Route 66: Leviticus - Finding God's Meeting Place

It's lovely to see you this evening.

Thank you for braving it out for Leviticus.

Wow, you guys are great.

As we talked about the weather possibly being inclement, I was wondering who was going to say the weather kept them away, rather than saying Leviticus kept them away.

I want to play a word association with you tonight.

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word Leviticus?

Sacrifice?

What did you say?

The law, okay.

What are the words?

Butchering?

I'll talk about that in just a second.

Yep, blood, any other things?

What was that word?

Priest?

Okay.

Well, when I was a new believer, I became a believer at the age of 21.

And I began to read the Bible so I could familiarize myself with it and, being in the Air Force and working the second shift, I had plenty of time in the morning considering all my friends were working different shifts to read the Bible, and so I broke the Bible up into different sections Old Testament, new Testament, psalms, proverbs and I had a cycle of speed of reading for each of those so that I could get through the Old Testament and New Testament at a different pace and I could stay current in the Psalms and current in Proverbs throughout the days, and as I was beginning that, launching into that study, a friend of mine by the name of Mike came over to my barracks room and asked me how the reading was going.

And I told him well, I said, at the moment I'm in Leviticus and Mark, and he's like, so what do you think?

And I was a new believer, never been to church, just keep that in mind.

And I said to him, I said, well, mark feels like a shorter version of Matthew.

It seems like it's saying the same thing just a little more quickly.

And I said Leviticus is puzzling to me because I feel like I need to talk to a butcher.

All these body parts and I don't know how to even conceptualize all of that.

The book of Leviticus when I first read it, and the first several times I read it, it mystified me, and I don't think I'm alone in that.

Just yesterday in the Google group I mailed out a link to about 20 some odd different Bible reading plans that you can take advantage of for 2024.

I think a lot of people start off well right.

They kind of go through Genesis 50 chapters.

They get into Exodus until they get to the end of Exodus and they're like, whoa, wait a second.

What are all these curtains and all this fabric and all of that?

And then they get into Leviticus and they roll to a dead stop and they might go, numbers picks up again and then they keep on going.

But Leviticus seems to be a place where a lot of people bog down.

It continues to mystify people.

Well, if you were to look at the book of Leviticus, you would find it divided up in a lot of different ways, and I just want to mention a couple very quickly, just to give you a broad sketch of the book.

We're not going to spend hardly any time in this, but in the first 16 chapters you will see covenantal worship and you will see things like sacrifices, consecration of priests, declaration of things, clean and unclean, and you will see certainly the day of atonement put in there.

Chapter 17 to 27, you'll see the holiness code, a discussion of the festivals of the people of Israel and a list of blessings and cursings, among other things.

If you were to break it up differently, maybe into three parts, you might do it this way Leviticus 1 to 10, approaching God.

Leviticus 11 to 16, clean before God.

Chapter 17 to 27, meeting and are representing God.

So you might put it that way, but I'd like for us to look at it differently.

I don't want us just to walk away with an outline of Leviticus.

I want us to appreciate Leviticus in its story and in its setting.

This morning, as we've been doing on Sunday mornings at 9 o'clock, 9.15 in the White Building, we've been going through an ABF Adult Bible Fellowship class on how to study the Bible, how to understand it, and later we'll talk about how to apply it.

And we've been looking.

We started this morning at looking at larger chunks of Scripture.

We started out by looking at sentences and then paragraphs, and now we're looking at bigger chunks of Scripture.

And one of the things that I said about our paragraphs is that they're usually ruled by a topic sentence, which usually lays at the top of a paragraph.

So you often see the first sentence being the main sentence of a paragraph.

Well, if you were to go into literature of the ancient Near East, you would find a different structure.

You would find what they call the center of it, and in the center of it you would find the thematic center of the meaning of something, and we call that arrangement a chiasm.

A chiasm is not something we use in our discussion about our Western literature at all, but it's common in the literature of the Bible and other ancient Near East literature.

And what is a chiastic structure?

What is a chiasm?

Well, it's a series of statements that work in parallel from the outside to the inside, and so you would start at, say, verse 1 and verse 10, and you would see parallels there.

And then you would go to 2 and 9 and see a parallel there possibly, and then you would jump up maybe to say verse 4 and verse 6 and see a parallel, and then in the center might be verse 5, which stands alone on its own, and you would find verse 5 is what is the actual thematic center of that passage of Scripture.

You might think of it this way you think about a mountain with both sides sort of equal in their ascent and descent and a pinnacle.

Well, look at a passage of Scripture and knock the mountain on its side and you'll be able to see sort of the front end and the back end moving toward the middle, where you have the thematic center.

That center is the height, the literary height of communication.

This morning in ABF I used this statement.

I got out of bed this morning, I got dressed, I got in my car, I went to church.

I preached all day.

I got back in my car, I drove home, I put on my PJs and I went to bed.

So I got up out of bed, I went back to bed, I put on some clothes, put on my PJs, I got in my car.

I got in my car, I drove to church.

I drove home.

What's the center?

I preached, right.

So what'd you do today?

I preached.

That would be the thing I would probably talk about the most.

I wouldn't talk about putting on my PJs for very long at all or at all, but I would speak about the main part of what I did, and that's what a chiasm does.

It brings an emphasis to something in that structure.

Now I don't want to push this too hard, but are there some things like a chiasm that we can find that help us understand the book of Leviticus?

Yes, there are, for instance, the end of the book of Genesis and the end of the book of Deuteronomy, so we're talking about the Pentateuch right.

So Leviticus sits in the middle of the five books of Moses Genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers, deuteronomy.

So let's take the first one and the last one and see something here At the very end of Genesis.

What do you have?

You've got Jacob blessing the 12 tribes before he dies outside the promised land, is that right?

What do you have at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, moses blessing the 12 tribes before he dies outside the promised land?

Okay, there's a parallel there.

So from the outside we see that there's some parallel going on there.

So let's move to Exodus and Numbers.

Coming in a little more closer into the center, exodus and Numbers are filled with parallels.

For example, there are a number of statements of movement to the people in Exodus there's six of them.

And there's a number of statements of movement to the people of Israel in numbers there's six of them.

Okay, that's not a mistake, it's not just a coincidence.

In Exodus you've got, charting Israel's journey from Egypt to Mount Sinai, six major points of emphasis of where they stopped, and from Sinai to the plains of Moab, right before they go to the promised land, you've got six statements of placements of where they camped.

So those notices correspond to the big movement of the people of Israel, of the people of Israel.

You've got them in Exodus, 1 to 15 in Egypt.

And then, joshua, where are they going to be the promised land right?

So in Exodus 1 to 15, they're in Egypt.

In Exodus 15, 22 to 18, 26, they're in the wilderness.

And then in Exodus 19 to 40, they're in the wilderness.

And then in Exodus 19 to 40, they're at Mount Sinai.

In Numbers 1, 1 to 10, they're at Mount Sinai, and then in chapter 10, verse 11 to 21, 35, they're in the wilderness, and then in chapters 22 to 36, they're in the Transjordan, they're making their way to the promised land.

So there's again parallels moving closer to the center Genesis, exodus, numbers, deuteronomy.

What's in the center?

Leviticus.

So that leads us to ask a couple questions here.

Then Leviticus sits at the center of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses.

What is central to Leviticus?

What is the center of Leviticus?

Well, we'll get there.

Leviticus doesn't contain any itinerary notices, like Exodus and Numbers does.

It doesn't have any chronological markers.

It doesn't have any day this month that any of those things.

The book is, in a sense, timeless.

Timeless, it doesn't move through space.

It's marked out as a unique book in those five books.

In that sense and there's a clue that we find when we get to the second half of the book of Exodus and the first half of the book of Numbers.

What do we discover in the second half of the book of Exodus?

How to erect the tabernacle right, the building of the tabernacle.

What do we find in the first part of Numbers?

How to tear down the tabernacle so it can move.

Leviticus 1.1,.

We read this Then the Lord summoned Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting.

So from that spot that Exodus talks about building the tabernacle and Numbers talks about removing the place of and moving on from the meeting house, we find God speaking from the tabernacle.

Numbers 1.1,.

The Lord spoke to Moses in the tent of meeting in the wilderness of Sinai on the first day of the second month of the second year after Israel's departure from the land of Egypt.

So the whole book of Leviticus is a discussion of God to Moses from the tabernacle.

So in contrast to Genesis and Exodus, which have a clear storyline, leviticus is a bunch of talk from God to Moses, to the people, about worship and ethics.

And Leviticus is the only book in the Pentateuch that takes place completely at Mount Sinai and also takes place at the Tent of Meeting, and so Leviticus is God's speeches from the tabernacle.

So let's back up just for a second here.

Okay, we've got Egypt on the outside, on one side, the promised land on the outside of the other side, right, exodus, and then reaching out toward Joshua, out there, right, right, at the end of Deuteronomy, we come in a little closer.

Wilderness journey, wilderness journey, come in a little closer.

Sinai, sinai, come into the center.

Tabernacle, tabernacle, the center of Israel's liturgical life.

What is physically at the center of Leviticus?

Well, let's go back to what we talked about the laws and the outline of Leviticus.

Let's start at the beginning Chapter 1 to 7, sanctuary laws.

In the first part of Leviticus, you go to chapters 23 to 27, sanctuary laws of the people of Israel.

Let's come in a little more closer to the center.

Chapters 8 to 10, priestly laws.

21 to 22, priestly laws.

You see what's happening here.

Come a little closer to the center.

11 to 15, personal laws.

17 to 20, personal laws.

Right, do you see that?

Sanctuary laws, priestly laws, personal laws.

But we missed a chapter, chapter 16, what's the dead center of Leviticus?

The day of atonement.

The day of atonement, right in the middle of this discussion of the tabernacle, is the day of atonement, which is in the center of all of the five books of Moses, which talk about the people of Israel moving from the promised land to Egypt and back to the promised land.

So all of that structure, those structures of parallels, that chiastic structure, is meant to highlight the vital necessity of the day of atonement and the place of the tabernacle in the life and worship of the people of Israel.

Okay, so that structure helps us to see the major theme of Leviticus.

So let's sort of back it up again and go back into it again, maybe from a slightly different angle.

Let's go to Exodus, chapter 25, for a second Exodus 25.

Exodus 25 · chapter mention

What do we have there?

The Lord spoke to Moses, and what are they going to do?

He gets a number of different materials right, a bunch of material from the people.

What's going on?

Verse 8 tells us they are to make a sanctuary for me that I may dwell among them.

You're going to build a tabernacle, and here's how I want it built.

What's the purpose of that tabernacle?

That I might dwell among the people.

Okay, let's go now to Leviticus, exodus, chapter 29, in verse 45.

Exodus 29 · chapter mention

Leviticus 29, or Leviticus Exodus 29, verse 45.

Exodus 29:45

Well, let's go to verse 44.

I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar.

I will also consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests.

Notice, I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God, and they will know that I am the Lord, their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt so that I might dwell among them.

I am the Lord their God.

So, at the beginning and the end of the instructions to build the tabernacle, god reiterates this point Make it so.

It'll be the place where I dwell and the place where the people of Israel and I can meet each other.

So there's two functions to the tabernacle it's the dwelling place of God amongst his people, but it's the meeting place of God with his people.

Okay, just keep that in mind.

However, as we go through the book of Exodus, we find out that the people of Israel sin, and in chapter 33, god makes a statement Go up from here, you and the people who you brought up from the land of Egypt.

Now it's the ones Moses brought up from the land of Egypt, in the land I promised Abraham, isaac and Jacob, and say I'll give it to your offspring.

I'll send an angel ahead of you and drive out the Canaanites, amorites, hethites, perizzites, hivites, jebusites.

Go to land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up with you because you're a stiff necknecked people, otherwise I might destroy you on the way.

And when the people heard this bad news, they mourned and didn't put on their jewelry.

The Lord said to Moses tell the Israelites you're a stiff-necked people.

If I went up with you for a single moment, I would destroy you.

What happens?

Does God destroy them?

He doesn't.

Moses intercedes for the people, pleads for God to uphold his promises to these people.

Despite their iniquity.

He stands in the gap for them.

And so in Exodus, chapter 40, the very end of Exodus, something happens.

Exodus 40 · chapter mention

In verse 34, the cloud covers the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Moses was unable to enter the tent of meeting.

What a remarkable statement that is.

The closing verses of Exodus bring us to the height of wonder, but they also show us a big problem.

God is beginning to take his dwelling in the tent, but no one yet can meet him there, not even Moses.

Exodus ends with a problem, a problem that Leviticus begins to answer.

We read here, at the end of Exodus, that the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Right.

What's happening here?

For the first time since the flood, the maker of heaven and earth is dwelling among humanity.

But at the end of the book of Exodus, humanity cannot enter into the presence of the Lord.

The story's not complete.

Though the Lord has taken up the tabernacle as his earthly abode, there's still no way for humanity to approach him and we certainly can't enjoy fellowship with him.

And this is the crisis.

Remember, the Lord said there were two functions to the tabernacle a place for his dwelling and a place for meeting.

He's taken up the dwelling, but there's not yet a way to meet.

Okay, what's happened?

We read at the end of Exodus that Moses can't enter in because of the glory of the Lord, which is repeated in verse 34 and 35.

Moses is barred entry.

Now, this is a shocking statement, because everywhere else through the book of Exodus, moses has not been barred entry.

Right, moses has been able to go up into the presence of the Lord, but not here.

And if Moses is not able to go into the tabernacle, nobody is, no human being, no Israelite, not even Moses himself.

And so the book of Exodus takes the themes of the Garden of Eden and continues to present a problem to us.

Exodus closes with a new Garden of Eden, if you will, planted in the middle of the wilderness, right In the middle of Sinai's wilderness.

But even Israel's mediator can't go in.

He's unable to enter through Eden's gates into the glorious presence of God.

Here we're brought with a fundamental issue of human civilization.

From that point all the way through, how do we get back inside, how do we get back into the presence of God?

How do we get back to paradise?

Paradise is here, god is here, and we still can't get in.

Why?

And so Leviticus isn't just a bunch of tedious ritual instruction.

Leviticus is talking about a theological story that's found wrapped up in the skin of all of that, that the Lord cannot be approached, that the way between God and man is separated and unapproachable.

He who dwells here cannot yet be reached.

So Leviticus begins with Israel, god's son called out of Egypt, god's son called out of Egypt, standing outside the cherubim guarded gates of the presence of God, and Moses can't get them in.

What can get them in?

This is what begins to be answered in the book of Leviticus.

God himself speaks from the place of dwelling and begins to show them how that place can be a place of meeting and how, out of that place of meeting, it can become a place of fellowship and how, out of a place of fellowship, their lives can be transformed to be people of representation again.

And so the whole theme and theology of Leviticus is to show us how the Lord is opening up a way for humanity to dwell in the presence of the consuming fire.

Who is God?

It tells us who can enter and it tells us how we can enter.

And the tabernacle, that is the divine dwelling place that Exodus speaks about, leviticus brings us to how it becomes the place of meeting for us.

And the day of atonement is the focal point of how that happens.

This is why I took you through that chiastic structure of parallels and showed you how it all kind of reduces down to one place the day of atonement.

That is the very center, because it's the answer to the problem of humanity how do we get back in to Eden, how do we get back into paradise?

How do we get back in to fellowship with God, atonement, reconciliation, at-one-ment between a holy God and unholy people, how we can have intimacy with one who describes himself as a consuming fire?

And the book of Leviticus holds out not even how we might enter, but how we might have communion, fellowship with this holy God, communion fellowship with this holy God.

And so the whole focus of the book of Leviticus flows in and out of that approach and life and fellowship with God himself.

Everything that pertains to life, whether it's personal, social, economic, all of it revolves around that central point.

And Leviticus shows us that all of life relates and has an effect on our worship and our meeting with God.

And so Leviticus points us forward to something else.

It points us forward to the new covenant.

It points us forward to us being redeemed by the blood of Christ, not the blood of a lamb, so that we might be brought to at-one-ment with God, so that Jesus becomes not only the dwelling of God with man, emmanuel, but he also becomes the place of meeting with God.

And it's when we are in Christ we can have fellowship with God as well as entrance into the presence of God.

And because we are in Him, everything that pertains to life flows out of our new identity that we find by being in Christ.

Whether it's personal or social or economic, everything relates to our relationship with him.

And this is why Paul urges us you're not your own, you've been bought with a price.

Therefore, glorify God in your body.

This is why the scriptures tell us whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God, because the God who is too holy to approach is the God who's communicated a way for us to come to him, and he did it in the types and the pictures of the people of Israel in a tent where they would bring a lamb and they would sacrifice it.

And he shows us that that's pointing to himself coming in a body that is human, who would give up himself like a lamb so that that sacrifice might be our place of return to paradise in Jesus Christ.

And now that we're his, we not only have a place back in, but a place of fellowship with God in him and a place of representation of God through his sanctifying work, which Leviticus also points to.

It's a great book.

Don't just think of it as a bunch of priestly rules and worship this and festivals that and walk away and not capture it.

It's a beautiful picture, but it's only a picture.

The reality is found in Christ, but it's only a picture.

The reality is found in Christ.

Let's pray, father, we thank you for the book of Leviticus, thank you for what we learned there and how we can see your ultimate purpose plan in Christ, to bring us truly into everlasting relationship with you and fellowship with you.

We thank you for our Lord, jesus Christ, who has come to bring us to God, and we pray that we might always be found in him and, lord, that our life would be subsumed in him and that our life might be so clothed with him that we would represent you in this world as we ought, and we pray this in Christ's name, amen.