Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Leviticus is a book about a perfect, holy God who wants to draw near to his people who are, unfortunately, completely depraved and sinful. It walks us through the very messy and detailed process of how that can be possible.
There are a lot of components involved, so set your mind to press through on the days when it's not easy. You'll be grateful you did, just like you tell your kids when you take them to piano and swim lessons. Those things are good, but your kid's ability to see that it's good just hasn't developed yet. So put on your swim cap. Here we go.
First things first, who are the Levites? They're the descendants of Levi, one of the twelve tribes of Israel slash sons of Jacob, and just yesterday we saw that God appointed this particular tribe or line to be the priests in the tabernacle. So we'll be dealing with a lot of things pertaining to priests. They are the mediators between the holy God and the sinful people. God is going to show them what steps are necessary to make this relationship functional.
There are three primary ways of being that are laid out in this book. Unclean, clean, and holy. In general, the people are unclean. Always, God is holy. And the purpose of these rituals and laws set out in this book is to get the people from the state of being unclean to the state of being clean or even holy. There are various ways this has to be approached. First, we'll look at a lot of offerings. Why?
While we're in these more challenging parts about sacrifices and offerings, I want to point you to a short article that explains these five major offerings in brief. The burn offering, the grain offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering. We'll link to that article in our show notes today.
We open with Moses speaking with God at the tent of meeting, a phrase that now represents the tabernacle. It's very confusing that they use these same terms to refer to different things, but just know that once the tabernacle exists, that's what the phrase tent of meeting refers to. Everything we read today was God talking to Moses at the tent of meeting. And the first thing God does is establish a lot of ritual offerings. You may wonder, first of all, why this barbaric stuff has to happen at all.
Remember back in the Garden of Eden when God told Adam and Eve about the connection between sin and death? By sparing their lives, God saves them, but something else has to die in their place. In that instance, God killed an animal to clothe them. And here we see lots of animals are going to have to die because we've got three million sinners living in the desert together for 40 years.
So God sets up this sacrificial system so that animals can die instead of people, to make atonement for their sins. Atonement means to cover. So the animal's death is a temporary covering for their sin. And not to give too much away here, but God knows all along that this plan is temporary. It's just a band-aid, not a permanent fix. This is a placeholder, a foreshadowing of the real solution that will come in the form of Jesus and his death on the cross.
But for now, we've got this system. And learning a little bit about it should really increase gratitude in all of us that we live approximately 3,300 years later. Another thing we'll see taking place here is not just God's provision of a blood sacrifice, but also God's provision of food for the priests.
they get to keep some of the things that are sacrificed. Since their job requires them to be working to help mediate this relationship between God and his people, they can't be out raising food and farming. If they're going to obey God's calling on their lives, they'll have to trust him to feed them. Fortunately, he has a plan for this, and it involves other people bringing them food all the time via an offering. And God calls that offering Most Holy.
God also says that no offerings can be made without salt, and he calls it the salt of your covenant with God. Salt implies preservation, so bringing salt with these offerings is a way of remembering and preserving the covenant with God. In these offerings, the fat represents the very best part of the animal, so God keeps all that for himself. 3.16 says, All the fat is the Lord's. Amen.
By the way, lots of you asked us to put this verse on a shirt, so we made one for you, and it's in the TBR store. Apparently, it's a great conversation starter at the gym.
In chapter 4, we see that even unintentional sin requires a sacrifice. That's because sin is still sin regardless of motive, and it still has to be paid for. This is true even for the priests and leaders among them, and the higher your position, the more valuable the sacrifice required of you. Leadership, especially spiritual leadership, comes with added weight and responsibility.
To heighten understanding of this, God also required that anytime a priest sinned against the congregation or led the congregation in sin, that the blood of the offering be sprinkled in front of the veil of the sanctuary. Let's talk for a second about what that is, just to make sure we don't miss the significance here.
Remember how the tabernacle is laid out in the shape of a cross? And the things that are the furthest out of the tabernacle are made of less valuable metals like bronze. Then they increase in value to silver, then gold-plated, then pure gold. The first area outside with the bronze stuff is called the outer court. Then we move into the holy place. And at the far end of the holy place is a big curtain that separated the holy place from the most holy place, which is also called the holy of holies.
This is the section where the pure gold item is kept, the mercy seat, which is the lid for the Ark of the Covenant and is where God dwells. No one was allowed to enter that area except the high priest, and he was only allowed in there one day of the year, which we'll talk about soon. But for now, what you need to know is that when the priests sinned or when the whole congregation sinned, the blood of their offering was brought from the bronze altar in the outer court into the holy place and sprinkled in front of the veil.
With regular people, the blood was just thrown on the sides of the bronze altar. But with the priests or the sin of the whole congregation, those sins defiled the whole tabernacle. What was your God shot today? Mine was in the moment I just described where the priest is carrying the blood inside the tabernacle on account of his own sin. This has to feel pretty weighty, to have to carry blood up to God's door and sprinkle it there. But I wonder if it reminded the priests that God spared them when they as a people sprinkled blood on their own doorways.
The people it happened to were still alive. This was just a year ago that he brought them out of Egypt. They remember the screams of the Egyptian families in the night. They remember fleeing because God had rescued them. And now they stand in front of his earthly throne, deeply aware of their own sins and his goodness. I'm in awe of the fact that a holy God has made a way for our sins to be atoned for.
He's merciful. He provides a sacrifice. And He's where the joy is. Through the years of TBR, we found that people who read the Bible together finish the Bible together. And there's a great community of other Bible readers in our official TBR Recaptains Facebook group. Recaptains are our monthly supporters who keep TBR going. And no matter which support level you sign up for, you get access to this exclusive Facebook group.
People post questions, share their God shots, and encourage each other to keep reading. It's my favorite little corner of Facebook because we're all on the same team doing the same thing. And just by being a ReCaptain, you help us reach more people with God's Word. Find out more at thebiblerecap.com forward slash ReCaptains or click the link in the show notes.