9-21-25 Enjoying Leviticus
Christ in the Bible • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to share with you this morning.
We have had that title up my last few messages. Enjoying Leviticus. I’ll be honest, It’s not the easiest book of the Bible to Enjoy. In fact, I’m looking forward to getting to Numbers and Deuteronomy as they have a bit more narrative to go through. But just because it’s not easy to enjoy doesn’t mean you can’t
It takes a little work. Which is fine. The Bible is a text that get’s misunderstood more often than not. There are people out there that say they know a lot about the Bible, but have never read it. There are people out there that hate the Bible and hate God. They get the idea that God is one way and they ask Google and use single verses out of context to smear God into their image of him, instead of us made in his image.
There are other people who have a desire to know about God, but look the same as a hateful person, for a god made in their image. They twist God into one who calls sin righteousness and righteousness they call sin.
There’s plenty of other people who look at this wonderful text. Earnest Christ followers who have looked at the Bible with much the same effort as one looks at the foreign language pages of electronic instruction manuals. They get to a tough part and skip it all. And when it comes to the Bible, I’ve said in the past, that’s fine. It is much better to skip to segments you understand with the intent to make the effort later to understand what you’ve skipped passed.
Because I’m going to tell you something wonderful about this Book.
So many people think it’s a book of history, which it is, kind of. It tells of the history of the world and all the people in it. In fact, many people think of the Bible as a love story to to us and about us. And I’ll tell you that is part of the story, but it’s not the story.
The Bible is a text all about one person. From the first words in Genesis to the last in Revelation.
And that is what got me going on finding this person in every book of the Bible. The person being Jesus. And here in Leviticus we’ve seen Jesus as a representative of the Grain and Burnt offering, the one we give our worship to.
Jesus as not just the peace offering but he is Peace, when Jesus is present peace is in the room.
The next one is so plain as day, it is almost pointless to cover it. The Sin and trespass offerings. Anyone who knows anything about Jesus knows that he died for this sins of mankind. He is the perfect lamb that takes away the sins of the world.
We know that we need Jesus to forgive us our sins and we know that he willingly gave us his life in payment.
But the big question. One so many don’t fully understand and can’t explain well is WHY?
Why are the wages of sin death?
Why was there animal sacrifice and what did they do?
Why is Jesus, God in the flesh, the one who had to die?
I think Leviticus 4-7 can point us to the answer to these questions. Because remember, there are areas of scripture that answer our questions, but there are also areas of scripture that point us to answers. Or, in the case of Leviticus 4-7, create a few questions.
The first being
Why are the wages of sin death?
Why are the wages of sin death?
Now, if you’ve already turned to Leviticus 4, great, you’re paying attention, you’re on fire. Put a bookmark in it and flip back to Genesis 3:15-17
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Okay, there’s the rule. In words many of us can understand: keep your hand out of the cookie jar.
And some might ask the question: Why was this so bad? It was just fruit, people have done way worse that eating a … whatever fruit it was off a tree.
And the consequence? DEATH?!?! What? We might say, that doesn’t seem fair.
But then we look to God and we see perfect. Nothing out of place, not a spot of dirt. Never a lie, or a deception. 100% without evil.
And Adam and Eve were too. Perfect. Nothing wrong. But, God wants a people to choose to love him. Not by force. So he gave them a choice. Don’t eat the fruit. If you eat the fruit you will know good and evil. And you will die.
The fruit wasn’t magic fruit that bestowed special knowledge. Those of us who have an insatiable curiosity (point at self) we like to do things, so that we know what it feels like. We enjoy the experience. Or just have the experience.
A few weeks ago, I had a shingles scare. FYI, it wasn’t shingles, don’t worry. But I was oddly looking forward to going through it. Not because I’m a weird guy that likes pain and itching, but because I like going through things that I’ve never been through before. Obviously there’s limits to that, there are things I’m perfectly content not going through.
But Adam and Eve had a choice. Listen to God, or not listen to God.
They chose to not listen. And the moment they ate the fruit they knew evil, because they had preformed it.
The were no longer perfect, they had done wrong. They were tainted.
And God said that if they ate from the tree they would die.
So you say, but they didn’t die. Or you might say, they died spiritually, but not physically. Either one, wrong.
They died, right then and there.
The Hebrew word for “die” means
DIE:
DIE:
to pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life.
Prior to the first sin. Adam and Eve were set up to live forever. They were never going to get old and die. They would have looked the same as the day they were created for eternity.
But then they rejected God. They lost access to the sustenance of life. That was withdrawn.
If one loses the ability to ingest food and water, it would take many three or four days for the heart to stop beating and brain activity to stop, but you would be “dead” long before, because that which sustained you was gone.
Now, hopefully something could be done to save you from dying of thirst and hunger. Something to get that sustenance back in your body.
And because Adam and Eve were no longer perfect, nothing they made would be perfect. Which is why we have reminders like
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and Romans 6:23
23 For the wages of sin is death
Each of us is born not perfect. Innocent? to a degree. I would hate to miss a moment here and say that from the context of scripture we can see that prior to a certain age young children are not held eternally accountable to the sins of mankind. There comes a day when they do. So, I hope if there are little ones in your life you are pointing them to Jesus, because one day, when they recognize the difference between good and evil, they will be accountable.
God is 100% perfect and can’t have anything less in his presence.
Now, God is merciful. Yes, the wages of sin is death. We are born, we grow, we age, the whole world was effected by sin, so we have disease, murder, and what have you, and then our body stops. And it’s horrible, it’s not what we were designed for.
So, God, in his mercy, put in place a redemption plan. A way to come back into us and be our sustainer.
Which leads us to question 2.
Why was there animal sacrifice and what did they do?
Why was there animal sacrifice and what did they do?
As we have learned there were several different types of sacrifice that involved animals, but it is the sin and trespass or guilt offering we will cover today.
When Adam and Eve sinned the Bible says they were ashamed and wanted to cover their nakedness.
They sewed some leaves together, but they only last so long. God came in and killed an animal for them and covered them with the skin of the animal. This of course would last longer than the leaves, but it still can only cover them up for so long and then they need something new.
Hence we get into sacrifice.
When sacrifice first started happening it was with the understanding that only God saves us and the process of sacrifice was us putting that belief into action.
For example: When I sin under the old covenant. I must know that God is the one saving me. He has told me doing dot dot dot with the animal was the process I would go through in order to show my faith that he saved me.
Let’s finally get to Leviticus 4 -7 and see what these looked like.
Now, I’m all for going through these line by line. But the nice thing about the books of the Law is that they are redundant so that the reader would have an easier time remembering them. So after today, I would encourage you go back over the Chapters 1-7 and see if you can see and understand it a bit better than you did before.
1 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If anyone sins unintentionally in any of the Lord’s commandments about things not to be done, and does any one of them, 3 if it is the anointed priest who sins, thus bringing guilt on the people, then he shall offer for the sin that he has committed a bull from the herd without blemish to the Lord for a sin offering.
13 “If the whole congregation of Israel sins unintentionally and the thing is hidden from the eyes of the assembly, and they do any one of the things that by the Lord’s commandments ought not to be done, and they realize their guilt, 14 when the sin which they have committed becomes known, the assembly shall offer a bull from the herd for a sin offering and bring it in front of the tent of meeting.
27 “If anyone of the common people sins unintentionally in doing any one of the things that by the Lord’s commandments ought not to be done, and realizes his guilt, 28 or the sin which he has committed is made known to him, he shall bring for his offering a goat, a female without blemish, for his sin which he has committed. 29 And he shall lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and kill the sin offering in the place of burnt offering.
We have 3 groups here:
the priest, he has to be covered before he can enter. Now, Jesus as our high priest, never had to do this. But the priest would have to go through the faith procedure and be as clean as possible, so he could do his job.
We have the congregation or the entire nation. If they sin collectively they must go before the assembly and the priest will sacrifice. This happened often. This is one sacrifice for all. Remember Christ died for all.
Then we have the last, the individual. A sacrifice must be done for you individually. Your personal sin must be atoned for. We say Christ died for the sins of mankind, 100% true. But as an individual we must also recognize our need for his sacrifice.
Jesus got up on that cross and died, because God loved the world so much. But he also died for you individually. Think about that as you reflect on some of your life choices. Don’t feel overwhelmed, I did it too and it’s a long list of sins that Jesus died for me. And the list keeps growing.
But he died for you personally.
And the super crazy thing about it is that he wasn’t dying for the righteous, or the perfect people, there were none.
Jesus died for his enemies.
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
I recently saw a dialog between a Muslim and a Christian. The Muslim made the assumption that each of them despised the other.
The Christian jumped in. “I know you despise me,” he said. “Your Quran tells you to despise Christians.”
“But,” he continued. “Christians love you. We don’t like your ideology, we don’t like the being you follow. But we love you.”
That is so backwards.
There are people you know. And I know you know people like this, because I do and most of you are a little older than me.
But we all know someone we don’t like. Someone, perhaps not in word, but in action, that we don’t want to see in eternity. So we, and I hope not consciously, we withhold the gospel from them.
We sometimes, myself included, think Jesus is only for the good ones, the ones that might not believe in Jesus, but you’d be comfortable having them over for dinner.
And if that has ever been you, and you can’t really think of a reason or intent then Leviticus 4:1-12 is for you. Unintentional sin. Jesus has got you covered.
And even if you do it intentional, Jesus got you covered, but he is going to convict you of that.
Because we must ask the question. If Christ died for you when you were his enemy, why would you not go to your enemy and share that gospel.
The sin an d trespass or guilt offerings covered many means of sin and it was done publicly. Mike stole from Ben, confessed and sacrifice in front of everyone.
Mary gossiped about her sister, everyone hears the confession and sees her repentance.
Repentance was serious work in the wilderness and people did it. Because they knew God loved them and wanted to thank him and worship him in everything he did.
We tend to hide our faith, we don’t want people to know we follow Jesus. Might make us look weird.
I love being weird.
We don’t have giant assemblies anymore like Israel did. we don’t have sacrifice. Because sacrifice was a temporary covering. better than leaves, but not forever.
We needed a sacrifice that would cover us forever. Not just a temporary, have to come back next week.
But that is what the Israelites had to do. Every year, month, every sin had to be atoned for.
But it was all still by faith. The people had faith in God’s power to forgive through the animal sacrifice. But they did have the promise that someone would come some day who would provide the full sacrifice. The sacrifice that would cover all sin for all time.
As the animals were part of our fallen world the reason their sacrifice had to be repeated over and over again was that, for lack of a better phrasing, the forgiveness decayed, just like we do.
To have a sacrifice that would last forever, it would have to come from somewhere untainted and perfect.
Which leads us to our final question:
Why is Jesus, God in the flesh, the one who had to die?
Why is Jesus, God in the flesh, the one who had to die?
I already started that didn’t I? In order to fully forgive sins and restore relationship with God, to receive the sustenance of eternal life, one must come from the place that is perfect and die in the place of the imperfect.
One of the universal laws of nature is justice for wrong doing. Sin must be paid for. We may ask the question why can’t God just forgive. Just say everyone is forgiven and no payment is needed.
If there is no consequence for sin, if there is no forgiveness and no transformation, then what is heaven, but an eternally tainted place where eventually war would ravage and hate would reign.
No, sin has no place in heaven, so to get there, one must be changed, transformed, forgiven.
But on our part the wages of sin is death. That is the fate we buy for ourselves when we sin.
Apart from Jesus all we have within us is death.
What did both John the Baptist and Jesus call the Pharisees on a few occasions?
A brood of vipers. A viper is a snake filled with venom that will kill. Vipers are filled with death.
If you get bit by a venomous snake what will you need?
You will need anti-venom. you will need something put in your body to stop the death.
To make antivenom what you need is venom and an animal. And not just any animal will do. Three are commonly used. Horses, goats and sheep or lambs.
They inject a small amount of venom into the animal and the animal produces anti bodies, then we take the blood out, do some sciencey stuff to it and then you give it to the bitten person and they don’t die.
Horses were on the list, and it works, and can be mass produced because horses are big and have a lot of blood. But there are side effects that are a lot less unpleasant than death, but still uncomfortable.
But when you get antivenom that was made in a lamb, there are significantly less chance of side effects.
All that to say, when you have death raging in your body, only the blood of a lamb can save you.
Now, obviously, if you skim through Leviticus 4-7 a variety of animals are used.
Bulls for the masses. Why? Lots of blood. For the individuals, goats, lambs, and if the person is poor, two turtledoves Less blood.
Jesus is identified as the Lamb of God.
So how did Jesus’ blood become the answer to the death raging inside of us?
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
Sin was placed on Jesus. And verse 7 illustrates it beautifully. He took it, he didn’t fight against our sin being placed on him. Then Jesus died with our sin on him.
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
When you make antivenom the animal you inject has to be healthy. You don’t want to be cured of the venom and then get botulism or something else that will kill you.
So, if by chance my blood could cure your sin, great right, nope, because along with the cure to your sin, carries mine. My blood can’t take away sin.
Jesus has no sin. But he took on ours and he died. Usually death is the end. The animal died the blood covered us, but it was temporary. A dead thing can only save you for a moment, but a living thing...
Jesus didn’t stay dead. His blood is alive and coursing in the veins of those who believe in him.
56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.
We have his blood in us, and not his dead blood, his living blood. Dead blood breaks down, you would need it again, but Jesus offers this:
12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
His own blood secured ETERNAL redemption. Only Jesus can do that because his blood was perfect to begin with. And when he died, with all our sin in him, our sin died with him, it broke down and decayed.
Then Jesus rose from the dead. The sin gone and dead, but the blood, pure and living.
The wages of sin is death. I showed that verse earlier, but I cut it off. Here’s the whole thing
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If you know Jesus as your savior, then you have his blood in you. Eternally speaking, you will not die. Sin can happen, we still have decaying bodies, but sin cannot thrive in us. It dies in us.
If you depend on other things to save you, they might make you feel good for a while, they might even win you awards. They won’t save you for eternity. Only Jesus can.
Animals were never meant to be our savior, they were meant to illustrate that only God can save you.
And Jesus died to saved you.
In social media, people out there create videos and content to entertain you, so that you will in turn “FOLLOW” them with a click or tap.
Jesus took your sin upon himself so that you wouldn’t have to die. God himself took your place, so that you could live forever.
Isn’t that worth a Follow?
Let’s pray
