Category: Leviticus

These chapters repeat the highlights of the Law and enlarge upon some of its requirements. Again, it may be dull reading for us, but we can appreciate God’s goodness in giving His people all the information they needed to worship Him appropriately, especially since the consequences of inappropriate worship were so severe. He has preserved them here for us for a reason; we are challenged today to understand what He wants us to understand from them.

What does it mean that these requirements are not given to us in the New Testament? I encourage you to consider not what your church believes, but what God is showing you.

• Does the absence of these commands in the New Testament mean that none of them apply to us? If that is the case, what does it teach you about the work Messiah has done on your behalf? One thing it cannot mean is that our salvation is cheap, for God Himself paid a dear price for it. In comparison to the requirements imposed on His Old Testament people as condition for relationship with God, simple faith seems a very cheap price to pay for relationship with Him. Given our human tendency not to value that for which we haven’t paid fully (and certainly God knows that about us!), it seems unlikely that God would want to limit our part in our salvation to simple faith. The New Testament sheds some light on this, and this blog will have to delay further discussion on it until then. But we don’t have to wait to understand; God can certainly reveal His will to each one of us. These readings give us an opportunity to seek His revelation to each of us about what He wants for our relationships with Him.
• Since Jesus came to fulfill the Law and not abolish it, do all of these requirements apply to us? If we truly are seeking to know Him, should we reject Old Testament Law without considering what it reveals about God’s desire for people who have relationship with Him?

God speaks often here of being holy. These commands are all to that end. The justification He offers for their being so is that He is holy. Holiness is not something we understand well, because we have no experience by which to reference it. Since we learn by making connections to something we already know, and we have no experience on which to base our understanding of holiness, we need to rely on God’s revelation in His word and His Holy Spirit to understand the idea of holiness. The best definition I have heard of holiness is one offered by R.C. Sproul: it means to be “other” – other than what we are. That definition challenges us to consider prayerfully what God wants to teach us about Himself and His requirements and desires for us.

The expectation for His people to be holy is not just an Old Testament concept. The New Testament doesn’t speak practically about holiness as much as the Old Testament does, so the Old offers a practical teaching for New Testament seekers. This passage teaches us that being holy means being:

• Set apart by God for special relationship with Him. This is a privilege not to be taken for granted and not to be a reason for pride but rather humility, for it is not my doing but God’s. With privilege always comes responsibility.
• Distinct from other people – in one’s appearance, behavior, values.
• Pure

Note the first requirements for holy living that God offers here:

• Number 1: Every one shall reverence his parents – no conditions given. And it is brought up a second time in this summary, adding the consequence of death.
• Number 2: Keeping the Sabbath.

These came before the command not to turn to idols. They must be important to God. Are they important to you?

Consider the requirement about gathering the gleanings of the fields and vineyards: as someone who is not a farmer, I can reject those kinds of commands, right? Well, a true seeker will seek to understand the principle behind the command, so as to please God in his or her own affairs. Is the principle one of laziness or carelessness with God’s abundance to us? The whole counsel of Scripture would answer “No.” The principle is one of caring for the poor.

Consider each requirement prayerfully, seeking first what God was requiring of His Old Testament people, and then what He wants you to understand about His desires for you. Some hints for you:

• The prohibitions against trimming hair and beards was not commanding them to look unkempt, but to look different, behave differently, and hold different values in a world where men elaborately styled their hair and beards.
• Molech was a god worshiped by one of the peoples living in Canaan. Their practice in desperate times was killing their children in sacrifice to appease an unresponsive god. God’s requirements cost His people dearly, but emphatically not in that manner.

The Day of Atonement was a very important part of the Law. Although we don’t observe it as God’s New Testament people, it is important for us because it helps us understand the work Messiah has done to accomplish our great salvation.

The Day of Atonement was a solemn occasion, requiring rest and reflection. All the other holidays were to be celebrations and remembrances, but the Day of Atonement was a day of humbling themselves and confessing their sins. It was needed because of the people’s impurity – a condition -, and their willful acts of sin. It was the only provision God made to pay for willful acts of sin.

Atonement is cleansing from sin. The priest had to make atonement for the place and articles of worship as well as for the people. Atonement was made with blood. Reflect on each element of the ceremony and consider what it reveals about what the worship of God requires of man. Further, consider what Jesus has accomplished for you.

Making atonement for the people’s impurity and sins was serious business for the priest. Mistakes were deadly. Before the priest entered the Most Holy Place inside the veil, the practice was to tie a rope around him so that if he was struck dead his body could be pulled out. The people understood the danger, and waited anxiously for the priest to emerge. When he did, they knew that God had accepted his efforts on their behalf, and there would be great relief throughout the community.

God’s requirement that sacrifices were to be offered in one place only is important to remember. The nation would suffer in the future for failure to do so. God imposed that restrictive requirement so that the people would not make sacrifices to other gods.

Verse 17:7 tells us that although the people had said they would do whatever God required them to do as part of the covenant, they were still worshiping goat demons. Such hints and open statements throughout the history and prophecy books reveal that God’s Old Testament people were never faithful to Him. As incredible as this sounds, we must recognize that this lack of faithfulness also is our own tendency because of our fallen nature. Apart from the help God gives us through the transforming work of our Savior and through His Holy Spirit living in us, we could never be any more faithful to God than they were.

The ceremonies of animal sacrifice are not understandable to us except if we pay attention to verse 17:11. When man sins against God, man does not decide what is acceptable to make it right. God decides. And in His sovereignty, God has decided that payment for sin will be in the form of blood. The shedding of blood took a life. God is not cruel to decide that another life is the only acceptable payment for our sin; no, He is teaching us that sin is a serious and an awful and a costly business.

God required His people to be different from the people around them then, as He does us now. They were to look different and behave differently. The reason He gave His people for being different was two-fold: the moral reason that He was Jehovah God, their God, and the practical reason that the land would be defiled with their sin and “spew them out.” Both are worth our consideration.

The disease of leprosy was fearsome to ancient people because it was disfiguring and contagious, and there was no known cure. (Today it is treated with antibiotics.) Compare it to a contagious disease for which there is no known cure today, to better understand how people would feel about it.

How cruel it seems to require one who is the victim of an awful disease like leprosy to further lower himself by openly branding himself as unclean so that everyone knows business that anyone would rather keep private. Further still, he would be forced to live alone, marginalized by society. Actually, he would most likely be living with other marginalized folks suffering from the same disfiguring disease. That is so foreign to our culture’s way of thinking! What principle does this offer for us? That even when one is the innocent victim of one of life’s misfortunes, he is still responsible for handling it responsibly and justly, and in a way that protects others.

Note that if a person was granted healing from leprosy, his uncleanness from the disease had to be atoned for. Again we are confronted with the reality that we can contract uncleanness by simply living in a sin-cursed world, despite our best efforts and good choices. Is it any wonder that Jesus taught us to pray, “…deliver us from evil” and to be on our guard? This is another good reason for us to be in God’s word daily, attend church services regularly, and fellowship with other believers.

Did you catch that God Himself may put a mark of leprosy on a house?

Bodily discharges – ! Really, who wants to talk about that?! If the subject repulses us, what must it do to a holy God? And yet, because it is an inescapable part of our lives, He addresses it. How He must love us, bodily discharges notwithstanding. This evidence of His genuine love for us makes the discussion of bodily discharges precious to me, strange as that may sound. Further, my love for God deepens when I consider the fact that He has used something that’s downright ugly, for the great good of showing me how much He loves me, thus thwarting what Satan wants to use for bad. That is powerful good! That’s God!

Here’s one example of how relevant and profound one of the worst discussions in one of the most avoided books of the Bible can be. It teaches us that no portion of the Bible should be avoided, but rather studied and contemplated prayerfully until God gives us understanding of why He has preserved the account for us

We’re in the thick of what makes Leviticus so dreadful. If God can reveal something relevant and helpful or profound to us in this, we have no reason to avoid any other passage in this book or anywhere in Scripture!

The dietary laws God gave reflect His concern for practicality and the health of His people. Before God revealed to man insights about germs and good and bad fats, He built protection into their dietary laws. While the laws were restrictive, they demonstrate His protection of His people when they didn’t realize they needed protection! What restrictions do you suppose He has imposed on you for your protection? What restrictions do you resent, in which you could look for His protection instead?

Adherence to the dietary laws might at times require a sacrifice: when one is hungry he doesn’t want to have to be too choosy about what he finds to eat. One also didn’t want to have to waste or eat one’s wealth when something else was available. And sometimes His people simply didn’t want to be different from other people.

But God didn’t give them explanations or share with them about His protective intent; no, the only justification He gave for the laws is, “I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves, and be holy; for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean…. For I am the Lord, who brought you up from (bondage), to be your God; thus you shall be holy for I am holy.” If that is a good enough reason for His Old Testament people to make sacrifices in what they put into their mouths and to stand out from others, is it a reasonable expectation for His New Testament people to make sacrifices for the privilege of relationship with Him?

Requirements for cleansing following childbirth and for diagnosing leprosy remind us that life is messy. We live in a sin-cursed world that exposes us to base realities with which a holy God has no contact. Yet God addresses them, and provides a way for man to be cleansed from his uncleanness. We may think that it’s unreasonable of God to consider one unclean because she has given birth; would He rather we not give birth and remain clean? Not so. Just because it’s an inevitable part of life doesn’t mean that God can tolerate its presence on us; rather, He is good to give us a way to remedy the uncleanness. To think otherwise is to buy into Satan’s lies like Adam and Eve did.

As you read about the establishment of the Old Testament priesthood, keep in mind I Peter 2:9 which says of believers in Christ, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light….” God’s requirements for Old Testament priests can inform our understanding of what that means.

The preparation for the priests was lengthy. After following special requirements to pay for their sin and to cleanse them ceremonially, they had to spend seven days and nights in the holy place inside the tent of meeting. Their service to God wouldn’t fill but a fraction of that time; presumably they would be seeking God in that time. Even those who were called and prepared were required to spend this time; is it any less necessary for us today?

After all the commands were instituted, God gave them a dramatic and unmistakable sign that their efforts had met with His approval. That is very important, given what was documented in the next chapter, an account of His giving them a dramatic and unmistakable sign that their deviation from His worship order did not meet with His approval and would not be tolerated.

God had special requirements for the priests, “so as to make a distinction between the holy and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean, and so as to teach (God’s people) all the statutes” associated with the covenant. He held the priests to high standards at such high cost because He had to be held in honor by the people.

What do these requirements instruct you about your role as a believer in Christ, one of the “royal priesthood?” Today’s reading confronts us with an opportunity to consider how we approach God ourselves, and how we minister Him to others. 

The way the Law is presented can seem random and scattered to me, but I don’t believe that God’s thoughts are so disorganized. So I seek to find the principles His requirements establish.

Here is my attempt at finding principles in the examples given in today’s reading. They seem to be addressing the very human circumstances of seeing something we wish we hadn’t seen, encountering something simply because we were unfortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time, and reacting in an unlovely fashion when something unexpectedly goes wrong for us. Life is often messy, and sometimes we get embroiled in messes through no fault of our own. These laws address life’s messes. They teach that God’s people were still expected to do the right thing, still expected to make things right, still expected to pay when they were victims of circumstances, even if they were unintentionally and unknowingly victims of circumstance. Would God’s heart be changed with regard to His expectations for His New Testament people?

Ignorance was no excuse for violating the Law with regard to what is holy to God. In their day, the consequences for violating some of these worship practices were instantaneously deadly; that was great incentive for knowing God’s requirements thoroughly and getting it right. What if the consequences of our not knowing God’s word were as deadly to us as it was to them? What if we’re not aware of its consequences until we stand before Jesus and hear Him say, “Depart from me; I never knew you?” It’s not a wise risk. We’re doing well to be in His word!

Where man’s uncleanness, even if it was contracted simply by innocent contact with the uncleanness in the world, violated God’s requirements for man, he was guilty of uncleanness and had to  make it right with God. He may not have been able to control the getting unclean, but he was still unclean, and was required to make it right with God so that he could be forgiven of his uncleanness. Where he had sinned against man, he had to make it right with both God and man. Again, what do you think is the significance for us New Testament people of God?

There were many different types of offerings. The guilt and sin offerings are the ones we probably understand the best: they paid for a person’s guilt, as God’s given means to make it right before Him. (How good He was to give them a means to make it right!) The burnt offering was simply a gift poured out to God: a “soothing aroma” for Him. Does that make God bloodthirsty, that the sacrifice of an animal is a soothing aroma to Him? I don’t believe that God cared so little for His creatures that He delighted in their killing; rather, that animal represented to Him their sacrifice, something valuable to Him that was of value to them, that they gave to Him because they loved Him and wanted to please Him. What do we have that is valuable to us today, that we can offer to Him in what looks like a total waste to the world, because we want to please Him?

Notice that the altar was to have a constant fire in it with a burnt offering. What does that speak to you about worship?

God gave requirements for each type of sacrifice offered, depending on its purpose. Even if one wanted to offer a sacrifice in thanks to God, he had to follow the prescribed method. The priest had a role to play in each offering, and if the priest failed to follow the requirements correctly, the offering would not be accepted; in fact, it would be offensive to God. Consequences for that were serious: “he who offered it shall not be accepted.” In other cases, punishment was that the person “shall be cut off from his people.” That’s serious. One wouldn’t offer sacrifices haphazardly, even if one had the wealth to burn. What does that teach us about worship?

We’re at the place one probably dreads the most when one thinks about reading through the Bible. But we will forge ahead, and we will read Leviticus, and hopefully gain some profound insights. Years ago, the pastor of the church I was attending preached a lengthy sermon series from Leviticus, amazing the entire congregation with the unforeseen blessing the book turned out to be. I don’t recall specific lessons from the series, but I’m sure it changed me and thus became a part of me, as it did all of us. References to that sermon series became part of the culture of our church.

We might be tempted to skip over this unpleasant part of the Bible, believing that it doesn’t apply to us anyway. Once again, we need to consider why God has preserved these provisions of the Old Testament Law for us. Since He has, we must conclude that He has something for us in them. What might that be? It isn’t immediately evident; it  takes some prayerful seeking. Do you believe that God will reveal it to you?

The idea of animal sacrifice is horrifying to me. I believe God intends for it to be horrifying to us. For insight here, I spoke to a friend who has much experience raising domesticated animals, and was interested to find that familiarity doesn’t make it easier to kill an animal; in fact, it makes it more difficult.

Imagine what it would be like. In that culture, herds and flocks were the measure of wealth. Those people were as diligent in building and preserving their wealth as we are today. They cared for the animals with much effort and time. Killing one for a sacrifice would be like burning cash. My friend shared that with the bulls she raises, offering one would be the equivalent of burning $5000. It also would mean the loss of any additional provision or income the animal might have brought. That their offering generally was required to be a young animal meant that they would have fed the animal from birth to the point that it could begin giving a return on that investment, and then they would have to kill it, eliminating any chance of ever gaining any return. Given that the chosen animal was required to be the best of the herd or flock, without defect, animal sacrifice was financially very costly.

There was an emotional cost as well. As they cared for the animals, they likely grew to know them as individuals, and perhaps grew attached to at least some of them. Young animals are so darling; how could one not get attached? You can easily find photos of year-old lambs, goats, and calves on the internet; find one, and imagine choosing that one to sacrifice for your own sin. When asked to give of the best of the herd or flock, the best is obviously the favorite. What a dilemma! Is  giving of anything less than the best true worship?

Beyond the choosing of the animal is the bringing. Offering of sacrifices was to take place at one location: the altar of burnt offering at the entrance to the tabernacle. Imagine leading that animal there, placing it on the altar.

Then there is the killing. My animal-raising friend says that it is never easy to put an animal down. And it’s not just a girl thing; her husband has to ask a detached neighbor to put down an ill or injured animal, and ensures that it is done in the most quick and painless manner, with a gun. Can you imagine offering a sacrifice, placing your hand on the head of that animal and applying that knife?

I point all of this out to ensure that we get from the descriptions of the animal sacrifices what we should get: it was horrible. We generally enjoy the luxury of not having to think about it. But not thinking about it has made us careless about the horribleness of sin – of our sin. Today’s reading confronts us with the opportunity to consider how awful our sin is.