Come and See

In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, we read about when Jesus began to

call his first disciples.

One of those, the first of those, was Philip, who, like Andrew and Peter,

was from the town of Bethsaida.

Philip went out immediately and found his friend Nathanael and said to him about Jesus of Nazareth,

he says he told him about Jesus and what he was doing and all of that,

and Nathaniel responded to Philip, Nazareth?

Can anything good come from there? Now, that was a statement that was made oftentimes

in those days because Nazareth was a poor town up in the northwest part of the country,

and there wasn't much that came out of Nazareth.

And so the statement around every place was, Nazareth?

Can anything good come from there?

Well, Philip didn't argue with Nathanael, he said, come and see.

And that's all he said to him, come and see. And so Nathanael went with Philip

to see Jesus, but he really wasn't expecting too much.

I mean, after all, Nazareth, can anything good come from Nazareth?

Well, I wonder if that isn't the way modern people think of Jesus when we ask them to come and see.

Jesus, can anything good come out of Christianity, when they see what's going on in these days.

But however, after meeting Jesus, Nathanael realized that Jesus was much better

than he had expected, and within minutes was calling Jesus, even in this early

time, was calling him the Son of God.

And Nathanael went on and chose to spend the next three years with Jesus,

and his life was never to be the same.

Now I introduced that part basically for just the statement,

come and see. And unfortunately.

I won't mention her name, and I hope that she's not here today,

but there's somebody who talked to me about a certain book in the Bible when

she's reading through the books of the Bible,

reading through the Bible every year, which we've been encouraged to do.

She said there's just one book she gets into, and she goes like,

why did God even put that in there?

Can you tell me which book do you think it is? Well, that's one.

Numbers is one. That's not it. Close. Leviticus. She said, Leviticus,

why does God even put Leviticus in there?

You know, and so we're going to be, we've gone through Genesis and Exodus in

some of our studies, and we've taken some quite a bit time to do those,

but we're going to begin looking at the book of Leviticus.

And I know everybody thinks, oh, brother, here we go for a summer slump, but really not.

There's some interesting things in Leviticus that we're going to see.

I don't know if it'll take us, well, I know it won't take us a whole year to

study it, but we're going to be looking at the book of Leviticus.

And when I say to you that Leviticus is a great book and there's some good,

great ideas in it, you may just roll your eyes and think, Leviticus.

Can anything good, anything practical come from Leviticus?

Well, yeah, if you've read it, yes, it can. A somewhat cynical analyst has observed,

Leviticus is a dust heap containing a single pearl, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

You guys thought that Jesus invented that statement, but that actually came

from the book of Leviticus.

And a casual reading of Leviticus may cause the reader to feel that Leviticus

is the epitome of Old Testament irrelevance.

Why on earth did God even put that book in the Bible just so we would learn

how to pronounce the name Leviticus?

Actually, it wasn't called that in the beginning. That was what we named it

when we canonized the Old Testament,

and it really means Levitical laws or laws of the Levites, procedures and rules

of the Levites, the priestly tribe of the Israelites.

And so when we think of that, that being the laws and the rules and the governance

of the Levites, you think, boring, don't you? You kind to think about that, don't you?

Leviticus is full, though, of rituals

and sacrifices that have not been performed for nearly 2,000 years.

And one of the times I was in a church looking at Passover and some of the things,

some of the Levitical laws and the sacrifices, I think I said this leading up to Easter and Passover,

that they figured at one Passover time, one Passover week, there were more than

250,000 lambs sacrificed.

And that means burning the hides and hair and everything.

And I don't know about you, but I haven't ever done it with a curling iron,

but some of you ladies have.

When you've used a curling iron, you get that little burn of some hair.

Doesn't that smell so wonderful?

Awesome and awesome. And I was thinking, you know, in all of this,

of all these Levitical things and their sacrifices and stuff,

wouldn't it be great to burn some sacrifices in the sanctuary just to smell how holy that is.

Maybe not. But these rituals and sacrifices begin performing even as much as 2,000 years ago.

It goes into great detail describing a priesthood that no longer exists and

feasts and holidays that are no longer observed by regular Israelis or Jews.

All of these factors is probably why Leviticus is the least read book of the Bible.

In fact, let me ask you, how many times have you decided you wanted to pick

a good book up to read in front of the fireplace and thought,

oh, I want to read Leviticus?

Probably not. All of these factors is probably why Leviticus,

as I said, is the least read book.

Dr. Smith, in his survey of the Pentateuch, which is the first five books of

the Bible, says this, the prejudice against it notwithstanding,

Leviticus is a Christian book.

Now, this is Old Testament, okay,

before Christ, but this writer says that Leviticus is a Christian book.

The Bible of Jesus contained this book.

The Bible that Jesus would have known at that time, the Jewish Torah.

The Bible of Jesus contained in this book, more than 40 New Testament references

to Leviticus have been identified.

So all of these laws and rituals and all these sacrifices and things like that

that Leviticus hold, they were referred to in the New Testament,

which means they were still understanding the necessity of those things.

So while what appears on the surface—he goes on to write—what appears on the

surface to be a barren wasteland proves to be a goldmine to those with patience

to plunge its death. Now, say it with me.

I want you to say it together after I get it. Leviticus is a goldmine.

Let's say that. One, two, three.

Leviticus is a goldmine. Have you convinced yourself yet?

We're still going on, but let's go. So as we begin our study,

Leviticus, I invite you to come and see.

I'm going to ask you to open your Bibles, release your preconceived ideas about

this book, and come with me this time as we discover what treasures God has for us. And I.

Part of Leviticus, which kind of sets the stage for it.

It says in chapter one, the Lord called to Moses.

Now, this is while they were still, Moses was still the leader,

and spoke to him from the tent of meeting.

Now, you remember the tent of meeting was outside the camp. They were in the wilderness.

They had it all set up. There was a tabernacle there, but there was also a tent

of meeting where God would come down and visit with Moses only.

And lead him, okay? And he said, speak to the Israelites and say to them,

when anyone among you brings an offering to the Lord, bring as your offering

an animal from either the herd or the flock.

And it goes on to start talking. The whole rest of the book is about different sacrifices and laws.

There's even some rules in there in the book of Leviticus we might get later

is, what to do when you get mold in your house. Wow.

Now, you don't go to the store and buy bleach because they didn't have tractor

supply or Walmart like was mentioned last week by somebody.

But as we look at this book, I'm going to ask you to set aside some time this

week to read through this book in one sitting.

It will probably take you about an hour to read through the entire book,

hour, maybe an hour and a half to read through the entire book of Leviticus,

and to do it with an open mind.

The reason for that is you will get a big picture of what this book is about.

What we normally do when we do Bible studies is we take the first chapter,

maybe in the first few verses, and we try to read through that,

and then we try to analyze that, and then we go to the next ones,

and we try to analyze that.

And what happens is you do not get a picture of the whole thing.

So read through the entire book in its entirety, and you will see what it does.

Then I'm going to ask you to try to set aside another hour later in the week

to carefully read through the first seven chapters, looking especially for repeated

phrases, words and phrases.

So we'll do that every week for a little while, just kind of read through that.

Now, you're going to come back to me and say, Pastor Tim, that's an effort and futility.

Why are we doing this. But as we go on, I trust that we'll see some relevance

to it and some pointing to Christ.

As we survey the book of Leviticus, we'll discover that Leviticus is indeed

a very relevant book for Christians because that's the basis of everything we

look at in the Old Testament when we come to the person of Christ.

If it wasn't for the Old Testament in Leviticus and the laws of sacrifices and

holiness and the blood sacrifice and all of that.

The New Testament with Christ would be meaningless. If we don't gauge sin,

if we don't measure sin, if we don't look at what holiness is, the holiness of God,

how can we measure what we're redeemed from, right?

And so we look at this in the book of Leviticus as we go on.

And so there's a few things that the book of Leviticus teaches us.

The first thing is this, It talks to us about the great problem of sin.

Now, there is a—in Wisconsin, southwestern Wisconsin, over by Schultzberg,

there's a Catholic—not a monastery, but it's a home for retired nuns.

And we would go there oftentimes as pastors. We would go there for prayer retreats,

and they have rooms and stuff that you can set up.

They call them cells, by the way. We weren't locked in, but they call them cells,

but you have a small room that has a bed and a sink.

And you go in there basically and you spend time in prayer during those times.

Of course, they do feed you, which is good.

But it was in a place called Cincinnati, S-I-N-N, S-I-N-N, S-I-N-N-A-W-A.

And so we were talking about that one time. And one of my friends in the ministry

who's not in this conference anymore, he says, Oh, it's pronounced Cincinnati.

I thought it was Cincinnati. But no, that's not what it is.

So the first thing we're going to look at is what is sin?

The word sin is used 90 times in the book of Leviticus, more than any other book in the Bible.

The word is used over four times as much in Leviticus than it is in Genesis and Exodus combined.

Maybe that's one reason why we don't really like to read Leviticus because we

don't like to think about sin.

Nobody does. Nobody wants to really think about your sinfulness.

In Exodus, we found that God was concerned with getting his people out of Egypt.

Exodus was an openly redemptive book.

The people of Israel had been living in Egypt as slaves for 430 years to the

day when they came out of Egypt, came out of the land of Egypt,

and so it was an openly redemptive book.

In fact, Moses is referred to as the Old Testament Messiah or Deliverer.

He was the one who delivered them out of Egypt, out of the land of sin.

He was kind of the Old Testament precursor of Jesus, of the Christ.

And so we looked at that as a redemptive book, and that it reveals how God was

concerned with releasing the Israelites from the bondage of Egyptian slavery,

which was referred to as a life of sin.

There was a sense that they were living in the abyss of sin.

In the book of Leviticus, which only spans a one-month period of teaching—now to get that in mind,

this book of Leviticus was probably referred to about a month of teaching to

the rabbinical students and those who would be in the synagogue schools.

It took about a month of teaching in the book of Leviticus.

That's all it took.

It's about the building of the tabernacle, or after that, we find that God is

now concerned with something different than getting his people out of Egypt.

I don't know if you've ever seen the old commercial, and unfortunately,

it's referring to a cigarette, but have you ever seen the old commercial,

you can take Salem out of the country, but you can't take the country out of Salem?

No, you guys are that old, right?

Okay, I just want to make sure I wasn't that older than you guys,

but anyway, so you can take Salem out of the country, but you can't take the country out of Salem.

In Leviticus, God's main purpose was to get Egypt out of his people.

He had gotten his people out of Egypt.

Now he wanted to get the old ways out of the people, the sinful ways out of the people.

And so when we live in sin long enough, there are thought patterns that become ingrained in us.

The desires are still so strong that simple forgiveness doesn't work.

We can be forgiven, but we need to leave that life of sin.

Like Jesus said to the woman who was caught in adultery is, now leave your life of sin.

We need to leave that and move into a life of holiness.

This is what Leviticus is about as a precursor to the New Testament.

God was concerned with dealing with his people's problem with sin.

The problem of sin is really quite new in America today.

I mean, nobody ever before us has ever sinned, right?

So the problem of sin has been a long time since the creation.

Adam and Eve fell, walked away from God, and sin entered the world,

and it has been plaguing us, and that's true, plaguing us ever since.

Problem of sin is not something new ever since Adam and Eve.

People have rejected God's truth.

So sin is disobedience to God's law.

It's disobedience to God's commandments. In fact, it's even more than that.

In Romans, Paul says, we sin when we fall short, when we don't measure up to

what God expects us to be and what God expects us to do.

So sin is falling short, as he says, of the glory of God.

So what is the glory of God? Wow.

That's a year's worth of sermons, right?

So what is the glory of God? Sin, as I've told you before, is kind of an archery term.

It means missing the target entirely. Now, I don't know how many of you ever

shot bows and arrows at, well, just the arrows, not the bows,

at targets out in front of you.

Okay, so you have a bullseye in the center, and then you have multiple rings

around that, and then you have the white around the target.

Sin is when you miss that target entirely. You don't even get on the board.

So sin is when we don't even get on the board to God's holiness,

to God's righteousness, to God's purity, to God's all-consuming love.

It's when we don't get on the board, when we fall short, as Paul referred to. So what does sin do?

Sin is disobeying God, breaking his laws. And in many places in the book of

Exodus, we read that those who break God's commands and disobey are to be cut off.

This phrase is used 15 times in the book of Leviticus, that if they sin,

they are to be cut off from the people.

Okay? This term teaches us that those who are disobedient, those who sin,

are to be separated from God and from God's people.

So this comes in that idea that sin separates us from God.

Sin, falling away from God's glory, missing the target, separates us from God's holiness.

And yet we'll see in the book of Leviticus as we go on, God says, be holy as I am holy.

That's the theme that goes out. It's also repeated in the New Testament.

So this is what sin is. It does. It separates us from God. Our God's a holy God.

Four times in the book of Leviticus in chapters 10, 19, and 20,

God tells his people to be holy because he is holy.

When God's people sin, they become stained, they become impure,

and they no longer can approach or stand in God's presence. Now,

you've heard of our righteousness being as filthy rags.

So what do you do with a stained garment?

Well, thankfully, we have some things that can take most stains out,

but if a garment gets so stained that you can't get the stain out, what do you do with it?

Throw it away. Make it rags. Cut it up and make it rags.

Our righteousness is like filthy rags.

In the reference there. So it doesn't matter what we do, we cannot get the stains out.

When God's people sin, they become stained, they become impure,

they can no longer stand in God's presence.

The prophet Isaiah wrote in chapter 59 of his book that our sins separate us

from God, and that our sins also hide God's face from us.

Now, when Jesus was on the cross, what was one of the last seven words or seven

statements that he supposedly made.

My God, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why have you turned your back from me?

And in the book of Isaiah and Leviticus and stuff, we see that God cannot look on evil.

And Jesus took our sin upon him when he went to the cross.

And so God had to turn his face from his own son because he couldn't look at

evil, the evil that Jesus had taken on.

You know, the interesting thing is we forsake Jesus too when we sinned because

it's our sin that was put on him.

And how often do we think people think that, okay, God has forgiven me through

Jesus Christ, so it doesn't matter how I live now.

Hmm. Yeah, it does.

So what is sin and what does sin do? And then whose problem is it anyway? So whose problem is it?

It's everybody's problem. Romans 3.23 says, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

In the book of Leviticus, we see this principle illustrated.

In chapter 7, we will hear the Lord speak to Moses and address the people's sin.

And in doing so, God refers to the sins of the anointed priest,

the whole Israelite community, the leaders, and every individual member of the

community. He doesn't leave anybody out.

He refers to everybody and their sins.

It doesn't matter who we are or what we do. We are guilty of sinning against God.

And then we also see in Leviticus, in the book of Leviticus,

we read about a great problem sin, but we also discover God's great provision of sacrifice.

As God speaks to Moses from the tabernacle, God not only points out man's problem of sin,

but God also tells Moses of the provision that he's instituting so that that

sin will be forgiven and covered over.

You see, man's problem of sin must be dealt with before man can come into a

restored relationship and fellowship with the one true and holy God.

We cannot, since God cannot look on evil, our sin has to be taken care of before

we can come back into the presence of God.

And in Leviticus, we see that oftentimes this is done through sacrifice.

God saw man's need and recognized that man was in no position to do anything about his own.

Now, you hear people say that I've lived a really good life, so I deserve heaven.

Sorry, it's not about what we do or don't do.

It's about what Jesus has already done and what's our reaction to what Jesus has done.

God saw man's need and recognized that we were in no position to do anything about it.

And so he spoke from the tent of meeting, informing Moses of his provision.

The words offering and sacrifice are often used in about 90 times in this book,

and the first seven chapters deals with the seven sacrifices that God established.

Now, in your reading, you're going to see listing all of those sacrifices that.

They were commanded to do, and I'm not going to take a test of you next week

to find out if you remembered those.

So you can come next week.

But just a thought. Anyway, so let me give you a heads up on some of what you'll be reading this week.

First of all, a worshiper could never come before into God's presence empty-handed.

He always had to come. He or she always had to come. Well, primarily,

he had to come with an offering before the Lord.

You could not come to the temple, to the tabernacle, to the Holy of Holies,

and to the place of worship.

You could not come without an offering. And the Hebrew word translated offering

means literally to bring near or brought near.

This offering provides a clue to the significance of the sacrificial system.

We could not send an offering ahead of us.

We had to take it with us and be brought near, bring that sacrifice near to the throne of God.

The word provides a clue. The sacrifices were the means by which a worshiper

could come into the presence of God.

You could not come into the presence of God unless you brought an offering.

Now, we use that phrase or that word. We think of that word as meaning money.

We bring money and put it in the box out at the door, and that's our offering.

Well, for them, the offering was very costly.

It was a lamb or a bull or something of their flock that was quite precious

to them, a firstborn, unblemished animal that was brought to them.

And in most cases, the Israelites were commanded to sacrifice a domestic animal.

They did not go out into the wilderness and find a deer and bring that in and

provide that. It had to be something

that cost them money, something that cost them out of their flock.

The animal would need to be the most valuable animal in their flock or herd

because the Israelite would be trained and would have served a purpose in knowing that.

So the gift also depended on one's financial situation.

God cared about those who were poor, and just because they could not afford

a sheep, goat, or bull, God provided a way for them to sacrifice as well.

He allowed for the poor to substitute a small bird or a couple small birds for

the normal requirement of sheep and bulls if they could not afford a sheep or a bull.

The really beautiful illustration is this is the love of God,

that he is not partial to the people based on their financial means.

He wants everybody to be able to come into his presence, and it provided it needed a sacrifice.

Then we see that the worshiper actually took part in the sacrifice.

He had to bring the animal to the tabernacle and

oftentimes and not only did he present the animal

for sacrifice but oftentimes the one who was bringing the sacrifice for atonement

would have to place his hand on the head of that sheep or goat or bull or whatever

place his hand on the head as they sacrificed that animal and basically saying,

you are dying in my place.

We're taking your life so that I can be free from my sin.

Do you see what it's like now for when Jesus became the Lamb of God, the sacrifice for all.

We substituted him for us. Who killed Jesus?

We all did. It wasn't just the Jews. It wasn't the Roman persecutors.

It was us. It was our sin that put him to death.

The animal would be substitute for the worshiper.

The animal would take the place and assume the position and the punishment for us.

Hebrews 9 says this, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.

In the book of Leviticus, we'll see the life of an animal is in its blood.

Without that blood, there is no life. And the same thing goes with us,

is without the shedding of blood, there could be no forgiveness.

So in Leviticus, we read about the great problem of sin, and we read about the

great provision of sin, but we also read about the great power of the priesthood.

The priesthood will be described in great detail in chapters 8 through 15.

Priesthood teaches us is that man can approach God.

And so we see in this first that God chose and ordained Aaron and his sons to be priests.

They were the chosen mediators, and they were to stand between God and the people.

After Aaron and his sons were called to the tent, they were ordained.

The Hebrew word for ordained literally means to fill the hands.

And so what would happen in our church, in the Freemuthers church,

when a pastor is ordained, the bishop will lay a Bible on his or her hands and say these words.

When we are kneeling at the altar for our ordination at annual conference, when we see that,

the bishop will say this, the Lord pour upon you the Holy Spirit for the office

and work of an elder now committed into your hand by the laying on of our hands.

Take authority to minister in the word of God, faithfully proclaim his word,

declare his forgiveness, celebrate the sacraments, and shepherd his people.

At that point, like I said, they lay the Bible open in your hands,

and they will say those words, and oftentimes the pastor who is being ordained

will be anointed, oftentimes, not always,

but be anointed at the same time.

So a priest's life was to be filled with nothing but the holy things of God.

Aaron and his sons then went through an ordination service where they were completely

cleansed and set apart and had special clothes to put on.

And when the ordination was over, they immediately began their priestly service.

It says in chapter 9 of Leviticus that Aaron offered a sacrifice for himself and his sons.

He had to first offer the sacrifice for his own and his sins,

then for the sins of his sons—that's hard to say twice—and then only when the

sacrifice for their sin was offered could they offer the sacrifices for the people of Israel.

A pastor being ordained, a leader of a church, cannot offer forgiveness for the.

Until he's been forgiven and released of his sin. Another thought,

the New Testament says that we are all priests.

We are a royal priesthood.

Every one of us is ordained in the mind of God.

Not to preach up here necessarily, although if you want to, I could set it up.

But we are ordained to be the ministers to a community that needs to know Jesus.

So we need to be forgiven and set apart and redeemed and made holy to present

a most holy God to the people around us.

I wonder if we're fully aware of God's provision for our sin.

And if we were, wouldn't our everyday lives be filled with such overwhelming

joy in praise and worship that we live among a people who need to come and see Jesus?

We often say that at the close of our service. Go now and what?

Serve a world that desperately needs Jesus. We are the only Jesus that some people may ever see.

What is our life like in presenting those? Then we also see the great principle

of holiness. The great principle of holiness throughout the book of Leviticus

is this, God's holiness demands holiness on the part of those who are his people.

The words holy and clean appear over 300 times in the book of Leviticus.

The verse that captures the essence of this book is found in chapter 19, verse 2.

It says, the Lord said to Moses, speak to the entire assembly of Israel and

say to them, be holy because I, the Lord, your God, am holy.

God's people are to be holy, set apart. That doesn't mean that we sit around

with sourpuss faces because the joy of the Lord is our strength.

But we are to be cleansed and set apart for a holy use for an almighty God and a holy God.

Did you notice that God didn't say you're to try to be holy?

Oh, I have tried so hard this week, Pastor, but I've just failed.

Well, that's good. We should try. But God says, be holy as I am holy. How does that happen?

Only comes through the presence of God.

How do we get to the presence of God? Presenting a sacrifice,

bringing something in our hands and presenting ourselves.

Oftentimes we talk about that in our relationship with Christ as we present ourselves.

Hmm, there's an old song, I Surrender All.

And then when the Israelites approached God in a prescribed manner,

when they practiced the principles of holiness and cleanliness,

when they went to and through their mediator, Only then would they enjoy the

great privilege of the presence of God.

The book of Leviticus reveals that when the priests and people do everything

that the Lord commands, they would enjoy the great privilege of God's presence.

Oh, what fun it is when we're sitting by ourselves sometimes reading the Word

of God or spending some time in prayer or listening to some Christian music,

that when we sense the overwhelming presence of an almighty God in us.

People say, well, when that happens, I'll jump up and shout.

No, when I sense the presence of God, when I sense the holiness of God,

when I sense the spirit of God, I can only sit there and say, Lord,

I'm a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips, and yet I have seen the Lord almighty.

I think those are the words of Isaiah, don't you think?

Only then can we experience the presence of God.

Does God still make provision for his people by sacrifice today?

Sacrifices in Israel stopped a long time ago, probably 2,000,

little less than 2,000 years ago when the temple was destroyed in 70 AD.

New Testament says, and while we were still in our sin, And God demonstrated

his love for us in this way.

He gave his one and only son to die on a cross for us while we were still his enemies.

Isn't that interesting? And Jesus bore the burden of our sin upon his beaten

back. And Jesus carried the penalty for our sin away from us.

He took it outside the camp and our sin was removed as far as the east is from

the west. God provided the ultimate sacrifice for once and for all for sin on

the person of Jesus Christ for anybody who would ever believe.

John 3.16, we understand that to be true.

And Christ is still our powerful high priest.

Sometimes holiness gets a bad rap.

Sometimes we act as if we really don't need it.

But let me ask you, if holiness is a bad rap, and if we don't need it,

how will the world see that we're any different than they are?

Go now and serve a world that desperately needs Jesus. How can we do that unless

we are being set apart for holiness?

Now, like I said Leviticus is not a a fun

book to read it's kind of like reading

the driver's education manual for take

your test at the DMV like oh my goodness all these rules I gotta dim my lights

200 feet before an oncoming car is at 200 yards and then how do I measure that

Do I get out and put a tape measure out there to make sure? Hmm.

And how far back from a stop sign am I supposed to stop?

And how long do I have to wait at that stop sign before I go?

And, you know, and all these things that we have to read.

Leviticus is not a fun book, but it tells us about the holiness of God.

It tells us about the need for sacrifice. It tells us about our sin.

And it tells us where we are and what we need to be to be in the presence of God.