As we travel along a Good Way, it’s important that we realize that there was a time before the Good Way. There is always the tendency within the church today, not all churches, but some to spend little time in the Old Testament. Those of us, here  in the Pew tend to look at it in this manner, kind of a love and marriage and baby carriage thing, the Old and the New go together. Knowledge of each strengthens the other. We can actually go back into the past as far as Genesis up to Exodus, this particular journey would help us to understand the present situation. From the book of Genesis after Joseph’s death, the Israelites remained in Egypt for a period leading up to the Exodus, which biblical tests suggest either a 210 year journey in Egypt as part of a larger 430 year period with some scholars suggesting around 150 to 200 years between Joseph’s passing and Moses’s birth though precise numbers vary. It is important that we understand where those who proceeded us have traveled, this is one of those warning from past ways things. That’s why today we’re going to take  a little time to look at the book of Leviticus. After this exodus took place Leviticus served as a Jewish people’s rulebook for holiness it detailed how sinful humanity can live in the presence of a holy God. Remember, there had been instances, God never abandoned his people they turned away from him during their wanderings. The book of Leviticus simply focuses on priesthood sacrifices, purity laws, and ethical contact to maintain their covenant relationship, establishing them as a kingdom of priests through rituals and commands for holy living. It is basically a foundational guide for worship, atonement, and sanctification, education, bringing the gap between God’s dwelling in the tabernacle and Israel’s imperfect state. It is interesting to note that it is traditionally the first book that Jewish children studied.

It is important that we recognize those things that are important to the core relationship that we have with God. If we were to break it down simply with some learning points, they would be as follows. The book of Leviticus provides us with a guide to holiness, covenant maintenance. Let us include just a quick note that covenants that God made with individuals as well as nations, some came with restraints and some with no restraints. So covenant maintenance in this sense provides laws and rituals to repair a broken covenant and maintain a pure relationship with God. Addressing this scene of impurity is a purity code, there are details of sacrifices and responsibilities of the priesthood. There is a reminder about holiness…be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, I am holy. Then we have atonement which explains how sin is dealt with taking us to the day of atonement. So in its simplest terms, it is the essential manual for ancient Egypt’s worship practices and their understanding of God’s presence in their lives. There is an important fact here that we do not want to overlook. There is provided through this book of Leviticus spiritual foundation. Historically, it was the first book of the Torah and it was studied by Jewish children introducing them to God’s will, and the path to spiritual growth. There was a lot in that book about rituals and laws to promote ethical behavior and for love for one another challenging people to live distinctively or in simple language to be different.

As in all things that we study to try and gain knowledge and to structure our our lives on a path that serves our Lord there has to be a practical application. We must learn and come to understand that God takes his holiness very seriously and so should we. The trend in many of our churches today is to create God in our own image, giving him the attributes we would like him to have instead of the ones his word describes when we read about God’s utter holiness, his transcendent splendor and his approachable light and that’s in 1Timothy 6:16. We sometimes are confused by these concepts. We are called to walk in the light and to put away the darkness in our lives so that we may be pleasing to God. We must understand that a holy God cannot tolerate blatant, unashamed sin in his people and his holiness requires him to punish it. We seemed to be confused in our society today there are two words that have stepped in and changed a lot of things, the first one being inclusiveness, and the second tolerance. It creates a flippant attitude on our part towards sin, our God’s loathing of it, we should not allow sin to simply become part of a trend, social acceptance, our personal or group agenda. We must come to the point to where we praise the Lord that because of Jesus’s death on our behalf, we no longer have to offer animal sacrifices and that our salvation comes through the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. Leviticus is all about the substitution. The death of animals was a substitute penalty for those who have sinned. In the same way, but much much better was the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as a substitute for our sins. Now we can stand before God without fear because he sees in us the righteousness of Christ.

Life is Good

jk