Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Bible reading plan...

Before we get into our sermon, I want to show you a couple of pictures.

Tim Noble And Sue Webster...

SHOW PICTURE 1

SHOW PICTURE 2

They are taking something that we would normally regard as useless and not only showing its beauty but are trying to send a message.

One guess as to the message they are trying to send with that second picture…it’s called whitetrash and is the collection of six months worth of trash from just one two-person household.

Why do I show you that?

Well, today, we are going to be going through the book of Leviticus.

Now, I’m not saying that you or I think the book of Leviticus is trash…not at all.

But, I am saying that for many people, they steer clear of it because of how it reads.

Leviticus is in the genre of Law Code.

It is the equivalent of you picking up the United States annotated code of justice and reading it.

Not only that, but the claim of the Bible is that we should read it because it can change our lives.

And yet, its full of some crazy rules about things that we don’t even do anymore.

Should we do them?

What of Leviticus, if any, applies to us?

Why does it talk so much about bodily fluids and animals you can’t eat…and honestly wouldn’t want to even if God had called them good?

Am I a priest?

And if so, should I be coming by your house to inspect for mold or to look at that weird rash you’ve developed in the underside of your arm?

If you’ve been reading your Bible reading plan this week, raise your hand if you recall hearing about the fatty lobe of the liver?

What the heck even is that and why is it burned on some sacrifices and not on others?

All of those are valid questions and while we will get to a few of those, perhaps what is most important is for us to adjust our perspective and shine the proper light on Leviticus so that you can understand it properly for yourself.

That’s why I showed you those pictures.

To adjust our perspective we actually have to journey across three different books really quickly.

First open up to Exodus 40 and we are going to look at verse 35...

So that is how Exodus ends…remind them about the long drawn out process of building the tabernacle and God’s presence coming to dwell with them only for Moses to not be able to enter.

Leviticus begins this way:

I wan’t to highlight a detail in that verse we are prone to miss…next slide:

Leviticus 1:1 (NASB95)

1 Then the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying,

From is telling us that God is in the tent and Moses is not…But…look at how the book of Numbers begins:

Did you catch it?

Here look again:

Numbers 1:1 (NASB95)

1 Then the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting…

Leviticus begins and Moses is still unable to enter the Tent of Meeting and yet by the beginning of Numbers (the very next chapter in Israels story) Moses is inside the tent speaking with God.

Leviticus is about how this changed.

Now, that is the proper angle from which to view Leviticus, but in order to shine the right light on Leviticus, we have to talk about the concept of Holiness.

Holiness is primarily about uniqueness.

I think a lot of times, we want to make holiness about some sort of moral purity.

Do Eiffel tower is not all of Europe bit…it is a part of it, not the whole thing.

God is utterly unique amongst all other things.

Everything else shares at least one common attribute with everything else…everything is related to one another because anything that isn’t God has been created.

When I think about holiness, I like to think about the sun.

Is the sun good?

Yes…explain light, warmth, energy, and plant food...

Is the sun safe?

NO!…explain cancer, heat stroke, burning alive if you are too close to it.

Can you just hurl a snowball at the sun and expect it to be ok?

NO!

This relationship between the goodness and safety of God’s holiness is the problem that Leviticus is addressing in what I like to call The Holiness Dilemma.

The Holiness Dilemma is the problem created when sinful and impure humans try to come into God’s holy presence.

God redeemed his people out of Egypt and came to be with them so that they might have life, and yet, we can’t exist in his presence.

That’s how the story ends.

Check out this story from Leviticus chapter ten which gives us a dramatic example of the holiness dilemma on full display:

Ya’ll these were priests of God.

They had been given instructions about how to enter into God’s presence which they had, in some way, completely disregarded and it cost them their lives.

Do you guys know who Marie Curie is? Do Marie Curie bit…someone showing her how to deal properly with radiation…lived between the 1860’s and the 1930’s…died of a condition related to her radiation exposure

The book of Leviticus solves the Holiness dilemma for the Israelites and because we have that same hope of being with God one day, it is in this that it points our eyes to the solution as well.

So, let’s get started with our:

Story Overview

For those of you who like symmetry, the book of Leviticus is amazing!

The book is tracking three basic themes from which we have to derive our understanding of its message.

Leviticus is tying the themes of RITUAL, PRIESTHOOD, and PURITY together into a single unified story.

You may have read Leviticus and thought it was anything but unified.

It seems all choppy and disjointed and yet, as I have already explained, with the right angle and light, it is beautiful.

Here, look at how it is arranged.

LEAVE SPACE IN THEIR NOTES FOR THEM TO DRAW THIS.

Do seven parts on the board:

Outermost (chapters 1-7 and chapter 23-27) are about ritual.

Next in (chapters 8-10 and chapters 21-22) are about the priesthood.

The innermost sections (chapters 11-15 and chapters 18-20) are about purity.

That leaves one section right in the middle (chapters 16-17) that ties all three of these themes together beautifully around the Day of Atonement.

Ritual

Chapters 1-7 detail Israel’s sacrificial system with 5 different sacrifices to be performed for different reasons.

There are two freewill offerings that are given in thanks to God and three sacrifices that are done because of sin, guilt, and obedience.

See the handout for more detail on those.

God gives Israel these sacrifices to ensure ongoing relationship with Him and right relationship with their fellow man.

This is the basis of the whole law.

When pressed by a lawyer to reduce the law into its most basic tenets, Jesus says it is these two things: To love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.

It’s how the ten commandments are broken down, its how the rest of the law is broken down.

Even the sacrificial system is centered around these two concepts.

I get so many questions about these sacrifices.

Why did they do them that way?

You may have wondered this week while you were reading this, why there was so much detail given in this.

We have to understand this law code against the backdrop of the pagan nations surrounding Israel.

These nations also offered sacrifices and yet, the prescriptions given were not nearly as detailed.

Most importantly to note, and don’t miss this, the outcome of their sacrifices was not guaranteed.

Not for Israel though.

God is giving them a perfectly clear plan to know when they are right with Him and when they are forgiven.

There was no guessing whether or not some capricious god was going to be dissatisfied with your sacrifice or not.

God was giving them a guarantee of their forgiveness and His love for them.

This certainty fundamentally changed the way they were to think about their God.

I often think about this in regards to religions who base their salvation off of works.

How do you know you have done enough?

The most brutal and existential question for a Mormon missionary is: “How do you know when you’ve knocked on enough doors to get into heaven?”

The answer will always be…you don’t.

God didn’t want his people living in this kind of mental state so He gave them a clear list of instructions on how to properly relate to Him and their fellow man.