| Leaves
from the Tree
1:1-3 - "Then the LORD called to Moses
and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, "Speak to
the sons of Israel and say to them, 'When any man of you brings
an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of animals
from the herd or the flock.." In the study of the next few chapters for instance, we will discover that there were five main categories of sacrificial offerings Israel was to make to the Lord in the tabernacle. These five kinds of offerings are simply portraying five distinct aspects or elements of what Christ accomplished in His sacrifice on the cross. These Levitical sacrifices were never intended by the Lord to have any value or power on their own apart from the future sacrifice of Christ (Hebrews 10:1-4). Faith in these sacrifices was really forward-looking faith in the cross of Christ which was to come. Once a New Covenant believer in Christ understands that connection between the tabernacle sacrifices as spiritual previews of the cross, and the cross as the actual fulfillment of what they could only foreshadow, then they are ready for a profitable study of this book of Leviticus. As we read through these various sacrifices and tabernacle rituals keep this question in mind; "what is this meant to teach me about Christ and the cross?" The first word of the book is "Then." This tells us that Leviticus was not written as a stand alone book. Then is a connecting word indicating a continuation of what has already been said. In this case, it points directly back to the book of Exodus. The connection is that Exodus ended with the completion of the tabernacle, and God's presence filling the tent as His confirmation that He had accepted it as His house and the new meeting place between Himself and His people. Leviticus begins right where Exodus left off with the activities that the Lord ordained should fill His house. If we stop reading at Exodus we will only have the story of the building of the tabernacle without the specifics of what God wants His people to do in the tabernacle. 1:3-9 - " If his offering is a burnt offering
from the herd, he shall offer it, a male without defect; he shall
offer it at the doorway of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted
before the LORD. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt
offering, that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his
behalf. He shall slay the young bull before the LORD; and Aaron's
sons the priests shall offer up the blood and sprinkle the blood
around on the altar that is at the doorway of the tent of meeting.
He shall then skin the burnt offering and cut it into its pieces.
The sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar and arrange
wood on the fire. Then Aaron's sons the priests shall arrange the
pieces, the head and the suet over the wood which is on the fire
that is on the altar. Its entrails, however, and its legs he shall
wash with water. And the priest shall offer up in smoke all of it
on the altar for a burnt offering, an offering by fire of a soothing
aroma to the LORD." The burnt offering is not introduced here for the first time, but
new and additional details are given. Previously we saw Noah (Genesis
8:21), Abraham (Genesis 22:2, 13), and Moses (Exodus 24:5) making
burnt offerings to the Lord. From these examples it is clear that
the burnt offering served a range of worship purposes. It was appropriate
to make a burnt offering to the Lord for personal atonement for
sins, for thanksgiving for what the Lord had done, and as an expression
of commitment to the Lord and submission to His will. The next key detail is that the person bringing the offering was to lay their hands upon the animal before it was killed for the sacrifice. The word describes more than a light touch. They were to press their hands upon the animal. The principle is spiritual identification with the animal. God wanted the person making the offering to actually feel the life within the animal just before it was killed so that they could recognize as it was slain for them that the animal was receiving what they deserved themselves. This was training their perspectives for the day when Christ would come and take their place upon the cross. We never physically laid our hands upon Him, but by our faith, we identify with the life He relinquished when He took our deserved place upon the cross. After laying hands upon the animal to be sacrificed the ritual then took a dramatic turn. The person that had brought the animal was, with the help of one of the priests to take the animal through the outer doorway into the courtyard surrounding God's house. There, on the north side of the altar the person making the offering was to take the knife provided by the priest and slit the throat of the animal themselves. As they did, the priest stood there with a basin and caught the blood flowing from the throat of the animal. Once the animal died, the person then was to skin the animal, cut it into pieces, and wash certain parts to finish preparing it for the altar upon which it was to be burned. This was a very messy process which was designed by God to spiritually impact the one making the offering. They were not allowed to just give the animal to the priest and let them do the "dirty work", but were required to personally end the life of the animal that was taking their place. The spiritual parallel is that we are meant to fully identify with the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. His suffering and death was in our place. Our hands put Him there in a very direct way. One last detail deserves our attention. When the burnt offering was carried out as the Lord had ordained, the result as it was burning is described as creating "a soothing aroma to the LORD." This meant something more than the Lord enjoying the aroma of cooked meat. The Lord uses the physical description of enjoying the smell of the cooking meat to indicate a deeper spiritual principle. The burnt offering was necessary because the price required for sin of the person making the offering had now been satisfied. This image of a soothing aroma displays the complete satisfaction of God that His Law has been honored and His justice has been answered by the death of the sacrifice. Christ's death on the cross is described in the New Testament using this exact metaphor of a pleasing aroma. "Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma." (Ephesians 5:2) 1:14 - "But if his offering to the LORD is a burnt offering of birds, then he shall bring his offering from the turtledoves or from young pigeons." In the category of burnt offerings, there were three groups of acceptable sacrifices. The groups were herd, flock, and birds. They all served the same function as an acceptable burnt offering to the Lord. The determination of which of the three to offer was purely economic. The first category was the most valuable of the three. Oxen would be a typical example of a herd sacrifice. The second group of flock sacrifices would be from the sheep or goats. The third allowed certain kinds of birds to be offered such as doves. The guideline was that whichever kind a person could afford to offer was the appropriate one to make. If a person could afford a lamb, but only offered a dove, then their sacrifice was not acceptable to the Lord. He and they would know what they could realistically afford. The two sides of this coin were that the Lord commanded that each person offer the appropriate value for their own life, but at the same time He mercifully made allowance for the economic limitations of those who could not afford either a bull or sheep for a sacrifice. 2:1-3 - "Now when anyone presents a grain offering as an offering to the LORD, his offering shall be of fine flour, and he shall pour oil on it and put frankincense on it. He shall then bring it to Aaron's sons the priests; and shall take from it his handful of its fine flour and of its oil with all of its frankincense. And the priest shall offer it up in smoke as its memorial portion on the altar, an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the LORD. The remainder of the grain offering belongs to Aaron and his sons: a thing most holy, of the offerings to the LORD by fire." This chapter introduces the second of the five kinds of offerings the Lord ordained for Israel to bring to Him to the tabernacle. The grain offerings differed from the burnt offerings of the last chapter in several important ways and were similar in one detail. The similarity to burnt offering was that a portion of the grain offering was taken and placed upon the altar by the priests and burnt. The burnt portion also produced, like the burnt offering, a soothing aroma which was pleasing to the Lord and signified His acceptance of the offering and pleasure with what was offered and the one who offered it. The main differences between the offerings were that the grain offering did not involve the death of a sacrifice and its blood, and only a portion of this offering was placed on the altar. Since the grain offering did not involve the shed blood and death of a sacrifice, it was not an atonement offering. In other words it was not designed to address the issue of sin in the life of the one offering the sacrifice. Other sacrifices addressed the sin issue. The grain offering was focused on another important issue in our lives. What was to be offered was grain grown and harvested by the person offering. It was also not to be offered in its raw form fresh from the harvest. It was first to be processed and the grain removed from the chaff and husk, and then ground into fine flour. The term fine flour did not refer so much to how small or fine the grind was, but to the quality of the flour produced. There were different qualities of flour produced each harvest, and the fine flour was made from only the inner kernel of grain. It was the most prized and therefore most valuable flour. It was only produced by the combination of the work of planting and harvesting. Later in the chapter we see that the grain could also be offered in a cooked form which also adds the element of the work involved in cooking. These elements lead us to the meaning of the grain offerings. The burnt offering signified that the entire person belonged to the Lord. The grain offering was focused on the work of the person making the offering. The grain represented his life work of whatever kind and the fruit of that work being offered back to the Lord in acknowledgement of the blessing of the Lord upon his work. It was a way of honoring the Lord as Lord over not just all of one's life in general, but of all one's labors. The symbolic connection to one's works was not a message about working for salvation, or in any sense earning the Lord's favor, but rather in recognition that everything we have produced in our lives only has value because it ultimately belongs to the Lord, not to us. The offering returns a portion to the Lord in the form of a handful of what He has previously given to the offered. It was to be offered combined with frankincense. Remember from our study in Exodus on the altar of incense that frankincense was offered also on that altar as a fragrant aroma which symbolized prayer. By adding it to the grain offering it showed that the offering was a form of prayer in symbol that pleased the Lord as the offerer honored Him as the Lord over all their labors. The giving of the handful of grain from the amount brought for the offering worked on a similar principle to the tithe. When we tithe on our income, we are giving one tenth of the whole income back to the Lord. The tenth portion spiritually represents the whole. By giving the tenth we declare that we believe that all of our income came from the Lord to us as His blessing. It also honors Him as the owner of it all. When we tithe we are not saying that 10% belongs to the Lord and 90% belongs to us. Instead we are showing by the sacrificial return of the valued 10% as a gift to the Lord that we recognize all 100% belongs to the Lord. It is a blessing that He allows us to use the 90% to meet our needs, but the correct identification of who owns it is critical to a healthy perspective of our resources. In the grain offering, giving the handful to be burned on the altar, and the remainder of the grain offering to the priests signified the worshipper's faith that their entire harvest of grain belonged to the Lord, and not to them. Here are two passages that carry forward this principle of our worship in a New Covenant expression. "Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (I Corinthians 10:31). "Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father." (Colossians 3:17). The point is that it is an important aspect of our worship to give the Lord His proper place in our hearts in whatever we do. Our worship is not meant to be limited to Sunday mornings within the walls of the church meeting place. We are called to honor Him 24 / 7 in whatever work we are engaged. The grain offering was a way to honor the Lord as a shepherd, farmer, soldier, priest, potter, baker, and every other endeavor that He blessed. 2:4-9 - "Now when you bring an offering of a grain offering baked in an oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour mixed with oil, or unleavened wafers spread with oil. If your offering is a grain offering made on the griddle, it shall be of fine flour, unleavened, mixed with oil; you shall break it into bits and pour oil on it; it is a grain offering. Now if your offering is a grain offering made in a pan, it shall be made of fine flour with oil. When you bring in the grain offering which is made of these things to the LORD, it shall be presented to the priest and he shall bring it to the altar. The priest then shall take up from the grain offering its memorial portion, and shall offer it up in smoke on the altar as an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the LORD." When the grain offering was made in the form of a baked cake it was to be prepared a specific way. The same quality fine flour was to be mixed with oil and shaped into a kind of unleavened pancake. It was also acceptable to make bread wafers and spread oil on the wafers. A third acceptable way was to break the baked bread into bits and pour oil over it for the offering. In each case oil was essential to the offering. The oil was a symbolic indication of the presence and influence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the one bringing the offering. The point is that it is only under the influence of the Spirit's work in our hearts that we are inclined to worship God in the way that pleases Him. Jesus alluded to this principle when He declared, "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:24). Worship that follows the outer form of worship rituals and practices without the spiritual heart, attitude and perspective that pleases the Lord is not what the Lord desires. If we go through the motions of the activities of worship, yet our hearts are not fully engaged with Him in love, honor, reverence, and adoration then our worship is not worship is spirit and truth. An interesting detail of one of the baked offering is worth noting. When they made the bread wafers they were to spread the oil on the wafers. The word translated spread is a form of the Hebrew word for anoint which is related to the word for Messiah. The Messiah was the anointed, or oiled One. These wafers were to be anointed with oil before being offered. Ancient Jewish rabbis tell us that when they anointed the wafers for the grain offering they spread the oil in the shape of a cross on the bread. They probably did this as a way to show that the entire piece of bread was covered without literally covering every inch of the bread's surface. Nevertheless, it formed an interesting connection since the word for spread was related to the word for Messiah and was spread in a cross on the bread offered. 2:10-12 - "The remainder of the grain offering belongs to Aaron and his sons: a thing most holy of the offerings to the LORD by fire. No grain offering, which you bring to the LORD, shall be made with leaven, for you shall not offer up in smoke any leaven or any honey as an offering by fire to the LORD. As an offering of first fruits you shall bring them to the LORD, but they shall not ascend for a soothing aroma on the altar." Once the handful of flour was removed from the offering to be burnt on the altar, the remainder of the grain offering was not taken home by the one offering, but was instead given to the Levitical priests on duty in the tabernacle. The priests were given this flour by the command of the Lord. The priests, and only the priests were then allowed to eat this flour for their own food. It was reserved only for the priests because the Lord called it "a thing most holy", meaning that only those that were fully set apart as a priest and ordained to represent the Lord in that high calling could eat this offered bread. It was the Lord's bread and He allowed those that most directly served Him to partake of the food that was offered to honor Him. There were two prohibitions for ingredients for the grain offering. Leaven and honey were not to be added to the grain offering which was to be burnt on the Lord's altar. The significance of the leaven and honey prohibition had to do with the practical qualities of these two ingredients and what they spiritually represented. Both leaven and honey were well known and widely used in various recipes for bread because leaven caused the bread to rise and honey sweetened its taste. However, both were also fermentation agents. Foods combined with leaven or honey were far more susceptible to corruption or rotting. They symbolized the natural tendency in a fallen and rebellious world that people have toward spiritual corruption. Because of the fall of Adam in the Garden, left to themselves, things in this world tend to deteriorate, not improve. Spiritually, unless the Lord intervenes people tend toward sin and corruption, not greater holiness and righteousness. By ordaining for this offering to be corruption free the Lord was indicating that He wants all of our work in this world to be free from the corrupting influences of the fallen world around us. 2:13 - "Every grain offering of yours, moreover, you shall season with salt, so that the salt of the covenant of your God shall not be lacking from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt." The final detail for the grain offering was essential. Every grain
offering was to be made with salt. On a natural level, salt is often
added to bread recipes because of its ability to enhance the flavor,
but the purpose of salting the grain offering was for the spiritual
connection to the other known quality of salt in ancient cultures.
While the presence of leaven and honey caused foods to corrupt more
quickly, the presence of salt acted as a preservative. Salt was
commonly used to slow down corruption, especially in a desert environment.
As a result, salt was recognized as a symbol of something long-lasting
and resistant to corruption. When covenants were formed between
people, the common practice was for the people entering into the
covenant relationship to share eating a portion of salt together.
This was then called a covenant of salt. The Lord refers to this
practice in this passage and identifies the salt for the grain offering
to be the salt of the covenant. The picture presented by a salted
grain offering was that the relationship between the Lord and the
one bringing the offering was salted and free from corrupting influences.
It indicated a long-lasting and pure covenant fellowship. 3:1-5 - "Now if his offering is a sacrifice of peace offerings, if he is going to offer out of the herd, whether male or female, he shall offer it without defect before the LORD. He shall lay his hand on the head of his offering and slay it at the doorway of the tent of meeting, and Aaron's sons the priests shall sprinkle the blood around on the altar. From the sacrifice of the peace offerings he shall present an offering by fire to the LORD, the fat that covers the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails, and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them, which is on the loins, and the lobe of the liver, which he shall remove with the kidneys. Then Aaron's sons shall offer it up in smoke on the altar on the burnt offering, which is on the wood that is on the fire; it is an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the LORD." This chapter is dedicated to the third of the five tabernacle offerings; the peace offerings. The peace offerings share some similarities to the burnt offering in that it is a bloody offering requiring the death of the sacrifice, the animal offered is to be without defect, the worshipper was to lay his hand on the offering and then kill it himself. The peace offering also had unique features that we do not see in any of the other offerings. For instance, in the burnt offering all of the animal was to be offered on the altar except for its hide. In the peace offering only the fat portions of the animal were placed on the altar. The peace offering was ordained and performed for three kinds of occasions. It was an expression of thanksgiving to the Lord for previous blessings received. It was offered as an acknowledgment of a vow taken and performed by the worshipper. It was also a free-will offering whenever the heart of the worshipper was moved to honor the Lord apart from the other offerings. It is translated as a "peace" offering because the Hebrew word is related to the word shalom which means peace. It has also been translated as a fellowship offering. Calling it a peace offering is probably the best way to describe the spiritual intent behind this particular offering. The Biblical principle of peace with God is a main theme running throughout the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. This offering addresses that issue in a symbolic way. The implication of a peace offering made to God is that apart from sacrifice there is something between God and man that has broken their relationship of peace. That something is not on God's side of the relationship, but ours. Our sin and rebellion toward God have broken the peace with God that as he was originally created, the first man, Adam enjoyed with God as they shared a fellowship of peace in the Garden of Eden. God has provided a way for the peace between him and us to be restored, but we will never have peace with God based upon our feelings, desires, good intentions or good works. Peace only comes from sacrifice, and only the sacrifice that God ordains. No sacrifice means that there is no peace between God and that person. This is one of the essential principles of Old Testament theology that lays a critical foundation in symbolism for the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. Many people today who do not understand the holiness and justice of God ask why it is necessary to believe that Christ died for our sins on the cross in order to enjoy peace with God. It is worth repeating; unless there is a sacrifice which pays the price our sins deserve, then there can be no peace between ourselves and God. Interestingly, even though this is the peace offering, its purpose was not to make peace with God! The burnt offering which we studied in Leviticus 1 is the sacrifice which made peace with God for Israel. The peace offering does not make peace, but rather celebrates the peace which now exists between God and the person making this offering. This distinction is seen in the relationship between the burnt and peace offerings. The peace offering was to be offered up "in smoke on the altar on the burnt offering." It was only to be offered after the burnt offering and was placed on top of the burnt offering. The whole sacrifice of the burnt offering would be placed upon the altar and as it was burning, the fat of the peace offering was placed on top if it. The order establishes that the atonement established by the burnt offering is what makes peace between God and the one approaching Him. The peace offering was an offering that confirmed and celebrated the restoration of peace with God. Both the burnt offering and the peace offering point to the cross, but in different ways. Jesus offered Himself for us as a whole burnt offering upon the cross to make peace between God and us. Once we recognize His death on the cross as our only basis for peace with God, we then celebrate what He has accomplished for us. "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God." (Romans 5:1-2). The New Testament practice which we follow in our worship that captures this concept of a celebration of peace which has already been established for us by sacrifice is the Lord's Supper, or communion. When we eat the bread and wine that represent the body and blood of Christ that were given for us on the cross, we are not making peace with God by eating and drinking. We are not sacrificing Christ each time in an effort to make a peace with God that does not yet exist. Instead, we are remembering, honoring and celebrating that Christ has already made peace with God once for all on our behalf. Even though the details are not given until chapter seven of Leviticus, part of the peace offering was that the person making the offering was to eat from the rest of the animal offered after the blood was drained and the fat removed. They ate it in a joyful recognition that their relationship with God was a fellowship of peace. 3:16-17 - "The priest shall offer them up in smoke on the altar as food, an offering by fire for a soothing aroma; all fat is the LORD'S. It is a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwellings: you shall not eat any fat or any blood." Unlike the burnt offering, the distinction of this offering was that only the fat was removed and actually offered on the altar. To understand why the fat portions were offered it is necessary to identify the differences between modern perspectives of fat and ancient perspectives. Today fat is for the most part considered an unwanted substance. To refer to someone as fat is generally considered an insult. Fat was not viewed in that way in Biblical times. Remember in the days of Joseph that Pharaoh had a dream of a coming famine in Egypt. The imagery that God used to show Pharaoh seven years of famine following seven years of prosperity was seven gaunt cows swallowing seven fat cows. Fat cows were considered a great blessing to possess. Eating the fat of the land was a way of describing a prosperous life in an abundant land. In ancient cultures fat was the best and most valuable part of the animal. This was because a fat animal indicated a prosperous owner. As a practical consideration the fat also was the portion that flavored the meat of the animal for enjoyment in eating it. In the peace offering the Lord gave a specific requirement. The fat of the sacrifice was to be separated from the rest of the meat and only the fat was to be burned on the altar unto the Lord. Here, in this passage the Lord makes a clear requirement that the fat was to be saved for Him; "all fat is the LORD'S." The meaning was that all the fat of the sacrifice belonged to the Lord. The Lord allowed the rest of the meat of the peace offering to be shared and enjoyed as food by the priests and the worshipper as we will see in chapter seven, but the fat was not to be consumed by the worshipper or even the priests. This was not a health consideration as though the Lord was requiring a low fat diet for His people. This was a symbolic way of demonstrating that the Lord deserves the best and most valuable. He required not just a sacrifice which was without defect, but also the best, most valuable portion of that sacrifice. In Christ, God received the very best and most valuable sacrifice possible. There is one other aspect of our relationship with God that corresponds to the peace offering. Since this is not an offering that makes peace with God, but recognizes and appropriately responds to the peace that now exists between Him and us, this offering speaks to our discipleship response to the Lord after we are saved. "Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.'" (Matthew 16:24). We are each called by the Lord as a response of discipleship to take up our own cross. His cross is a saving cross. Our cross which we take up is not a saving cross, but it is still a cross of sacrifice. This sacrifice is the sacrifice of what we would choose for our life for the sake of doing His will for our life instead. When the Lord calls us to make this sacrifice it is in light of the peace we enjoy with Him in our salvation. It is a sacrifice of our fat to Him. We offer Him our best and most valuable as an expression of appreciation for having saved us. Anything less than our best and most valuable is an insufficient thanks for all He has done for us. 4:1-7 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 'If a person sins unintentionally in any of the things which the LORD has commanded not to be done, and commits any of them, if the anointed priest sins so as to bring guilt on the people, then let him offer to the LORD a bull without defect as a sin offering for the sin he has committed. He shall bring the bull to the doorway of the tent of meeting before the LORD, and he shall lay his hand on the head of the bull and slay the bull before the LORD. Then the anointed priest is to take some of the blood of the bull and bring it to the tent of meeting, and the priest shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle some of the blood seven times before the LORD, in front of the veil of the sanctuary. The priest shall also put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of fragrant incense which is before the LORD in the tent of meeting; and all the blood of the bull he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering which is at the doorway of the tent of meeting." Following the detailed instructions regarding the Burnt offerings, the Grain offerings, and the Peace offerings, these next two chapters four and five address the fourth of the five tabernacle offerings. These are the laws of the sin offerings. The primary difference between the burnt offering which provided atonement for the people and the sin offering, was that the burnt offering addressed the issue of sin in the life of a person as a whole. The sin offering was designed as God's provision for specific individual sins among the covenant people. This offering, like all the others points ultimately to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for our sins and highlights one aspect of the cross. The cross was not intended to provide only a general answer for sin for mankind, but more than that was God's specific answer for every individual you or I will ever commit in the course of our life in this world. One of the great purposes of the Law of God was to reveal to the people of God the true nature of sin and teach them the appropriate spiritual response to sin. These sin offering laws accomplish that purpose by make the reality and affect of sin very personal and very specific. This is a lesson many Christians struggle to learn even today. There is a common perspective in which the Christian accepts that Jesus died for their sins on the cross and never gives further thought to how their spiritual condition and relationship with the Lord is impacted by the individual sins they commit following their salvation. The Lord does want us to believe that we are saved from all of our sins because of the cross, but He also wants us to deal appropriately with each sin we commit as He convicts our heart. The specific concern of the sin offering laws was to cover unintentional sins. There were two main categories for understanding sins in the Law; unintentional sins which are covered here, and defiant sins (Numbers 15:30) which are addressed later in the Law. An unintentional sin would be committed whenever a person transgressed the Law of God without realizing they had done so, or through a lack of knowledge. What is critical to understand is that like the principle which applies in our civil law, "ignorance of the law is no excuse." The good intentions of the person do not redefine their action from sin to mistake. Sin is a violation of God's boundaries for behavior and even if a person steps across His boundaries with a good attitude and intentions, he has still trespassed on God's holiness. Once that boundary has been crossed, the people of God cannot simply disregard their violation with a general reference to God being a forgiving God. Under the law of the sin offering each transgression was to answered with the necessary sacrifice. The requirements of these laws showed in a vivid way that every sin impacts our lives and the lives of those we touch. In this first of the sin offering laws the sins of the "anointed priest" are addressed. The anointed priest could possibly refer to any of the Levitical priests when they sinned, but it is more likely aimed at the necessary response of the high priest when he sinned. Remember when Aaron as the first high priest was first consecrated as high priest he was anointed with oil poured upon his head. If the high priest were to sin the impact on the entire holy nation would be great because he was the chosen representative of God for the entire nation in the tabernacle service. His sin spiritually polluted or defiled, not just his heart in private, but his ability to function in his office in the way that represented the Lord's holiness. The ceremony of the sin offering for the high priest reflects the pollution from his sin. A bull was required as a sacrifice for his sin because the bull was the most valuable possible sacrificial animal to offer. This points to the high cost to the nation of such a high level spiritual leader sinning. The anointed priest who had sinned was to lay his hand on the bull to identify with it, then slay it himself, then take some of its blood and enter into God's holy place. He was to take some of the blood and sprinkle it seven times in front of the veil separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. Since the Lord's presence was in the Holy of Holies, this showed that the high priest's sin had penetrated into the tabernacle itself and threatened the covenant relationship with the Lord. Then he was to put some of the blood on the horns of the incense altar. The incense altar symbolized the prayers and worship of close fellowship with the Lord. By smearing blood on those horns the symbol was that the blood of the sacrifice confirmed that fellowship with the Lord had been restored and that He would again hear the prayers of the high priest and receive his worship. As New Covenant priests of God, we should not neglect the effect our sins have upon our relationship with the Lord. When we sin, and when the Lord convicts our hearts, we should return each time to the cross and cry out to Him for the blood shed by Christ for us repair the damage we have caused to our most holy relationship. 4:11-12 - "But the hide of the bull and all its flesh with its head and its legs and its entrails and its refuse, that is, all the rest of the bull, he is to bring out to a clean place outside the camp where the ashes are poured out, and burn it on wood with fire; where the ashes are poured out it shall be burned." For the grain and the peace offerings the priests were allowed to eat from the sacrifices offered. For the sin offerings, the fat was removed and offered on the altar of sacrifice in the courtyard, but the remainder of the sacrifice was to be taken completely outside the courtyard of the Lord's house. It was also to be taken outside the camp of Israel. In each place they camped, there was a place outside the camp chosen to dump the ashes of the sacrifices burnt on the altar. The entire bull sacrificed as a sin offering was to be carried out to this place of ashes. There the priest that committed the sin was to build a fire and burn the entire sacrifice. None of the sacrifice was to be kept by the priest and eaten. There are two important points made by this practice. First, sin does pollute our lives, and the sacrifice for sin was to be offered outside of the tabernacle and outside of the camp to show that God did not want any of the pollution from the sins of the people which was symbolically carried by the bull to stain the house of the Lord or the camp of the Lord. Second, the Lord did not want the priests to eat anything from this sin offering to demonstrate that there is no profit, no good thing that comes from sin. Eating from a sin offering would physically benefit the priest who ate, and the Lord wanted to show that sin produces no good benefit. We don't gain anything nourishing or strengthening to our lives by sinning. 4:13-15, 22-23, 27-28 - "Now if the whole congregation of Israel commits error and the matter escapes the notice of the assembly, and they commit any of the things which the LORD has commanded not to be done, and they become guilty; when the sin which they have committed becomes known, then the assembly shall offer a bull of the herd for a sin offering and bring it before the tent of meeting. Then the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands on the head of the bull before the LORD, and the bull shall be slain before the LORD... When a leader sins and unintentionally does any one of all the things which the LORD his God has commanded not to be done, and he becomes guilty, if his sin which he has committed is made known to him, he shall bring for his offering a goat, a male without defect... Now if anyone of the common people sins unintentionally in doing any of the things which the LORD has commanded not to be done, and becomes guilty, if his sin which he has committed is made known to him, then he shall bring for his offering a goat, a female without defect, for his sin which he has committed." These three sections identify the differences in the laws of the sins offerings. Including the law aimed at the high priest we can see that there were a total of four categories of sin offerings. The four categories were the high priest, the nation of Israel, the leaders of Israel, and any individual person in Israel. The four categories were each given their own requirements and guidelines. For instance the sacrifice necessary for the sins of the high priest and the nation was a bull. However, for a leader a male goat was the appropriate sacrifice, while for any other individual Israelite a female goat was to be sacrificed. These differences were not intended to confuse God's people but teach them about the differences in sin depending upon who had committed the sin. There is a common saying among Christians that "sin is sin." What is meant by this saying is that all sins are the same in the eyes of God with none worse than another. That saying is true in one specific sense, but in another way, it is false. The way in which it is true that God considers all sin the same is in the sense of how sin will be judged on the final day of judgment. When our lives are judged, any one sin will disqualify us from heaven when determining whether we have earned a place there by our own righteousness. Any one sin of any kind committed during the course of our life makes us a sinner. Whether that sin is murder, adultery, theft, lying, or idolatry we will be judged as a sinner. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the impact of sin upon our lives, our relationship with God, and the lives of others, some sins are worse than others. In this sense the sin of murder is more serious than the sin of lying. These sin offering laws are designed to show us that there is also a distinction between different people who sin depending upon their position or role. The sin of the high priest causes a greater spiritual pollution than the sin of another Israelite even if they commit the same sin. This was shown in requiring a more costly sacrifice for the high priest. This same principle is displayed whenever someone of high standing in our society falls in sin. If a famous Christian leader on television sins it has a greater impact than if another Christian commits the same sin. This provides no excuse for those who are not prominent, but is meant to warn those who are prominent to guard their hearts from causing greater impact by their failures. 4:35 - "Then he shall remove all its fat, just as the fat of the lamb is removed from the sacrifice of the peace offerings, and the priest shall offer them up in smoke on the altar, on the offerings by fire to the LORD. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him in regard to his sin which he has committed, and he will be forgiven." Once the sin offering is sacrificed according to the instructions of the Lord atonement has been made for the person that sinned. He is also given the assurance that his sin has been forgiven. Forgiveness is one of the great and central principles of Christianity. We do not earn our relationship with the holy Lord, it is based upon our enjoyment of His forgiveness. The meaning of forgiveness is straightforward and simple. To forgive is to treat the person forgiven as though they had not sinned and committed an offence. When God forgives us He is choosing to treat us as though we had never violated His holiness and as if we had always remained as faithful to His law as Jesus Himself is. This is one of the awesome blessings of our salvation. Forgiveness is a choice that the Lord makes to restore us to the place of full fellowship with Him. However, His choice is not arbitrary, but based upon something. Biblical forgiveness is always 100% based upon sacrifice. If there is no sacrifice there is no forgiveness. If there is no forgiveness there is no fellowship with God. The Lord is a Lord of forgiveness, but never apart from the atonement accomplished by the shed blood and death of the sacrifice. God the Father forgives us and welcomes us back into fellowship with Himself, but only because Jesus died on the cross for us. Anyone who is convinced that they have been forgiven by God without the cross of Christ is deceived and will experience a rude awakening on the day of judgment. 5:1 - "Now if a person sins after he hears a public adjuration to testify when he is a witness, whether he has seen or otherwise known, if he does not tell it, then he will bear his guilt." The first thirteen verses of chapter five continue the focus on the sin offerings from chapter four. This section is treated differently as a kind of appendix to the description of the sin offering violations of chapter four. In this section four specific examples of additional kinds of transgressions that require a sin offering are covered. The listing of these examples show us that they function as what we would call case laws in our modern judicial system. The point is that God did not provide an exhaustive list of every possible sin a person my commit in this category. Instead, He provided examples of these sins to teach Israel how to recognize this kind of sin in their own lives and to teach them the appropriate response when they sinned in this way. Even though the specifics no longer apply for us in this exact way, we are still meant to learn from these examples so that we can recognize the kinds of things God identifies as transgressions against His holy standards. The first example given has to do with a legal concern affecting the community. The public adjuration referred to being placed under the obligations of an oath. In our court system, when a person is summoned into court to testify as a witness, they are first placed under oath to "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." This law is concerned about such cases, but is even broader in its concerns. This law applied to more than specific witnesses summoned to testify. A leader of the community could call the entire community together in a legal case in which it was necessary to identify witnesses in order to render a proper verdict. If no witnesses had yet stepped forward, the leader could publicly adjure the entire community by an oath. This meant that the leader called on anyone within the community who had knowledge of the case to step forward to testify. The adjuration meant that the leader placed the community under obligation to the Lord to give testimony with the implication that the person that had relevant information about the case and chose to withhold it would be punished by the Lord for doing so. It is what we refer to as withholding evidence in our law system, and it still bears a penalty today, but the penalty in Israel was carried out by the Lord. This law teaches us something about the importance the Lord places upon truth and justice. The person that withholds evidence usually does so for good reason in their own mind. They may fear retribution from the person against whom they are testifying, some social complication arising from their testimony, or it may be that the person who should testify does not wish for the person that is guilty to be punished in the way the law will require if they step forward. Whatever the motive for the person withholding their testimony, they are compelled by this law to see the imperative of truth and justice. The concerns of the truth outweigh any personal agenda or desire the witness may have. This teaches us that the knowledge of the truth brings with it an obligation. The truth is not ours to possess and use or withhold as we see fit to serve ourselves. The truth belongs to the Lord and we owe our testimony to the community for the sake of the Lord's justice. Human justice is designed to reflect the greater justice of the Lord. The justice of the Lord is greater than human justice, among other reasons, because His justice is always based upon the fully known truth of each matter. Human justice as a reflection of the Lord's justice is dependant upon the full truth being made known in each case. If a person know the truth of a case and withholds their testimony, and a judgment is rendered without that testimony, then the justice of the Lord has been subverted by being misrepresented. 5:2-3 - "Or if a person touches any unclean thing, whether a carcass of an unclean beast or the carcass of unclean cattle or a carcass of unclean swarming things, though it is hidden from him and he is unclean, then he will be guilty. Or if he touches human uncleanness, of whatever sort his uncleanness may be with which he becomes unclean, and it is hidden from him, and then he comes to know it, he will be guilty." The second and third cases are covered in this section and both concern a person being rendered unclean by contact with something or someone unclean. When studying the laws of God concerned with being clean or unclean it is necessary for explain the differences in the way we use the term unclean today. If a person is unclean today, we are usually referring to their physical condition and how dirty they are. These laws addressing becoming unclean are not dealing with physical cleanliness and the necessary response when becoming unclean required more than some water and soap to remedy. To be unclean meant that any Israelite had been rendered ceremonially unclean. It was a symbolic uncleanness and affected their ability to approach the Lord in the courtyard of the tabernacle. Until their unclean condition was remedied, their relationship with the Lord and the rest of the nation of Israel was compromised. Uncleanness affected even their relationship with other Israelites because uncleanness was transferable. Contact with anything or anyone that was categorized as unclean made the person who had touched the unclean thing or person unclean themselves. It was similar to the hygienic concern we hold in the case of a contagious disease. Recently there was a big news story of a man who was infected with tuberculosis, which is an airborne disease, flying on a plane and potentially infecting the entire plane load of people simply because they were all breathing the same re-circulated air in the plane. If you visit a person in the hospital with a serious contagious disease, you are required to wear special gloves and a surgical mask to avid the transference of the contagion. The same principle was being demonstrated by the Lord in these laws. However, instead of physical diseases, the focus is spiritual. The deeper lesson, beneath the surface of these two laws is that sin is contagious. Sin has a dynamic effect in a person's life, and close contact can result in the transference from one person to another. The Lord was teaching this through a variety of circumstances. If one person touched the carcass of an animal they became instantly ceremonially unclean. The symbolic connection is that death is the final outworking of sin. To touch death is in essence to touch the results of sin directly. The people of Israel were not to ignore the transferred effect of touching death, but respond to it by a restoration to a spiritually clean condition by offering a necessary sacrifice to the Lord. In the same way, touching a person that was already unclean transferred their uncleanness to the person that had touched them. A person could be unclean for a number of reasons. These will be listed in greater detail in chapters 12-15, but included leprosy, previously touching any carcass, childbirth, menstruation, and a variety of other circumstances. Each one of these conditions were not chosen arbitrarily to represent a ceremonial unclean condition, but were each symbolically valuable to teach Israel about different aspects of the original fall into sin and its many effects. 5:4-6 - "Or if a person swears thoughtlessly with his lips to do evil or to do good, in whatever matter a man may speak thoughtlessly with an oath, and it is hidden from him, and then he comes to know it, he will be guilty in one of these. So it shall be when he becomes guilty in one of these, that he shall confess that in which he has sinned. He shall also bring his guilt offering to the LORD for his sin which he has committed, a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat as a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement on his behalf for his sin." The fourth and final example requiring a sin offering in this section is of a thoughtless oath. The taking of an oath was a very serious matter for anyone in the nation of Israel, because the Lord was considered to be present to hear the oath, and to hold the oath taker accountable to fulfill their oath. The standard that applied was that the person who swore the oath must fulfill it no matter what it cost them or what they might lose by fulfilling it. Because the standard for oaths was so high, it was wise to think carefully before swearing any oath and it was far better to refrain from swearing an oath than to swear and not keep it later. In spite of this, not everyone exercised such wisdom. When a person swore an oath to the Lord, or to another person, and later regretted doing so were they stuck in that circumstance forever without any recourse? In this law the Lord did hold the oath swearer accountable, but also gave a merciful provision through a sin offering to the person that failed to fulfill their oath. The passage describes that the oath in this case was hidden from the one who took it, and that later they came to know it. What is meant be this phrasing is that the person did not recognize the full implications of their oath at the moment they swore it and later came to realize just how much fulfilling it would cost them. There is a new element introduced in the restoration process in this law. The person that has failed to fulfill their oath is to bring an offering to the Lord, but an additional requirement is added to the need for a sacrifice. The oath breaker is to "confess that in which he has sinned." Their confession is not optional. It is also not done in private between only themselves and the Lord. Of course all spiritual confession is first and foremost directed to the Lord, but this confession was to be done just before offering the sacrifice at the tabernacle in the presence of the priest who would receive the sacrifice. "Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much." (James 5:16). Today, our confession is not directed toward a priest in the tabernacle, but in the context of an open sharing in our fellowship in the body of Christ as we testify to the Lord's dealing with our heart to bring us from an area of darkness into His light. The point of confession to another person is not merely to make the situation as embarrassing as possible, but to provide a safeguard against future failure through the anchor of accountability to another in the Christian community. The idea of confessing the sin is more than just reciting what was done that violated the Lord's standard. Biblical confession carries the sense of agreeing out loud with what the Lord says about our actions and or words. Confession is an important expression of a true repentance, which means to change both what we think about what we have done, how we describe it to others, and how we behave in that area in the future. This testimony of David's from the Psalms shows this heart of repentance in an expression of confession. "How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit! When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD"; And You forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah." (Psalm 32:1-5). The confession of David is the necessary and appropriate outcome of a new heart conviction of repentance toward his sin. However, for David, and for us, repentance and confession is not a result of a human born sudden inclination to be a better person. David experienced the pressure of the hand of the Lord on his heart convicting him of his sin and moving him to repent and confess. We can be confident in any area in which we have fallen into sin that the Holy Spirit is at work in our hearts to restore us from the effect of that sin. 6:1-5 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "When a person sins and acts unfaithfully against the LORD, and deceives his companion in regard to a deposit or a security entrusted to him, or through robbery, or if he has extorted from his companion, or has found what was lost and lied about it and sworn falsely, so that he sins in regard to any one of the things a man may do; then it shall be, when he sins and becomes guilty, that he shall restore what he took by robbery or what he got by extortion, or the deposit which was entrusted to him or the lost thing which he found, or anything about which he swore falsely; he shall make restitution for it in full and add to it one-fifth more. He shall give it to the one to whom it belongs on the day he presents his guilt offering. Then he shall bring to the priest his guilt offering to the LORD, a ram without defect from the flock, according to your valuation, for a guilt offering, and the priest shall make atonement for him before the LORD, and he will be forgiven for any one of the things which he may have done to incur guilt." This section addresses four neighbor violations that require a guilt offering at the altar in the tabernacle. These are neighbor violations because they each involve various sins of theft by one person against another. The four violations are a deception regarding a personal security deposit, a robbery, a extortion and a deception regarding found property belonging to the neighbor. Again, like we saw in the previous chapter, these are not the only four ways to steal from a neighbor, but are examples of that category of sin represented in the Eighth Commandment. This section is a more detailed explanation of the Commandment number eight with examples of the kind of violations that constitute stealing in the Lord's eyes, and also what is the necessary response of the thief in order to be restored to right relationship within God's holy nation. The first principle emphasized is easy to overlook but critical to a right understanding of the nature and effect of sin. These sins of stealing in their various forms are identified first as sins "against the Lord." This does not mean that the theft is not a sin against the neighbor who was victimized in the theft, but that the Lord wants His people to first recognize that he is not left out of this circumstance. The clear implication is that if I steal even a single dollar from you, that I have not just affected my relationship toward you, I have affected my relationship toward the Lord. Any theft from anyone in Israel was a theft from the Lord Himself. Of course, I may think when I steal from you that I have successfully hidden it from you and gotten away with it, but nothing is hidden from the Lord and He will hold me accountable for how I transgressed against you whether you know what I have done or not. A person my steal from their neighbor and outwardly maintain the image of righteousness, but the Lord will not accept or ignore the sin. The Lord will maintain the pressure of convicting guilt upon their heart until the guilty person repents and seeks restoration. In order to be restored the guilty thief must address his sin both toward the Lord and toward the person from whom he stole. The necessary response to be restored to right relationship with the Lord is to bring a guilt offering for his sin to the Lord. However, there is an interesting order to this offering that at first seems out of order. The Lord commanded that the guilt offering was not accepted from the thief and therefore there was no possible forgiveness and restoration for him until he first made things right with the victim of his crime. Ordinarily we think in terms of the proper order of repentance being to first express our repentance to the Lord, and then go and express our repentance to our neighbor. The Lord flips that order and requires that the thief first show his repentance to the person he sinned against. This was even to be done on the same day that he intended to make a guilt offering to the Lord. What the Lord required of the thief to be restored to his neighbor was more than a sincere apology. Saying, "I'm sorry" could of course be included in his repentance, but by itself was an insufficient expression. What was required toward the neighbor was restitution. This meant that the thief was to return to the person from whom they stole everything that was stolen, plus an additional 20% was to be added to what was returned. We see this principle on display in the New Testament in the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. "Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering." (Matthew 5:23-24). The Lord wants the one who has sinned to be restored to Him, but He makes their response to their neighbor the test of whether their repentance is genuine or not. We have a famous example of this kind of genuine repentance on display in the life of Zaccheus. "Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much." And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham." (Luke 19:8-9). The heart of Zaccheus was so impacted by his encounter with Jesus that he came under full conviction for his pattern of taking more as a tax collector that was required to keep for himself. Interestingly, the Romans who imposed the taxes recruited tax collectors from among the Jews and allowed them to keep an extra portion for themselves as long as Caesar received what he required. This violated the Law of God, however, and Zaccheus was moved to true repentance for having extorted too much tax. The Law only required he restore the portion he extorted plus 20%, but in his sincere desire to show his changed heart Zaccheus promised to repay four times as much as he took. Then, once the restitution to the neighbor was made, the one who had stolen was now free to approach the Lord with a guilt offering. This offering symbolically expressed the payment of the debt incurred by the theft just like the 20% restitution had represented that debt to the neighbor. The reason a sacrifice was required toward the Lord, rather than a 20% payment is that our sins produce a debt to the Lord greater than we can pay. The debt our sins create can only be satisfied by death. This is why the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross is prophetically identified by Isaiah as a guilt offering to the Lord (Isaiah 53:10). In other words, the death of Jesus This 20% or one fifth restitution requirement was righteous and wise. It was a fair payment to the victim of not only their original property but an amount representing what they would have gained with it had it not been stolen from them. It also served as a serious fine for the thief and taught the needed lesson in an economically impacting way that stealing is not profitable, and only costs the thief more in the end. It also served as a true deterrent for others that were tempted to steal but who saw with their own eyes the added cost of the restitution. It is worth noting that no jail sentence was attached to this crime or its punishment. If the thief were sent to jail, they would sit in an unproductive circumstance and they would not be changed by the punishment, not would the victim receive any benefit. Additionally, the entire society would lose by having to support the thief for the duration of their sentence. In a choice between the Lord's way of dealing with theft crimes and the way our society has chosen to deal with them, I have to choose the Lord's way as far more productive and redemptive. 6:8-13 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Command Aaron and his sons, saying, 'This is the law for the burnt offering: the burnt offering itself shall remain on the hearth on the altar all night until the morning, and the fire on the altar is to be kept burning on it. The priest is to put on his linen robe, and he shall put on undergarments next to his flesh; and he shall take up the ashes to which the fire reduces the burnt offering on the altar and place them beside the altar. 'Then he shall take off his garments and put on other garments, and carry the ashes outside the camp to a clean place. The fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it. It shall not go out, but the priest shall burn wood on it every morning; and he shall lay out the burnt offering on it, and offer up in smoke the fat portions of the peace offerings on it. Fire shall be kept burning continually on the altar; it is not to go out.'" The remainder of chapter six is divided into sections giving the laws of the burnt offerings and the grain offerings. The laws for those offerings were already given in detail in chapters one and two. This section is not a simple repetition of the earlier laws, but a restatement of those laws from a new perspective. In the earlier chapters the laws of these two offerings were given from the perspective of the person who was bringing the offering to the Lord. Now, the same offering laws are given with the new focus of the role of the Levitical priest who receives the offering and presents it to the Lord. Traditionally, rabbis have interpreted this section as a kind of rule book for the priesthood to instruct them in how to make these offerings to the Lord. The primary concern of the Lord in the burnt offering in regard to the responsibility of the priests had to do with the fire on the altar. The Lord did not even address the requirement for the maintenance of the fire in the earlier description of the burnt offering because the people of Israel had no responsibilities in the tabernacle. Here though, in the guidelines for the priests, the fire on the altar is their chief responsibility. They were to make sure the fire on the altar was never extinguished. The Lord's concern is repeated a few times to make sure the priests do not neglect the fire. What was it about the fire that made it so important to keep burning? There were two reasons why the Lord wanted the fire on the altar to be maintained continuously. The first reason was the source of the fire upon the altar. We will see in the next few chapters that when the first of the burnt offerings was offered unto the Lord upon the altar that the Lord consumed the sacrifice by fire that came forth from Himself. It was the responsibility of the priests to maintain the fire of the Lord upon the altar as a continuous reminder that the fire of the altar was heavenly. The second reason the Lord commanded them to keep the altar fire burning was the ultimate symbolic connection of the altar. The altar of sacrifice points forward as a type to the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. It was important for the altar and its fire to represent the purpose of the cross. Jesus died upon the cross as the once for all time sacrifice for all of our sins. Once He dies upon the cross, He is never again offered in sacrifice for all of eternity (Hebrews 7:27). However, His sacrifice has a constantly continuing saving effect. The cross did not just provide a sacrifice for the sins we had committed up until the moment we believed. The cross is a constant provision of God's mercy and grace for us day by day. There will never be a moment when we approach God trusting in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and discover that the fire of that heavenly altar has been extinguished and no longer answers the need of our sin. 7:5-10 - "The priest shall offer them up in smoke on the altar as an offering by fire to the LORD; it is a guilt offering. Every male among the priests may eat of it. It shall be eaten in a holy place; it is most holy. The guilt offering is like the sin offering, there is one law for them; the priest who makes atonement with it shall have it. Also the priest who presents any man's burnt offering, that priest shall have for himself the skin of the burnt offering which he has presented. Likewise, every grain offering that is baked in the oven and everything prepared in a pan or on a griddle shall belong to the priest who presents it. Every grain offering, mixed with oil or dry, shall belong to all the sons of Aaron, to all alike."
This section continues the restatement of the laws for five main tabernacle offerings that were previously covered in chapters 1-5. The difference is that this section is written for the priests to govern their role and participation in these offerings. In these verses, the emphasis is on what is to be done with the sacrifices as they are offered. Each sacrifice was first offered to God to honor Him and satisfy the requirements of the law, but the hide, meat and grain of the sacrifices were then to be used as God designated. For the burnt offering the meat of the sacrifice was burned, but the hide of the animal was to be given to the priest who actually served in the offering by placing the sacrifice on the altar. For the grain offering, once the grain was properly prepared and offered, the priest was given the grain for him to eat. The principle that applies here is that the priests were the Lord's servants in His house, and by giving them a portion of the offerings given to Him, the Lord was paying His servants their wages. The Levitical priests were engaged in what we call today full time ministry. In other words, they did not work other jobs or have other sources of personal income. Their own livelihood was supported entirely by their ordained portion from the offerings of the tabernacle. Paul describes this principle which carries over even into the New Covenant. "Do you not know that those who perform sacred services eat the food of the temple, and those who attend regularly to the altar have their share from the altar? So also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel." (I Corinthians 9:13-14). The pattern is that the Lord calls some from among His people to serve Him as their life's work. The Lord also ordains for His people to give a portion of what He has given to them to honor Him. Those who serve in this capacity are intended to be supported in their work of service from the offerings of the people of God. There is in our generation a commonly shared resistance to give offerings to the work of God because of how some who receive those offerings have abused their position and privilege by accumulating too much from the offerings and misusing what was intended to provide for their true needs, not all of their fleshly desires. The reluctance to give to such so called servants of God is understandable and even wise in many cases. In order for these offerings to honor the Lord as they are intended it is first necessary for the one receiving the offering to honor the Lord as they should. This story from a later time in Israel's history shows how the sons of the high priest who were themselves priests abused the offering system for their own benefit. "Now the sons of Eli were worthless men; they did not know the LORD and the custom of the priests with the people. When any man was offering a sacrifice, the priest's servant would come while the meat was boiling, with a three-pronged fork in his hand. Then he would thrust it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot; all that the fork brought up the priest would take for himself. Thus they did in Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. Also, before they burned the fat, the priest's servant would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, "Give the priest meat for roasting, as he will not take boiled meat from you, only raw." If the man said to him, "They must surely burn the fat first, and then take as much as you desire," then he would say, "No, but you shall give it to me now; and if not, I will take it by force." Thus the sin of the young men was very great before the LORD, for the men despised the offering of the LORD." (I Samuel 2:12-17). The sins of Eli's sons is described as "very great before the LORD." Any offerings made to the Lord are holy and He will not tolerate for long men who dishonor His name by mishandling the gifts that are given to Him. Their abuse reflected on the Lord Himself and tempted the people of God to withhold their offerings. 7:20-21 - "But the person who eats the flesh of the sacrifice of peace offerings which belong to the LORD, in his uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from his people. When anyone touches anything unclean, whether human uncleanness, or an unclean animal, or any unclean detestable thing, and eats of the flesh of the sacrifice of peace offerings which belong to the LORD, that person shall be cut off from his people." We saw in a previous chapter that the peace offering was meant to be eaten by the person that made the offering as a fellowship meal to celebrate that the peace the person enjoyed in their covenant relationship with the Lord. There was a critical limitation on the person bringing the offering however. They were not allowed to eat the peace offering if they were currently in an unclean spiritual condition. They might be rendered unclean in a number of ways. For instance merely touching a dead body of an animal or person would render anyone unclean until they went through the specific requirements to be restored to ceremonially clean condition. If any person in Israel ignored this command and ate the peace offering while they were still unclean then their standing in the holy nation of God immediately changed to a drastic degree. That person was "cut off from his people." To be cut off was to lose all covenant rights and identification. A cut off person was treated as if they were not part of Israel at all. They had no access to the tabernacle for sacrifice, and they were treated as if they were one of the Gentiles. For many, such a serious consequence seems harsh and unreasonable. However, as with many things, the Lord sees this situation from a different perspective than most. He considers violations of His holiness to be a much more serious issue than we tend to view them. In this case, there was an important symbolic reason why the Lord wanted such violations to result in a complete disassociation of the offender from His house and His holy people. If the Lord were to overlook the defilement of the peace offering and allow an unclean person to celebrate the peace offering meal without consequence, what He would be communicating is that sin and the unclean condition it produces has no effect upon our peace and fellowship with God. In other words, He would be declaring by His inaction that the cross was not really necessary to establish peace and restore fellowship between God and us. Sin defiles and until that defilement is cleansed we cannot celebrate peace with God because there would be no peace with Him. We see a similar concern of the Lord's played out in one of the New Testament churches. In the church in Corinth, there were some who were participating in the Lord's Supper in a way that dishonored the Lord and the purpose for the meal. Paul wrote them and explained that the Lord had already begun to deal with those offenders in a discipline of His judgment. "For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world." (I Corinthians 11:29-32). The severity of the violation is shown by the severity of the consequences that the Lord imposed on them which included both sickness and in some cases death. The Lord is neither detached or unconcerned about His holy things. It is important for us to recognize that there are some things which He has chosen to represent His holy standards which He will personally guard even to the point of dealing with us whenever we trample on His holiness. 7:37-38 - "This is the law of the burnt offering, the grain offering and the sin offering and the guilt offering and the ordination offering and the sacrifice of peace offerings, which the LORD commanded Moses at Mount Sinai in the day that He commanded the sons of Israel to present their offerings to the LORD in the wilderness of Sinai." These final verses of chapter seven sum up the first seven chapters of Leviticus. These chapters have detailed the laws of the five offerings of the Lord for both the Israelite who is to bring the offerings and the priest who is to receive them and make the offering to the Lord. As we look back over this section the themes that should stand out are the high value the Lord places upon His holiness, the absolute necessity of sacrifice to enjoy restored relationship with the Lord, and the necessity for all things to be done in the exact ways the Lord commanded in the service of the tabernacle. These seven chapters are not a collection of the Lord for the worship of Israel. These were all laws which detail the commandments of the Lord for the offerings. It was not an option whether to make these offerings to the Lord. If any refused to make these offerings they were cut off from the Lord and from Israel. Additionally, the offerings were commanded to be presented in a specific place, offering specific gifts, in specific amounts, at specific times, by specific persons, for specific reasons, and in specific ways. The implication in all of this is that left to ourselves, we would not recognize the need to make such offerings to the Lord or would offer them with the wrong perspective and in the wrong way. The details of the Lord's specific requirements in these offerings were not designed to make approaching God more difficult, but to reflect His order. "But all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner." (I Corinthians 14:40). Remember also that each offering pointed to the cross in its own way, illuminating a different aspect of the one great offering of Jesus for our sins. 8:4, 9, 13, 17, 21, 29, 36 - "So Moses did just as the LORD commanded him." This chapter now shifts the focus away from the offering laws that filled the first seven chapters and returns to a narrative of the consecration and ordination of Aaron as the first high priest of the tabernacle and his sons as priests along with him. The setting apart of Aaron and his sons for the priesthood was previously detailed in a set of consecration laws previously in the book of Exodus. In this chapter, the role of Moses is key in his responsibility to act upon each one of the requirements of the Lord to complete this process of ordaining the new priests that will serve the Lord in the tabernacle. Moses was faithful to carry out every requirement of every one of the ordination laws. In his obedient faithfulness Moses serves as a type of Christ. This section from Hebrews draws that comparison between the role of Moses in the tabernacle and the role of Christ in relationship to the church. "Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession; He was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was in all His house. For He has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by just so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God. Now Moses was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later; but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house--whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end." (Hebrews 3:1-6). The faithfulness of Moses to carry out all of the will of God for the tabernacle reflects the perfect faithfulness of Christ as He carried out all of the will of God in every detail in the New Covenant tabernacle which is the church. As beautifully as the faithfulness of Moses reflects the work of Christ, the writer of Hebrews draws an important distinction between Moses and Christ. Moses served God in the house of God. Christ's faithfulness was revealed as the Son of God over His own house. The faithfulness of Moses to obey all of the commands of God in this chapter also serves as a model for us to follow. There are seven verses in this chapter that essentially repeat the same phrase, "So Moses did just as the LORD commanded him." The seven fold repetition emphasizes that the obedience of Moses was a complete obedience in every detail. This is the standard to which we are called in our own service to the Lord. There are two aspects of what Moses did that are instructive to our own service to the Lord. First, what Moses did was determined by the command of the Lord. Second, how Moses obeyed the Lord in these commands establishes a high standard for all believers in their own service. What Moses did was receive and follow the will of the Lord. His ministry service was not based upon his own human imagination or preferences. He served because the Lord commanded it. The command of the Lord bears the authority of the Lord and places the servant under the singular responsibility to carry out the will of the One Who commands. Each believer in Christ is called to serve the Lord as Moses did. We are not turned loose to imagine the specifics of our obedience for ourselves any more than Moses was. We have been given the clear commands contained in all of God's revealed Word, the Scriptures. Our obedience to God is measured by our faithfulness to carry out the instructions detailed in the Scriptures regarding our lives, our families, in society, and in the church. How Moses served the Lord in these commands is highlighted by the phrase "just as." It emphasizes that he followed the commands of the Lord to the fullest extent and in every detail. When the Lord commanded that a scarlet thread was to be used, Moses did not substitute a green thread and justify himself with rationalizations that green would somehow be just as good. The implication was that Moses grasped that every detail of the Lord's commands was critical because it originated from the Lord. Moses never presumed to substitute his own ideas or preferences for the command of the Lord. The reason that this is so important for our own generation of believers is that so many have chosen to ignore or disregard clear commands in Scripture and in there place have substituted personal standards or the standards of the world. As servants of the Lord, our lives are not our own. It is our responsibility to learn the commands of the Lord for our lives and then to obey all of them just as the Lord commanded. 8:10 - "Moses then took the anointing oil and anointed the tabernacle and all that was in it..." From the passage in Hebrews 3:1-6 quoted above we see that the church is identified as the house of the Lord just like the tabernacle was identified as His house. In this passage, Moses anointed the tabernacle and all the furnishings within it. He did so by pouring some of the special anointing oil upon the structure of the tabernacle, and not just upon Aaron. This points toward a similar double anointing in the new Covenant. Christ is the anointed One, and in His baptism by John the Baptist, Christ was fully and permanently anointed with the Holy Spirit. "After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him," (Matthew 3:16). "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME" (Luke 4:18). "You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him." (Acts 10:38). When the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus at His baptism that was His anointing. The Holy Spirit did not come and go from Jesus, but remained with Him from that moment forward. In the same way we describe His anointing as permanent. Just as the tabernacle was anointed along with the anointing of the first high priest, Aaron, the church is anointed along with Christ in the New Covenant. Our anointing is based upon His anointing. The anointing is the presence of the Holy Spirit coming upon a person, filling that person and remaining with them as He did with Christ. As a fulfillment parallel, the entire tabernacle was anointed by Moses and the entire church is anointed by Christ sending the Holy Spirit. "As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." (Matthew 3:11). As Lord over the New Covenant tabernacle, which is the church, Jesus anoints the entire church by filling the church with His Holy Spirit. Our anointing is similar to His in that the Spirit fills us and remains with us. Our anointing does not wane over time or fluctuate from week to week. Our anointing is lasting and permanent. "But you have an anointing from the Holy One" (I John 2:20). This is an important corrective to many well intentioned but misguided prayers and teachings, especially in Pentecostal and charismatic Christian circles. Many pray for a new or fresh anointing, but they do so without understanding that is the equivalent of asking God for a new or fresh Holy Spirit to come live inside of them. Every true believer in Christ is anointed and will always remain anointed. The anointing neither grows or diminishes. This is because the anointing is a person, and not simply a spiritual substance. 8:22-24 - "Then he presented the second ram, the ram of ordination, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram. Moses slaughtered it and took some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron's right ear, and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. He also had Aaron's sons come near; and Moses put some of the blood on the lobe of their right ear, and on the thumb of their right hand and on the big toe of their right foot. Moses then sprinkled the rest of the blood around on the altar." When Aaron and his sons were set apart in this consecration ceremony for their calling to minister as priests, Moses first applied the blood of the ram of ordination to their bodies in three locations. In our study from Exodus 29 we saw that there was a symbolic reason why some of the blood of the sacrifice was applied to their right ear, right thumb and right big toe. The Lord was showing by the ear that they were being set apart to hear His Word and that all of their thoughts were to be guided from this point forward to the Word of God and not their own thoughts. The thumb signified that everything they laid their hands upon, all of their life's work was from this point to be dedicated unto the Lord. In other words they were to do His will and not their own. The toe indicated that every step they took in their lives from this point was to follow Him. These three parts of the body as a whole pictured that their entire life was being set apart for God's service. The reason that blood was applied in these three spots was to show the priest was being spiritually sanctified or set apart for God's holy service. This ceremony was what qualified Aaron and his sons to lead the people of God in the tabernacle service. This pattern of applying some blood to these three body parts is no longer practiced in the ordination of leaders to their ministry in the New Covenant. There is however, a spiritual principle regarding church leadership that we can draw from this pattern and still applies. The principle that applies is that holiness is the first priority of the Lord for those that He chooses and calls into church leadership. In most church denominations, the priority for choosing and preparing new church leaders is usually education, not consecration. The traditional pattern for developing new leaders is through the avenue of seminaries and Bible colleges where the great emphasis is placed on higher religious education. The candidate for leadership is passed and later assigned primarily on the basis of how much they have learned rather than how holy they are. I am not implying that education played no important role in the ministry preparations of Aaron and his sons. They, more than the rest of Israel were responsible to become educated in the requirements of the tabernacle and they would do so by paying special attention to the instructions of the Lord for all of the aspects of the tabernacle. However, this day of their ordination was not a day in which their knowledge of the tabernacle was tested. It was a day of blood. The Lord's priority for those He calls is sanctification and then education. Biblical education is especially important as a foundation for future fruitful ministry. But, education without sanctification results in an empty intellectual grasp of the details without really understanding the point of any of this. A sanctified servant of the Lord is now prepared to learn and serve in the way the Lord intends. 9:1-6 - "Now it came about on the eighth day that Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel; and he said to Aaron, "Take for yourself a calf, a bull, for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering, both without defect, and offer them before the LORD. Then to the sons of Israel you shall speak, saying, 'Take a male goat for a sin offering, and a calf and a lamb, both one year old, without defect, for a burnt offering, and an ox and a ram for peace offerings, to sacrifice before the LORD, and a grain offering mixed with oil; for today the LORD will appear to you.'" So they took what Moses had commanded to the front of the tent of meeting, and the whole congregation came near and stood before the LORD. Moses said, "This is the thing which the LORD has commanded you to do, that the glory of the LORD may appear to you." In the last chapter the focus was on the final preparation and consecration of Aaron and his sons as the priests of the tabernacle. In order to complete their consecration they had to enter into the outside courtyard of the tabernacle where the altar and laver were, and stay there for a full seven days. Each of those seven days the required sacrifices were offered for them. Now, at the beginning of chapter nine Moses calls to Aaron and his sons to signal that their week of consecration is complete. Moses represents the Lord in this call. It is the Lord's call to come near to Him and serve Him in His house. The call of the Lord takes place on the eighth day again signifying that what is about to take place represents a progression to a new creation work of the Lord. We have previously seen in our study of the tabernacle in Exodus that the house of the Lord is filled with new creation symbols. The specific new creation connection here is spotlighting the role of Aaron as the new high priest as the beginning of a new creation work of God. This points us again to the fulfillment of these symbols in the role of Christ. The New Covenant is a covenant of new creation. Christ's role as our heavenly High Priest is foundational to the new creation. Until Christ entered into the heavenly temple of God on our behalf following His perfect sacrifice, His resurrection, and His ascension, we had no high priest to mediate between ourselves and God. His presence in heaven as high priest represents all, but only all, who have been born again into the new creation. The new creation symbolism is established by the end of the seven days of the original creation week represented in the seven days of Aaron's consecration in the courtyard. It is on the eighth day that Aaron will be able to enter into the house of the Lord representing all the covenant people of God. Even Aaron is not allowed to enter the tabernacle before the eighth day which emphasizes that only those who belong to the new creation work of salvation in Christ have access into the spiritual house of God. Moses declares that this day of inauguration of the priesthood's ministry is going to be marked by the arrival of a special guest. The culmination of the day's ceremonies will see the appearance of the Lord. Only once before in all of history had the Lord appeared in the midst of a people and that was on the day that the tabernacle structure was finished in Exodus 40. Now, Moses declares that the Lord was going to appear again in relationship to the beginning of the ministry of the high priest which shows in the greatest possible way the importance of that special office. As always, everything that is promised to happen is contingent on the offering of the sacrifices the Lord commands and the obedience of the people to follow His commands. There are three New Covenant principles of the Christian life that are brought to the forefront in this section. 1) The goal of true religion is not ceremony or ritual but the presence of the Lord. 2) The sacrifice of the cross always precedes the presence of the Lord. 3) No one can enter the presence of the Lord apart from the mediating ministry of the high priest God has consecrated. 9:15-18 - "Then he presented the people's offering, and took the goat of the sin offering which was for the people, and slaughtered it and offered it for sin, like the first. He also presented the burnt offering, and offered it according to the ordinance. Next he presented the grain offering, and filled his hand with some of it and offered it up in smoke on the altar, besides the burnt offering of the morning. Then he slaughtered the ox and the ram, the sacrifice of peace offerings which was for the people; and Aaron's sons handed the blood to him and he sprinkled it around on the altar." Aaron now begins to actively function for the first time in his role as high priest. Appropriately, the very first act of the very first high priest in serving the Lord on behalf of the people of God is was to make these offerings recorded here in this section. Aaron offered four offerings representing the covenant people. He offered in order a sin offering, a burnt offering, a grain offering and a peace offering. Each of these offerings represented different aspects of the purpose of Christ's one sacrifice of Himself on the cross. What is unique about the cross is that Christ was functioning both as the One making the offering to God as the high priest, and the sacrifice offered. His death accomplished all that the various Levitical offerings were designed to represent. The order of these four offerings is intentional and shows a theological progression of how the cross applies to our lives. The first aspect of the cross is that it provides the necessary payment that our sins require which is death. This payment is essential for a restoration of relationship with God. Without the cross, people stand before an awesomely holy God as souls polluted and corrupted by their many transgressions against His standards. The second aspect of the cross represented by these sacrifices is that of atonement for the entire person in the burnt offering. The salvation accomplished by the cross covers all of me, all of my failures, and every part of my life. The result of salvation is that all of my life now belongs to Christ, and none of it belongs to me any longer. The third aspect of the cross shown in the grain offering is that not just me, but all I will ever do in the future belongs to Him also. The cross marks the end of my old life and the beginning of a new life that is His (Galatians 2:20). The final aspect of the cross highlighted here is found in the meaning of the peace offering. Because of Christ and His death on the cross I now live in peace with God (Romans 5:1). I now live to please Him not in an effort to make peace with God, but because I am forever at peace with Him. 9:22-24 - "Then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them, and he stepped down after making the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings. Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting. When they came out and blessed the people, the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people. Then fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the portions of fat on the altar; and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces." As soon as the last required sacrifice was offered by Aaron, his next official act as high priest was to bless the covenant people of God. This establishes a pattern that will remain constant throughout all of Old Testament history. The sacrifices God requires are the spiritual prerequisite for the blessings of God. Aaron represents God in this act of blessing. The act of blessing here involved Aaron lifting his hands and proclaiming the Lord's pleasure toward His people. The words of blessing he spoke are not recorded here, but were most likely similar or identical to this blessing. "The LORD bless you, and keep you; The LORD make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace." (Numbers 6:24-26). Through the proclamation of blessing the Lord extends a greater measure of His grace and benefits to His people. These four sacrifices offered were on behalf of the entire covenant nation of Israel. That means that the benefits represented in these sacrifices were not just for Moses, Aaron, and his sons to enjoy. The spiritual benefits of the blessing of Aaron were gained by every person in Israel the moment these sacrifices were offered. The parallel is the full availability of every blessing purchased by the cross to anyone that believes the gospel of Christ. This verse from Ephesians seems like a bit of exaggeration when it is first read, but it accurately declares the full truth of what the cross accomplished for those who believe. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," (Ephesians 1:3). There was actually a double blessing pronounced at this time. The first blessing was immediately after the sacrifices were offered. Then Moses and Aaron together entered into the tabernacle. Once they came back out of the tabernacle a second blessing is declared upon all the people. The double blessing displays that God is now holding nothing back in His desire to bless His people. Like the wording in the Ephesians passage above, "every spiritual blessing" has been poured out through the mediation of the new high priest. This reveals the heart of God toward us. He is gracious and merciful and inclined to bless us with overflowing blessings. If you doubt His heart's intention, take a closer look at the cross. 10:1-3 - "Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, "It is what the LORD spoke, saying, 'By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored.'" So Aaron, therefore, kept silent." This development with Nadab and Abihu is a sudden and unexpected interruption in the event of the ordination of the new Levitical priesthood. Chapter ten should be read as an immediate continuation of the events of chapter nine. In the last chapter, Aaron and his sons have completed their consecration process for the priesthood which has lasted seven days. It is now the eighth day and the new priests have begun to serve the Lord in His house. Nadab and Abihu were the two eldest of the four sons of Aaron. They were also the next two highest ranking priests with Nadab being the next in line to become the high priest following Aaron's death. The immediate context behind this circumstance was established at the end of chapter nine. "Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting. When they came out and blessed the people, the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people. Then fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the portions of fat on the altar; and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces." (Leviticus 9:23-24). Chapter nine ends with the first offerings by the Levitical priests according to the instructions of the Lord being fully accepted by the Lord. The Lord left no room for uncertainty in His acceptance of the offerings when He caused fire from His presence to consume all the offerings on the altar in the eyes of all the people. Now, sometime that day, following the accepted offerings, the eldest sons of Aaron took their firepans which were used for holding coals to light incense in the tabernacle, and they offered what is identified as "strange fire" in the presence of the Lord. As soon as they did so, another fire came out from the Lord's presence and rather than consuming sacrifices on the altar as before, Nadab and Abihu are consumed, and die. This is the Lord fighting fire with fire. The strange fire of Nadab and Abihu is swallowed up, as are they, in the holy fire of the Lord's judgment. There has been great interest in identifying exactly what the strange fire was by both Jewish and Christian commentators because of the severity of the response of the Lord. This was a death penalty response by the Lord and it was immediate and without appeal. There have been at least twelve different possibilities offered including the theory that they changed the incense formula the Lord had commanded (Exodus 30:37-38), they entered too far into the tabernacle by violating the Holy of Holies (Leviticus 16:1-2), and that they drunk when they entered the house of God (Leviticus 10:9). However, we cannot know for sure exactly what this great violation was because the Lord has chosen not to give us any additional details. What we do know is that it involved a blatant disregard for the instructions of the Lord for offering incense and that God considered it to be such a serious offence to His holiness that the appropriate punishment was death. Without any further details, we can learn the main point of this circumstance, which is the absolute priority of the holiness of God. All through the book of Leviticus so far the Lord has been emphasizing through the laws of the offerings and the laws of the priesthood that His holiness is the first concern before all other things. Now the Lord puts a terrifying exclamation point at the end of this lesson and does so in a double execution of two of His own most valued servants. This becomes for ever generation of priests to follow, and for all of Israel, an object lesson that will not be easy to ignore. Nadab and Abihu should have known better. They had a greater exposure to the presence of the Lord than anyone else in the world other than Moses and Aaron. Their special role among the other priests was first shown by the Lord when He named them when He called the leaders of Israel to join Him on Sinai. "Then He said to Moses, "Come up to the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel, and you shall worship at a distance." (Exodus 24:1). Because they had been granted this special privilege, and had been called to such a high and holy calling as assistants to the high priest, the Lord also held them to a high standard of accountability. "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required" (Luke 12:48). The Lord did not require perfection from them. The previous seven days of sacrifices that they offered in their consecration to the priesthood testified to their imperfection. What the Lord did require of them was that they honor Him, treat Him as holy in the eyes of Israel, and obey His commands. For some reason, Nadab and Abihu decided to approach the Lord in their own way rather than the way the Lord had ordained. Remember that the fire used to burn the incense was to be taken from the altar of sacrifice which pointed forward to the cross and the incense itself was picturing the acceptable worship and prayers pleasing to God because of the cross. Their strange fire symbolically corrupted the meaning of the cross. It was the Old Covenant equivalent to the proclamation of a false gospel that Paul condemned. "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!" (Galatians 1:6-9). Even though the exact circumstances of this day are impossible to duplicate today, the lessons of that day still apply. There is no tabernacle, we are not Levitical priests, and there is no longer any incense to offer. We are however considered a royal priesthood of a higher order in the New Covenant, and the Lord is no less concerned about His holiness today than He was that day. The issue is whether this story is relevant for Christians today. It seems to me that in our present generation of believers where presuming on God's grace is the norm and disregarding the judgments of God is commonplace, that it is more than relevant; it is a much needed spiritual corrective. There is one more key detail from this passage that should catch our attention. How did Aaron respond when the fire of the Lord consumed his two sons? First, before Aaron can respond, Moses speaks on behalf of the Lord directly to Aaron and gives an explanation for what has just occurred. "It is what the LORD spoke, saying, 'By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored.'" The clear implication in the words of Moses is that they had been held to a higher standard because of their high office. They received from the Lord exactly what they deserved for their sin against His holiness. The words of Moses impacted Aaron's heart, and he remained silent. His silence meant that Aaron accepted the judgment of the Lord upon his sons without protest. This alone took great faith on Aaron's part. He did not scream his anger out toward the Lord, or even quietly ask the question many of us would ask, "Why Lord?" There was no need for the question because Moses had already supplied the answer. Aaron trusted that the Lord was just and righteous to end the lives of his own sons because they actually deserved it, and because of the need for the holiness of the Lord to be indelibly imprinted on the hearts of all of Israel in this. Aaron has shown himself to be far from perfect, but in this he also shows that he is a true man of faith. 10:4-7 - "Moses called also to Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Aaron's uncle Uzziel, and said to them, "Come forward, carry your relatives away from the front of the sanctuary to the outside of the camp." So they came forward and carried them still in their tunics to the outside of the camp, as Moses had said. Then Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, "Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, so that you will not die and that He will not become wrathful against all the congregation. But your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, shall bewail the burning which the LORD has brought about. You shall not even go out from the doorway of the tent of meeting, or you will die; for the LORD'S anointing oil is upon you." So they did according to the word of Moses." Following the death of Nadab and Abihu, Moses called two of Aaron's extended family to come and carry their bodies out of the sanctuary area and outside of the camp of Israel. In a normal burial circumstance the closest relatives would bear the body to the place of burial, but in this case Aaron and his other two sons are not permitted by the Lord to participate. Aaron, Eleazar and Ithamar are also not permitted to show the traditional cultural response to the death of their close family members by either removing their head coverings or tearing their clothing. At first glance, these requirements seem like the Lord is being too harsh to require such restraint of the father and brothers of the slain priests. The Lord's requirement was spiritually necessary however. If they had moved the bodies themselves they would have invalidated the consecration of the last seven days because any priest that touched a dead body was rendered ceremonially impure. In order to fulfill their higher calling they had to forego the ordinary responsibility toward their son / brothers. The Lord also did not allow them to display the normal outward marks of mourning of removing the head covering and tearing their own garments because they now represented the Lord to all of Israel in their role as priests. With His actions, the Lord had shown that they deserved to die. By maintaining their composure and not outwardly mourning their death, Aaron and his sons displayed their faith in the righteousness of the Lord's judgment. The lesson here for us is that it matters to the Lord that we do the right thing, but it also matters to Him when we declare to others by our attitude and actions that He has done the right thing. Our response to the actions of the Lord has an influence on how others will interpret and respond to His actions. 10:8-10 - "The LORD then spoke to Aaron, saying, "Do not drink wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sons with you, when you come into the tent of meeting, so that you will not die--it is a perpetual statute throughout your generations--and so as to make a distinction between the holy and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean, and so as to teach the sons of Israel all the statutes which the LORD has spoken to them through Moses." Immediately after the death of Nadab and Abihu, the Lord speaks directly to Aaron for the first and only time. In all other interactions when the Lord communicated necessary information to Aaron, He did so through Moses. In this case, the Lord speaks directly in order to establish a firm boundary in Aaron's heart regarding His holy standards for the priesthood. The Lord introduces a new standard here of prohibiting the drinking of wine or strong drink by Aaron or any of the Levitical priests prior to their going on duty in the service of the tabernacle. This is the basis for the theory some hold that the sin of Aaron's sons was drinking on the job. It is possible that Nadab and Abihu had been drinking before offering strange fire. However, we can be certain that their drinking was not the cause of their death. In identifying why they were slain, the specific reason given was the strange fire, not strange drink. The question remains though as to why the Lord would bring up the issue of priesthood drinking right after this incident unless it had some relationship. It seems to me that Nadab and Abihu were probably drinking, and their judgment was adversely affected by it in their foolish decision to offer strange fire. This does not lead us to the conclusion that all alcohol use is automatically sinful, but it should warn us that there is a time and place and way to drink, and that there are times, places, and ways to avoid drinking altogether. The Lord also uses this context to describe the secondary ministry of all Levitical priests. The first ministry of the priests was to serve the Lord in His tabernacle. The secondary responsibility was to function as a teacher in the community of Israel. Their teaching ministry was to pass on to the whole nation the benefit of what they had learned of the holiness of the Lord through the statutes of the Law. This shows us that the priesthood, while mostly hidden from public view because their responsibilities were conducted primarily where only the priests could go inside the tabernacle, was never intended by the Lord to develop into some kind of secret order learning and conducting rituals only for themselves. All of their work as priests was designed by the Lord as a teaching device, first for all of Israel, and second for all of us in the New Covenant. Their teaching included instructing the people in the laws of the Lord, but also involved their own obedience to the standards of the priesthood. Every time they followed a requirement for the priests that the Lord had established, their obedience was teaching every Israelite that was watching. This was not class room style teaching, but what we describe as teaching by example. Biblical teaching includes both elements. If a priest disregarded one of the standards of the Lord, he was still teaching, but now was teaching the wrong lessons by the bad example he was setting. Because the Lord's purpose was for the entire nation to be His holy nation (Exodus 19:6, I Peter 2:9), and not just to have a holy priesthood in the midst of a corrupt nation, the role of the Levitical priests as teachers by example was a critical aspect of the Lord's plan. The New Covenant parallels should be obvious. Those that the Lord calls to be teachers of His people today dare not live as the Pharisees who taught with their words a high level of holiness, but displayed with their lives a low level of holiness. Bible teachers must teach the truth about God both with their words and their actions. The Lord holds them accountable to that standard. "Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment." (James 3:1). 11:1-8 - "The LORD spoke again to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them, "Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 'These are the creatures which you may eat from all the animals that are on the earth. Whatever divides a hoof, thus making split hoofs, and chews the cud, among the animals, that you may eat. Nevertheless, you are not to eat of these, among those which chew the cud, or among those which divide the hoof: the camel, for though it chews cud, it does not divide the hoof, it is unclean to you. Likewise, the shaphan, for though it chews cud, it does not divide the hoof, it is unclean to you; the rabbit also, for though it chews cud, it does not divide the hoof, it is unclean to you; and the pig, for though it divides the hoof, thus making a split hoof, it does not chew cud, it is unclean to you. You shall not eat of their flesh nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you." This is the first chapter in a new five chapter section of purity laws. The laws in this section are expressions of the concern of the Lord identified in His commands to the priests in the previous chapter. "and so as to make a distinction between the holy and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean, and so as to teach the sons of Israel all the statutes which the LORD has spoken to them through Moses." (Lev 10:10-11). This section was designed to teach Israel how to make spiritual distinctions between the ways of the Lord and the ways of the world around them. These were practical object lessons to teach the basics of holiness. Chapter 11 is primarily covering food laws, but also contains a section of laws of contamination caused by forbidden contact with the dead bodies of animals. The food laws in this chapter became the basis for most of what later became called the Kosher laws of Judaism. Many of those standards are still practiced today in the segment of the Jewish community concerned to keep them. This section is also one of the most commonly misunderstood and misapplied section of God's Word among believers. The aspect of this section that is straight forward and beyond debate is that the Lord commanded His people to refrain from eating certain animals, fish, birds and insects while also allowing them to eat others of the same categories. The four categories covered in this section follow the original categories established in creation in Genesis. The category forbidden is identified as unclean by the Lord, while the allowed category is identified by Him as clean. It is the attempt to explain the meaning of the terms clean and unclean and why God made these distinctions a law for Israel that the debate has developed over the generations. Here are the main views of what these laws are designed to address. Keep in mind that there are true believers that hold each of these views. The four explanations are: 1) Arbitrary: this view believes that there is no reason behind these distinctions. God simply made arbitrary diet boundaries for His people to test their obedience and to teach them to be different from the Gentile nations. Many Rabbis through history have held this view as well as many Christian Bible teachers. The weakness of this view is that God is not characterized by arbitrary standards, and in all of His law has His own wise reasons for why He commands and forbids certain things for His people. 2) Religious: this view holds that God did not want His people to eat the animals that were commonly worshipped and sacrificed to pagan gods. It is true that God forbid His people from following the pagan practices of the cultures around them. The weakness of this view though is that many of the animals Israel was allowed to eat were also worshipped and sacrificed to false gods. The bull for instance, was a clean animal that could be eaten by Israel, but it was worshipped by Egypt. 3) Hygienic / Health: this is the most common view held through history and the certainly the view most believers hold today in trying to understand the Old Testament food laws. It holds that God gave these laws to benefit the health of Israel by teaching them to avoid contact with dead animals that could carry dangerous bacteria and infectious diseases. The prohibition on eating these animals sees the Lord restricting the diet of Israel for their health much like some people in our culture today choose to not eat red meat for health concerns. The weakness of this view is that the Lord never mentions health as His motivation in establishing these laws, but holiness. To mix health and holiness confuses physical and spiritual categories. Additionally it is difficult to maintain the health distinction on a scientific basis since new research would indicate that many of the unclean animals are as nutritious as the clean ones. This view is completely undermined when we bring in New Testament information on this subject as we will see below. 4) Symbolic: this view holds that the clean and unclean animals were meant by the Lord to represent as symbols the spiritual differences between people in covenant with God (Israel) and people outside the covenant (Gentiles). I'm convinced that this is the correct way to interpret these laws. Their symbolic purpose only extended to the coming of Christ and the beginning of the New Covenant. As a result, they no longer physically apply to believers today. We are free to choose to eat animals from either category as part of our diet today without violating any concerns of the Lord. There are several New Testament passages that address the concerns of the Old Testament food laws, but for the sake of space these two passages will be sufficient to show us how we should understand them. The first passage is from the teaching of Jesus. In this passage He was responding to a concern raised by the Pharisees over Him allowing His disciples to eat food from the marketplace without first going through a ritual cleansing. In His response Jesus declared a principle which Mark correctly identified as radically changing all of the Old Testament food laws. "And He said to them, "Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?" (Thus He declared all foods clean.)" (Mark 7:18-19). In the New Testament, all of the previously unclean animals listed in Leviticus 11 and the parallel chapter in Deuteronomy 14 have now been declared clean by the Lord Jesus. This should prove conclusively that the food laws were never meant as health laws. If so, the Lord would not have changed them in the New Testament or else we would have to conclude that He cares less about our health than He did about the health of Israel. If pork was a bad meat to eat for health reasons in the Old Testament, it still is today, as is shrimp, and catfish, all of which were forbidden, but are now allowed. The second passage is from Peter's experience recorded in Acts. "But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. A voice came to him, "Get up, Peter, kill and eat!" But Peter said, "By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean." Again a voice came to him a second time, "What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy." This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky... And he said to them, "You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean." (Acts 10:10-16, 28). In this event, God caused Peter to fall into a trance. He then gave him a vision. In the vision Peter was commanded by God to kill and eat animals that were identified as unclean in Leviticus. Even though it was God commanding, Peter at first objected out of concern to not violate the food laws. God insisted and implied that if He was commanding him to eat, that the food was clean because of His command. God repeated this vision experience for Peter three times to make sure it sunk in for him. As soon as the vision ended there were Gentiles that God had sent that had arrived at the house who appealed to Peter to come preach the gospel to them. Then, later in the chapter Peter describes this experience to others and what he had learned from it. The lesson was that God was speaking to him through the imagery of the unclean animals about the spiritual condition of the Gentile nations. The point was that they were spiritually unclean because they were outside of covenant relationship with God, but that through the gospel of Christ, those who believed were now clean. 11:44-47 - "For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth. For I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy." This is the law regarding the animal and the bird, and every living thing that moves in the waters and everything that swarms on the earth, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean, and between the edible creature and the creature which is not to be eaten." The Lord's concern was and is holiness. He wants His people to be holy. The holiness God desires for His people is not artificial or hypocritical, but real and authentic. In the Old Testament He trained His people in the basic principles of holiness through various practical areas of their lives including what they could or could not eat. The point was that holiness touches every area of our lives and we should not limit our perspective of holiness to only what we say and do on Sundays in church meetings. This section identifies the source of true holiness for Israel and the source for true holiness for Christians in the New Testament also. The source of our holiness is not found in ourselves but in our relationship to the God Who is holy. Israel was called to be holy and live holy lives, not based on their own opinions of what was holy and not based on their own behavior to make them holy. Instead, their holiness was a derived or dependent holiness. Their holiness was established by their relationship to the Lord Who is holy. As they remained in right relationship with Him, honored the laws of His house, and followed His standards, they were identified by Him as a holy people. In the same way, Peter quotes from this section of Leviticus 11 and applies it to the Christian life. "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, "YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY." (I Peter 1:14-16). Our holiness as Christians is also not measured by our own relative perfections based upon our own goodness. Our holiness is based 100% upon His holiness. The sacrifice of Christ upon the cross is the basis for our holiness, and as the children of our holy Father in heaven we grow in holiness as we grow in our relationship with Him. Questions from Leviticus 10: Question: 10:7 - "You shall not even go out from the doorway..." - Was there a lavatory or place to sleep in the tent of meeting? In 8:35, it also indicates they are to stay day and night for seven days. Answer: I'll have to separate your question into two parts. For part one let me answer the seven day stay from 8:35. For the seven days of the consecration of the priests they actually lived in the courtyard just outside of the tabernacle. They were not allowed to enter the tent until their consecration was complete because they would carry defilement into the Lord's house otherwise. For sleeping purposes they slept under the stars for those nights. We are not given details of what they slept on, but I would imagine that they slept on whatever they normally slept on. No, there was no lavatory either in the tent or in the courtyard. It is a good practical question regarding how they relieved themselves for the seven days, but the text is completely silent on this issue. I would guess that some portable arrangements were made because they were not allowed to leave the courtyard at all for the seven days, and it would have defiled the courtyard if they simply dug a hole in the ground. However, the reference in chapter 10:7 is addressing a completely different issue. This was Moses' warning Aaron to not leave the actual tabernacle once he entered it that day to fulfill his duties as high priest. Following the original seven days of consecration, the priests did not live in the tabernacle or the courtyard. They each lived in their own family tents that were set up in close proximity to the tent of the Lord. Each day they reported to the tabernacle for their specific service. In order to enter the tabernacle they went through a daily process of dressing in the clothes of the priest, offering sacrifice at the altar and washing at the laver. Once they entered into the tabernacle they were to finish their task before leaving. There were no bathroom breaks so to speak. For Aaron this included filling the lamps on the lampstand with oil and trimming the wicks. The task did not take hours to accomplish, and his personal needs had to be taken care of before he entered the courtyard, or after he left. Question: 10:9 - Under the New Covenant, I believe Timothy was encouraged to drink wine for his ailment (1 Tim 5:23) and they drank wine at weddings as a celebration (John 2:3). But since our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) and we are called to be filled with the Spirit, also 1 Peter 2:9 notes being a royal priesthood and a holy nation - could you comment on what are the acceptable times to drink wine and when should we avoid it (Eph 5:18)? Answer: In the New Testament there is no absolute prohibition against
drinking wine in spite of what many well intentioned believers have
claimed. There are guidelines of wisdom established by various passages.
The guidelines address issues such as not over indulging with the
danger point of drunkenness defining when an allowable activity
becomes a sinful activity. Other concerns include whether our drinking
brings glory to God or diminishes His glory, always considering
the effect by way of influence our drinking may have on others observing
our behavior, and our motives in the behavior. To answer your specific
question, it would be acceptable to drink a little wine in a social
setting of celebration or fellowship as long as no one present would
be caused to stumble. The appropriate time, place and amount to
drink are all subject to the individual's conscience and discernment,
and it uncertain it is wise to lean toward less than more. 12:1-4 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel, saying: 'When a woman gives birth and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean for seven days, as in the days of her menstruation she shall be unclean. On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Then she shall remain in the blood of her purification for thirty-three days; she shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are completed." Chapters 12-15 cover various cases of ceremonial uncleanness caused by issues arising from different physical conditions. Keep in mind that uncleanness is not identical to sinfulness. Anything sinful is unclean in relationship to the tabernacle, but not everything that was unclean was sinful. This chapter is concerned with the resulting uncleanness of the mothers in Israel following childbirth. The first clarification that should be made is in what about childbirth causes ceremonial uncleanness. Ceremonial uncleanness meant that the unclean person was excluded from the courtyard of the tabernacle until the appropriate time had passed and all the requirements for cleansing had been fulfilled. There was also to be no physical contact between the unclean person and a clean person during that time or else the uncleanness would be transmitted to the clean person. There is no detailed explanation given in this chapter or anywhere else in Scripture regarding the exact reason for the uncleanness connected to childbirth so we will need to pay close attention to the details of the short text we have in this chapter. The first important detail to notice is who is identified as unclean as a result of the birth. It is not the child who is identified as unclean, but the woman who gave birth; "...she shall be unclean..." There is a comparison the Lord draws for us to another unclean issue that will be addressed later in chapter 15; "as in the days of her menstruation she shall be unclean." The comparison is made to the uncleanness resulting from her menstruation. What was unclean about this was the contact with the discharge of blood. It was not the child that was unclean, or childbirth itself. The Lord ordained the birth of children and identifies their entrance into the world a blessing for covenant families. Yet, childbirth carries with it an unavoidable reminder of the fall of man into a sinful and corrupted spiritual condition. The discharge of blood during and following childbirth are a symbolic reminder of element of death that affects even the entrance of a new life into the world. Following the birth of a male child the mother was unclean for seven days and then was to remain separate for an additional 33 days. The son was to be circumcised on the eighth day. The timing of the circumcision was symbolic and pointed forward as we have studied before to a new covenant reality. The eighth day signifies a new creation because it is the first new day of a new week after the original creation week of seven days is complete. The circumcision itself is a symbolic act, "and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;" (Colossians 2:11). Old Covenant circumcision was performed in the flesh of males on the eighth day by the father or community leader. New Covenant circumcision is performed at the new birth upon the heart of the believer by Christ Himself. The first removes excess physical flesh, while the second removes our old fleshly nature. 12:5 - "But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean for two weeks, as in her menstruation; and she shall remain in the blood of her purification for sixty-six days." This law required the same kind of ceremonial uncleanness for the birth of a female child as the birth of a male, except the time period for the mother's uncleanness was doubled. No one knows for sure, including myself the reason why the Lord doubled the time period for female children. There is no explanation offered in this law for this required distinction. There is no clear and definitive passage elsewhere in the Scriptures that accounts for this. Even the best commentaries written on Leviticus offer a list of theories and possible explanations, but none seem particularly satisfying to me. The only suggestion that I would even lean toward is that this was intended to be continuing reminder from the Lord of the consequence of Eve's role in the original fall of man in the garden. Remember, it was Eve who listened and was deceived by the serpent's wicked suggestions to disregard the command of God regarding the tree. It was Eve who first took and ate the fruit from the forbidden tree. It was Eve that gave the fruit to Adam to eat. This does not mean that Adam was blameless in the fall. He actually bore the greater responsibility in his decision to disobey God and eat from the tree. Most reminders of the fall point back to Adam, but the Lord has does not want us to ignore Eve's contribution and childbirth is one area where her role is center stage in remembering the fall (Genesis 3:16, I Timothy 2:14-15). 12:6-8 - "When the days of her purification are completed, for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the doorway of the tent of meeting a one year old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering. Then he shall offer it before the LORD and make atonement for her, and she shall be cleansed from the flow of her blood. This is the law for her who bears a child, whether a male or a female. But if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, the one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she will be clean." In order for the new mother to be restored to ceremonial cleanness she had to wait the required time period and then visit the altar of sacrifice in the courtyard of the tabernacle and offer two sacrifices. The first sacrifice was a burnt offering and the second was a sin offering. Without these offerings she could not be restored. One detail of this required offering answers one of the theories attempting to explain the difference in the time period of uncleanness for male and female births. One theory is that the law was intended to show that females have an intrinsically lower value to God than males. This cannot be true, because the sacrifice to restore the mother to ceremonial cleanness is identical for both male and female children. She was to offer the exact same sacrifices in both cases. If the issue was the relative value of the child then the sacrifices would have been twice as great for the male children. There is also an important change in the order of the two sacrifices offered. In a previous chapter, we saw that in the case of someone who had sinned, they were to approach God and first offer a sin offering. Here, for childbirth, a sin offering was made only after a burnt offering. Remember the burnt offering was an offering of dedication. The point here is that giving birth was not a sinful act for the mother. A sin offering was made, but only after the she dedicated herself to the Lord in the burnt offering. It seems that the main issue was that the Lord wanted the new mothers in His holy nation to focus on the need for a new dedication to the Lord in their new role as a mother in Israel, while as a secondary focus to remember the taint of sin from bringing a new life into this fallen world. Even the mother of Jesus followed this requirement of the Law and we see Mary fulfill it in this portion from the gospel of Luke. "And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, "EVERY firstborn MALE THAT OPENS THE WOMB SHALL BE CALLED HOLY TO THE LORD"), and to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the Law of the Lord, "A PAIR OF TURTLEDOVES OR TWO YOUNG PIGEONS." (Luke 2:22-24). The Lord allowed two choices for what was offered for the burnt offering depending upon the economic condition of the woman making the offering. Those that could afford to do so were to offer a lamb. If they could not afford a lamb then a turtledove or pigeon was acceptable. We should notice that Mary, the mother of Jesus, offered the bird rather than the lamb, which confirms that the family of Jesus was among the poor in Israel. 13:1-6 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, "When a man has on the skin of his body a swelling or a scab or a bright spot, and it becomes an infection of leprosy on the skin of his body, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons the priests. The priest shall look at the mark on the skin of the body, and if the hair in the infection has turned white and the infection appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is an infection of leprosy; when the priest has looked at him, he shall pronounce him unclean. But if the bright spot is white on the skin of his body, and it does not appear to be deeper than the skin, and the hair on it has not turned white, then the priest shall isolate him who has the infection for seven days. The priest shall look at him on the seventh day, and if in his eyes the infection has not changed and the infection has not spread on the skin, then the priest shall isolate him for seven more days. The priest shall look at him again on the seventh day, and if the infection has faded and the mark has not spread on the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him clean; it is only a scab. And he shall wash his clothes and be clean. These next two chapters 13 and 14 are part of a larger section from 11-15 concerned with practical issues that affect whether a person is ceremonially clean or unclean. Chapters 13 and 14 are specifically focused on the problem of leprosy. This is acknowledged by most Bible scholars as an unfortunate and misleading translation of the Hebrew word. There is a medical condition called leprosy still present in the world today, largely in third world countries that is a serious skin ailment but which also produces other more serious problems in the body. That disease is also called Hansen's disease. The conditions addressed in these two chapters are not Hansen's disease and so technically are not leprosy at all. If we were to identify the conditions in these chapters by their correct medical terms we would choose a range of conditions such as psoriasis and others. These chapters are commonly either skipped over by believers reading the Bible due to the excessive details of uncomfortable medical conditions. The purpose of these chapters is usually interpreted as a brief section on health concerns aimed at the physical welfare of Israel. To read these chapters in that way is to miss the spiritual purpose behind the Lord's decision to include them in the Scriptures both for His people at that time, and also for our spiritual benefit now (II Timothy 3:16). The purpose of these chapters is not the health of Israel any more than the purpose of the food laws was to encourage Israel to eat a healthy diet. If the purpose was to create a kind of medical directory in the Law, it is curious that only skin conditions are addressed. There are many many more serious medical conditions that afflict humanity that it seems the Lord would have covered if His purpose was a medical one. If this were the case, the priests would also be functioning for these cases more like a doctor than a priest. The priests are commanded by the Lord to investigate the outbreaks of these conditions, examine them closely, rule on the required response by the afflicted person, and even impose isolation upon them when necessary. However, all of these actions are in relationship to the whether the Israelite was clean or unclean, not unhealthy or healthy. Remember the clean / unclean issue had everything to do with whether the person was allowed to approach God in His holy dwelling place, the tabernacle. Instead, the Lord chose this group of similar skin conditions to represent as symbols certain spiritual conditions that result from living in a fallen world. It is possible to identify the various forms of leprosy with sin, but I think that there is a better connection to be drawn. If the point of the symbol was to represent sin directly, then a sin offering would need to be offered at the completion of the cleansing process required of the afflicted person. Instead, I think a better connection is to see the conditions in this chapter as symbols representing the defiling influence of living in a fallen world, and that certain kinds of contact with the world can leave even a committed member of God's holy nation unclean. The reason skin conditions were chosen was due to the skin being the physical organ through which we make all of our contact with the world around us and its visible nature for the purpose of community evaluation. Of course, sin does enter into this equation because ultimately all defiling elements of the world can be traced back to a root of sin of one kind or another. However, the point in these symbolic laws is that you and I can be affected spiritually by unhealthy direct contact with defiling aspects of the world around us even if we do not give ourselves to them in a defiling way. The point of the investigation by the priests was to determine the depth and activity level of the infection in the person that had contracted the condition. If their contact was more than skin deep and actively growing worse, it would be necessary to isolate that person so that they in turn did not infect others in the covenant community. As just one of many possible examples of how this symbol teaches us about defiling influences from the world, consider gossip. If I am exposed in conversation with someone in the world to gossip which is unhealthy and heart corrupting, I may not have sinned by the mere exposure. It all depends on how I treated that temptation to participate in the gossip. The issue is if I allowed it to go deeper than skin deep and my own heart was affected toward the person that was the target of the gossip. If I in turn pass that gossip on to others then my condition is more than a temporary spot on my skin, but has become a full blown infection that is growing and deepening in my heart. If I am not isolated from the believing community while infected, I have the potential to cause my own condition to spread to others and risk infecting the entire community. This pattern is not limited to gossip, but is seen in all of the many ways we can be adversely affected by the fallen world in which we live. 13:45-46 - "As for the leper who has the infection, his clothes shall be torn, and the hair of his head shall be uncovered, and he shall cover his mustache and cry, 'Unclean! Unclean!' He shall remain unclean all the days during which he has the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp." In the worst cases of infections that did not pass inspection, the infected person was isolated from the camp of Israel. They were not allowed to visit the tabernacle, or remain within the community camp boundaries. They were to live outside of the camp for the duration of their condition as long as it was active and infectious. They were required by law to tear their outer garment, uncover their head, cover their mustache and whenever they came within physical proximity of another person who went outside the camp they were to cry out, identifying themselves as unclean. These requirements served as an early warning system for all clean Israelites so that accidental physical contact could be avoided and no one would be rendered unclean also by that contact. The physical signs of tearing the clothes, uncovering the head, and covering the mouth were all common signs of mourning one who had died. In this case, the unclean person had not died, but they were to use the outward signs of mourning to indicate that they were in a condition of living death. It was a kind of living death, because life was not defined as mere physical existence, but by proximity and relationship with God. The person that was not allowed to even approach God due to their defilement was as though they were dead. The New Testament uses this same imagery to describe the common spiritual condition of people in the world that do not know God and have not been saved. "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." (Ephesians 2:1-3). One of the great benefits of salvation is that the Lord cleansed us from the defilement of the world and brought us into His holy presence. We can learn from these laws that there remains an ongoing danger of inappropriate contact with the defilements of the world which can infect us. Questions from Leviticus 12: Question: What is the difference in offering, a lamb, pigeon or turtledove? Does the kind of offering signify something? Does it mean if a person is a high class level he has to offer lamb, or if a low class level only a turtledove? Answer: The difference between offering the lamb and the bird offerings
in chapter 12 is purely economic. The Lord was making a gracious
allowance for those in Israel that were too poor to afford offering
a lamb, so He allowed the poor to offer inexpensive birds. Those
who could afford it were expected to offer the lamb. 14:1-7 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing. Now he shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall go out to the outside of the camp. Thus the priest shall look, and if the infection of leprosy has been healed in the leper, then the priest shall give orders to take two live clean birds and cedar wood and a scarlet string and hyssop for the one who is to be cleansed. The priest shall also give orders to slay the one bird in an earthenware vessel over running water. As for the live bird, he shall take it together with the cedar wood and the scarlet string and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird that was slain over the running water. He shall then sprinkle seven times the one who is to be cleansed from the leprosy and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the live bird go free over the open field." Chapter 13 detailed the laws for leprosy but focused for the priests responsible on how to identify an outbreak, and the requirements for examination, isolating the person affected if necessary, and even excluding them from the camp of Israel in the cases that did not improve. This chapter is also dedicated to the leprosy issue, but from standpoint of the process involved in restoring the leper to full community access once their condition has improved. Like in the examination leading to isolation and even exclusion from the camp, the process of possible restoration centers on the role of the priest. No leper who had previously been excluded from the camp for an outbreak as described in chapter 13 could decide for themselves that they were now healthy enough to enter the camp and resume their former life. Keep in mind that camp exclusion was a serious matter. It meant a married person could not be with their spouse. It meant a parent could not be with their own children. It meant any former profession was no longer possible because anything the leper touched was rendered unclean. It was like the affected person was dead while they were still alive. The anguish of the person forbidden from the camp was more than the physical discomfort of their condition. They had to endure the daily loss of all of the comforts of family, friends and a productive livelihood. The desire to return to benefits of the camp must have been great, but they could not decide for themselves when or even if they could return. It was entirely up to the priest to determine whether they could be restored. Since the leper could not enter the camp at all, if their condition improved they would have to pass word at the entrance of the camp to the priests. The priest would then come, and decide whether the afflicted person was eligible for restoration. The priest represented the Lord and His authority in this decision and his ruling could not be ignored or overruled. The priest also made zero effort to treat the problem in any medical way. The actual condition of the person was seen as being in the hands of the Lord. All of this was a strong message in the imagery of the circumstances of the value of access as a full member of the covenant community. Everyone would be reminded from the example of any excluded individual what a great privilege it was to have access to the camp of Israel, the comforts of their own tent in the camp, and most importantly to the courtyard of the Lord's tabernacle. This process of restoration was a symbolic expression of the Lord's mercy and grace in restoration. In the New Covenant there remain valid reasons for the community of believers to have to exclude members from the fellowship of the believing community. The issues are not physical like the symbol of leprosy in these laws, but spiritual defilements. The defilements that exclude a person from the church today include continuing in serious sins without repentance or change. We are given examples of this in two of the New Testament letters (I Corinthians 5, II Thessalonians 3:6-15). The purpose of excluding a person from fellowship, or what has been traditionally called excommunication, is not to permanently exclude them, but in the hope that the discipline of temporary exclusion will impact their heart and lead them to repentance as the necessary beginning of a restoration process. Of course, the heart of the Lord is always inclined toward restoration of his wayward people. This famous encounter between Jesus and a leper shows the readiness of the Lord to heal and restore. "And a leper came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, "Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean." Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, "I am willing; be cleansed." And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to him, "See that you tell no one; but go, show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." (Matthew 8:2-4). Notice in this encounter, that even though the Lord Jesus healed the leper of his leprosy, He did not allow him to immediately return to his former life. Instead, as the laws of leprosy in Leviticus required, Jesus commanded him to present himself to the priest and go through the sacrificial requirements for full restoration. 14:8-13 - "The one to be cleansed shall then wash his clothes and shave off all his hair and bathe in water and be clean. Now afterward, he may enter the camp, but he shall stay outside his tent for seven days. It will be on the seventh day that he shall shave off all his hair: he shall shave his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair. He shall then wash his clothes and bathe his body in water and be clean. Now on the eighth day he is to take two male lambs without defect, and a yearling ewe lamb without defect, and three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering, and one log of oil; and the priest who pronounces him clean shall present the man to be cleansed and the aforesaid before the LORD at the doorway of the tent of meeting. Then the priest shall take the one male lamb and bring it for a guilt offering, with the log of oil, and present them as a wave offering before the LORD. Next he shall slaughter the male lamb in the place where they slaughter the sin offering and the burnt offering, at the place of the sanctuary--for the guilt offering, like the sin offering, belongs to the priest; it is most holy." This section shows us that the restoration of the leper involved a several stage process. After the priest inspected him and determined his condition had been arrested, he was to shave and wash both himself and his clothing before entering the camp to insure he did not carry any defilements into the holy camp with him. Even then, he could return to his own tent inside the camp, but was not allowed to enter his own home yet. He was required to spend another week living just outside his own tent. Then on the seventh day inside the camp he was to again shave all his hair and wash his clothing and body. On the eighth day after his return to the camp he was to approach the Lord in the tabernacle and offer the sacrifices required for full restoration to the Lord and to the community. He was required to offer a range of sacrifices detailed earlier in the law including a guilt offering, a sin offering, a burnt offering and a grain offering. There is no explanation offered here for why a sin offering was required even though there is no indication in the text of these chapters that the condition was due to the person's sin. The most likely explanation is that the sin offering was to cover all sins committed by the afflicted person during the time of their exclusion from the camp when they were not allowed to approach the tabernacle even to make an offering. It was only after this process was completed on the eighth day that the person was fully restored to fellowship with God and with the community. The eighth day, as we have seen in previous studies was a symbol of new creation. For the restored person, this process indicated that their life was granted a new starting point. In addition to the eighth day requirement, the person could not be restored without the offerings of the sacrifices God required. This serves as a wonderful image of our own salvation. Each of us was excluded from fellowship with God and His people before the Lord gave us new life. Our new life began with the applied blood of the Lamb of God, as He was sacrificed for us on the cross. 14:14-18 - "The priest shall then take some of the blood of the guilt offering, and the priest shall put it on the lobe of the right ear of the one to be cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. The priest shall also take some of the log of oil, and pour it into his left palm; the priest shall then dip his right-hand finger into the oil that is in his left palm, and with his finger sprinkle some of the oil seven times before the LORD. Of the remaining oil which is in his palm, the priest shall put some on the right ear lobe of the one to be cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot, on the blood of the guilt offering; while the rest of the oil that is in the priest's palm, he shall put on the head of the one to be cleansed. So the priest shall make atonement on his behalf before the LORD." The restoration process included an unexpected ceremony. The priest was to take some of the blood of the sacrifice and dab it on the right ear, right thumb and right big toe of the leper. Then some of the oil offered was dabbed in the same three places on top of the blood. It is unexpected because this is a ceremony that the average Israelite never experienced. The Levitical priests were consecrated in this same way, but it seems surprising that the lepers were set apart in this way. It was a ceremony signifying that the entire life of the person marked with the blood and oil in this way belonged exclusively to the Lord. It displayed the spiritual purpose of the Lord in such a gracious restoration. When the Lord restored a person from such a serious condition of living death, He expected that person to view their newly restored life as belonging to the Lord and not themselves. This is also an image that is meant to show us the way we should view our own lives following salvation. Since we were spiritually dead while alive before our salvation (Ephesians 2:1-3), any life we now have is only by the gracious restoration of the Lord. We owe Him everything. We owe Him our life. There is another element of this that speaks to our life circumstances. When the Lord takes us through a deep and difficult trial, and brings us out on the other side, He intends for us to use that experience to minister to others. The priests lived lives of consecrated service, but we see here that the restored lepers were to see themselves as the consecrated servants of the Lord from that point forward. It is an awesome thing, that the Lord can cause the circumstances of our lives that represent our greatest trials to equip us for greater service. Passing through an experience like this is meant by the grace of God to change us and shape us for the Lord's service. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." (II Corinthians 1:3-4). 14:33-35 - "The LORD further spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying: "When you enter the land of Canaan, which I give you for a possession, and I put a mark of leprosy on a house in the land of your possession, then the one who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, 'Something like a mark of leprosy has become visible to me in the house.'" The last section of this chapter is similar to the last section of the previous chapter. In chapter 13 we saw that not only could a person be declared unclean, but fabric and clothing could become unclean through the development of what was probably fungus or mold. Now, in this section the same principle is applied to houses. This anticipates the future entrance into the Promised Land when Israel would conquer the people of Canaan and move into their houses. The point of the warning about unclean garments and now houses is to show us the nature of spiritual defilement. Defilement spreads. When we sin, it affects more than ourselves. Our environment is spiritually impacted by our sin. This was vividly portrayed in the Garden of Eden. When Adam sinned, he was immediately affected as he fell spiritually, but the impact was not limited to him. It was not possible for Adam to contain the ramifications of his sin within himself. The entire world was tainted by Adam's sin and the Lord made sure Adam learned that lesson by cursing the ground because of what he had done (Genesis 3:17). What we are intended to understand from this is the danger of sin and the spiritual contamination it causes. PARENTAL ALERT—some of the following subject matter involves mature themes. Please review with discernment before sharing with your children. 15:13-15 - "Now when the man with the discharge becomes cleansed from his discharge, then he shall count off for himself seven days for his cleansing; he shall then wash his clothes and bathe his body in running water and will become clean. Then on the eighth day he shall take for himself two turtledoves or two young pigeons, and come before the LORD to the doorway of the tent of meeting and give them to the priest; and the priest shall offer them, one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. So the priest shall make atonement on his behalf before the LORD because of his discharge." This chapter continues the laws of the things that cause ceremonial uncleanness and address four specific issue; two for men, and two for women. The two issues for women address both normal and abnormal blood loss related to the female organs, while the two issues for men concern abnormal discharges and normal emissions from the male organ. The abnormal conditions for both the male and the female stem from medical conditions and would be a health issue, but the purpose of these laws is not focused on the health of Israel any more than it was for the food laws as we saw. For all four of these conditions the response the Lord commanded was not a "cure" but a cleansing. The cleansing dealt with the spiritual defilement that the condition caused in relationship to the holiness of the tabernacle. There is no note of rebuke in this section blaming the person with any of these conditions. The sense is that most everyone in Israel will encounter one of these issues sooner or later, and these instructions insure that an individual will only be continually excluded from the tabernacle if they ignore or disregard them. In that sense, these laws are a gracious provision aimed at teaching them how to recognize what physical issues cause defilement and restoring them to ceremonial cleanness. All of the elements involved are symbolic as well as physical. The blood flow which defiles the woman and temporarily disqualifies her from entering the courtyard of the tabernacle is unclean because of the fall of humanity into a sinful condition. The only flowing blood which is considered ceremonially clean is the blood of the appropriate clean sacrifices that God had ordained. It was a vivid reminder that our own blood is spiritually corrupt because of the taint of sin, and that only a blood cleaner than our own was acceptable to God in His holy dwelling place. The emissions of the men were connected to the way God has ordained that we obey His purpose to fruitfully multiply in the earth. The association of that purpose with a temporary defilement was a regular reminder that even our ability to obey God in this commission to produce offspring has been touched by the fall. Nothing in our lives has been unaffected by the fall. There is a strong tendency in our culture today to identify anything that is natural as good and by extension holy. These laws reveal that God wants us to see the circumstances of our natural life from a different perspective. A thing is not automatically good and holy just because it is natural. This would have been true in the world before sin entered and the fall resulted. Things before the fall were by nature good. "God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." (Genesis 1:31). However, we cannot automatically assume that now. Because the effects of the fall are in many cases subtle and not obvious to the natural eye, we must learn how to see things from God's perspective. These laws teach that even these natural aspects of every man and woman's life carry a taint of the fall. We should not take this point too far however. These conditions were not sinful. A sin offering was required to complete the cleansing process, but it was the lightest of the sin offerings, requiring only one bird to be offered. This signifies that only the element of sin is addressed in the offering, not a sin that the person making the offering had committed themselves. In other words, it was to teach all that we each carry an element of Adam's sin with us that needs to be dealt with by sacrifice. As with several previous kinds of sacrifices this was to be offered following a seven day cleansing period, and the offering of the eighth day pointed as a symbol toward the new creation reminder of restoration to God's tabernacle. Every time an Israelite offered a sacrifice on the eighth day they were declaring with their actions that their old life in Adam deserved the judgment inflicted upon the sacrifice, and that only by the shed blood of that sacrifice could they enjoy new life in Christ. 15:19-25 - "When a woman has a discharge, if her discharge in her body is blood, she shall continue in her menstrual impurity for seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. Everything also on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean, and everything on which she sits shall be unclean. Anyone who touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening. Whoever touches any thing on which she sits shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening. Whether it be on the bed or on the thing on which she is sitting, when he touches it, he shall be unclean until evening. If a man actually lies with her so that her menstrual impurity is on him, he shall be unclean seven days, and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean. Now if a woman has a discharge of her blood many days, not at the period of her menstrual impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond that period, all the days of her impure discharge she shall continue as though in her menstrual impurity; she is unclean." For those familiar with the accounts in three of the Gospels, this law of a continuing menstrual discharge should remind you of the encounter Jesus had with a woman with this kind of condition. "...But as He went, the crowds were pressing against Him. And a woman who had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and could not be healed by anyone, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak, and immediately her hemorrhage stopped. And Jesus said, "Who is the one who touched Me?" And while they were all denying it, Peter said, "Master, the people are crowding and pressing in on You." But Jesus said, "Someone did touch Me, for I was aware that power had gone out of Me." When the woman saw that she had not escaped notice, she came trembling and fell down before Him, and declared in the presence of all the people the reason why she had touched Him, and how she had been immediately healed. And He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace." (Luke 8:42-48). This story, just on the surface, is a beautiful display of the compassion and power of the Lord Jesus. The full appreciation of what happened that day requires some understanding that this law from Leviticus provides us. The law identified this woman as not simply unhealthy, but unclean. Her condition involved a continuing flow of blood from her menstrual cycle, but one which did not end after a few days each month. Instead, her cycle never ended, for a long twelve years by the time she met Jesus. The reality of her condition was that she was legally forbidden to enter the temple precincts in Jerusalem and had been restricted from approaching the altar of the Lord for those twelve years. In addition, she was legally restricted from engaging in sexual intercourse for all long as her condition persisted. She also was not allowed to physically touch anyone else without rendering them unclean. For twelve years she had been socially isolated for the most part with the allowance of only conversation without physical contact. Just as difficult was the continuing element of her rendering unclean any garments she wore, and any furniture upon which she sat or upon which she laid down. These standards were not simply social standards which could be bent or modified. These were holy standards that the entire community was required to follow and honor. As a result, it made even walking through the city streets and public marketplace extremely risky for everyone else due to the possibility of inadvertent contact in a crowded situation. Keep all of the above in mind as we read that the woman came to Jesus as the crowds of people "were pressing against Him." The implication is that the crowds were so thick around Jesus that there was not way to reach Him other than by pushing through the crowd. In order to reach Jesus, this woman actually broke the purity law and exposed everyone with whom she made contact as she pushed through the crowd to ceremonial impurity. Then, she compounded that violation of the law by intentionally touching the hem of the garment of Jesus when she finally reached Him. As far as she knew, her touching Jesus would render Him unclean. Her actions were inexcusable in the eyes of the law and the community required to uphold the law. If here condition had been exposed, she risked the angry response of the entire crowd for defiling them without their knowledge or agreement. That risk she was taking explains her response when Jesus pointed her out in the crowd. As soon as she touched His garment, He recognized that the power to heal her had gone out of Him into her. When He stopped in the midst of the crowd and insisted on identifying the one who had touched Him in this way, the woman came forward, but then fell trembling to her knees in an attitude of grateful humility, mixed with concern over having violated this law in such a bold way. She then declared openly to the crowd why she had touched Him (this was an admission of her unclean condition). She also testified how she had been immediately been healed when she touched Jesus. The gracious mercy of the Lord was displayed in this. Her healing eliminated the source of her uncleanness and the uncleanness she had just passed on to others in the crowd. Touching Jesus was the only possible exception to the social barriers this law imposed. Everyone she had touched for twelve years was made unclean by that contact. When she touched Jesus, He did not become unclean, but she was healed, made whole, and ceremonially cleansed. 16:1-4 - "Now the LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they had approached the presence of the LORD and died. The LORD said to Moses: "Tell your brother Aaron that he shall not enter at any time into the holy place inside the veil, before the mercy seat which is on the ark, or he will die; for I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat. Aaron shall enter the holy place with this: with a bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He shall put on the holy linen tunic, and the linen undergarments shall be next to his body, and he shall be girded with the linen sash and attired with the linen turban (these are holy garments). Then he shall bathe his body in water and put them on." Chapter 16 returns to the narrative story of the history of Israel that left off in Chapter 10. Chapters 11-15 in between established the laws of the clean and the unclean. From those laws we learned that every Israelite would inevitably become unclean by just living a normal life. The main point of those chapters was to teach God's people how spiritually defiled the world had become due to the fall of man into sin. Since we are all born into a fallen world and live every day of our lives in it, there is a natural level of insensitivity we all develop to the spiritual defilement in the world. We are used to it. These laws were intended to expose Israel to the reality of how God views us in our unclean state and to raise their awareness of their own fallen condition. Each of the individual defilements of the previous five chapters were assigned their own necessary sacrificial resolution as an appropriate offering was to be made every single time they were rendered unclean and the accompanying ritual was to be performed each time as well. However, even the most conscientious Israelite ran the risk of carry unresolved uncleanness and defilement by neglecting any single violation, or even by not knowing that they had contracted such uncleanness. The events of this chapter marked a single day on the yearly calendar for Israel. This was the Day of Atonement. It was the day that covered all of the uncovered violations for the entire previous year. It was God's ultimate provision of mercy and grace for His people under the Old Covenant Law. It became known as the most holy day of the entire year for Israel. Later rabbis simply referred to it as "The Day." It is also known by its designation in Hebrew as Yom Kippur. This day was special among all the tabernacle services in every aspect. The entire nation participated, but the actions of the high priest were the central focus of the day. The law for the day of atonement was not the idea of Moses, Aaron, or any other Israelite. It came by revelation directly from the Lord and while the details of that day no longer are practiced today anywhere in the world, the spiritual meaning of it continues as the foundation for our salvation as Christians. The events of this day are a complex portrayal in the imagery of the tabernacle of the work Jesus accomplished in His death on the cross. It involved a multi-staged ritual in which the high priest, and only the high priest was to enter the tabernacle. Even the high priest was only allowed to do so after first washing himself, dressing in special clothes that he only wore on this day of the year, offering a series of sacrifices for himself, the Holy of Holies, the entire tabernacle, and finally all of the people. That last sacrifice for all of the people made atonement for all of the sins that the entire nation of Israel had committed for the entire previous year and dealt with all the sins that had not been properly addressed in any other sacrifices. It was only by obeying the commandments of this day that Israel as a nation could maintain its special calling as God's holy nation among all the nations of the earth (Exodus 19:6). The special garments the high priest was to wear only on this day were of course significant. We have previously studied the special garments and ephod that the high priest was to wear on all the other days of the year. Those garments were woven from blue, purple and scarlet thread with threads of gold added. He also wore a beautiful turban on his head, a sash around his waist, special shoulder pieces with precious gemstones and a breastpiece set with twelve precious stones. All of his daily garments together gave the high priest the stately appearance of a king. Those garments were worn to accentuate the beauty and glory of the office of the high priest (Exodus 28:2). On this day of atonement, the high priest was to remove his normal glorious garments and dress in simple linen garments. The contrast was dramatic. It was the difference in how a common person dressed compared to the dress of someone rich and powerful. The reason for this change had to do with the purpose of this day. On this day the high priest represented the people to God, where as on other days he represented the Lord to the people. He was dressed to serve as the offerings necessary for atonement were to be made. This laying aside of his usual garments is a poignant picture for us of the sacrificicial choice Christ made for us long before the cross. In order to accomplish God's plan of salvation, Jesus first had to come to this world, not just as a spiritual visitor, but as one of us. His incarnation as a human being was foundational to the sacrifice He would offer on the cross. In order to be born as a human being, He first chose to lay aside the heavenly glory. In His birth, He took the form of a servant rather than a king. "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:5-8). It was only after His death on the cross, that He was rewarded by the Father with the restoration of His full glory in his resurrection, ascension and exaltation at the throne of God. This is also pictured in the events of the day of atonement in which the high priest is re-clothed with his garment of beauty and glory only after the atoning sacrifice is complete. 16:12-15 - "He shall take a firepan full of coals of fire from upon the altar before the LORD and two handfuls of finely ground sweet incense, and bring it inside the veil. He shall put the incense on the fire before the LORD, that the cloud of incense may cover the mercy seat that is on the ark of the testimony, otherwise he will die. Moreover, he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east side; also in front of the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times. Then he shall slaughter the goat of the sin offering which is for the people, and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat." As the high priest entered the tabernacle to make atonement, he encountered, not an empty room at the conclusion of an empty ritual, but he encountered the presence of the Lord Himself. This was not a meeting to be taken lightly. In giving the instructions for this day, the Lord intentionally reminded Aaron of the death of his two eldest sons when they had entered the tabernacle. The Lord reminded Aaron of this painful memory because it was critical that he learn and remember the lesson that they had failed to learn. They died because they entered the presence of the Lord having disregarded His commands regarding when and how to come before Him. Here the Lord gives specific commands for the offering of incense on the altar of incense in the first room of the tabernacle before he could proceed to enter the inner room of the most holy place. The Lord warned him in this passage that if he disregarded this command, he would die. Aaron was to offer the incense in such a way that a cloud of the smoke of the incense would form in the tabernacle. The purpose of the cloud was to cover the mercy seat inside the Holy of Holies. The mercy seat was the golden lid which covered the box of the ark of the covenant. The ark and the mercy seat symbolically represented the throne of God. It was above the mercy seat that the visible glory of God would appear. The cloud of incense to cover the mercy seat was a necessity and an expression of God's accommodation. The issue was that as well prepared as Aaron was to enter the tabernacle, he was still a fallen, imperfect man. As he stepped into the holiest place, he encountered the glory of God. The cloud of incense served the same purpose as the pillar of cloud did that led them through the wilderness. The cloud shielded him from the full glory of God. Without the cloud, he would be exposed to too much of God's glory and would die. The cloud of incense was God's provision to filter His glory so that Aaron could bear it as he fulfilled his duties within the holiest place. 16:21-22 - "Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness." One of the sacrifices of the day required a double sacrifice of two goats. Aaron was to cast lots to identify one goat to be slain and its blood gathered and used to make atonement. The other goat was offered, but not killed. Instead Aaron was to lay his hands on the head of the goat and as he did so, to confess over the goat all of the sins of the nation. Of course, it was not possible for Aaron to know every single sin of the nation, let alone to mention each one individually on a single day, but he was to make confession of sin on behalf of the entire nation representing all the sins they had committed for the entire preceding year. Doing so symbolically transferred the sins of the nation from themselves to this goat. Then, one man was designated to take the goat and lead it outside the camp into the barren wilderness where he was to release the goat. The symbolic purpose of this double offering was that the full work that Jesus accomplished on the cross could not be adequately represented by one sacrifice alone. Each part of these two sacrifices shows an aspect of the cross. We could describe these two aspects as the root and fruit of the cross. The first goat which was killed and its blood gathered to apply in the tabernacle and on behalf of the people is the root of the cross which is the sacrificial death of Jesus on our behalf. The second aspect of the release of the second goat shows the fruit or beneficial result of what the cross accomplished for us. Because of the cross, our sins have been transferred from us to Christ. In doing so, our sins were not removed just out of our reach, but far away from us in a permanent removal. "As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103:12). This aspect of Christ's sacrifice as the sin bearer who has completely taken our sins away from us is emphasized in this prophecy. "All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him." (Isaiah 53:6). 16:29-34 - "This shall be a permanent statute for you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls and not do any work, whether the native, or the alien who sojourns among you; for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD. It is to be a sabbath of solemn rest for you, that you may humble your souls; it is a permanent statute. So the priest who is anointed and ordained to serve as priest in his father's place shall make atonement: he shall thus put on the linen garments, the holy garments, and make atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar. He shall also make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. Now you shall have this as a permanent statute, to make atonement for the sons of Israel for all their sins once every year." And just as the LORD had commanded Moses, so he did." This section of the Lord's commands for the Day of Atonement is problematic today for many people. It is clear that the Lord declared this was to be "a permanent statute for you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month..." That is was to be permanent simply meant that it was not designed as a short term provision, but from that time on. This and this alone was God's provision for the atonement of Israel. The question is, what about the Day of Atonement today? In modern Judaism, the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur remains the most important day on the Jewish calendar and it is still observed, but with radical differences. Today, when Yom Kippur is practiced, there is no tabernacle (or temple), there is no high priest to lead it, there are no sacrifices slain, no blood poured out and applied, and no goat released into the wilderness. In fact the only aspect of the ancient Yom Kippur observance that is still practiced today is the instruction of the Lord for the people to obey all these requirements by taking the day off and humbling themselves before the Lord, which is done as a fast of normal food and pleasures for that day. All of the other requirements are ignored by even the most stringent orthodox Jewish Rabbis. Why would they ignore all of the essential elements of this day? They ignore them because there is not temple still standing since the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70AD. There has been no Jewish high priest recognized since that same year. Since the sacrifices required by this day could only be offered in the tabernacle, and later the temple, and only by the high priest, there is no righteous way to offer the atoning sacrifice since 70AD. That event left all Jewish people with only two choices. The choice that the majority of Jewish leaders made was to invent their own substitute rules for Yom Kippur. Since then, orthodox Jews rely on their own good deeds and fasting to make atonement for their own sins before God. The issue is whether God accepts good works and fasting as adequate atonement for our own sins. To imagine He does ignores the absolute necessity of the laws in this chapter. Otherwise God would have simply commanded Israel to fast and do good deeds this day. Our good deeds don't come close to covering the spiritual debt to God's holy justice that our sins have incurred. Thankfully, there is another provision, but admittedly one that most Jewish people are not willing to embrace. All of the meaning and significance of that day was fulfilled in the once for all sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. His blood is the permanent blood of atonement that has satisfied the holy justice of God for all of the sins for all who believe this glorious message. There is no other provision that God has made for our sins, or ever will make. If we accept His provision of the sacrifice of His Son then we have eternal atonement. If we reject His only provision for our sins, then on the Day of Judgment we will have to pay the price for our own sins. 17:1-9 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to Aaron and to his sons and to all the sons of Israel and say to them, 'This is what the LORD has commanded, saying, "Any man from the house of Israel who slaughters an ox or a lamb or a goat in the camp, or who slaughters it outside the camp, and has not brought it to the doorway of the tent of meeting to present it as an offering to the LORD before the tabernacle of the LORD, bloodguiltiness is to be reckoned to that man. He has shed blood and that man shall be cut off from among his people. The reason is so that the sons of Israel may bring their sacrifices which they were sacrificing in the open field, that they may bring them in to the LORD, at the doorway of the tent of meeting to the priest, and sacrifice them as sacrifices of peace offerings to the LORD. The priest shall sprinkle the blood on the altar of the LORD at the doorway of the tent of meeting, and offer up the fat in smoke as a soothing aroma to the LORD. They shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat demons with which they play the harlot. This shall be a permanent statute to them throughout their generations."' Then you shall say to them, 'Any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice, and does not bring it to the doorway of the tent of meeting to offer it to the LORD, that man also shall be cut off from his people." Chapter 17 carries forward one of the concerns of the Day of Atonement and extends it beyond the boundaries of that single day. The Lord wanted His people to understand the special role of blood in their lives and their relationship to the Lord. The laws of this chapter were not limited to only the priests, but were aimed at every single Israelite, and also applied to any outside the covenant who traveled with them. No one was exempt from these laws regarding the blood. These were also not to be regarded as minor laws. The Lord gives two strong warnings regarding anyone that disregards or violates them. They would be "cut off from among his people", which effectively amounted to permanent isolation from the tabernacle and covenant community. That warning reflected how Israel as a nation was to treat any who broke the blood laws. It was strictly forbidden to kill an ox, lamb, or goat in the camp of Israel or outside the camp in the field without bringing the animal to the tabernacle. These animals were the domesticated animals God had ordained for offerings. Even if the purpose of killing the animal was only to eat its meat, it was still required to be brought to the tabernacle. The priest had to supervise the slaughter, insure the blood was properly drained from the animal, some of the blood was offered along with the fat which the Lord had reserved for Himself. By establishing this clear prohibition, the Lord effectively eliminated false religious worship from Israel in a single stroke. It was a common practice in the false religion of Egypt, as well as the other pagan nations of the ancient world to make liberal use of blood in their sacrifices to their idols. It was not unusual to even drink a portion of the blood of the sacrifice as part of the rituals. The Lord forbid Israel to participate in the worship of other gods in the Ten Words (Exodus 20:3-4), and now with the laws of blood He eliminated the possibility of any continuing that practice. Until now, an Israelite discovered slaughtering an animal to offer in worship of a false god could easily cover their sin by claiming it was only being killed to eat. Now, anyone slaughtering any animal other than under the watchful eye of the priesthood was in violation of the law. Later in the chapter, the Lord makes an allowance for hunting outside the camp. If an animal is slain during a hunt, of course this would not be under a priest's supervision. In such cases, the blood was to be drained and poured out on the ground and covered with dirt so that it could not be used for any illegitimate religious purpose. In the restatement of the Law in Deuteronomy, when Israel would settle all over the Promised Land with many physically distant from the tabernacle and temple in Jerusalem, the Lord made this additional provision. "When the LORD your God extends your border as He has promised you, and you say, 'I will eat meat,' because you desire to eat meat, then you may eat meat, whatever you desire. If the place which the LORD your God chooses to put His name is too far from you, then you may slaughter of your herd and flock which the LORD has given you, as I have commanded you; and you may eat within your gates whatever you desire. Just as a gazelle or a deer is eaten, so you will eat it; the unclean and the clean alike may eat of it. Only be sure not to eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh. You shall not eat it; you shall pour it out on the ground like water. You shall not eat it, so that it may be well with you and your sons after you, for you will be doing what is right in the sight of the LORD." (Deuteronomy 12:20-25). This was all to make a strong emphasis on the spiritual significance of the blood. Every single time any Israelite shed blood, they were to have their concerns raised and attention focused on the seriousness of what they were doing. As with the other laws of the Old Testament, this was meant to prepare their hearts for Christ in a key way. As we saw in the previous chapter on the Day of Atonement, God has provided for our salvation in one way and only one way. Salvation is found through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sins, and purchased at the price of His own blood shed for us. Any mishandling of the blood of these animals was a symbolic misappropriation of the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God. God was training them to honor and respect the blood as an example to us of the value of what Christ accomplished in His death. It also serves as a warning to not turn our hearts in any other spiritual direction in the vain hope of finding salvation in any other than Christ. 17:11-12 - "And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement. Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, 'No person among you may eat blood, nor may any alien who sojourns among you eat blood." The prohibition against eating blood had to do with both drinking blood, as some ancient cultures did, and eating any meat that had not been properly drained of blood when it was slaughtered. This was again, as we have seen from earlier studies not required for health purposes, but for spiritual reasons. In this case, the spiritual reason is the special purpose of blood in God's creation design. God mad both our physical bodies and the bodies of animals as a blood based life system. The blood is the core, or essential element of our physical lives. We can lose virtually any other part of our physical makeup and still survive, except for our blood. Since it is designed by God as the basis for our life, He also chose for the blood to represent the value or worth of our lives for the purpose of sacrifice and salvation. Therefore, blood was reserved for holy purposes. It was never to be shed without a proper recognition of that holy purpose. It's clear from these last two chapters that blood played a critical role in the worship of the Old Covenant tabernacle. "And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." (Hebrews 9:22). What we are meant to learn from this is that blood is just as important for us today as it was for them. The only difference is that the specifics of the laws regarding the blood of animals do not apply in the same way for us today, since there is not tabernacle any longer, and no priests to supervise the slaughter of animals. Instead all the concern in the New Covenant focus on blood has shifted from the blood of animals to the blood of Christ. The one exception to this is the carry over of the Lord's prohibition of consuming blood even for the New Testament believers as described in Acts. "For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell." (Acts 15:28-29). Questions from Leviticus 16: Question: I was curious as to why Aaron had to make atonement for the Holy Place, Tent of Meeting and the altar? Answer: It's a good question, because the natural assumption would be that the tabernacle and its furnishings were holy because they were God's house, and would not need to have atonement made for them. The point of having Aaron make atonement for the tabernacle is that it was considered defiled by contact with fallen, sinful humans. Many of the laws we have recently studied showed in a variety of circumstances that when someone or something unclean touched that which was clean, that the unclean defiled the clean. The sins of Israel spiritually affected the spiritual integrity of the tabernacle. Even the priests who actually made physical contact with the altar and entered inside of the tabernacle were themselves contagiously communicating defilement that needed to be addressed. The atonement offered for the tabernacle on the Day of Atonement cleansed all defiling residue from the tabernacle being in the center of a nation that was not perfectly holy. This also pictures in advance an interesting element of the sacrifice
of Christ. "Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the
things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly
things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ
did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true
one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God
for us;" (Hebrews 9:23-24). When Jesus entered heaven He cleansed
heaven itself of defilement. The concept here is that humans were
made as both physical and spiritual beings. We were designed for
heavenly interaction with God. Even our worship and prayers which
at times contain fleshly, self-centered elements are imperfect expressions
of God's holiness and as they enter heaven they carry defilement
with them. Christ cleansed heaven itself with His sacrifice as the
fulfillment of what Aaron did on the Day of Atonement. PARENTAL ALERT—some of the following subject matter involves mature themes. Please review with discernment before sharing with your children. 18:1-3 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'I am the LORD your God. You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you; you shall not walk in their statutes.'" This chapter is contains key passages in which the Lord is further defining what He meant when He identified Israel as His "holy nation." He did not mean that Israel would only be distinguished from the world around them by unique and more frequent religious rituals while living just like the other nations once the rituals were done. What will distinguish Israel as holy is that they will live differently than the other nations of the world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their holiness will be revealed in their every day behavior as much if not more than it will on special religious days. The starting point for what defines them as holy is not with themselves, or in comparison to the nations around them. Their reference point for holiness is the Lord. He is the holy God Who called them out of Egypt, made them His own special nation, and had called them to the Promised Land. The Lord establishes Himself as their standard of holiness by introducing this chapter of laws on specific holy behaviors by declaring, "I am the LORD your God." The significance of this simple declaration should not escape our notice. The Lord had already previously introduced Himself to Israel with awesome demonstrations of His powerful presence, and in many laws. Why would He state Who He is again to precede this section? It was a way to remind Israel that they belonged to Him and not to themselves. As a nation in covenant with God they were not free to make their own laws, set their own standards, or chooses their own ways to behave in areas of spiritual, moral and ethical concern. It is a reminder that the god of a nation becomes the standard for that nation. As the God of Israel, they would always be responsible to live as He required them to live. Of course, even though the Lord is the only true God over all the earth and every nation in all of history, the nations of that day did not acknowledge the One true God any more than they do today. Each nation chose their own gods to worship. The gods of those nations became the standard for the behaviors of those nations. The Lord makes it clear that He will not tolerate Israel following the standards of the gods of Egypt, where they had lived, or Canaan, where they would live once they entered the Promised Land. We are to understand the heart of the Lord's concerns for Israel and apply them to our own lives today as Christians. Just like Israel lived in the midst of nations of false worship and corresponding corrupt behaviors, all Christians today live in the midst of a world that worships anything and everything other than the One true God. The moral standards of the world around us are not based on the holiness and righteousness of God, but upon whatever the society and culture currently value the most other than God. The contrast between the world's standards and God's standards is in some cases more subtle today than in the days of ancient Israel, but the spiritual difference is just as real and serious. The church has always struggled with the implications of this issue. The Lord has called us into the world on a mission to serve Him and represent Him to the world, but He also calls us to remain spiritually separate from the world while we serve Him in it. "I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world." (John 17:14-18). The church typically swings from one extreme to another in the attempt to honor these dual concerns of the Lord. Either we tend to separate so far from the world that we cannot even connect with those who are still in it, or in our effort to identify with them and reach them we become so much like them that we become spiritually indistinguishable from the world we are trying to reach. This balance point must be discovered by every generation of believers. In the effort, one thing we must keep in mind however is that the behaviors identified in this chapter with the evil of the world are non-negotiable. These are moral absolutes that identify the holy standards of God for every generation. No matter how much the society around us may embrace these behaviors, they remain forever forbidden for us who base our behavior on a heavenly standard that does not change with the times. 18:4-5 - "'You are to perform My judgments and keep My statutes, to live in accord with them; I am the LORD your God. So you shall keep My statutes and My judgments, by which a man may live if he does them; I am the LORD." In these verses there is a simple word of promise. The promise is that the person that performs, keeps and lives according to the standards of God will live. What is meant by this is not just that the person obedient and faithful to God's law will physically survive, or that the person that violates them will instantly drop dead. The meaning instead is that God is promising a certain kind of life to the person that honors His law standards in their behavior, not merely with their words. The Lord is encouraging the hearts of the faithful that their is a reward for obedience. The ultimate reward is not in this life, but at the throne of God on the final Day of Judgment. Those who lived lives pleasing to God will be blessed forever more. Yet, there is also reward in this present life for obedience and faithfulness. The Lord will work in the life and life circumstances of those that so honor Him to show them and everyone that observes their lives that it is always wise to obey God. This does not mean that God is here promising that only pleasant experiences will accompany an obedient life, but that the Lord will cause the obedient to be blessed as the overall characteristic of their lives. Necessary difficulties will be experienced by the obedient and faithful as they endure the reactions of a God dishonoring society, and also pass through the testing circumstances designed by God for their own spiritual growth. Conversely, the rebellious and disobedient can expect not only to lose the blessings of the Lord but to receive deserved judgment from God not only in this life, but in eternity. 18:6 - "None of you shall approach any blood relative of his to uncover nakedness; I am the LORD." A large section of this chapter is devoted to what we could describe as laws of incest. They are laws forbidding crossing sexual boundaries with any family relation either by blood or by marriage covenant. We should not determine the impact of these laws based on continuing current social distaste for this kind of behavior in our present day. Our society only frowns upon incest because of previous generation's strong Christian and Bible influence. Without that previous influence as a social moral foundation, our society would see incest in the same way the cultures of Egypt and Canaan did. In Egypt, the royal family purposefully practiced the types of incest named in this section in order to maintain the "purity" of the Egyptian royalty by insuring that no Egyptian royalty married outside of the family. The Canaanites practiced all twelve specifically forbidden incest behaviors in this chapter and did so with the perspective that it was "natural" and acceptable. 18:22-30 - "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion. Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants. But as for you, you are to keep My statutes and My judgments and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native, nor the alien who sojourns among you (for the men of the land who have been before you have done all these abominations, and the land has become defiled); so that the land will not spew you out, should you defile it, as it has spewed out the nation which has been before you. For whoever does any of these abominations, those persons who do so shall be cut off from among their people. Thus you are to keep My charge, that you do not practice any of the abominable customs which have been practiced before you, so as not to defile yourselves with them; I am the LORD your God." This final section of the chapter is particularly difficult to digest for our present culture and generation. So much so, that many so-called Christian groups (let alone the world) have done their worst to twist the clear and obvious meaning of 18:22 simply because it directly conflicts with a sexual behavior that our society wants desperately to rehabilitate and re-identify as acceptable, normal, and a viable "alternative lifestyle." Don't make the mistake of thinking that God's perspective of this kind of sexual behavior has changed at all in the generations between when He first spoke these words and now. The behavior in view is more commonly called homosexuality today. It is not treated here in God's Law as a lifestyle, or even more importantly a biological orientation as most claim today. It is treated as a behavior. Biblically, all behaviors of this sort are the outward expression of heart choices made by the person practicing the behavior. It is because it is a moral choice lived out as a behavior that the person can and will be held accountable to God. Homosexual behavior is identified here as an abomination. This is a critically important word which sets this behavior in right perspective. The term describes the attitude of the one who has named it an abomination. In other words, this is more than the personal opinion of Moses, Aaron, or any other Israelite. This is how God views this behavior. He still views it this way. The word abomination translates a Hebrew word meaning something hated, or detestable. It is a word describing a very strong revulsion. As an ironic contrast, there is a politically correct movement gaining momentum in our culture to classify any public speech or writing that puts homosexuality in a bad light as "hate speech." Many would even desire to make it a crime to speak against this behavior. What I am writing in this section would be considered hate speech by that movement. The reality is, that this section of Leviticus is hate speech. Simply put, God hates homosexual behavior. It is not a behavior that He mildly disapproves of. He detests it. As His people, so should we. This does not mean that we are to be hateful toward those that choose to practice such behavior. We can strongly disapprove of their behavior without violating other commands of God to love our neighbor as we love ourselves for instance. So that Israel does not misunderstand the deadly effect of such defiling and detestable behaviors on a society, the Lord calls their attention to the nation of Canaan that at this moment still possessed the Promised Land. The Lord uses a vivid word picture to describe His own perspective and attitude toward them. He used what we call personification, which is to give human characteristics to something that is not human to make His point. He described that the land was vomiting out the inhabitants that were currently living there. Their behaviors had so polluted the land spiritually that the land was sick to its stomach of them and was forcefully ejecting them. This image previews the coming judgment of God on these societies. The Lord also uses this as a warning to Israel that the land would do the same to them if they were to ever adopt the ways of the corrupt nations around them. 19:9-10 - "Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the LORD your God." The Law of God was a comprehensive guideline for Israel including what things should be done as a nation as well as what things to avoid. This law, as many others anticipated their lives once they reached the Promised Land and settled into an agricultural economy. This law regulated how Israel was to harvest their own fields each year. The restriction was aimed at those farmers in Israel that would be so careful in the harvest that they would gather ever stalk of grain and any other crop that was grown. The obedient Israelite was to intentionally not harvest his own field all the way to the edges of the field. Additionally, as the crops were being harvested, if some of the crop fell to the ground as it was being gathered and bundled, instead of bending down to pick up what fell, they were to leave it where it fell. This standard insured that each season a small percentage of each crop was left in each field throughout Israel. The Lord was not training His people to be careless by this law, but was training them to be kind and compassionate. The purpose of this law was to make available some food for the poor and needy in Israel. Once the harvest was complete, and even as it was being harvested with permission from the owner of the field, the poor and needy were allowed to come into the field and harvest what remained at the outer edges of the field, as well as gather the small portions of the crop that had previously fallen to the ground. This food was purposefully not to be harvested by the owner of the field and then given as a gift to the poor. Instead, those in need were to come do the work of harvesting the available food for themselves. In God's Law for His holy nation there is no provision for what we have in our society of a welfare system where people in need simply collect without work or effort from the abundance of others and funneled through the national government. Instead of a welfare system, there was this law. The beauty of this law was that it not only provided necessary food for those in real need, but it did so in a way that did not impose on the landowner / farmer, while also training the needy to work for their own living by causing them to gather their own food. 19:17-18 - "You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD." This passage is one of the most significant portions of all of God's Law. We know that with certainty because of the way both the Lord Jesus and Paul the apostle quoted from it and taught from it. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.'"This is the great and foremost commandment. "The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' "On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:36-40). Jesus identifies the phrase, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" as one of the two core principles of all of the Law of God. The two principles are 1) Love God, and 2) Love your neighbor. Jesus taught in this section that the whole Law and all the Prophets books to follow in the Old Testament are concerned to establish our hearts in these two commands. As we saw in our study of the tablets of the Law written by God on Sinai, that these two principles in a sense summarize the two tablets of the Law and each corresponds to five of the original Ten Words or Commandments. The first five commandments reflect the concern to teach us to love God, and the second five commandments teach us to love our neighbors. Paul then refers to this same section and applies it to the Christian life. "Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, "YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, YOU SHALL NOT MURDER, YOU SHALL NOT STEAL, YOU SHALL NOT COVET," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." (Romans 13:8-10). The person that loves his neighbor has fulfilled all of the concerns of the Law of God that were aimed at all of our horizontal relationships with other people. Keep in mind, that the fulfillment of the love your neighbor standard is based upon what God defines as love, and upon who God identifies as our neighbor. Human tendency is always to minimize the responsibilities that come with such far reaching laws. Jesus had to give us many further instructions and examples to show us the nature of true love as He defines it. The famous parable of the Good Samaritan was given by Jesus in response to a question He was asked for the purpose of clarifying who belongs in the neighbor group for each of us. The parable of the Samaritan is a powerful description in story form of the essence of the command to love our neighbor. In the story, a Samaritan stopped to help an injured Israelite and showed true neighbor love for him by treating his wounds, carrying him to safety, and even paying his lodging bill. The degree of the love the Samaritan showed is further emphasized when we understand the natural distaste with which Israelites held Samaritans at that time. The point is that our neighbor is whomever crosses our path in life. The believer should recognize the sovereignty of God in the encounter and be always prepared to display the true love of God in a way that honors Him and represents Him to our neighbor. 19:26-31 - "You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor practice divination or soothsaying.... Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God." This section gives a strong and non-negotiable prohibition to certain spiritual practices of the ancient world. Those practices included divination, soothsaying, mediums and spiritists. These are actually two pairs of similar practices. These were very common practices in all of the cultures of the ancient world, but God insisted that the people of His holy nation refrain from these practices. They were not to even allow these things to be practiced in their society, and later laws in Deuteronomy reaffirmed the complete prohibition of these spiritual practices (Deuteronomy 18:9-14). Today, in our society, not only do allow these exact practices, we create television shows to promote them, games to encourage these practices, and laws to protect the right to practice them. Divination and soothsaying involved using various natural elements to "read" or discern hidden spiritual messages for one's present or future life. Modern examples of divination would include reading Tarot cards, or the famous "game" of the Ouija Board. The person who practices divination sees messages in the cards, or animal bones, or other natural patterns that supposedly represent messages from God. It should be obvious to the believer that God will not speak through such practices when He forbids His people to seek messages in this way. Yet, in spite of that, some naive Christians are drawn into these practices without recognizing the spiritual danger inherent in them. There are also some who still identify themselves as mediums, but that term has fallen out of common usage in recent years in favor of more mystical sounding terms like "channeling". There are basically two kinds of mediums or channels. One purports to receive messages from the dead, while the other claims to receive messages from non-human sources such as angels or UFOs. The medium or channel claiming to have a connection with the spirits of the dead who have a desire to communicate with the living has been popularized by Hollywood in the movie Ghost, and the television series Crossing Over, and Medium. The channeler is supposed to be a person more spiritually tuned to receive their messages. God knows the natural inclination of people to know things hidden from them including the future. This warning was given in anticipation of the temptation even believers would experience from those who claimed to communicate with "spirits beyond the grave." The serious nature of this practice is revealed when we recognize that there is a good reason why God forbids His people to participate in such practices. The true source of these messages is not UFOs, angels, or the spirits of dead loved ones, but demonic spirits using these guises to delude and lure into spiritual darkness those who embrace them. 19:32-34 - "You shall rise up before the grayheaded and honor the aged, and you shall revere your God; I am the LORD. When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God." There are two laws in these verses that would benefit our society in particular if they were to be applied in the way that God intended. The first law requires a specific behavior in response to the elderly in the society. As with all of God's laws, the behavior required is the appropriate outward expression of a right perspective and attitude in the heart. In this case, the right perspective encouraged is for all relatively younger people in the nation to recognize the value of the elderly and to honor them in an expression that has been lost in the last generation of our society. The law required something more tangible than having a respectful attitude toward the aged. It called all Israelites to respond in a specific physical way whenever an elderly person was encountered. That response was to rise up in their presence. Simply, it meant for the younger people to get up from sitting down when an elderly person entered the room in which they were sitting. To clarify, this did not apply to anyone that happened to be older than you. It was not a relative standard. The accepted standard in the culture of that day was that an older person was anyone over the age of fifty. There was a time in our culture when a form of this principle was practiced as a social pattern of behavior. I remember being taught by my parents as a child to stand up whenever an adult entered the room. That pattern of behavior no longer is a concern of many parents today. As a result, it is an easy observation that older people are commonly treated with diminished honor in our society, and often with no honor shown to them in normal social circumstances at all. The second law in this section that has fallen by the wayside in our society is the response to the strangers in our society. In this passage, the term stranger does not refer to someone you have never yet met, and so they are socially a stranger to you. Instead, the term refers to what we would call today a foreigner. Strangers were people that came from other nations surrounding Israel. Many were drawn to Israel from other nations because of the evident blessing of the Lord upon Israel. The Lord intended His great blessing on Israel to not be guarded only for Israel to enjoy, but that the blessings of the Lord would spill over the full lives of God's covenant people and be a natural attraction to those who longed to enjoy such blessings for themselves. This law is especially problematic today, even for many believers, because of the huge issue with the influx of so many illegal aliens into the United States. Even many Christians feel perfectly justified in angry or outraged expressions to those who have crossed our nation's borders without going through the proper procedures. I am 100% in favor of obeying the law and urging others to do so also, but this law of God should not be ignored in our patriotic zeal to protect our national boundaries. What God calls His people to do is recognize a higher spiritual purpose in the presence of aliens in our midst. The implication is that the Lord has drawn them here for His purpose and that our interaction with them is a spiritual opportunity to represent an even greater nation than the USA to them. As citizens of God's kingdom, He calls us to treat them with respect and to show His love to them. The reminder the Lord gives of Israel's recent status as aliens in the land of Egypt is meant to shape their perspective to a more sympathetic orientation. The implication is that without the reminder, Israel, like ourselves would tend to see any strangers from a self interested viewpoint. Kingdom living calls us to see such strangers through the perspective of how God would have me treat them first and foremost. 20:1-5 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "You shall also say to the sons of Israel: 'Any man from the sons of Israel or from the aliens sojourning in Israel who gives any of his offspring to Molech, shall surely be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones. I will also set My face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given some of his offspring to Molech, so as to defile My sanctuary and to profane My holy name. If the people of the land, however, should ever disregard that man when he gives any of his offspring to Molech, so as not to put him to death, then I Myself will set My face against that man and against his family, and I will cut off from among their people both him and all those who play the harlot after him, by playing the harlot after Molech." The violations in this chapter were already listed in chapter 18, but here the Lord makes known the judgment or penalty that was to be carried out for each transgression. This first section involved a man giving any of his offspring to Molech. The name Molech is no longer familiar to anyone who has not read the Bible, but it was the name of one of the chief gods of the Canaanites. The worship of Molech involved sacrifice, however the particular sacrifice was not an animal, but a child. The person bringing the sacrificial child to Molech would bring one of their own children from their family and offer the child to Molech in a fiery sacrifice that was expected to bring increased fertility and blessing to the life of the one offering. This law placed this horrific practice in right perspective. The Lord would personally respond in judgment against anyone in Israel that participated in such evil. The Lord's description is that He would set His face against that person. This was a way of saying that the Lord would treat that person as His own enemy from that point forward. The Lord also called the entire holy nation of Israel to follow His example in responding to such evil practices in their midst. There was no allowance made by the Lord to anyone who saw and knew this was being practiced to disregard it or look the other way. It was the entire community's responsibility to take a stand against such profane and defiling activity in their community. The community was to carry out the judgment of the Lord in a public and joint response. The penalty required was stoning. That involved each member of the community to pick up a sizable stone and together to throw their stones at the guilty person until they died from the impact of the stones. It was not am easy, clean way to execute. It was bloody, graphic and intended by the Lord to make a lasting deep impact on the hearts of every participant and witness. This false worship of Molech is also described by the Lord as "playing the harlot after Molech." This identifies a theme that will continue throughout the Old Testament. It is a key covenant theme of Old Testament and it anticipates an issue that remains at the heart of our own relationship with the Lord today. To play the harlot with Molech is a word picture which describes Molech as if he were an illicit lover. Those who play the harlot with him are portrayed in this word picture as an unfaithful bride breaking her marriage vows. The Lord is also involved in this word picture, just not directly mentioned. The Lord is the faithful husband of the unfaithful bride. Israel was pictured here as the bride of the Lord. Israel had given her vows of faithfulness to the Lord at the foot of Sinai when the Lord established a covenant of marriage between Himself and Israel. Any in Israel who turned from the Lord and worshipped any other god, was breaking their vow to the Lord to love Him only. This was spiritual adultery. In the New Covenant, the church has been betrothed to Christ as her only husband. No believers worship Molech today, but the danger of spiritual adultery remains. "You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." (James 4:4). James teaches that spiritual adultery is not limited to the overt worship of obvious false gods, but that line of unfaithfulness to our heavenly husband is crossed whenever we enter into friendship with the world. James is not warning us here about making friends with people that do not know the Lord. Instead, the warning is for a believer who adopts the world's standards of right and wrong as their own standard. We are showing friendship to the spiritually rebellious world around us when we embrace its standards, and in doing so turn from the standards of the Lord. 20:7-8 - "You shall consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy, for I am the LORD your God. You shall keep My statutes and practice them; I am the LORD who sanctifies you." These verses return again to the main theme of Leviticus, which is holiness. The Lord is an awesomely holy God. In heaven, the four living beings that are in closest proximity to Him behold His glory and continuously cry out with a shared exclamation of, "Holy, holy holy is the Lord God..." (Revelation 4:8). We should expect that the great priority of the covenant that God establishes with His people is to call His people to greater holiness as His holy nation. In this call to holiness we are certainly not to hypocritically put on a holy act. The Lord intends for His people to be an authentically holy people. We become more holy by looking to Him, learning His standards from His Word, and committing to imitating Him. The Lord calls us to this life of holiness and in the call we have the assurance of His power working in us and upon us to bring it to pass. He confirms this in this passage with the declaration, "I am the LORD who sanctifies you." The point of this declaration is that the Lord knows that holiness is really beyond our reach. No matter our best efforts, we cannot make ourselves truly holy from the inside out, but He can and will. This principle is echoed in the New Testament in these passages. "So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." (Philippians 2:12-13). "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass." (I Thessalonians 5:23-24). The theme of both of these passages is that the New Covenant believer is to be sanctified and that their lives are to be characterized by holiness. The holiness standard for the believer in the New Covenant is not less than the standard of the Old Covenant as though God relaxed the standard for us in Christ so that we can call ourselves holy even though we really are not. If anything, the standard of holiness is even greater now, because while the focus in the Old Testament was on obeying the laws of Moses, the focus in the New Testament is to become like Christ. Our confidence in this great purpose of the Lord for our lives is not in ourselves, but in Him. He is powerfully at work inside of us to influence us by His Spirit to make the right choices and live in the right way. He has not only called us to this, He will also bring it to pass. Our personal holiness is 100% God dependant. 20:9-16 - "If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his bloodguiltiness is upon him. If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. If there is a man who lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness; both of them shall surely be put to death, their bloodguiltiness is upon them. If there is a man who lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have committed incest, their bloodguiltiness is upon them. If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them. If there is a man who marries a woman and her mother, it is immorality; both he and they shall be burned with fire, so that there will be no immorality in your midst. If there is a man who lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death; you shall also kill the animal. If there is a woman who approaches any animal to mate with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them." This section lists some of the violations of the Law of God that required a death penalty for the one who committed such acts. The sin that opened this chapter of sacrificing one's own child to Molech is also included in the death penalty category. Few, even in today's more "sensitive" culture would argue against the death penalty for someone that burned their own child to death. However, many of the other violations in this section have been rejected by our society as worthy of the death penalty. The list of offences includes cursing parents, adultery, incest, homosexuality, and bestiality. These sins are such grievous assaults on God's standards that the Lord commanded that Israel deal with them by executing those who practiced such acts. Remember that the Lord did not ordain any prisons for His holy nation. None were locked away from society as we do today. It's true that this served a practical purpose during Israel's first forty years in the wilderness journey since there was no possibility of building a prison for a people constantly on the move. Yet, even after they entered the Promised Land and settled in it, the Lord never had Israel build any prisons. A prison is a society's acknowledgment of problems that cannot be resolved. The Lord did ordain the way to resolve such serious social problems and that was to command the permanent elimination of the people that chose to practice such transgressions of His Law. There are many opponents of the death penalty in today's society. They argue that the value of the life of the person to be executed outweighs all other considerations. This is foolish sentimentality and a gross exaggeration of human value when a person is given over to serious sin. The Biblical perspective is that our value as human beings is based upon our creation design of bearing God's image and purpose to honor Him. If we reject that design and purpose to such a degree as to cross the behavior boundary lines described in this section, then we have forfeited our human value as well as our right to live. The death penalty served God's purpose in His holy nation by teaching in a vivid display the seriousness of His call to holiness and demonstrating His justice. It also preserved the purity of the society by eliminating evil elements before they could spread their influence further. The question is often raised whether these laws should be practiced by societies today. This is a complex question, deserving a book length response, but a couple of point can be made in a brief response. First, these were the laws of God for Israel. God did not require all the nations to live according to these standards, but He did commission Israel to teach the nations the ways of God in His holy Law so that the nations could learn and be changed by the knowledge of what God expected of all humanity. It is a serious misunderstanding of God's Law to say it has nothing to teach society today. "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;" (II Timothy 3:16). The second point is that if we say that God's Law is not to be consulted as the basis of a society's morals or its laws which govern morals, then the question remains as to which other standard will that society use in its place. The issue is that every society must choose some standard to be the basis of its laws. If God's standards are rejected as not applicable, then where will that society turn to find a foundation for its laws and morals? Of course, in every case, the only alternatives are the various shifting expressions of human standards. In other words, the society will reject God's standards in preference for their own. Our society today still maintains some measure of decency because, and only because the original standards of this nation have not yet been entirely jettisoned. Those standards were for the most part Biblically based. Questions from Leviticus 19: Question: If it is true that mediums can't talk to the dead, then how come when King Saul sought out a medium, Samuel came up and talked to Saul and told him he was going to be killed? nswer: Technically, it is not that mediums can't talk to the dead, it is that they don't talk to the dead when they are receiving their messages. The issue really boils down to what the Bible teaches us regarding the situation of the dead. What actually happens to the spirits of the people once they die? Do their disembodied spirits remain here interacting with spiritually sensitive people by communicating messages to them? The answer is no. Instead, during the Old Testament, before the first coming of Christ, the spirits of the dead where taken to one of two places. The righteous dead were taken to Abraham's Bosom (Luke 16:19-26), also called Paradise, where the righteous dead waited for the coming of Christ and the opening of heaven in the New Testament. The unrighteous dead were taken to Hades where they wait the final judgment. None of them is free to interact, let alone communicate with people who are still alive (Luke 16:27-31). The question you raised concerns a specific event involving King Saul and Samuel the prophet. I'll address that situation again when we reach that passage in our study, but I'll give a brief answer to it now. It is true in the passage you are referring to that Samuel was dead at this time and that his spirit did appear to Saul and speak a message from the Lord to him. This is clearly what we can identify as an exception to a spiritual rule. It was the Lord's doing, and He is free to bring someone up from the dead if He chooses to do so. In this case, Samuel was used by the Lord to deliver a word of judgment from God to Saul. However, it was the Lord Who brought Samuel momentarily back from Abraham's Bosom, not the medium of En-dor. In the passage, she is actually surprised that it is really Samuel. The result was not what she expected. The normal practice of every medium even today is that they are either putting on an act and simply making up their messages, or else they are in contact with a demonic spirit who is feeding them messages using the deception of posing as departed human spirits. Question: Leviticus 19:28 "You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the LORD." Does the tattoo pertain only to markings related to the dead? And, how does this relate (if at all) to 1 Corinthians 3:17 "any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are." and Romans 12:1 "Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship". Answer: I'm assuming that your question has to do with whether this law was addressing the common cultural practice today of people getting tattoos, and how that might relate to the New Testament passages you mentioned. This law forbidding tattoos in Leviticus 19:28 is not addressing the kind of tattoos that are commonly done today. Most tattoos done today are for purpose of permanent skin decoration. The goal of the tattoo today is to draw attention by enhancing beauty or communicating some message. The tattoo practice addressed in Leviticus had a more directly religious purpose. Those tattoos were marking made on the body as an expression of worship of the various false gods. It was a common practice in the Canaanite cultures in the Promised Land. The Lord was forbidding His people to mark themselves as belonging to any of the gods of the nations. In answering the question as to whether it is allowable for a believer
in Christ to get a tattoo, it is important to say up front that
there is no specific passage anywhere in God's Word that would forbid
it since the Leviticus passage is really addressing a physically
similar, but spiritually different practice. If I was asked for
my advice by a believer interested in getting a tattoo, I would
however bring up to them the issue that you mentioned about our
body being identified by the Lord as belonging to Him and being
His temple. In the Old Testament, it is clear that the Lord was
very specific as to how He wanted His tabernacle / temple to be
decorated. The people of God were not free to apply whatever designs
to the exterior of the temple just because it pleased them to do
so. The Lord has identified how He wants the lives of believers
to be decorated with certain characteristics, behaviors and good
deeds. I would tend to see tattoos on the bodies of believers as
graffiti on the exterior of God's temple that would not enhance
God's message, but rather detract from it. 21:1-6 - "Then the LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: 'No one shall defile himself for a dead person among his people, except for his relatives who are nearest to him, his mother and his father and his son and his daughter and his brother, also for his virgin sister, who is near to him because she has had no husband; for her he may defile himself. He shall not defile himself as a relative by marriage among his people, and so profane himself. They shall not make any baldness on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts in their flesh. They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God, for they present the offerings by fire to the LORD, the food of their God; so they shall be holy." This chapter continues the section concerned with holiness laws covering the behaviors and conditions that would defile God's people. In the previous chapter the guidelines applied to all of God's holy nation. Now in this chapter these laws only apply to those who are set apart as Levitical priests, and starting in verse 10 only apply to the high priest. This set of three distinct holiness requirements for these three groups within Israel corresponds to the three areas of proximity to the Lord as represented in the tabernacle. There are actually four areas of proximity to the Lord shown in the tabernacle if we include the world of Gentiles outside of covenant relationship with the Lord. They would be allowed to come only to the outer curtain of the courtyard of the tabernacle. All of Israel could come one step closer to the Lord and enter inside the courtyard to offer the sacrifices at the altar. Then, only the Levitical priests could enter into the actual tent of the tabernacle into the outer room called the Holy Place. Finally, only the high priest was allowed into the inner room called the Holy of Holies into the direct presence of the Lord at the ark of the covenant. These sets of holiness laws were in a sense the qualifications that must be maintained by each group within Israel in order to maintain their right of access into the area of the tabernacle allowed to their group. Membership in that group was not sufficient to maintain access. Each group was required to obey these standards in these laws or else forfeit their access to the Lord's presence. In this section the Levitical priests were not allowed to participate in certain funeral ceremonies or else be ceremonially defiled. They were to refrain from participating in preparing the body for burial of any except the closest family members. The prohibition against baldness, shaving the edges of the beard, or making cuts in their flesh were all also connected to common burial rites of the ancient cultures. Shaving the head and portions of the beard for instance were visible physical expressions of mourning the dead. It is easy to get sidetracked by the details of these laws that might not make immediate sense to us in our cultural setting today and miss the main point of why God gave them. The main point was that God was displaying the spiritual principle that our degree of true holiness is established by the nature of our relationship to Him. You and I have zero self generated holiness. All of our holiness is due to our relationship with the Lord Who is the holy One. The closer we are to Him, the greater our reflection of His holiness. We saw this displayed in the experience of Moses. He was granted the privilege of coming closer to the glorious presence of the Lord than anyone else in Israel and when he returned to the people from the Lord's presence, he reflected the glory of the Lord, which is the visible expression of God's holiness, from his face. The corresponding principle that we are meant to learn from this section of holiness laws is that our behavior can diminish our reflection of God's holiness by exposing ourselves to spiritually defiling elements in the world around us. The great privilege we have been given of access into the presence of the Lord carries with it a corresponding responsibility to honor the Lord's boundaries and to avoid those things in the world that the Lord calls defiling. The Levites could not do as so many Christians do today and presume on the graciousness of God. They could not tell themselves that God understands and then go ahead and give themselves permission to violate the very things God had warned them against. 21:10-15 - "The priest who is the highest among his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil has been poured and who has been consecrated to wear the garments, shall not uncover his head nor tear his clothes; nor shall he approach any dead person, nor defile himself even for his father or his mother; nor shall he go out of the sanctuary nor profane the sanctuary of his God, for the consecration of the anointing oil of his God is on him; I am the LORD. He shall take a wife in her virginity. A widow, or a divorced woman, or one who is profaned by harlotry, these he may not take; but rather he is to marry a virgin of his own people, so that he will not profane his offspring among his people; for I am the LORD who sanctifies him.'" This section details the extra high standard of holiness that was required of the high priest. He is "the highest among his brothers." Just like all Israel was held to a higher standard of holy behavior than the Gentiles, and Levitical priests were held to a higher standard of holy behavior than the average Israelite, the high priest was held to a higher standard than the rest of the priests. The general spiritual principle we can derive from this is, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required;" (Luke 12:48). To those whom God gives greater privileges, He also requires greater responsibility and accountability. The high priest was given the greatest role of leadership in all of Israel. He was also given higher standards of holy behavior. This was ultimately because the high priest represented Christ. Each high priest in Israel's history stood as a symbol of Christ. The high standard was critical to honor or else the high priest would be saying by his compromised behavior that Christ was less than perfect. Of course, none of the high priests including Aaron were able to perfectly represent Christ because they were each imperfect men with character flaws and human weaknesses. We are meant to understand though by the highest standard of conduct established by these laws that God intended us to recognize the greater holiness of Christ in this role of high priest, however imperfectly he was represented by the men that held the office of high priest. Additionally, we can learn from this principle that higher callings in God's kingdom carry a higher standard of accountability to walk in holiness. The passages in I Timothy 3:1-7, and Titus 1:5-9 that detail the qualification standards for those who would serve in the church in the role of elder are examples of this principle. The point is that all Christians are called to holiness and to walk in righteousness, but those who lead the church must be characterized by successfully maintaining those standards of behavior before even entering the office of church leadership. 21:16-23 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to Aaron, saying, 'No man of your offspring throughout their generations who has a defect shall approach to offer the food of his God. For no one who has a defect shall approach: a blind man, or a lame man, or he who has a disfigured face, or any deformed limb, or a man who has a broken foot or broken hand, or a hunchback or a dwarf, or one who has a defect in his eye or eczema or scabs or crushed testicles. No man among the descendants of Aaron the priest who has a defect is to come near to offer the LORD'S offerings by fire; since he has a defect, he shall not come near to offer the food of his God. He may eat the food of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy, only he shall not go in to the veil or come near the altar because he has a defect, so that he will not profane My sanctuaries. For I am the LORD who sanctifies them.'" This section can be confusing when misread today. It clearly prohibits any Levitical priest who was born with various physical defects and deformities to serve as priests in the tabernacle. There were a total of twelve different types of defects listed and any of them would disqualify the afflicted person from entering the tabernacle. The confusing aspect is that this prohibition seems at first glance to communicate the opposite concern from what we see revealed in the ministry of Jesus. He welcomed and ministered freely to all of the most needy people in Israel. He gave special attention to those who were described in this section such as the time he miraculously healed the man with the withered hand. It seems inconsistent that Jesus was so gracious toward those with these kinds of physical defects, while the Law was so strict on not allowing them access into the tabernacle. It is not really an inconsistency at all. The ministry of Jesus perfectly expressed God's heart of compassion toward those who are born into this fallen world with physical deformities. These laws do not reflect God's heart in that way, as if in the Old Testament, the Lord was cold and uncaring, but in the New Testament He is warm and compassionate. The apparent inconsistency is really a confusion of categories and a misunderstanding of Old Testament symbolism. In the Law of God, there are many sections in which the Lord chose to use the physical condition of the human body to symbolically represent the spiritual condition of the heart. In other words, physical deformity symbolized a heart affected by sin. It was necessary to disqualify those who served as priests in the tabernacle who had such physical defects as a representation that those who served God were free from the serious effects of sin. This symbol connects to the New Covenant principle that only those who have been truly born again are identified by God as members of His royal priesthood. The emphasis shifts in the New Testament away from physical condition to spiritual condition. Questions from Leviticus 20: Question: 20:27 - Many people, Christians even, believe it is ok to "dabble" in things like enjoying Harry Potter books and movies and other similar things which glorify "white" witchcraft and the occult. Can you comment on how we as Christians should view books and movies like Harry Potter? Answer: It's a good question that really does deserve a more lengthy answer than I can provide here. I'll try to briefly address the heart of the issue as I see it. The Lord does forbid His people from participating in activities that are often labeled as occult practices, but which are spiritual activities that expose and involve a person to demonic influence if not full blown demonic interaction. The passage you are asking about does address two of those forbidden activities which are mediums and spiritists. However, from what I know about the Harry Potter books and movies, the spiritual activities portrayed in them are of a different forbidden category. This passage from Deuteronomy deals with the specific kind of occult practice that Harry Potter describes. "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD; and because of these detestable things the LORD your God will drive them out before you." (Deuteronomy 18:10-12). Harry Potter is a witch or sorcerer who practices spell casting. In defense of the books and movies, the power that Harry uses is never portrayed as demonic or arising from demonic contact, although he often fights against those. Instead the power is portrayed as arising from within himself and useful as long as he uses his powers for the cause of good. The problem from a Biblical perspective is that witches and sorcerers
are always expressions of evil and the powers associated with them
always arising from demonic contact. You could try and make a case
as some have that it is only a fantasy and that the normal rules
of God's standards don't apply in the fantasy. The problem is that
the stories are primarily aimed at a younger audience and tend to
produce a confusing element into where the boundary lines of acceptable
spiritual activity really are found. If we allow those lines to
be blurred for the sake of telling an entertaining story, what other
lines of God's standards are we allowed to cross to tell a good
story; murder, adultery, theft, lying, etc.? If asked, I do not
recommend the Potter stories in either book or film form for this
reason. 22:1-3 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Tell Aaron and his sons to be careful with the holy gifts of the sons of Israel, which they dedicate to Me, so as not to profane My holy name; I am the LORD. Say to them, 'If any man among all your descendants throughout your generations approaches the holy gifts which the sons of Israel dedicate to the LORD, while he has an uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from before Me; I am the LORD.'" Chapter 22 continues the special holiness laws that the Lord gave to all the Levitical priests who served in the tabernacle. These laws did not apply to any Israelite from the other 11 tribes. They do not have any direct application to our lives today, because there is no longer a physical tabernacle on earth, and we are not Levites. However, as the royal priests that serve God in His New Covenant temple, the church, we are meant to learn from the principles imbedded in these laws and apply those principles to our own service to the Lord. This section required special care to be exercised by the priests as they handled the holy gifts that God's people brought to offer to the Lord. Those gifts were the various animal and grain sacrifices that the Lord commanded His people to worship Him with as we studied in the early chapters of Leviticus. The priests were to recognize the holiness inherent in any gift that a worshipper brought and dedicated to the Lord. Since the priests handled the offerings for the entire nation, it would have been normal and even expected for them to begin to treat the offerings as part of the routine of their daily work. The old saying, familiarity breeds contempt applies here. The priests were to guard their hearts and perspectives from ever handling the offering to the Lord as routine or rote tasks. If they did so, they risked mishandling them by exposing them to various defiling elements and end up dishonoring not just the holy gift, but the holy Lord to Whom they were dedicated. In our own generation, this principle certainly would apply to those who are called to church leadership responsibility and who handle the financial gifts given to the Lord by God's people. That money belongs to Him, not the people collecting it, and it must be treated with as much holy respect as the lambs that were offered in the tabernacle. Sadly, the church has far too frequently suffered from those in church leadership that have treated the offerings of the Lord as though it was their personal fund to use as they desired. Another potential application of this principle is that as the people of God offer back to Him their service in the expression of their spiritual gifts, we must all learn to respect those offerings. 22:9 - "They shall therefore keep My charge, so that they will not bear sin because of it and die thereby because they profane it; I am the LORD who sanctifies them." Because the offerings of the Lord carried special value to the Lord, any disrespectful handling of those holy gifts bore a serious penalty for the priests that dishonored the Lord in that way. Later in Israel's history there is a strong example of this principle being violated by two of the priests of the Lord. "Now the sons of Eli were worthless men; they did not know the LORD and the custom of the priests with the people. When any man was offering a sacrifice, the priest's servant would come while the meat was boiling, with a three-pronged fork in his hand. Then he would thrust it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot; all that the fork brought up the priest would take for himself. Thus they did in Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. Also, before they burned the fat, the priest's servant would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, "Give the priest meat for roasting, as he will not take boiled meat from you, only raw." If the man said to him, "They must surely burn the fat first, and then take as much as you desire," then he would say, "No, but you shall give it to me now; and if not, I will take it by force." Thus the sin of the young men was very great before the LORD, for the men despised the offering of the LORD." (I Samuel 2:12-17). Eli was the high priest of Israel at that time in history. His sons were high level Levitical priests that were given responsibilities in the tabernacle of the Lord second only to Eli himself. These two sons of Eli dishonored the Lord by blatantly mishandling the offerings brought by the people to worship the Lord. They disregarded the standards of the Lord for what was to be offered and how the offerings were to be received by the priests on behalf of the Lord. They essentially abused their positions of authority for their own benefit and because their father the high priest tolerated their sinful actions it seemed that they were beyond correction. However, these men should have paid closer attention to the warning of the Lord in Leviticus 22:9 given to the priests mishandling the gifts of God's people. The warning was clear that those who dared to do so would bear their sin and die as a direct consequence for their rebellion against the Lord's standards. We see the mercy of the Lord in not executing Eli's sons the first day or even week that they abused their positions in this way, but neither was their judgment neglected. Shortly after this pattern of treating the offerings of the Lord with disdain developed, both of the sons of Eli were slain in a battle with the enemies of the Lord in which even the ark of the covenant was captured. 22:26-27 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born, it shall remain seven days with its mother, and from the eighth day on it shall be accepted as a sacrifice of an offering by fire to the LORD." We have seen many examples in the Law so far of an eighth day pattern. This law for the offering of young sacrificial animals continues that pattern. In this case, the law regulated how old a sacrificial animal had to be before it qualified to be offered. The minimum standard was on the eighth day. This requirement served a double purpose that was both practical and symbolic. The practical purpose was concerned with the natural complications that would arise for the mother of a young animal to be sacrificed if its young was taken from it too soon due to the natural responses of the mother's body to nurse its young in the first days after birth. The symbolic purpose was of course of even greater value because it extends far beyond the natural life of the animals offered. As with all of the previous occurrences of the eighth day pattern we see a connection in symbol to the new creation to come in the work of Christ. The first seven days represent the complete first week of the original creation at the beginning of history. The eighth day is the first day of a new week of a new creation. This corresponds with an animal equivalent to the law of the circumcision of human males which occurred on the eighth day following birth. 22:31-33 - "So you shall keep My commandments, and do them; I am the LORD. You shall not profane My holy name, but I will be sanctified among the sons of Israel; I am the LORD who sanctifies you, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, to be your God; I am the LORD." The Lord concludes the holiness laws section with this firm reminder of the responsibility of the priests to keep the commands of the Lord. To keep His commands is simply to obey them. The Lord emphasizes their responsibility by the declaration, "I am the LORD." The meaning He is driving home once again to their hearts is simple but at the core of His concern for His people. They must come to the full realization that He is the Lord and they are not. "Lord" is the master, or the one fully in charge. When He declares that He is the Lord to His people that already know Him, it is to remind them not to presume on His commands. The Lord is He Who must be obeyed. These commands are in no sense optional, especially to the priests who must set the example of conscientious obedience for the rest of God's holy nation. When the Lord then declares that they will not profane His holy name, but that He would be sanctified among the sons of Israel, He was not describing His hope or desire. The Lord was declaring what would happen with the priesthood, and the implication is that when, not if, any priests violate these standards, that He will personally step in and enforce His own holy laws. In other words, the Lord is not going to allow the priests in particular to "get away" with compromising or violating His holy name as they represented Him to the nation of Israel and the watching world. Questions from Leviticus 21: Question: How could God say that the sons of Aaron could not marry a prostitute? How could there be any? Wasn't that a death penalty offense? nswer: While it is clearly identified as a sin, I don't know of a specific law that required the death penalty for a prostitute in the Old Testament. There was of course the seventh commandment forbidding adultery which was a death penalty offense, but prostitution could be outside the boundaries of adultery. The law in 21:7 also applied to priests marrying former prostitutes. If a woman had been engaged in prostitution in Egypt, but had since the Exodus reformed her ways, she was still ineligible for marriage to one of the priests because of the higher standard of holiness required of them. She could however, marry any other man in Israel. 23:1-2 - "The LORD spoke again to Moses, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'The LORD'S appointed times which you shall proclaim as holy convocations--My appointed times are these:" This chapter gives us an overview of the yearly calendar of Israel. Their calendar was established by the Lord, and as we should expect, it was based on both natural and spiritual connections. The year's calendar was marked by seven great events in which all of Israel was called to participate. These seven events are today commonly referred to as the Feasts of Israel, even though not all of them were technically feasts. The feast concept is present in many of these events because the people were to gather together around the tabernacle and later the temple and celebrate the various aspects of why the Lord had established these national activities. There is a first event upon which all of the other seven events were spiritually based. That first event is the Sabbath. We have previously seen that the Sabbath was the day of rest appointed by the Lord for His holy nation at the end of each week on their calendar. It spiritually pointed both backward and forward in time. It was a reminder of the far distant past as God Himself rested on the seventh day of the original week of creation. His rest from His work of creation formed a pattern for us to follow in resting one day out of every seven from our own work. It pointed forward in time toward Christ as all of the Law of God does. The true spiritual rest of God is the fruit of the work of redemption accomplished by Christ for us on the cross. When we come to believe in Christ as our Savior, we are permanently resting from attempting to earn our own salvation by our own works. All of the seven feast days of Israel were Sabbath based in that they were practically oriented on the calendar around the weekly Sabbaths and spiritually based upon the Sabbath concept that the redemption of Israel was the Lord's work. The seven feasts all highlighted some aspect of redemption and served to remind everyone in Israel of this. It is from these special days on the calendar that our modern concept of a holiday developed. Originally, the holidays were "holy days." In our generation the holy element of holidays has been mostly obscured by a spiritually ignorant and uncaring culture. The seven feasts of Israel's calendar year were; Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Weeks / Pentecost, Trumpets / New Year, Day of Atonement, Booths / Tabernacles. We have already studied the purpose of Passover which was the portrayal of the deliverance of God's people accomplished by Christ, Unleavened Bread which was meant to teach Israel about the necessity for spiritual sanctification following salvation, and the Day of Atonement which was the most direct image of the cross, so in this study we will focus on the four feasts we have not yet covered. 23:9-14 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD for you to be accepted; on the day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. Now on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb one year old without defect for a burnt offering to the LORD. Its grain offering shall then be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, an offering by fire to the LORD for a soothing aroma, with its drink offering, a fourth of a hin of wine. Until this same day, until you have brought in the offering of your God, you shall eat neither bread nor roasted grain nor new growth. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places." The Feast of First Fruits was to take place each year during the very beginning of the harvest season. It was a feast that they would celebrate once they entered the Promised Land and settled and began to plant and harvest crops. As the season's crops began to ripen the owner of the field was to take a sheaf, or a bundle of the grain stalks to the tabernacle to offer to the Lord. Once there the owner of the grain was to present it to the priest and the priest would wave it before the Lord. The term wave could also mean to lift it up before the Lord. The simple act of lifting this one bundle of new grain in the presence of the Lord was to declare in a symbolic act that all of the yet to be harvested grain belonged to the Lord. It was a way of thanking the Lord for the entire harvest and acknowledging that He was Lord of the harvest. Until this first fruits offering was made, each Israelite was forbidden to eat any of the remainder of the grain from his harvest. None of the harvest belonged to even the owner of the field until he showed that he recognized that all of his harvest really was a gift from the Lord and belonged to Him. While most of us don't live is a farming environment today, and the Feast of First Fruits does not literally continue in the New Testament, there is of course a carry over of the key principles of the feast for our Christian lives today. The first element that applies to us has to do with the principle of the tithe. We will study in a later section of the Law about the tithe, but it was always associated with the first fruits principle even in the Old Covenant. The principle is that the Lord calls us to honor Him in the practical way of taking a portion of our increase (whether crops or cash) and returning it to Him. Like the wave offering of first fruits it allows us to demonstrate out faith that everything we receive is given to us by the Lord and that all of our resources really belong to Him. Anyone can say that the Lord owns all they have, but only those that practice the tithe are showing their faith in their actions. Keep in mind, this offering to the Lord must be the first fruits, not the last fruits. Many believers today do give back to the Lord, but do so by giving Him what is left over each week or month rather than giving to Him first. The last aspect of the Feast of First Fruits is really the most significant. It symbolizes one of the core elements of the gospel, which is the resurrection of Christ. In Paul's extended teaching on the resurrection of Christ he identified it with a reference to this feast. "But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep." (I Corinthians 15:20). The connection is that the resurrection is the spiritual harvest of the Lord. One day, at the end of history, when the Lord Jesus returns in His Second Coming, He is going to raise everyone in a great resurrection. The wicked will be raised for the purpose of judgment and punishment, while believers will be raised to everlasting life and reward. The combined resurrection of all believers on that day is the harvest of God. At this point in history, Christ is the only person that has ever been raised to never die again with a resurrection body. He is therefore the firstfruit of that harvest to come. The Feast of First Fruits was separated in time in the calendar of Israel just like the resurrection of Christ is separated in time from our future resurrection. Yet, though separated in time, His resurrection is the guarantee of ours. 23:15-16 - "You shall also count for yourselves from the day after the sabbath, from the day when you brought in the sheaf of the wave offering; there shall be seven complete sabbaths. You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath; then you shall present a new grain offering to the LORD." The next feast was called the Feast of Weeks. It came exactly fifty days after the Feast of First Fruits. It was called Weeks because they were to count seven full weeks from First Fruits and then hold the next feast on the fiftieth day after the forty-nine days of the seven weeks. This feast day is more widely known to most believers as Pentecost. The name Pentecost was derived from the Greek word for fifty. This feast was an offering associated with the remainder of the harvest each year. The fifty days after the first fruits offering allowed sufficient time for the remainder of the crop to ripen and for it to be harvested. A portion of the remainder of the crop was offered to confirm the earlier expression of faith that the entire harvest belonged to the Lord. The greater spiritual connection of this feast should be more obvious. "When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance." (Acts 2:1-4). Out of all the days on the calendar, the Lord chose the day of the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost to reveal the church to the world. This was the first day of the church and was marked by an event that had never occurred in history before this. The Holy Spirit was sent by the ascended Lord Jesus to come and fill every believer. This made these individual believers into the church. Pentecost also points forward to the end of history and the great resurrection of believers. The filling of believers with the presence of the Holy Spirit today is called the pledge of our future inheritance of the full harvest of the resurrection (Ephesians 1:14). In other words, because the Holy Spirit has come to live in believers now, making them His home, they can be certain that they will receive the fullness of the resurrection to life at the end of history. 23:23-24 - "Again the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 'In the seventh month on the first of the month you shall have a rest, a reminder by blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation." The next feast on the calendar was the Feast of Trumpets. In Hebrew it is called Rosh Hashanna, and marked the end of the harvest season and the end of the calendar year. On this day there were trumpets blown signaling a special day of rest at the end of the year. It was a day for a holy convocation in which all of Israel was called together in the Lord's presence to reflect on the blessings of the Lord in the year past and to remember their covenant relationship with Him before beginning the new year. The trumpets blown were silver (Numbers 10:1-10) which symbolized redemption. The trumpets also represented the call of the Lord to His people and were treated as His voice calling the nation away for the day from their individual concerns to rest together in His presence. The New Testament is filled with too many trumpet references to mention here, but these two give us the main spiritual connection. “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” (I Corinthians 15:51-52). “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” (I Thessalonians 4:16). These passages describe the return of the Lord in the Second Coming. As that great event at the end of history begins, the Lord Himself will signal its beginning with the blast of the trumpet of God. That trumpet sound will mark the beginning of our eternal day of rest with the Lord because of the redemption accomplished for us by Christ. 23:34 - "Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 'On the fifteenth of this seventh month is the Feast of Booths for seven days to the LORD." The final feast day is the Feast of Booths. This is also known as the Feast of Tabernacles. In preparation for this feast which actually lasted a full week, all Israelites were to cut branches of particular trees including the palm. They were to gather their branches and construct from them temporary dwellings or booths. Then, they were to live in the booths for the week of the feast. Even when they later entered the Promised Land and dwelt in houses, for this week each year everyone was to camp in the booths they had made. The purpose of the practice was to be a yearly reminder of where they had come from spiritually. The booths were a vivid reminder of the time of the Exodus in which the Lord delivered all Israel from slavery in Egypt and made them dwell in temporary tents for the duration of their journey through the wilderness. The benefit of this regular reminder of their salvation was that it conditioned their hearts to not forget that the only reason they were not still slaves was the grace and power of God. It is just as critical for believers today to regularly remember their salvation, and never presume on the saving grace of God. Were it not for Christ and the cross, we would all still be slaves to sin. There is an interesting connection to the Feast of Booths in the ministry of Jesus. By the time of Jesus, the feast in Jerusalem culminated on the seventh and final day of the week of dwelling in booths. On that seventh day, the priests made a procession to the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem and pitchers of water which they brought and poured out down the steps of the entrance into the temple in the sight of all the gathered Israelites. As they poured out the pitchers of water they proclaimed, "Therefore you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation." (Isaiah 12:3), applying this passage from the prophet Isaiah to the salvation of the Lord. At that exact moment, at the climax of the feast, Jesus connected the symbolism of the feast with His own ministry. "Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'" But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified." (John 7:37-39). The waters poured down the temple steps He proclaimed were a picture of the Holy Spirit's work of salvation in the heart of believers. 24:1-4 - "Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Command the sons of Israel that they bring to you clear oil from beaten olives for the light, to make a lamp burn continually. Outside the veil of testimony in the tent of meeting, Aaron shall keep it in order from evening to morning before the LORD continually; it shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations. He shall keep the lamps in order on the pure gold lampstand before the LORD continually." The first section of chapter 24 rehearses instructions for the daily maintenance of two of the furnishings of the tabernacle including the lampstand and the table of showbread. We studied the purpose for these furnishings in the book of Exodus for both their practical function and symbolic purpose. The practical function of the lampstand was that it was the single light source for the tabernacle illuminating the interior of God's house for the priests to do their work of service. The symbolism of the lampstand pointed both to the past and to the future just as other aspects of the tabernacle do. The lampstand was a symbolic representation of the original tree of life in the midst of the garden of Eden. As such, it also points forward toward Christ, Who is the source of eternal life because of His saving sacrifice for us on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. The lampstand was also chosen by the Lord to represent the church in the New Covenant. The reason for this is that just as Christ was the Light of the world throughout His life in this world, the corporate community of believers in Christ is now the light of the world because we have been given by the Lord the responsibility of bearing the light of the gospel message of salvation in Christ alone to the world (II Corinthians 4:4-5). This passage in Leviticus highlights the aspect of the lampstand in which it was shown to be completely dependant upon an outside provision in order to fulfill its purpose. That provision was the oil that the lamps of the lampstand used as fuel for the light. Each lamp had to be filled daily with oil in order to provide the light for the tabernacle. The oil to be burned was special and specific. The Lord only allowed clear oil from beaten olives. This is the first clearest quality of olive oil that is produced by a process that today we call cold pressed. The purity of the oil required was important to its symbolism because the oil describes the ministry of the Holy Spirit in relationship to the church. The picture is that as the church, we are to shine the light of the gospel of Christ to the world so that many will believe and be saved. However, this saving testimony of the gospel is not communicated from the church to the world in our own strength or cleverness. It is as the Holy Spirit fills the church that we become effective representatives of the saving truth of the gospel. Like the lamps on the tabernacle lampstand we each need to be filled daily with the Holy Spirit. The other aspect of this daily responsibility was the priest who was given the assignment to keep the lamps filled. It was the high priest who each morning was to enter the tabernacle, and check each lamp. He was to trim the wicks of each lamp and fill each with the day's supply of the oil. The high priest was a type of Christ portraying the ongoing spiritual ministry we each receive from our great High Priest. Jesus is in heaven, but He is not spiritually distant from His church, and it is His responsibility to daily trim us and fill us according to our need. The connection is that while the lampstand symbolizes the church as a whole, the seven individual lamps that were mounted on the lampstand point to the individual believer. This ministry of the high priest was described as him keeping the lamps in order on the lampstand. Christ works in the lives of each true believer to "keep the lamps in order on the pure gold lampstand." The implication is that left to themselves the lamps will fall out of order in relationship to the lampstand. We are the lamps and the church is the lampstand. The purpose of the Lord for each believer is that they would remain in right order in relationship to the church. That indicates each believer being connected in the right way to the church where they belong. It is one of the priority ministries of the high priest to keep us rightly ordered in the church. We see indications of this heavenly ministry of Jesus as the High Priest working among the lampstands which are His churches on earth in this passage from Revelation. "As for the mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this: (Revelation 1:20-2:1). Jesus is described here as walking among the churches. This was the image of the high priest in the later temple of Solomon in which were multiple lampstands. He walked among them to insure all the lamps were filled and oriented on the lampstand so as to give their full light. Many Christians believe all that matters is that they have a relationship with Jesus, and not the church, but these passages reveal that the Lord is concerned about our relationship to His church. 24:10-16 - "Now the son of an Israelite woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the sons of Israel; and the Israelite woman's son and a man of Israel struggled with each other in the camp. The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name and cursed. So they brought him to Moses. (Now his mother's name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.) They put him in custody so that the command of the LORD might be made clear to them. Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Bring the one who has cursed outside the camp, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head; then let all the congregation stone him. "You shall speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 'If anyone curses his God, then he will bear his sin. Moreover, the one who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall certainly stone him. The alien as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death." This section deals with one of only two events in Leviticus. All of Leviticus is dedicated to different sections establishing laws with the exception of the story of two events. The events are here and in chapter 10. Both events centered on serious violations of the holiness of the Lord and were included in Leviticus rather than in Exodus or Numbers because the spiritual lessons attached to the events drive home the significance of the holiness of the Lord which is the main theme of Leviticus. In this circumstance a man whose mother was an Israelite and whose father was Egyptian engaged in a dispute with another man of Israel. Their dispute became a physical struggle. During the struggle the first man blasphemed the Name of the Lord and cursed. We do not know exactly what was said, but the indications are that he either used the Name of the Lord as a curse or he actually cursed the Name of the Lord. This took place in the ears of witnesses who brought the man to Moses. The witnesses did the right thing to bring him to Moses because at the least, this was a serious violation of the third of the Ten Commandments which commanded them not to take the Name of the Lord in vain. As the man was brought to Moses to receive his judgment in the case, Moses turned to the Lord to receive His instructions. The seriousness of the transgression had previously been communicated to Israel, but the penalty for such an offence had not yet been specified. The Lord then spoke to Moses and gave clear instructions for what to do to the man who had blasphemed and how it was to be carried out. The response of the Lord in this case might be difficult to accept for some. The Lord required the death penalty for the man. The Lord served as judge and jury in ordering his execution. There was no possibility of appeal, let alone pardon or even probation. This apparently was the man's first offence yet the Lord commanded the stiffest penalty under the Law. Those who oppose the death penalty on "moral" grounds will have to deal with it being the Lord that required the death penalty in this case. Many have made a classic error of Bible interpretation by reading passages like this one and drawing a sharp and unwarranted distinction between this event and one of the events of the New Testament. Some will reference the handling by Jesus of the case of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11) and build a case in which the God of the Old Testament is harsh and unreasonable, while Jesus is compassionate and reasonable. They claim that Jesus dismissed the use of the death penalty forever by pardoning the woman brought to Him for judgment. That story does not teach that Jesus opposed or changed the death penalty. He pardoned her because the men that brought her to Him for judgment were themselves law breakers and even broke the requirements of the law in the way they brought he to Him. Jesus never taught that the death penalty aspect of the Law of God was to be set aside in the New Covenant. What has changed is that Israel was both a spiritual and civil nation responsible to obey God and enforce all of His laws in the nation. On the other hand the church in the New Testament is a spiritual nation without civil authority to enforce any of God's laws. The church has no proper authority to execute any criminals no matter how serious the crime. That is the responsibility of the state, and the Lord has given authority to the state for that purpose (Romans 13:1-4). That does not change, however, whether a transgression deserves the death penalty or whether the state should carry it out. Our nation still properly executes some criminals for murder for instance and it is morally right for the state to do so because it reflects the righteousness and justice of the Lord. The specific sin this man committed ended in him being stoned to death. He did not murder anyone. He did commit unspeakable acts upon anyone. What he did was curse the Name of the Lord and in so doing seriously violated the holiness of the Lord in the hearing of others in His holy nation. Our nation today would never even consider executing this man if this event were to happen today. Instead, even if anyone else complained about his behavior, he would have the ACLU take his case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary to protect his so-called "right" to free speech. The point of this event was to teach Israel and us that the Lord does not consider such speech to be free at all. There was no such "right" in Israel, but rather it was considered among the most serious wrongs that a person could commit. Many would argue that our nation's current stance on this issue is the more enlightened one. The Lord would disagree as should we. 25:1-7 - "The LORD then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'When you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a sabbath to the LORD. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to the LORD; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. Your harvest's aftergrowth you shall not reap, and your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not gather; the land shall have a sabbatical year. All of you shall have the sabbath products of the land for food; yourself, and your male and female slaves, and your hired man and your foreign resident, those who live as aliens with you. Even your cattle and the animals that are in your land shall have all its crops to eat." Chapter 25 details special laws regarding the ownership and disposition of the land once Israel reached the Promised Land and possessed it. These laws as much as any others in God's Law were designed to distinguish Israel from all the other nations in the world and to mark them as a holy nation set apart unto Yahweh their God. In this opening section the law of the Sabbath was applied to the land itself. Once reaching Canaan, they were to work the land for six years and then on the seventh year they were to refrain from either planting crops or harvesting them. They were to allow the land to rest completely that seventh year. This was not intended to be a one time event in Israel's history but an ongoing pattern of honoring a Sabbath year each seven years. It would take true faith for Israel to follow this pattern and as a result the Sabbath year became an ongoing test of Israel's faithfulness to the Lord throughout its history. It was a sad testimony, but from what we can tell from Old Testament history, it seems that Israel never completely obeyed this law and set aside a full year to allow the land to rest. The design of the Lord in this was really socially staggering in its implications. Since Israel was an agricultural society primarily, the vast majority of the inhabitants of the nation would be given if they followed the pattern of the Lord an entire year's vacation one year out of every seven. The people were allowed that year to go out and gather any food which grew naturally for their own survival, but they were not allowed to actually harvest the cultivated crops or plant new ones. To insure the nations provision the Lord promised to bless their harvests on the sixth year so abundantly that they would have enough to eat. This pattern would be similar to how the Lord blessed Egypt with great harvests for seven years during the days of Joseph and by his wisdom they stored enough to feed the nation during the seven years of famine to follow. Requiring a Sabbath for the land served both a natural and spiritual purpose. The natural purpose was that the land would be replenished with nutrients during the sabbatical year when the crops of that year were to be allowed to die and eventually be plowed back into the land the following year. This would avoid the problem that every agricultural society must face of land being what is called "farmed out" in which the soil eventually becomes so depleted that it can no longer produce healthy crops. The spiritual reason for the land Sabbath was to remind all of Israel in a regular and dramatic way that the land and crops they enjoyed belonged not to themselves, but to the Lord. They were not free to set their own agenda, but were all required to stop for a full year and demonstrate that they believed that the Lord was in charge of the land and in charge of their crops and harvest. His extra abundant blessing every sixth year preceding the Sabbath year was a powerful reminder that all of their provision came from the Lord, and the seventh year when no one worked their fields was just as strong a reminder that their needs were not met by their own strength and effort, but by the Lord. Though we are not called to practice the Sabbath year pattern in the New Covenant, the believer today should not be surprised when the Lord custom designs testing circumstances to remind them of these same principles and to reveal whether they will trust and obey Him in matters of personal income and provision. 25:8-12 - "You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years, namely, forty-nine years. You shall then sound a ram's horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow, nor reap its aftergrowth, nor gather in from its untrimmed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its crops out of the field." In addition to the Sabbath year every seven years the Lord ordained a kind of super Sabbath year once every fifty years that became known as the year of Jubilee. Israel was to mark off seven cycles of the Sabbath years and following seven Sabbath cycles (7 years x 7 cycles = 49 years), they were to take another complete Sabbath year on the fiftieth year. This year was to follow the same pattern of the regular Sabbath years in which Israel was not to either plant or harvest their fields that entire year. This year was distinguished from those Sabbath years in that not only were they to not work the fields but it was a special year of liberty for the nation. The celebration of the Jubilee year began on the annual Day of Atonement feast day by the blowing of a ram's horn. The Hebrew word for the ram's horn is yobel, from which our word jubilee is derived. The liberty that was the focus of this year long celebration was both a liberation of lands and people in Israel. The liberated land had to do with the return of ancestral lands to the family that originally had the right to farm it. There was allowance within the law for individuals and families that were struggling economically to sell their right to farm the land that had been apportioned to them as their inheritance by the Lord when Israel first entered the Promised Land. Each tribe was assigned their own section of Canaan to possess and each family within that tribe was given a portion of land on which to settle. If due to hardship that family relinquished their right to that land to another, then during the Jubilee the land reverted to its original inheritance. In the same way, individuals and families in hardship could even sell themselves into service to other Israelites. During the Jubilee year these servants were all released throughout Israel and any remaining debt they owed wiped out as they were given a clean start to rebuild their lives and family fortunes. Because this was a huge economic consideration for the nation, the Lord built just guidelines into the jubilee law so that no Israelite was financially mistreated. The value of both land and service was prorated according to the numbers of years since the last jubilee and until the next scheduled one. In requiring this of Israel, the Lord demonstrated to His people that they were not the actual owners of the Promised Land. The Lord owned the land, and Israel were tenants on His land, blessed to possess it and enjoy its fruits, but only at His discretion. The year of Jubilee held a significant prophetic purpose in God's plans, and He did not treat it as an optional requirement for Israel. What we see in the law of the Jubilee in this chapter of Leviticus is the design of the Lord for Israel, but again, like the Sabbath year pattern, one which Israel never actually obeyed the Lord and practiced. There is no record in all of the Old Testament of Israel ever following the requirements for the jubilee. As a result, the Lord did hold the entire nation accountable for their disobedience to Him and this law and in a later judgment upon the nation mentioned this law specifically as the reason for the judgment. "Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete." (II Chronicles 36:20-21). The Lord stirred up the Gentile nation of Babylon to invade rebellious Israel and conquer them, taking them into captivity in Babylon. The seventy years of the captivity corresponded to the total of 490 years that Israel had disregarded the Sabbath year law and the Year of Jubilee law. The spiritual meaning attached to the year of Jubilee was a prophetic preview of the coming ministry of Christ. When Jesus began His ministry He first spoke in a synagogue in Nazareth, and chose to read from the Scriptures a passage from the prophet Isaiah that spoke of how the Jubilee would be ultimately fulfilled when the Messiah came to Israel. "And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written, "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD." And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4:17-21). Jesus proclaimed that the prophecy of Isaiah regarding the Jubilee was fulfilled by His arrival and ministry. The specifics of the jubilee in the Law were concerned with the liberty of natural land and the release of natural slaves and servants. The jubilee work of Christ was the spiritual fulfillment of what the jubilee was naturally portraying. The liberty that Christ brought was a spiritual freedom of setting the people free from all things that oppressed their lives. The true jubilee was accomplished by Christ on the cross when He set us once and for all free from sin which had enslaved us all. This is why the jubilee was always to begin only on the day of atonement so that Israel would associate their freedom with the redemption provided by the sacrificed lamb of God. Now, those who have been set free by the salvation found only in Christ are truly free. Yet, the fullness of the jubilee will be experienced not only spiritually, but in every way at the Second Coming of Christ when we will enter into the eternal freedom that awaits us then. Now, we eagerly wait for our jubilee of His return just like Israel was meant to wait for that special fiftieth year. 25:47-49 - "Now if the means of a stranger or of a sojourner with you becomes sufficient, and a countryman of yours becomes so poor with regard to him as to sell himself to a stranger who is sojourning with you, or to the descendants of a stranger's family, then he shall have redemption right after he has been sold. One of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle, or his uncle's son, may redeem him, or one of his blood relatives from his family may redeem him; or if he prospers, he may redeem himself." This final section of the chapter introduces the law of the kinsman redeemer. Under this law there was an allowance for members of Israelite society to sell themselves into service to other Israelites as we saw in the section above. They could also sell their land rights. This law was a provision from the Lord so that those who had chosen to do so did not have to wait the entire fifty years until the next scheduled jubilee to be freed or for their property rights to be restored. The Lord established for a near relative of the person in such a circumstance to step forward and on behalf of the needy person they could offer to redeem them or their land by paying for them what they could not pay for themselves. We will see in our study of the book of Ruth that this law is the framework for what develops in the relationship between Boaz and Ruth. The law of the kinsman-redeemer also has a powerful prophetic element in it. The work of Christ in accomplishing redemption for us is pictured in this law. Jesus is our kinsman-redeemer Who has paid the price on the cross necessary to redeem us from the debt our sins created for us. The kinsman aspect of His work has to do with the doctrine of the Incarnation. In order to save us, Jesus had to die for us on the cross. But, for His death on the cross to have the power to save us He first had to be born as one of us. Jesus becoming a human being was Him becoming our kinsman. 26:3-8 - "'If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out, then I shall give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. Indeed, your threshing will last for you until grape gathering, and grape gathering will last until sowing time. You will thus eat your food to the full and live securely in your land. I shall also grant peace in the land, so that you may lie down with no one making you tremble. I shall also eliminate harmful beasts from the land, and no sword will pass through your land. But you will chase your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword; five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword." This chapter is completely different than all of the previous chapters in Leviticus. There are no new laws that are introduced here, but instead we have the Lord's commentary on the two possible responses of Israel to all of the laws previously given. The two responses Israel may make to these laws in the years to follow can be boiled down to obedience and disobedience. The Lord anticipates these choices Israel will make in relationship to Him and His Law and makes a series of commitments to Himself respond according to their choices. This is a key aspect of a covenant relationship called the sanctions of the covenant. The relationship that the Lord formed with Israel at Sinai was not casual but a covenant relationship. As the Lord of the covenant, He promises in this chapter that He will personally monitor the condition of His relationship with Israel and their response to Him. If Israel honors the Lord by submitting to and obeying His laws then He promises to give them the sanctions that are identified as the blessings of the covenant. This first portion of the chapter details the amazing blessings that they can expect to be poured upon their lives by the Lord because of their continuing obedience. The blessings of the Lord upon His covenant people for their obedience are far ranging and include favorable weather for their crops, abundant harvests, national security, safety from harm, and victory over all of their enemies. The only thing the Lord required of them for all of these overflowing blessings was obedience. The Lord is not exaggerating in this section by artificially enhancing the description of what their lives would be like just to keep them in line. This is the kind of life the Lord desired for His people to enjoy. Remember, it was the Lord Who created the Garden of Eden and originally placed mankind in that gorgeous and perfect environment to live. Adam and Eve lost their home in the Garden of Eden, not because the Lord wanted to expel them, but because their rebellion required it. His heart to bless them was revealed in the perfection of Eden before they were driven out. A key consideration in our generation is whether people understand the true nature of the relationship of the Lord to this world which He created and over which He maintains complete control. Many, even within the Christian community have a perspective of the Lord's involvement in the world that recognizes the Lord as original creator, but that He has little day to day involvement in the world. Jesus taught us that God is so fully engaged in His involvement with His world that not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from Him (Matthew 10:29). This section teaches us that the Lord of the covenant controls the weather. It is not a random meteorological occurrence whether it rains or remains dry. It either rains or doesn't by the will of God. The Lord also controls the production of crops and the amount of the harvests. He is in charge of whether we live in safety or danger. It is His determination whether a nation dwells securely, or trembles in fear at the dangers threatening them from every side. Victory in war is not a product of numbers, weapons, technology, or strategy, but of the Lord. He holds the fate of nations in His hand. Nations ignore and disregard Him to their own peril, but those that honor Him cannot avoid the tremendous blessings He chooses to pour upon them. As with all other elements of the Old Testament Law and covenant there is a spiritual application for our lives as believers today. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," (Ephesians 1:3). This is Paul's declaration of the shared blessing of New Covenant believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Everyone who is in New Covenant relationship with God through the salvation accomplished by Jesus is the recipient of every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. The emphasis shifts from Old Covenant to New from natural and physical blessings to heavenly and spiritual blessings. Don't think in terms of us missing out because the spiritual blessings are greater than the natural blessings of the Old Covenant. God has withheld no spiritual blessing from us in Christ. The picture is of a container held by God of all His blessings. In Christ, He has not dribbled some blessings upon us, but has turned the vessel over in pouring out the fullness of His blessings on us. 26:14-28 - "But if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments, if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul abhors My ordinances so as not to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant, I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away; also, you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up. I will set My face against you so that you will be struck down before your enemies; and those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you. If also after these things you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. I will also break down your pride of power; I will also make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze. Your strength will be spent uselessly, for your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land will not yield their fruit. If then, you act with hostility against Me and are unwilling to obey Me, I will increase the plague on you seven times according to your sins. I will let loose among you the beasts of the field, which will bereave you of your children and destroy your cattle and reduce your number so that your roads lie deserted. And if by these things you are not turned to Me, but act with hostility against Me, then I will act with hostility against you; and I, even I, will strike you seven times for your sins. I will also bring upon you a sword which will execute vengeance for the covenant; and when you gather together into your cities, I will send pestilence among you, so that you shall be delivered into enemy hands. When I break your staff of bread, ten women will bake your bread in one oven, and they will bring back your bread in rationed amounts, so that you will eat and not be satisfied. Yet if in spite of this you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me, then I will act with wrathful hostility against you, and I, even I, will punish you seven times for your sins." The other aspect of the covenant sanctions is covered in this longer section. These are the curses of the Lord that He promises to bring upon the heads of His own people if they turn from Him and disobey His Law. It is a sobering factor that the curse section is significantly longer and more detailed than the blessing section. This is not because the Lord wants to curse more than He wants to bless, but is a necessary description for the hearts of Israel that are inclined to wander from righteousness. The Lord gives a very extensive description of all of the curses they can expect if they veer away from Him into rebellion. This section actually serves as a short preview of Israel's actual history. Sadly, from this point forward, Israel was more marked by long stretches of rebellion against the Lord and His Law with only brief periods of faithfulness in between. The curses of the covenant were almost exact reversals of the blessings previously named. The first and greatest sanction was that the Lord Himself would set His face against Israel. This is a figure of speech describing a firm and resolute disposition that would not soften no matter how painful the inflicted punishment would be for Israel. This does not describe an emotional outburst on the Lord's part which would quickly subside. Rather this was a settled and deeply serious intention to carry out full chastisement upon Israel because of their many and long-lasting violations of His Law. The curses included the following events. Israel would be afflicted with terror, consumption, fever, wasting away, their crops would be consumed by their enemies rather than themselves, their hated enemies would rule over them, they would be thoroughly defeated in battle, the weather patterns would devastate them, their harvests would fail, there would be plagues, wild beasts, and pestilence. What the Lord was promising was not one or two of these horrific events, but all of them hitting rebellious Israel in waves. There is an important triple description of the Lord's judgments which He gives here to show that His judgments will come upon Israel in a progressively growing pattern of chastisement. The principle that the Lord always follows in administering punishment for violations of His Law is that He makes the punishment fit the crime. The Lord never gives anyone more punishment than they deserve. Here, the continuing disobedience of Israel over generations to come calls for a progression of greater and greater judgment. As Israel escalates their rebellion, the Lord will escalate their punishment. This is revealed in this three-fold mention of punishing Israel seven times more for their sins if they do not relent. This pattern of three layers of a seven times judgment is followed in the Book of Revelation which reveals God's covenant judgments upon His rebellious people. In the prophecies of Revelation the three series of seven-fold judgments are seen as the breaking open of seven seals of judgment, the sounding of seven trumpets of judgment, and the pouring out of seven bowls full of the wrath of God. Covenant judgment is inescapable. No one in Israel who has lived in disobedience to the Lord will be able to avoid or dodge the impact of these curses. The Lord personally participates to insure that each judgment is carried out as He brings what is deserved upon the heads of all the rebels among His people. Thankfully, our situation has been dramatically altered in the New Covenant because of Christ's death upon the cross. We fully deserve the full curse of the Law because of our own sins and disobedience. Yet, the Lord has already directed the full force of all the curses of the Law against His own Son in our stead. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us--for it is written, "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE" (Galatians 3:13). This means that New Covenant believers will never be the target of God's covenant curses even though we deserve them all. Does this mean that we are free to disobey God without sanctions? No, the Lord continues to involve Himself fully in our lives in discipline in order to train our hearts in obedience and to finally break all the old habits of disobedience (Hebrews 12:5-11). 26:40-45 - "If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers, in their unfaithfulness which they committed against Me, and also in their acting with hostility against Me-- I also was acting with hostility against them, to bring them into the land of their enemies--or if their uncircumcised heart becomes humbled so that they then make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land. For the land will be abandoned by them, and will make up for its sabbaths while it is made desolate without them. They, meanwhile, will be making amends for their iniquity, because they rejected My ordinances and their soul abhorred My statutes. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God. But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the LORD." Even in the midst of the nearly hopeless condition of future Israel due to their own generations long rebellion and the ensuing judgments of God, there remains a note of hope. As severe as the judgments of God were, they were never designed to completely obliterate Israel such as we saw in the great flood of Noah's day, or the destruction by fire from heaven of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord's commitment to His people will not waver through the generations like their commitment to Him will. He loves them, and will bring these judgments upon them in order to turn their hearts back to Him. Sadly, their hearts will become so hardened that it will take very great punishments to even get their full attention, let alone change their perspective and attitude. Yet, in all of the judgments to come, the Lord's purpose in them is redemptive. They are judgments that contain an element of the Lord's grace and mercy. Were there no mercy, the Lord would simply execute them immediately ending any hope of a return and restoration. In all the difficult times to come, for any who will return to the Lord with true repentance would find mercy and grace. True repentance involved open confession of their sin and turning from them back to the Lord. When the people return to the Lord in this broken hearted way, like the prodigal son coming to his senses in the pig sty and returning to his father's house, the Lord promised that He would run to welcome them back home to full covenant relationship with Him. No matter how far the relationship deteriorates, the Lord will always remain ready to restore a repentant rebel who returns to Him. 27:1-4 - "Again, the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'When a man makes a difficult vow, he shall be valued according to your valuation of persons belonging to the LORD. If your valuation is of the male from twenty years even to sixty years old, then your valuation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary. Or if it is a female, then your valuation shall be thirty shekels." The final chapter of Leviticus is dedicated to laws regulating the making and fulfilling of vows. A vow of this type is a solemn promise or commitment to the Lord. It was usually made either in the hope that the Lord would respond to the vow with a future special blessing for the one making the vow, or as an expression of thanksgiving for some special blessing the Lord had already given. It involved words of commitment made in the presence of the Lord, but also included a promise to dedicate something of great personal value to the Lord. There are three kinds of dedicated things covered in these laws. There are vows of dedicating a person, an animal, or a house to the Lord. The dedication by vow was a way of declaring publicly that the person vowing was acknowledging that the Lord was the Lord over the person, animal, or house. The Lord was also gracious in allowing the person making the vow to redeem their vow. This meant that if they desired to reclaim for their own use what had been vowed, the Lord allowed them to redeem it by in a sense purchasing it back from the Lord. They did so by paying to the priests at the tabernacle the appropriate value for the dedicated thing plus an added 20% redemption value. The redemption of a house for instance would enable the person that dedicated it to the Lord to continue to live in it and enjoy it for themselves, but the redemption was costly. Each person was valued by the Lord by a monetary value. It was a value that was adjusted for factors of gender and age. For instance men from twenty to sixty years old, in what we call the prime years were valued the highest at fifty shekels. Keep in mind that a common laborer's wage was a shekel a month. A fifty shekel redemption value was the equivalent of five years of job income. For women of the same age range the value set was thirty shekels of silver. It is a common mistake by modern readers of the Bible to read passages like this one and draw a knee jerk conclusion that the Bible is sexist and demeans the value of women. This section is neither sexist or demeaning to women, in spite of the protests of those with an agenda to label the Bible in that way. These laws establishing the value of people dedicated by a vow do not identify the true worth of a person in terms of their value in the eyes of God or in light of eternity. If so, it is not just a gender issue that is created by the laws in this section, but an age issue also. People under twenty years of age are valued at a lower amount, as are people over sixty. Does this mean God considers very young and old people to be less valuable to Him? The short and firm answer is no! What is measured by these values in this chapter is not a person's intrinsic value as a human being, but their value in terms of their productivity potential in society. The reality is that people in their prime years are more productive than people below and above those years. Additionally, men are more productive than women in the work that is capable of economically sustaining a family. This was especially true in a society based upon an agricultural economy where working the fields and flocks was the primary source of income. Some may wonder about what kind of circumstance would ever lead a person to make a vow dedicating another person to the Lord. An example of this kind of vow is found in a story from later in Israel's history. Hannah was a woman that greatly desired to have a son, but she had been unable to have one. In a time of prayer Hannah made a special vow to the Lord and promised that if the Lord would bless her with a son, she would honor the Lord for that blessing by dedicating that son to the Lord's service. "She made a vow and said, "O LORD of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and a razor shall never come on his head." (I Samuel 1:11). When the Lord head and answered her prayer through the birth of her son, Samuel, she fulfilled her vow to the Lord. After Samuel was weaned, she brought him to the tabernacle of the Lord and gave Samuel to the Lord by giving him to the high priest to raise in the full dedicated service of the Lord. 27:28-29 - "Nevertheless, anything which a man sets apart to the LORD out of all that he has, of man or animal or of the fields of his own property, shall not be sold or redeemed. Anything devoted to destruction is most holy to the LORD. No one who may have been set apart among men shall be ransomed; he shall surely be put to death." The redemption provision under the laws of the vows covered all things vowed with the exception of those things which were "devoted to destruction." This was a special category of people and things that were under judgment from God and which could not be redeemed. The things within this category were not determined by the people, but by the Lord. When the Lord identified something as devoted to destruction, the people were not allowed to offer a redemption price for it. It was only to be destroyed. There are two important examples of this devoted to destruction principle in Israel's later history. The first example is during the conquest of the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua. When Israel conquered the Canaanite city of Jericho, one of the men of Israel named Achan took for himself some items that the Lord had warned all of Israel was to be devoted to destruction. Achan took some clothing, silver and gold that was under the ban of the Lord and hid them in his tent. The Lord exposed Achan's violation of the ban and he was executed by stoning for violating this law and bringing defilement upon the entire camp of Israel (Joshua 6-7). The second example is from the early career of King Saul. The Lord commanded Saul to lead Israel out in battle against the nation of Amalek. The Lord instructed Saul to "utterly destroy" Amalek and to spare none from the nation. Amalek was under the judgment of God for previous rebellion against the Lord and Saul and Israel were to act on behalf of the Lord in bringing the Lord's judgment upon them. When Israel defeated Amalek, rather than carrying out the command of the Lord as He has required, Saul decided to spare the king of Amalek. When Samuel the prophet arrived and saw that Saul had spared what the Lord had devoted to destruction he pronounced the Lord's judgment upon Saul. The principle of people and things devoted to destruction touches at the heart of what we identify as the sovereignty of God. This simply means that the Lord is sovereign, or king, over all things and all people. He determines the fate of people and things. What He devotes to destruction is to be destroyed and we cannot redeem it. What He chooses to redeem will be redeemed and we cannot hinder it. Paul describes the Lord's sovereignty in this way in Romans. "What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, "I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION." So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH." So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires." (Romans 9:14-18).
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