We've been reading it for a while and I've really, it's just one of those things, you know, every once in a while I'm reading and something just kind of arrests me and that's what this has done. It's not going to be boring and I'm not going to just wear it out. I'm not going to just, there's absolutely no way that we could even begin to get it all in one pass over. There's no way. It's real important. A lot of people, minimize the importance of the Old Testament like it's all something that's passed and we just don't need it anymore. I've heard illustrations given about why you need the shadow when you can look at the real thing. Well, now there's some truth in that. You need to look at it that way, but here's another thought too. You can't study the sun unless you put something on it to make it a shadow. You can't even tell what, for the glory of it, you can't see any detail. And so it's profitable to go back to the shadows to see some detail that you can't see in the glory of the revealed thing. It's all good, it's all profitable. The Old Testament is what Jesus preached out of, it's what the disciples preached out of. Paul went back to it, Peter went back to it. All of the Hebrews is full of it. If you don't understand the Old Testament, you can't understand the New Testament. It's all one revelation here. It's not two different things. It's one thing connected together. And so, these things are given to us and they're profitable. Oh my! It doesn't... It's not just an emotional thing, it opens your understanding so that you can see. When I preached through the book of Genesis for three years, it did more to help me. It opened my understanding about everything, so much that I can't even begin to tell you. I ain't got over it yet. It just changed my whole life, really. reading the book of Genesis, studying it, preaching on it, and going through. It gave me an overview of it all. This does the same thing. The book of Leviticus. We're not going to read it. We're not going to go verse by verse because it is repetitive. There's a lot of repetition in it. But we're going to just outline it, we're going to look at what it's about, and then we're going to look at some detail in some of the things, too. It's not that complicated, really. It's not. And so we'll look at it. Let's just pray, and then we'll get to it here. Now, Father, we thank you for the Word of God. This is the Word of God. is one of the foundational books of the Word of God. And Lord, we need to understand it. I pray we wouldn't just resist it or imagine that we're bored with it. I pray this wouldn't be boring, but it would help us to understand about worship and about communion with God and about our sacrifices and offerings and about purity of life and soul. Please help us. and give the understanding, Lord, and help me in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, I didn't get it finished preparing here like I wanted to for tonight. I woke up about four o'clock thinking about it, and then got tangled up here this afternoon and didn't get my last little time there, I didn't get to put in it. So we made this end, you know, it made this be like the end of a train without a caboose. There it went. It's over. Didn't see it coming. May just end that way. Alright, this book of the law is about sacrifice and offerings and worship and communion with God and purity, moral purity, physical purity. Now that's what this book's about. There's not much else in it besides those subjects. Sacrifice and offerings. Communion with God. Worshiping God. How to worship. Now the sacrifices and offerings, they're a big part of the worship of God. But it's two separate things also that you have to look at. And then purity. There's a lot of things in this book that people think are controversial. They're not a bit controversial. It's the law of God. And he spells it out in those uncertain terms in here about clean and unclean, about what's an abomination in the sight of God. Even to the people of the land, where they're going and what they're doing and what kind of immorality they're practicing, this book spells it out real clear and makes it clear over and over, this is why they're being destroyed. You better not do this stuff. Names it in detail. So it's about purity, it's about worshiping God, it's about sacrifice and offerings, and it's about communion with God, and it gives detailed instructions and order to it. This book was not the beginning of these things. It didn't start, all these sacrifices and offerings, all this communion with God, worshiping God, purity and morals didn't start with the book of Leviticus. Didn't start there. Y'all listening to me now, stay with me. It wasn't the beginning of those things. This book was the putting down in a written record of them for all ages. These first five books, they call it the Pentateuch. It's the books of Moses. Moses supposedly wrote these. He wrote them down. There's value in writing stuff down. I've preached that to you for years. You need to do that. You need to write stuff down. If God gives you a thought, write it down. Have you a little book. Keep things written down. Kenny sent me another little book and it's an old book. It looks like an old book that's been somewhere forever and ever. But that's what the whole book is about. It's about, it's one of Wesley's, Wesley's, I forgot now the name of it. But this man kept a notebook and he wrote things down just for himself. He didn't have no idea that it was going to do anything for anybody else. He didn't have that in mind at all. It was just for his own benefit, his own self, his own record of things. And I told her, and I won't go into it, but anyway, years later, when he was old, somebody seen him and read a little bit of him and tried to get him to publish him, and he refused. No, he didn't want to do that. Then somebody else tried to get him, and they kept trying to talk him into it, because it would help other people so much. But he was reluctant to do it, because he didn't want anybody to make something of him. And, you know, because God deserves the glory for everything, he said. And he said that, finally he did publish them, and he said, one of the remarks he said was, he said, I don't want anybody to be hurt by me. But he kept a record and it was, and this book looks like it's going to be a good book, really. Because somebody wrote stuff down. This was written down by God. God made sure this was written down. This is the record. This is written down. It's one thing when people just say, now this is what you ought to do, and this is the way we've always done it, and this is what I think God wants, and all of that. That's religion, and that's opinions, and that's everything else mixed in with it. But when God writes it down, that's what happened here. What you're looking at right there. is the Word of God. God made sure that this record was written down and preserved forever. So you can sit there tonight and hold it in your lap and look at it and read what God said. These are all God's words. I read, and I'm going to jump ahead a little bit here, but I looked it up, and 45 times in the book of Leviticus, he ended the little passage with, I am the Lord. That's how he ended it. You do this, you do it this way, you do this, do this first, this is the way you do it, I am the Lord. It's God talking to you. Man, that's big stuff right there. This ain't a storybook. This ain't a bunch of vain oblations. That's one of the sacrifices we're gonna talk about, offerings. But it is a step in the progressive revelation of God and His redemption of His lost creation. That's what the book of Leviticus is. It's a step in the revelation of God. You know, we talked about in Genesis how you can just see the progression of God's revelation and His dealings with mankind and how it went from Adam to Noah and then from Abraham and then Isaac and Jacob, and then Egypt and Moses, and then here we are here. All the way up until Christ came and was revealed. Ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, men have always tried to do something about their sin. Adam and Eve first tried to cover their sin and hide from God. That was their first solution. We just cover up, make us some aprons and cover it up and we'll hide. Hide from God. Run from God. Pretend that He's not coming. Pretend that He doesn't exist. Now that was their solution. That's what most men do right now, still. They're hiding, running, hiding from God, trying to, thinking they're gonna get away with it. Did Adam and Eve get away with it? No, sir. No, they didn't. But that proved to be futile and didn't solve their problem. God came seeking them and they couldn't hide. Ain't that wonderful? He found me. Well, it was a blessed day for you when he found you. trying to hide from him. When he come to you and said, hey, where art thou? Adam, where art thou? Well, that's how you got in. He come looking for you. He sought you out and found you because you was hiding because you knew something was wrong. Because it wasn't right between you and God. You realize the whole human race is like that. Maybe they're not conscious of what the deal is, but they know it's not right. They know something's not right. They know that things are wrong. That's why they're not happy. That's why they seek and seek and try everything in the world to run away from their problems and hide from their problems and the misery of their soul. They're lost and they're not right with God. They're alienated from God. And so all men are in that condition until they find God, until God finds them and they are reconciled to God and this thing is fixed. Well, that's what this book is setting out for us to see the way back to God. We, you may think it don't matter now since Jesus has come, but you can't separate Jesus from this. Jesus said in, search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life and I am he, you know, they speak of me. I'm all the way through that. This here is talking about Christ. All these sacrifices and offerings and this worship and purity and all of this is talking about Jesus. They made aprons, but God made a sacrifice. Men always trying to do something about this problem they've got. They make aprons, cover themselves up, try to hide their sin, hide themselves from God, cover up their sin. But God didn't deal with it that way. This is very important. That's because this book sets it out differently for than what man invents himself. I am the Lord. He made a difference. He came to them, announced himself, identified himself to them, and identified himself with this manner of worship, this manner of sacrifice, this manner of offering to God. He covered their nakedness with what had covered another living creature. But in order to cover their nakedness and shame, that other creature had to die. His life for their life. That's what it cost. God covered their nakedness, their shame. He covered it. But another creature had to die. Another life had to be given. What had covered that creature now covered them. You remember what I told you a week or two ago about I read Spurgeon said that he said, I can stand before God as Christ because Christ stood before God as me. See that's what happened in the garden. When they hid from God and God came and found them, God found them. took another life to cover their sin. I mean, there it is right there, right out of the gate. First thing, after sin entered into the world, what do you got? You got God showing the way back. You got God showing His plan to redeem mankind from His sin. Now, Cain and Abel made sacrifices and offerings to God, but they were very different from one another. Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve's sons, They made sacrifices to God. Cain brought of the fruit of the ground something that he had worked for, something he was proud of, and on which he placed great value. Those are very important things, because the whole world has went the way of Cain. Men sacrifice, and they make offerings in every culture, in every nation, in every people on the earth. They do it. Of one form or another, they make their sacrifices and their offerings. And Cain brought of the fruit of the ground what he had done, what he had put his hand to. It was something that he had worked for, it was something that he was proud of, and he placed great value on it. He brought of the best, of the fruit of the ground. He was thinking to impress God. Now, there's a whole message or a dozen of them here about Cain. What was in his mind? What was he thinking when he brought this offering to God? What kind of a mind did he have? Now, it's important here. This is the introduction to this whole deal here. Cain had a different view of everything, of his sin, of himself, of God, than Abel did. He was thinking to impress God with his sacrifice. Cain was giving God a blessing with an expensive and beautiful gift that he had designed in his own heart and mind and wrought with his own hands. And he's gonna bring it to God and say, here God, look what I have done. This is what I have to give you. Well, with men, that wins you favor, don't it? But we're talking about being reconciled to God, having your sin forgiven, being redeemed and ransomed back from death. We're not talking about making friends. We're not talking about appeasing an angry God. That's what the pagans do. That's the idea, the view that all of the world has that's alienated from God. That's the view Cain had. I can bring God this real fancy, beautiful gift that he can see that I have really sacrificed to give him this, give him the best of God. Surely he would favor me. Surely that'd calm him down. Surely he wouldn't hold my sin against me. Ain't that the way people think? They've done you wrong, but in order to win you back, they'll give you gifts. They'll praise you, say good things about you. They'll be nice to you. But what's the deal? They're just wanting you to forget about their sin and just be friends with them again. without doing anything really about it. And once you just forget it, just forget it. And I mean, I may have done something bad, but here's a bunch of good. I mean, can you weigh it together here? Can't you see that there is some good in me? It did nothing for Cain except increase his pride. which made his sacrifice unacceptable to God. Now the Bible tells us that very plainly, that God did not accept Cain's sacrifice. He doesn't still. He still doesn't to this day. He doesn't accept that kind of sacrifice. A lot of people got the idea, well, I'm just not cut out to be a missionary, I'm not cut out to be a preacher, I'm not cut out to talk to people about the Lord, so I'll just focus my life on making money and then I'll give my money to the work of God. Yeah, Mr. Cain, that's what you are. You're not thinking right. You're not thinking right. That ain't what God wants, never has been. God hasn't never thought in that realm, never had that view, never had that attitude toward man. That ain't what he wants from you. Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof. All right, now the book of Leviticus hadn't been written yet. All the instructions about the sacrifices here and the offerings, talk about the fat in the kidneys and the call above the liver. But, you know, the fat belongs to the Lord and the Bible talk says that about the sacrifices. Now, well, here we are back at the first generation after Adam and Abel's offering the fat of the flock. So I'm telling you, the book of Leviticus wasn't the beginning of all this stuff. It's just when God had it written down. So there wouldn't be no more arguing about it. So there wouldn't be no more opinions about it. No more confusion. There's no need for the confusion anymore because it's all written down right here. Abel brought the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof for he was a keeper of sheep. And you know they didn't eat sheep. God had given Adam and Eve the herb of the field, the seed-bearing herb, and the fruit of the trees. That was their food. When Noah got off of the ark, God gave them the animals for meat also. But not before that. Why did Abel keep sheep then? Yeah? There was only one reason. And that's it. I mean, you know, that was the only reason. Abel brought of the firstlings. He was affected differently by his sacrifice than Cain was with his. Don't you see the drastic difference between the mind of these two brothers who came to sacrifice to the Lord? Abel brought of his flock. Something that he knew, an animal he knew. It was not a, it wasn't a plant, it wasn't a squash or a potato. Don't you see the drastic difference? And this animal had to die. This animal pictured Christ, pictured what God had shown Adam and Eve in the very beginning. How they will learn it from Adam and Eve Where'd you get those skins, mama? Well, let me tell you about it, son. You reckon? McCain wasn't interested. He's too busy playing games and watching TV. He had his mind on other things. So Abel was affected differently. Abel's sacrifice affected his heart and humbled him before God. You can't watch an animal die. If you can, there's something bad wrong with your black heart. If you can watch any creature be put to death and the blood and the guts and the smell and then the burning it up and all of that, if you can watch all that and participate in it, do it yourself and it don't affect your heart. then you're one of these that we've been preaching about in the New Testament, your past feeling. The whole idea of it and the reason God put it that way is so you can understand what your sin cost. So it affected Abel and it affected his heart. Didn't make him proud. That don't make you proud. When you bring your stuff and you put your all that you've got your pride in, in the works of your hands and you present it to God, you're proud. You're proud before God, you're proud by everybody watching. See what I did? You don't get proud with this kind of offering. You know, I can't imagine anything but Abel going away from there weeping. I can't imagine Cain going away with anything except, well, he left angry because God rejected his offering, his pride, his haughtiness, his selfish self-righteousness. He rejected it. And Abel's sacrifice affected his heart, it humbled him before God, that was pleasing to God, and that made his sacrifice acceptable. Well, I hope you're getting the answer. Abel's sacrifice was about Abel's sin. While Cain's sacrifice was about Cain's pride in self-righteousness. So it's easy for me to see why God rejected it. And he said, you know, Cain, all you got to do is do it right. Send life at the door. Alright. Now we find Abraham making sacrifices. About 2,000 years later, Abraham making sacrifices. He didn't do it Cain's way, he did it Abel's way. When Abraham made a sacrifice and Isaac knew, he said, Father, here's the wood and the fire, but where's the lamb for the offering? Abraham said, son, God will provide himself a lamb. And he did. But Isaac understood about the offering. He understood it wasn't apples and oranges and potatoes and fruit stand and all that. You didn't bring a fruit salad and give it to God. You didn't bring all your finest stuff. and present it to God to get favor with God. No, it took a sacrifice. It took blood. So we find Abraham making sacrifices the same way as Abel about 2,000 years later. And we find all through history in every culture on earth some type of sacrifice and offering to gods. Most of it's after the manner of Cain. The focus is on the value of the sacrifice or the offering. Very important right here. the pagans, the heathen, the ungodly, and their sacrifices, their blood sacrifices, their human sacrifices, whatever sacrifices they make, they're all, it's accounted by the value of the sacrifice. That's why they make human sacrifices. It's the ultimate price to pay to an angry God to appease Him. They adjust the value of the sacrifice, an offering, according to the gravity of the sin that they've committed or what they feel to be the gravity of the sin they've committed. The focus is on the value. The thinking behind the sacrifice is to impress, to appease, or to please an angry God. Don't ever think it. I've heard Baptist churches where, I've heard Baptist preachers and Baptist churches preach the same kind of religion and motive that all the pagans believe in. that it pleased Him to breathe. Now the Bible says that, but don't interpret that wrong. Don't get the idea that somehow God took pleasure in the death of Christ on the cross. And I've heard Him say that and preach it that way. That when He saw that, that satisfied Him. No. Didn't satisfy His anger. It satisfied the law, that's right. It was he fulfilled the plan from the foundation of the world. He did it. He made it. Hallelujah. Victory. Yes, God was pleased because it meant man had an atonement. There was a way made. A ransom was found. But God wasn't pleased to see the blood and the water spilled out on the ground. And when he died, he said, okay, that satisfies me. Now, and his anger abated. No, that's the pagans who believe that way. And all their sacrifices are arranged with that in mind. The value of the sacrifice is increased or diminished according to the gravity of the sin they're seeking to expunge from their record. They look at it as payment or trade, a way to balance things. God's sacrifices are not that way. You better understand it. Oh, it's so plain in this. It's just so plain that it don't work that way. That ain't what God's got in mind. These sacrifices didn't pay for sin. And it wasn't about that at all. It's always viewed as a way to get things from God or the gods or to stop some calamity or hardship that they're experiencing. The pagans, the heathens, the ungodly of this world, they make their sacrifices and they make their offerings and they're extreme and, you know, insane with it sometimes, a lot of times. But it's always with the idea of appeasing an angry God or invoking the help of this angry God to save him from this calamity or disaster or whatever trouble they're in. They make sacrifices to God to bribe him to get them out of trouble or to their gods. This book here, along with Deuteronomy and part of Exodus, laid down the order and the guidelines for sacrifices and offerings acceptable to God and distinct from all the other inventions of men. And, you know, we're going to have to get into it a little bit before you really see what I'm talking about here. So I'm just kind of laying the groundwork here this evening real quick and then we'll get on with it. But the sacrifice was always the same. Every sacrifice was the same. Now, there were different animals mentioned for different things. There were different animals allowed for the different kinds of offerings. There's sin offerings. Well, there's burnt offerings. There's sin offerings. There's oblations. There's trespass offerings and peace offerings. And there was a difference in each one of them. But the value of the sacrifice didn't change. No. The order in which it's done, the part which is burned up, or kept, or eaten, or carried out of the camp, and burned outside the camp, all those things are different with each one of them. But the value of the sacrifice is the same. It didn't increase or decrease in value according to the transgression. A sin offering's a sin offering. Yeah. One size fits all. It didn't leave it up to the people to, you see, that cuts off that kind of thinking. You know, the Catholics still do it. I mean, the more you give, well, the more prayers they'll pray for you, and the better chance you've got of getting out of purgatory. And you can just sin and get away with it if you've got enough money to pay the priest to pray for you enough. Now that's the way they view it. It's not that way. That's as far ungodly as you can get when it comes to the matter of sin. It's not that way at all. There was a way made for the poorest and for the richest according to every man's ability. Mary, you know, it was a bullock Bullock was a pretty big deal. Not everybody could do that. God knew that. But a man that could do a bullock, he better not come with a turtle dove. His heart's wrong. And a man that's too poor to have a bullock, he better not come with a bullock because his heart's wrong. Pride. But according to every man's ability, Mary, when she went the eighth day to make her sacrifice and purification and all that, after Jesus was born, what did she take for the sacrifice? Two turtle doves. That was the poor man's sacrifice. It didn't have nothing to do with the value of the sacrifice. It had to do with the heart of the people making the sacrifice. There was a way made. The order in which the sacrifice was made was always the same. It did not evolve with the culture as the culture changed. And it did not change from generation to generation. It was the same and it better be exactly the same. God ordained it. God ordered it in detail. He laid it out. And right out of the gate, the first thing that happened was Aaron's two sons went in there with strange fire. What did God do to them? He killed them. Dead. That was the last offering they made. And it put the fear in the rest of them. And they said, boy, he must be serious about this. You mean we can't just, any old thing will do? You mean we can't just come as we are and do it as the way we think and what makes us feel, what we feel about it's the best? Nope. You better do it like God said. You better watch me. Moses made the first one and showed them how to do it. And then he put them through and said, now this is the way you do it. And then the next time, them boys went and offered with strange fire. And God killed them. Well, you better take God serious. You think it don't matter? Just any old way will do. You can just do whatever you feel. You think you can just change it up? That's what this generation's telling us right now. These old ways gotta go. They don't matter anymore. I mean, don't you, this is 2019. Them old hymns are out of date. Ain't no worship of God out of date. It don't get out of date. It stays the same. You won't get in trouble with God, just start changing it up. I am the Lord, 45 times in the book of Leviticus. I am not a god. I am the Lord. I am the Lord. He reminded him over and over and over and over. I'm not one of the gods of these heathen people. I am the Lord. I am. That I am has sent you. I am. Jesus told those Pharisees before Abraham was, I am. Then they took up stones to kill him because they knew exactly what he was saying. Those words have a powerful, terrible effect on people. I am the Lord. It emphasized that the sacrifices and offerings were different than the religions that the rest of the world practiced. God's instructed them to make sacrifices here. The heathen do this. They do. They sacrifice animals. They do all kinds of weird stuff. They sacrifice even people. They sacrifice their babies to Molech. Molech, the god with the big iron altar. Big, big altar. I don't know if it's iron or not, but they had fire in it and they'd throw their babies in that apparel net and burn them to death. Sacrificing them to their god. I'm not Molech, I'm the Lord." That's what he said. He wanted them to get it. Don't you think I'm one of them? These sacrifices are nothing like what they do. This is so important, man. I'm telling you, I don't know, hopefully I can get it across to you and you can get kind of into this to where you can start seeing how important it is. It emphasized, I am the Lord. So many times it emphasized the authority by which the sacrifices and offerings, the worship of God, the communion with God, and the instructions in purity were given. I'm the Lord. This is not a bunch of nonsense. This is not just a bunch of rules and regulations. I am the Lord. You're reading what I'm saying here. That's what the record Holds, that's what the record says. Don't skip over that, I'm the Lord. I've noticed it and I kept noticing it. I'm the Lord, I'm the Lord thy God. Told Abraham, I am almighty God. I am almighty God. Molech never said that. None of the gods, the rest of them said that because they ain't gods. They're figments of people's, wicked people's imaginations. You can't just make up what you think God's like and that'll do. No, you're an idolater. This is totally annihilates idolatry. I am the Lord. I'm the Lord. This little phrase gives the assurance repeatedly that all this is not just a bunch of vain religious practices invented by men. If it never said, I'm the Lord, you could just think, well, maybe Moses made this up. All these theologians and commentators and all that, they come up with all kinds of nonsense. They believe, a lot of them believes that a lot of this came from Egypt because Moses, you know, he brought it out of Egypt, mixed it all in there, Nonsense. How in the world could anybody believe that? Egypt was a bunch of, they were a heathen, godless land. Well, they had their gods, but it wasn't the Lord God was not their God. No, sir. Except the ones that went out with Israel. Except the ones that were under the influence of Joseph while he was there. You remember one of his servants, how he talked to him and he mentioned God to Joseph's brothers? Remember noticing that when we were in Genesis? And it was God he was talking about. He wasn't talking about some other made up thing. God. The God of your fathers. The God of your fathers. That's why we're so lost right now. We have left the God of our fathers. As a nation, as a country, they don't want him. They've on purpose rejected the God of our fathers. The old ways, they don't want him anymore. What was that little thing we read the other day? I can't remember, but it was to do with that. They forgot him on purpose, don't want him. Don't want that way. All right, I'm going to quit. Told you it'd be that way, as far as I got. Sorry to leave you hanging like that, but just keep it in mind. It's pretty simple, this book, what it's about. It's about sacrifices and offerings. We've got to look at that. Got to look at the different ones, what they meant. Where are they right now in our worship? I mean, how... You know, they're here. It's part of our worship. That was the outline. That is the prototype, if you will. We got the real deal, but it's still the same way. The sacrifices, the offerings, and all of that, we still do them. Not like that. No, I mean, we don't, you know, the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin. We've had, Jesus Christ is our Passover. Another thing that's in here is right at the end is the feast. And that's part of worship that's in this book. Man, there's a lot of good stuff in here. Can't believe 40 years and I've never really studied it and understood some things about it. Well, why don't you stand? And we'll pray and then we'll float home. Father, thank you for the Word of God. I pray you bless it to our hearts. Help us, Lord, and give us understanding in this matter here. These are some good, rich, important things. And I pray you'd help us all. I pray it'd be a blessing. and helpful to us in our understanding and in our walk with thee, in our worship of you. And the way we look at this whole thing. And we're going to need your help. Lord, I pray you to do that. Tonight's kind of a hard night. Everybody seemed kind of distracted because of the weather and all. And Lord, I pray you to get us home safely now through the rain and the wind and everything. I pray there wouldn't be anything. Harm anybody that we'd be be able to go to bed tonight everybody safe and sound bless our church and help us to reach out and and make a difference and Lord, we love you. Thank you for the time together in Jesus name