Sermon Tone Analysis

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INTRO

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Today we’re talking about killing animals or animal sacrifice.

I think most of us know that Christians aren’t supposed to sacrifice animals anymore, or at least we are aware that Christians don’t sacrifice animals.

But, it’s hard, because, when we read the Bible we are looking for information that we can apply, that we can live out.

And instructions about animal sacrifice, I think are sort of disappointing.

We know it’s in the Bible, so it should be valuable for something.

We need to do something with it.

When we read the Bible we are looking for information that we can apply in our lives and animal sacrifice, I think we know intuitively isn’t something that Christians do and it’s not really a thing anymore, but it’s in the Bible, so we need to do something with it, right?

Well, we’re going to do something with it today by taking a look at the book of Leviticus.

Next to Numbers, Leviticus is the book that Christians loathe to read because it seems mundane, irrelevant, and frankly confusing at times.

Well good news for you, I spent a lot of time with Leviticus this week and I’m going to hit the main sections for you today.

My prayer is that I can make the concepts relevant for you so that you’ll be inspired to go read it again for yourself to see what God has for you in this book of the Bible.

The issue of Leviticus is Holiness for the purpose of entering into God’s presence.

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The central issue of Leviticus is Holiness for the purpose of entering into God’s presence.

And the key verse in Leviticus is Chapter 11, verse 44 where the Lord says,

For I am the Lord your God.

Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.

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The entire book of Leviticus was written to show the Israelites how to consecrate themselves—or another way to say it is, how to be holy before the Lord.

The Lord was present in the city of the Israelites and if they were to appear before Him at the tabernacle, they would need to be consecrated; they would need to be holy.

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We often attribute holiness to obedience.

But, holiness is a lot more than just obedience to laws.

Holiness allowed the Israelites to worship God in His presence.

And in the church today, although there has been a change in our covenant with God — that is, the way we interact with God — we still have to be consecrated, we still have to be made holy, to enter into God’s presence.

So, we are going to look at three requirements for holiness from the book of Leviticus.

The first is, we have to be...

Killing animals Leviticus Unclean--presence of God Cleanliness rites Holy Spirit Word

Purified

When we talk about purity, there is a different term that's often used in the Bible.

The word is unclean.

The two terms are relatively interchangeable.

You may have head the term unclean, or ceremonially unclean and wondered what that means.

I mean, the symbolism is pretty obvious.

When we talk about the purity of God, how he is Holy and always does what is just and right, we get a pretty clear metaphor of cleanliness.

God is clean and his house is clean.

When a sin offering is given, there is always consecration.

You don’t have forgiveness of sins without being purified, made holy, also.

This is why we say that a person who claims to be a Christian or says they know God and they believe they will go to heaven, that person is not saved if they do not produce in their lives the character of Christ.

If there’s no evidence of purification, then there is no relief of guilt.

Have you ever gone to someones house, maybe with your kids, and you enter their house and to your horror they have white carpet?

And then they offer you a seat on the sofa and they have a white sofa?

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You’re immediately thinking, ‘Did I wipe my feet on the mat?’ and, ‘I hope the kids didn’t step in anything.’

and things like that.

You think those things because you realize intuitively that you probably aren’t anywhere near as clean as the house and you don’t want to mess it up.

Sprinkling of blood is for purification aka consecration, making of a thing holy, because there is life in the blood (LE: REF).

NOTE: The blood is sprinkled on the thing that needs consecrated.

When a person is defiled, the blood is sprinkled on them (ch.

14).

Interestingly, when a priest is defiled, the

Well, the Israelites were God’s people and they lived in God’s city and they went to visit with God to worship him at God’s house.

To an Israelite, at this point in history, to meet with God was terrifyingly out of the question, because they just weren’t clean enough.

That is, unless God made a way for them to get clean before they entered into His house and into His presence.

They had to be made clean, made pure.

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Uncleanliness is an issue of purification.

When someone is unclean they are unable to enter into the presence of God.

Uncleanliness is an issue of purification.

When someone is unclean they are unable to enter into the presence of God.

And there’s all sorts of things that make a person impure or unclean.

And we often think, well sin, certainly sin makes us impure.

When we break God’s commands, when we do things that damage our relationship with God or relationships with other people or when we do things that are just wrong or gross—sure those things make us impure, right…

But there’s more to it.

Impurity is not so much that we partake in evil things, but just that we partake in common things.

Another way to say it is that...

Uncleanliness is not so much an issue of sin as it is an issue of worldliness; contamination of the world caused by sin.

Disease makes people unclean.

Touching mold makes people unclean.

Touching dead people males people unclean.

Bodily emissions to do with human reproduction makes a person unclean.

Impurity occurs when we partake in things that are a unique part of this world and have no place in God’s eternal Kingdom.

If there is something you do, that is something you don’t think you will do in eternity with God, that is something common to this world that makes you impure and unable to enter into God’s presence.

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We don’t have time to go through the entire book of Leviticus to look at all the unique things, but here’s the major categories.

Sickness makes a person unclean.

Anything to do with human reproduction makes a person unclean.

Touching dead things makes a person unclean.

And anything to do with human reproduction makes a person unclean.

And certainly, yes, anything we call sin also makes a person unclean.

Now, let’s take a look at each of these so you can see why these make a person unclean.

Sickness is a pretty obvious part of this world.

When we think about Adam and Eve in the Garden, it’s hard to imagine them getting a head cold, but certainly they weren’t getting cancer and heart disease or any number of other illnesses.

So, it follows that if God’s Kingdom is a place of eternal joy and peace with God, that sickness probably has no place in that world either.

It’s obvious that getting sick is not a sin—although it’s possible sin led to sickness—but sickness is still a part of this world and the Israelites were not able to enter God’s presence if they were sick.

They were impure.

Sickness is a pretty obvious part of this world.

When we think about Adam and Eve in the Garden, it’s hard to imagine them getting a head cold, but certainly they weren’t getting cancer and heart disease or any number of other illnesses.

So, it follows that if God’s Kingdom is a place of eternal joy and peace with God, that sickness probably has no place in that world either.

It’s obvious that getting sick is not a sin—although it’s possible sin led to sickness—but sickness is still a part of this world and the Israelites were not able to enter God’s presence if they were sick.

They were impure.

The next major category is human reproduction.

If you touched bodily fluids, including reproductive fluids, or if you just had a baby, or even having sex, that makes you impure.

And that’s kind of odd, because I always say God wants us to reproduce, to multiply and fill the earth to build a Kingdom for Christ’s glory.

And that’s true.

But, the building of God’s Kingdom numerically is part of God’s plan for this world.

Jesus said,

In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage… ~, ESV

And if we don’t marry in eternity, then we don’t have sex and we don’t have children in eternity.