LEVITICUS - All The Bible Teaches About
Contents:
I believe that these comments aptly describe the attitude of 20th century Christians toward the Book of Leviticus.
Where are we?
I was attending a banquet the other night and was seated next to a Christian woman whose child attends the same school as our children. She commenced our conversation by politely asking what I did for a living. I responded that I was a preacher.
Second, it is difficult to draw the line between moral precepts and other law. Views Read Edit View history. How, then, can we find this ancient book relevant to our lives? When Christ returns, these laws will still exist Isaiah God's Masterwork Volume One:
As the conversation developed, I told this woman that I would soon be beginning to teach in the Book of Leviticus. That brought an immediate response. She told me that she had been involved in Bible Study Fellowship and that she had been assigned to study and to teach the Book of Leviticus. She went on to say that she went off by herself and sat down to read the book for two hours, after which time she was convinced she could come up with nothing whatever to say on this text. A number of Christians would agree with her analysis. There is a kind of mental block which most Christians seem to have about certain books—especially Old Testament books, and particularly the Book of Leviticus.
In this lesson I want to try to identify some of the reasons for our mental block about this book. I want to isolate some of the reasons why people think that Leviticus is an impossible book to read, to study, and most of all, to teach. I then will seek to show that these reasons are not valid. In the process, I hope to show why we should study the Book of Leviticus.
The book is filled with regulations. The English title, Leviticus, is borrowed from the Latin Vulgate, which, in turn, is derived from the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew text. It focuses on the levitical priesthood, who are prominently featured in this book. It should be pointed out, however, that the book is not written exclusively for the levitical priests, but has much instruction directed to the Israelite layman.
One student noted, “Leviticus says not to wear clothing woven of All day long and in every aspect of life, the Lord wants me to pursue a PhD in Old Testament under an evangelical scholar named Gordon Wenham. “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy,” says Leviticus it says: “like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your F. Duane Lindsey, "Leviticus," in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament, ed.
The very first words of the Book of Leviticus are: The regulations of Leviticus are a direct revelation from God to and through Moses. This means, as Wenham further emphasizes, 6 that the legislation given in the book is that which is likely laid down in response to actual incidents which required a divine response. The continuity of Leviticus with Exodus is immediately apparent, as can be illustrated by several common factors. In Leviticus there are many priestly regulations laid down.
In the Book of Exodus the design for the tabernacle is given Exod. At the very conclusion of the Book of Exodus the presence of God descends upon the tabernacle. In Leviticus, the implications of the presence of God are spelled out. While Leviticus does press the distinctions between clean and unclean, holy and profane, it does not press the distinction between the sacred and the secular. To others, the Book of Leviticus is something like camping … they tried it once and that was enough to last them a lifetime. The first thing we must seek to do is to identify the reasons why we tend to dislike and thus to avoid this book.
Here are some of the ones which I have isolated.
Dull after all the excitement of Genesis and Exodus. My first response to this criticism of Leviticus is not to deny the charge. If I had to choose between reading the exciting narratives in Genesis or Exodus and the levitical codes I would quickly opt for reading in the books of Genesis and Exodus. Compared to other portions of the Bible Leviticus is dull. My second response is that our culture has concluded that anything which is not entertaining is not worth listening to. They do this in competition with other media, trying to do the same thing.
And so we have come to the conclusion that we deserve to have all communication be entertaining and exciting. I would like to suggest that in most not all cases the level of drama and hype is directly related to the irrelevance of what we are watching. You have to spice up the kinds of things we see in the media because they have little value, other than entertainment. On the other hand, the greatest and most significant communications of history have not been particularly entertaining. How many of you go to the Richardson Public Library and check out the city code book for entertaining reading?
No one does, but they do read the city codes very carefully if they plan to build a house in Richardson. The Book of Leviticus is a book of regulations, regulations concerning how men are to relate to God and to their neighbors. Failure to observe these regulations can lead to death, and has eternal implications.
Thus, the very form and content of the Book of Leviticus, which in the past may have caused us to avoid the book, is that which signals us to the vitally important communication from God which is contained in this book. No law book should be taken lightly, especially one which comes from God. I was talking about Leviticus with a friend this week. This is a bloody book. But then anyone who understands Old or New Testament faith understands that blood is required to be shed in order for sins to be forgiven and for men to be able to approach God.
For the full and complete forgiveness of sins of both Old and New Testament believers, the blood of Christ was shed:. And not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ 1 Pet. Anyone who has attempted to study the Book of Leviticus would have to agree that it is not an easy book to understand. The fact is, however, that all biblical revelation in not only hard to fathom, it is impossible, apart from the illumination of the Holy Spirit:.
For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God … But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ 1 Cor. Thus the Spirit of God enables us to comprehend the truths of God which are otherwise impossible to fathom or to accept. The level of difficulty of understanding Leviticus or any other Scripture, for that matter is not without purpose.
The richest truths of the Word of God seldom lie on the surface, for all to see. As Proverbs puts it,. A literary masterpiece of the English language, the original King James Bible is still in use today. It is the burnt offering, because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning, and the fire of the altar shall be burning in it. I have given it unto them for their portion of my offerings made by fire; it is most holy, as is the sin offering, and as the trespass offering. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations concerning the offerings of the LORD made by fire: In the place where the burnt offering is killed shall the sin offering be killed before the LORD: And Aaron held his peace.
And they did according to the word of Moses. This is the law for her that hath born a male or a female. He shall be brought unto the priest: This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations. I am the LORD. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: It is wicked, but so is, say, greed. We must not imply that homosexual sex is the sin of our age.
If we are to be faithful to Scripture, we must also preach against theft, greed, drunkenness, reviling, and defrauding others, many of which are also trivialised in our society, and all of which also characterize the unrighteous. Homosexual sin is not inescapable. Paul continues in verse These forms of behaviour are not appropriate for the Corinthian church precisely because it is not who they are any more. Some of them clearly had been active homosexuals. They did once live in these ways. They have been washed, sanctified and justified; forgiven, cleansed from their sins, and set apart for God.
They have a new standing and identity before him. It is possible for someone living a practicing gay lifestyle to be made new by God. Temptations and feelings may well linger. That Paul is warning his readers not to revert to their former way of life suggests there is still some desire to do so.
But in Christ we are no longer who we were. Those who have come out of an active gay lifestyle need to understand how to see themselves. What defined us then no longer defines us now.
What does the Bible say about homosexuality?
The law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, men who practise homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. Also in common with 1 Corinthians, same-sex sex is mentioned among other wide-ranging sins, non-sexual as well as sexual.
They do not conform to the life Christians are now to lead. They go against the grain of the new identity we have in Christ. Attempts to read these texts as anything other than prohibitions of homosexual behaviour do not ultimately work. The plain reading of each passage is the right one. It is homosexual practice in general, rather than only certain expressions of it, which are forbidden in Scripture.
To attempt to demonstrate otherwise is to violate the passages themselves. The very passages that show us that homosexual activity is a sin, make it very clear that it is not a unique sin. It is one example of what is wrong with all of us. Watch this video for those struggling with what the Bible teaches? Website design by Creative Stream. Living Out on twitter. Living Out on facebook. Living Out on Vimeo. What if you're same-sex attracted and tempted to reject what the Bible teaches?
What does the Bible say about sex? What's wrong with a permanent, faithful, stable same-sex relationship?