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Prologue: Before we get to Leviticus - and with it, parts of Hebrews that are parallels under the New Covenant - it's important to look back. Remember that I said in the very first session, before we read a verse of Genesis, that the Bible is a linear narrative, a unified literary work, the story beginning in Genesis and ending in Revelation. The main character is God, the theme is redemption-and the conflict is sin. God's gift of the law and Tabernacle to the children if Israel while they were camped at Mt. Sinai, is in response to sin. So let's review.
In Genesis 1, we see God creating the world and all that's in it in six days, resting on day 7. After each day of creation, God said "it is good," and he blessed his work and his creation. Order and balance were the hallmarks of the world God made, and when he created human beings (the details of that are in ch. 2), he gave them control over the physical world. But in Gen. 3, the serpent, the craftiest and slyest of all the creatures God had created, planted doubt in Eve's mind; she gave in to Satan's misrepresentation of God's commands, disobeyed God, and Adam followed suit. Sin destroyed their relationship with each other and with God; now they are conscious of their differences and make clothes to hide their nakedness. God calls to Adam and he hides.
Sin has four characteristics: it's subtle, it gets bigger, it distorts our judgment and it cascades down through the generations. We see this when Cain kills Abel, and then in ch. 4, when Lamech marries two wives and distorts God's plan further. By ch. 6, God saw that his perfectly harmonious world had been destroyed because "he saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time." Sin had done this, and God decided to start over. Noah builds the ark, the world's animal and human life is wiped out, and Noah, his family, and the animal cargo get off the ark to start repopulating the earth. By ch. 11, we have Babel as evidence that people have forgotten God.
In Genesis 12, God intervenes and calls Abraham, making a covenant with him, and in it, promising salvation. God has seen how wicked people are; their sinful condition brings out sinful behavior, and without God's grace and a means of reconciliation, the human race cannot do anything to reverse sin's destruction in the world. So God tells Abraham "through you all the earth will be blessed." a promise of Jesus' coming to earth, his death and resurrection; the plan of salvation has been introduced. Abraham has Isaac, Isaac has Jacob and Esau, and Jacob has 12 sons. God had told Abraham (Gen. 15) that his descendants would live for 400 years in a land not their own-not the land God promised to give Abraham-and at the end of Genesis, Jacob and his 12 sons, 70 people in all, are in Egypt. Exodus begins 400 years later, fulfilling God's prophecy that Abraham's descendants would live as foreigners and slaves. Now God is ready to deliver them.
In Exodus 3, God calls Moses, an 80-year-old man who'd been raised as a prince in Egypt, though he was born to two of Abraham's descendants. Moses is now 80 years old, a scruffy shepherd in Midian. But after convincing him he, God would go with him, Moses answers God's call, and returns to Egypt. Ten plagues, each one more severe than the last, bring Pharaoh to his knees, decimating the country of Egypt, an Pharaoh frees the people who'd provided slave labor for many projects. They cross the Red Sea by God's miracle, Egypt's army is drowned, and three months later, we get to Exodus 19, and they're at Mt. Sinai, the Mountain of God, where God called Moses and promised he'd bring him back there to worship him.
Exodus 20: the people hear the voice of God as he gives them the law: the 10 commandments or principles for living in relationship with God and other humans. In Ex. 21-24, God gives Moses case law examples for application of those principles, and in ch. 25, God begins to outline his plan for the Tabernacle. For the rest of the book, plans for the Tabernacle are conveyed to Moses, who then gives them to the people to build. By Ex. 40, the Tabernacle is erected, and the glory of God fills it.
Now we're at Leviticus, and it begins once the Tabernacle has been put up. The Tabernacle is finished exactly a year after the children of Israel left Egypt; the book of Leviticus takes the next month. In Leviticus, the people are taught how to use the Tabernacle; as he did with the plans for this "tent of meeting," God reveals the Tabernacle's purpose in great detail.
Leviticus (the Latin name of the book) derives from Levites or the priestly tribe. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scripture, the name was Leukiton or "that which pertains to Levites" and in Hebrew, the title is Wayyiqra "And He called." The Talmud refers to it as "The Law of the Priests and the Law of the Offerings." It is the third book of the five in the Torah, all of which were written by Moses.
Leviticus has 27 chapters. The first 7 deal with the five great sacrifices and offerings; the next three cover the priests' ordination and duties; the next chapters regard purity: clean and unclean food, childbirth, leprosy, and bodily discharges. In ch. 16 and 17, the Day of Atonement is described along with the way sacrifice is to be made on that day, also known as Yom Kippur, the only day on which the High Priest may enter the Holy of Holies. The next chapters (Lev. 18-27) cover laws that define an acceptable walk with God: human sexuality, regulations for priests, worship on the festival days and keeping Sabbath, and laws for using the land and its harvests when they enter Canaan. Finally God speaks of consequences of disobedience.
Leviticus is a book in which the word "holiness" is key; being "holy" means being set apart for God and God's use. God tells them in Lev. 19:2: "You must be holy because I am holy." To meet God, a sinful people must have a means by which they can achieve holiness. The people's redemption came through the shed blood of lambs in Egypt; the covenant with God was sealed with shed blood. Now an entire system of sacrifices will be instituted so that the people's sin can be covered by the blood of an animal standing in the human being's place. The law was given in Exodus; now God gives detailed instructions for worship, for sacrifice, for the great festivals, for Sabbath observance, and for dealing with daily life-all to achieve holiness. He tells them to "set yourselves apart to be holy, for I, the Lord am your God. Keep all my laws and obey them, for I am the Lord who makes you holy." (Lev. 20:7-8) Jesus said to the religious leaders who challenged Jesus' claim to be God's son, in John 5:45-46: "But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me."
Hebrews: Chapters 2 through 10, and 13 of Hebrews provide a New Testament or New Covenant parallel to Leviticus, and we'll touch on those chapters as we go through Leviticus. The authorship of the book of Hebrews is unknown. Some thought it was Paul, but that seems unlikely. Whoever it was knew Timothy (Heb. 13:21) so it might have been Barnabas, Silas, Luke, or even Apollos, Priscilla or Philip-all mentioned in Paul's epistles in connection with Timothy. Nevertheless, the book was written to convince Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, and that through Jesus' death, a superior covenant was made. Paul says in Romans 8:3 Jesus was a sin offering-and the sin offering is one of five described in Leviticus. We'll look at Hebrews frequently as we study Leviticus to see how Jesus is the New Covenant that fulfilled the Old Covenant, the one God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then reaffirmed with his people at Mt. Sinai.
Leviticus 1-7: The five offerings or sacrifices are described in ch. 1-7. The first 4 chapters deal with the person taking the offering to the tabernacle, the last 3 to the duties of the priest.
Leviticus 1: The Burnt Offering comes first in the description of the five great offerings and sacrifices. Notice that for each of the five offerings, God describes (1) the substance of the sacrifice-whether animal or grain; (2) the way the sacrifice or offering is to be made, and (3) the purpose. The first three are known as "sweet savor offerings" and the last two "non sweet savor offerings." The first three speak of the person of Christ, and the last two of the work of Christ. The burnt offering, then, involves an animal totally consumed on the altar. It speaks of Christ's willingness to surrender of himself for our sins. The individual may bring any number of animals, each depending on the means, but all must come from the herd or flock and be a male without spot or blemish. Remember in Ex. 12 when God gave instructions for the Passover lamb that it, too, had to be a male without spot or blemish. The animal is brought to the entrance of the Tabernacle, and there the individual puts his hands on the bull, sheep or goat's head and cuts its throat. Its blood is caught by the priest. If he is too poor for either of those animals, he may bring a bird, and instead of cutting its throat, the priest twists off its head. The blood is sprinkled on the altar, the larger animal is skinned, cut up , the pieces washed of all that would make them impure, and all of it burned. It rises in a sweet savor to the Lord who accepts the offering. Because it is totally consumed, this offering speaks of our surrender to God. Jesus gave all of himself; he asks of us all of ourselves. Notice that in all cases the animal was valuable, and thus it cost the person something. All sacrifice involves cost: it's implied in the word. We don't offer what does NOT cost us something. It costs something-our will, our desires, our plans for our lives-when we surrender ourselves to God to let his will, his desires and his plans dominate us.
Leviticus 2: The grain or meal offering is the second offering described. Various forms of bread or flour could be offered, but each was to be without yeast or honey. The bread could be offered as flour, or a cake fried or baked with oil. The oil speaks of the Holy Spirit and sanctification, being set apart for God. All grain or meal offerings were to be offered with salt which speaks of the covenant, preserving the covenant. In middle eastern countries, salt was the seal of a bargain or agreement. God is using what is familiar, salt and animal sacrifice, to seal the covenant with his people. The meal offering is symbolic of what we eat and that all gifts come from God. It also symbolizes Christ's purity-he was without artificiality; he was completely without guile and artifice in his dealings on earth. His personality was not bitter or sour; it needed no sweetening. And he was without sin; yeast symbolizes sin or corruption in the Bible.
Leviticus 3: The fellowship or peace offering is described. It too involves an animal; only the grain or meal offering is not an animal sacrifice. The peace or fellowship offering was not offered to make peace with God but to celebrate and enjoy one's peace with God, and it always followed a sin or burnt offering. It was a form of thanksgiving, and as such, is closest to our communion or Eucharist in its intent. The animal is also from the herd or flock, either male or female without blemish, and presented in the same way: the person offering it put his hands on its head, slit its throat and the blood was caught by the priest. The blood is sprinkled on the sides of the altar, and instead of the entire animal being burned, only the fat was burned. The fat is the best part. The rest of the animal was given to the priests as food. It had to be eaten that day or the next. This speaks of the peace that Jesus made between us and God, peace for all time by his sacrifice. And Jesus was the best-no spot or blemish, no sin in him. At the end of chapter 3, God reminds them that they are never, under any circumstances, to eat the blood of an animal. This ordinance is given in more detail in the dietary laws which appear in Lev. 17.
Hebrews 1 tells us that Jesus, above all the rest of creation, was superior in every way to angels and prophets and all the ways God had revealed himself before Christ came to earth as a human being. We'll see as we move on that Hebrews gives us much more detail about Jesus as the fulfillment of the law, the replacement of all the sacrifices Leviticus prescribes; they were not able to take sin away and make us one with God as Christ's sacrifice was.
Next week, we'll begin with Leviticus 4.
Let's close in prayer.
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