrifices, and then we have the priesthood, the priest who performed the sacrifices. The individual brought the offering, but the priest put it on the fire. So it's logical that we would deal with the priest. The third subsection of the first part of Leviticus, the ceremonial law, is the difference between clean and unclean. According to Leviticus 11 through 15, some things are clean and some things are unclean. Certain animals were unclean. You touched a dead animal. that made you ceremonially unclean. We're not talking about germs. We're talking about something, God is trying to teach you that some things are dirty, spiritually, and some things are clean, spiritually. So he said, I don't want you to touch a dead animal. And if you touch the dead animal, you had to go through certain rituals to be ceremonially clean again. There were other things. Even childbirth rendered a woman unclean until certain days passed and so forth. Disease of the skin could render you unclean. But the Lord is simply trying to teach that there are clean and unclean things in the world. So parents do this with children. They start teaching them if something falls on the floor, you don't eat it because it is dirty. And what we mean by that is, it's got germs on it. By the way, I read something, you know about the five second rule? That if you get it up within five seconds? I read something the other day that's not true. It's two seconds. Yeah. Shucks, man, all that dirt I've eaten. Thinking I was within the five second rule. All right, but God is trying to teach there are certain things that are unclean and he's doing it in the most concrete fashion. Don't touch that and do this. So it's spiritual, but it's a ceremony, a ritual, that they had to go through that taught a spiritual principle. The third thing that we need to talk about is in the ceremonial law, or I should just say the next thing, is the Day of Atonement, which is in chapter 16. I said, did I say third? It should be fourth. Did I say fourth? Let me review. The sacrifices were first, the priesthood was second, clean and unclean is third, and the day of atonement is number four. Four little sub points under the first division of the book. Now, what do we make of the day of atonement? Big deal in Israel, even till this day. So what are we to make of the day of atonement? I now don't have to guess I've got help. Would you like to know what the Lord said was going on here? Turn to Hebrews chapter nine. Hebrews chapter nine. And I'm gonna read beginning in verse nine. Hebrews chapter 9 verse 9. Now what he does in the first eight verses is he describes the tabernacle. Then picking up in verse 9 he says, it was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices were offered. So he says, he just described the tabernacle, and he says in Hebrews 9, 9, that was all a symbol. It was all symbolic. It was an illustration. It was a figure. Illustration would be a good word. in which they offered sacrifices. Then he says, none of those sacrifices could make him that performed the service perfect pertaining to the conscience. It only concerned with foods and drinks and various washings and fleshly ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation. But Christ came as high priest of good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, nor of the blood of goats and calves, but of his own blood he entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctified to the purifying of the flesh, How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Ah. Drop down to verse 24. For Christ was not entered the holy place made with hands, which is a copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Not that he offered himself often as the high priest entered into the most holy place every year with blood of another. He then would have had to suffer once since the foundation of the world, but now once at the end of the age, he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Verse 28, so Christ has offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who wait eagerly for him, he will appear a second time apart from sin for salvation. Now, What he's saying is, and he's talking, especially in the latter part of the chapter, directly about the Day of Atonement. Every Day of Atonement, once a year, the high priest went into the holy place and sprinkled blood. Next year, enter the holy place, holy of holies, sprinkle blood. Next year, enter the holy of holies, sprinkle blood. Next year, enter the holy of holies and sprinkle blood. Wasn't his blood, it was the blood of an animal. The writer to the Hebrew says that was all symbolic. That was all an illustration. That Jesus, as the Lamb of God, shed his own blood and he only did it once. So, the book of Hebrews tells us the meaning of the day of atonement in no uncertain terms. It is the sacrifice of Christ that takes away sin. Many of you have heard of J. Vernon McGee on the radio, pastor for the Church of the Open Door for many years. I had the opportunity to have lunch with him on a number of occasions, and one day we were having lunch together, and he said to me, and I wrote it down, if we studied the book of Leviticus, if the people in Southern California studied the book of Leviticus, there would be no cults. And his point was, the sacrifice reminds us that the forgiveness is by the shedding of blood, not by works. right on. He shed his blood once, it's done. All right, got it? That's the first part of the book. Ceremonial laws, sitting around mainly the tabernacle. Those are some other things involved. The second half of the book pertains to, I'm calling it, moral laws. And some of these laws pertain to the people. Some of these laws pertain to the priest. Some of these laws pertain to the feast. We'll get to that, that's very important. Some of these laws pertain to the land. So that's the division of the second part of the book. People, priest, beast, and land. Those four things are discussed in the second part of this book. All right. When you get to chapters 17 through 20, he gives a bunch of laws for people and concludes food and marriage, behavior, punishment for serious crimes, all those pertain to the people. When you get to chapter 21 and 22, it's laws concerning the priest The priest had a higher standard for even things like mourning at a funeral, or marriage, or his physical condition. And the high priest had an even higher standard for such things as mourning at a funeral and marriage. So only ceremonially clean priest and those properly related to them could eat the sacrificial food, for example, in chapter 22. The sacrificial animals were to be perfect and given according to the timetable because the Bible says the Lord is our God. So my point is that in 21 to 22, we just have various laws concerning the priest. Then it comes to the feast. Ah, this gets important. Chapter 23. Chapter 24. Now, what the Lord did is he established appointed times, appointed days, the most familiar of which is the Sabbath. Once a week, you're to rest on the Sabbath. Then he had appointed times during the year that they were to stop and observe, and sometimes they're called feasts. That is really unfortunate. They should be called festivals. In one case, they fasted, they didn't eat at all. So these are festivals. Now, we as Christians, not because the scripture commands it, but we do observe two appointed times during the year that relate to the Lord. What are they? Christmas and Easter. Got it? All right. In the Old Testament, they had seven. So here's a brief outline of the seven. First of all, they observed Passover, which commemorated getting out of Egypt. That lasted a day. Then, the next day, they had the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and that lasted for seven days. So in the first month, which relates to our March, April, they had an eight-day feast. The first day, just the first day, was called the Passover. The next seven were called the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It was an eight-day thing. As a matter of fact, it was so united, the two were so united that in some cases, It's called the Passover, but it means all eight days. It's a little confusing in some passages. All right, the third feast was the Feast of First Fruits, which came at the end of the harvest. And so they were to give the first fruits to the Lord, recognizing his blessing. The next was sometime later, 50 days after Pentecost, I'm sorry, Passover, they observed Pentecost. Pentecost means 50, it's all it means. So it's 50 days after Passover. Then in the fall of the year, They had three more, trumpets, the day of atonement, and the day, the feast of tabernacles, or I should say the festival of tabernacles. Celebrating in the case of tabernacles, when they left Egypt and they lived in tents, they literally went out and lived in a tent for seven days to remember their journey out of Egypt. So, the question becomes, what's the significance of those things? Well, the New Testament says Jesus is our Passover. The Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost That's interesting. So we got two directly related. It calls the resurrection of Christ first fruits. And the day of atonement was for the nation. And that is usually related to the fact that one day all Israel will return to the Lord. One author said it like this. The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread speak to us of Calvary. Next came the Feast of Firstfruits, pointing to the resurrection of Christ. The Feast of Pen of Cost typifies the coming of the Holy Spirit. Then looking to the future, the Feast of Trumpets pictures the regathering of Israel. The Day of Atonement foreshadows the time when a remnant of Israel will acknowledge Jesus as Messiah. And finally, the Feast of Tabernacles sees Israel enjoying the millennial reign of Christ. Not bad. That's a good summary. I think I might add to that that Passover is the cross and then leaven in the Bible is a picture of sin. So there's the cross and then what do you do? Get the leaven out of your life. You get forgiven and then get the leaven out. Why don't we say, get the lead out? Well, the Bible would say, get the leaven out. Get the leaven out of your life. All right, there's one more. We're talking about the moral law now. Concerns people, concerns the priest, concerns the festivals. Then it concerns the land. God wanted the land to rest. So he created something called the sabbatical year. Every seven years, you were not to plan. I guess you had to trust the Lord, literally. Trust the Lord that year that what grew naturally would be sufficient to sustain you. Then, every 50th year, they were to let the land rest. And that one got real interesting because the year before the 50th is the 49th, and that's the seventh year. So the land would rest for two years. And then on top of that, in the sabbatical, I mean the year of Jubilee, the land returned to its original owner. And you heard me talk about all the ramifications that pertain to that. so that those year observances, the appointed years, was to teach them his ownership and their stewardship. Then he went on to say, you obey all these laws and I'll bless you. You don't obey them, and then there's gonna be discipline. Now, I'm just about done with the book, but I want to talk about that for a second. I think one of the most fascinating things in the whole book of Leviticus is the discipline that he mentions, and it's really, really fascinating. In chapter 26, he says there are five levels of punishment. If you obey me, I'm going to bless you. If you disobey me, there's gonna be increased punishment. So phase one, if you disobeyed the Lord, there would be terror, disease, and fever. He said he would set his face against them and his enemies would defeat, their enemies would defeat them. Phase two is the land would not yield them a good crop in the harvest. Phase three is he would send wild beast Their children, they would lose their children, their flocks would be destroyed, and their highways would be desolate. See how it's getting worse and worse and worse? Phase four was war, plagues, and famine. Phase five is the destruction of Israelite families, idolatrous practices and places, the land, and the people would be scattered out of the land to other nations. That was the ultimate. Now, I just thought that was really fascinating. But isn't that sort of the way we practice that? I mean, parents, you know, their punishments and their levels. And, you know, you might create a level of punishment for that little kid and figure out what the levels are going to be. And they would change as the kid gets older, you know. And maybe the, you know, the ultimate in Israel is you're going to, I'm going to, you didn't do what I told you to do about the land. You didn't let the land rest. I'm going to kick you out of here so it'll rest. And you miss 70 years, so the exile's gonna be 70 years. And I can see a parent doing that. The child gets to be an adult and says, you can't just lay around, do nothing, and stay on drugs all the time. You gotta pay rent, you gotta get a job, and if you don't, you're out the door. I can see that happening. Doesn't that happen at work? I mean don't they teach the HR people, teach the bosses to go through graduated steps and you put a letter in their file and finally you're out the door. Well, I just thought it was really fascinating that that's exactly what's taught in the book of Leviticus. Is that interesting or what? I thought it was. There's one more chapter. Actually, technically, the book of Leviticus ends at the end of chapter 26. The way it's stated, it's the end of the book and it's the end of the Mosaic legislation. And chapter 27 concerns redeeming houses and people and animals and property and tithes and that sort of thing. All right. I usually get to this point and say, how are we doing? Did you get all that? Could you repeat it back to me? Let me summarize it all real quick. What's the subject of the book? Separation under the Lord, right? Now, how do you get separated under the Lord? Well, there's two basic things you need to know. You go through all these rituals and their moral issues. Interesting? Yeah, pretty interesting. So Moses wrote to the Exodus generation to inform them that God's gave ceremonial and moral laws to Israel so that they might be set apart to him for fellowship. I haven't mentioned that, but it's really critical. You see, you could read the book of Leviticus and you could see all the rituals and stop. And then religion becomes ritual. And isn't that what the Pharisees did with the Old Testament? They kept all the laws. They were very proud of themselves. They created laws on top of laws so they wouldn't break any laws. They had so many laws they became hypocrites because they couldn't keep them all. So what God really wants is he keeps saying in this book, I want to be your God. You're my people. I redeemed you. So I want you to keep all these rituals, but all of this has to do with I'm in the Holy of Holies. You're approaching me. David got it in the Psalms. When he was kicked out of Jerusalem, he's out in the wilderness, he writes Psalms and says, oh, to be in your presence. He's not talking about being in heaven. He's talking about being back in Jerusalem, back near the tabernacle. So it could be near the presence of God. He's talking about a personal relationship with the Lord. So you can read Leviticus and get all this ritual, which the Lord ordained, but you need to read the Psalms. And the Lord said, David, David is a man after my heart. David got the message. And I think that's the real problem. with the Old Testament. We get hung up on the ritual and not the reality of fellowship with the Lord. Now let me end by saying it like this. I think I can make a whole sermon out of this. I'm going to make it a short conclusion. What do I learn from the book of Leviticus? Number one, I learn I'm saved by blood. I'm redeemed by blood. Number two, I know that brazen labor teaches me I need cleansing after the blood sacrifice. Number three, I learned from this book I'm supposed to be obedient. Could you conclude that from reading this book? I think so. And number four, but the ultimate issue is that I have fellowship with the Lord, that I have fellowship with him. Now, one more point. The book of Leviticus, I'm not under it. I'm a New Testament believer. I don't have to do any of this, for which I'm very thankful. Can you imagine? The book is closed to us. We are not under the law. Romans 6.14, you're not under the law, but you're under Grace, we're under grace. So here's the bottom line, don't get hung up on ritual. The veil between the holy and the holiest of holies has been ripped right in two and I can come boldly under the throne of grace. You ever heard that verse before? Hebrews 4.16, therefore come boldly under the throne of grace that you might receive mercy and grace to help in time of need. So the book of Leviticus was symbolic. It's symbolic. But now we have the reality. God lived in a tent. Today he lives where? In us. We can go directly to him. So to just reduce religion to external ritual, to external anything, is to lose the whole point. The point is, he wants us separated unto him. And there may be some rituals involved to teach us some spiritual lessons, but The ultimate issue is to have a personal relationship with him. That's the issue. So imagine somebody, some fella, falling in love with a girl. And in their relationship, she gives him a picture. And he walks around admiring the picture. He even does that when he takes her to dinner. He's just absorbed with her picture. Don't get absorbed with the picture when you have her in your presence. The book of Leviticus is a picture and from that we can learn. But don't forget we have his presence and we no longer need the picture. for which, Father, we are deeply thankful.