Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan KS, 24 Jan 2016
1:1 And Yahweh called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting to say,
1:2 Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them...
Today begins a new sermon series on the Old Testament book of Leviticus – the third book in from Genesis. About 22 years ago, I set out to memorize the whole book of Leviticus. It was not a project I made much headway on, but I did get pretty familiar with this book nonetheless, and I am interested in sharing the treasures I have gleaned from it with you. I’m also thinking of drawing some parallels with the book of Hebrews either inbetween or after Leviticus, so I expect it will lead us into a deeper understanding of Hebrews.
Now, a lot of people think of Leviticus as not worth studying because it is full of obsolete and obscure ceremonial laws, but consider for a moment:
· Leviticus was often the first book of the Bible that Jewish children studied (Wenham, Preface, p.vii). Why was that?
· Leviticus has a ton of very practical wisdom for living day-to-day life with a theistic rather than a humanistic worldview. This is very important in our age where the awareness of the presence of God has been systematically scrubbed from government, professional life, and entertainment.
· Also, Leviticus was quoted at least 17 times in the New Testament. For instance, do you remember the second-greatest commandment that Jesus listed? “Love your neighbor as yourself” came from Leviticus 19:18 and is still binding on Christians today.
· Did you know that the Gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Christ can be found in Leviticus? I plan to prove next Sunday that the first chapter of Leviticus is the Gospel acted out kinetically. The Kinetic Gospel!
· When you read commentaries on Leviticus (if you ever do such a thing!), you’ll see they write about God’s grace. How can grace permeate a book of so many laws? In his classic Biblical Theology book, Geerhardus Vos wrote, “[I]t is precisely in the ritual institutions that the greater part of the gospel of Moses is enshrined… [L]aw-keeping did not figure…as the meritorious ground of life-inheritance. The latter is based on grace alone, no less emphatically than Paul himself places salvation on that ground. The law was given after the redemption from Egypt had been accomplished, and the people had already entered upon the enjoyment of many of the blessings of the berith [covenant]… That which we call the ‘legal system’ is shot through with strands of gospel and grace and faith. Especially the ritual law is rich in them. Every sacrifice and every lustration proclaimed the principle of grace… The Gospel was preached under the constraint of law…”
· I want to explore these topics and more together in the weeks to come, but today let’s begin with:
o an overview of the structure of Leviticus,
o an explanation of the setting of Leviticus,
o and a look at the subject of Leviticus - a covenant relationship with God.
o Each of these three things can be related to a word in verse one:
§ The Structure of Leviticus is centered around the “tent of meeting.”
§ The Setting or context of the book of Leviticus springs out of the first word “and,”
§ and then the Subject of verse 1 stems from the verbs “called... spoke... say.”
· Let’s begin with:
· The place God called Moses to speak to him is called the “tent of meeting” (KJV “tabernacle of the congregation”).
o According to The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, “Meeting” stems from the Hebrew root יעד which means “to appoint.”
o It seems the translators of the ancient Greek Septuagint incorrectly identified the root as עד “witness” and translated this the “Tent of witness,” so you may see some translations which go that route.
o But modern Hebrew lexicographers (like William Holliday) affirm that this word means “an appointed time or place [in this case, a place] for meeting with other people or with God,” and it was “used widely for all religious assemblies.”
o Geerhardus Vos, one of the last great Princeton theologians, clarified that it refers, not to the meeting of the people with their God, but “to the meeting of Jehovah with the people… The word that is rendered ‘meeting’ does not designate an accidental encounter, but something previously arranged. It implies that Jehovah makes the provision and appoints the time for coming together with His people. The idea is of importance, because it is one of the indications of that conscious intercourse between God and man which characterizes the Biblical religion.”
·
The tabernacle or tent of meeting “embodies
the… idea of the dwelling of God with His people… It was His house, and the
people “were received into [it] as His guests.”
“[W]here do these religious principles... reappear in the subsequent
history of redemption...? …[T]he indwelling of God in Christ serves the same
ends which the Mosaic tabernacle provisionally served. He, as the antitypical
tabernacle, is revelatory and sacramental in the highest degree.” (John 1:14
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” John 2:19ff “‘Destroy this temple,
and in three days I will raise it up’… He spake of the temple of His body.”
Col. 2:9 “in Him the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.”)
“But what is true of the Christ is likewise true of the Church. Of that,
the tabernacle was also a type. This could not be otherwise, because the Church
is the body of the risen Christ. For this reason, the Church is called the
‘house of God’ [Eph. 2.21, I Tim. 3.15, Heb. 3.6; 10.21, 1 Pet. 2.5]”
(Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology,
pages 143ff)
· The problem is that God does not associate with anything - or anyone - who is not holy. Leviticus, therefore emphasizes that a key prerequisite to meeting with God is “holiness.” In fact, it emphasizes holiness more than any other book in the Bible. Forms of the word “holy” appear in Leviticus, by my count, 140 times, which is about 40% more than Exodus and Ezra, which tie for second place, even though Leviticus is almost half as long as those books – which means that proportionally, Leviticus talks about holiness approximately three times more often proportionately than Exodus and Ezra. (And, for what it’s worth, Isaiah, Numbers, Psalms, 2 Chronicles, and Acts come next with only half to one-third of the number of references to holiness that Leviticus has – again, all of them longer books than Leviticus.) So, holiness is a big, big deal in Leviticus because it is the qualification for meeting with God and walking in relationship with Him.
· Consider the following passages from Leviticus:
o Lev. 11:44a “For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves [make yourselves holy] therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean... 45 For I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy.” (NASB)
o Lev. 19:2b “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” (NASB)
o Lev. 20:7 “You shall consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy, for I am the LORD your God.... 26 Thus you are to be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy; and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine.”
o In order to meet with God you must be holy; in order to be holy you must have been met by God. (Repeat that.)
· When God meets someone, He makes a covenant with them – a kind of contract defining the relationship. The classic Keil and Delitzsch commentary on the Old Testament brings out the covenantal nature of Leviticus well, so let me quote a passage from it at length: Leviticus “carries to completion the giving of the law at Sinai, which commenced at [Exodus 25], and by which the covenant constitution was firmly established. It contains more particularly the laws regulating the relation of Israel to its God, including both the fundamental principles upon which its covenant fellowship with the Lord depended, and the directions for the sanctification of the covenant people in that communion... God had fulfilled half of the covenant that He would be their God and dwell among them, by the building of the temple and the presence of His glory there, but the other half needed to be fulfilled, that of Israel becoming His people. The institutions and legal regulations of Leviticus served, “on the one hand to sharpen the consciousness of sin in the hearts of the people, and thereby to awaken the desire for mercy and for reconciliation with the holy God, and on the other hand furnished them with the means of expiating their sins and sanctifying their walk before God according to the standard of His holy commandments… All the laws and regulations of Leviticus …aim at the restoration of an inward fellowship on the part of the nation as a whole and the individual members with Jehovah their God through the expiation or forgiveness of sin and the removal of all natural uncleanness, and at the strengthening and deepening of this fellowship by the sanctification of every relation of life.”
· In Leviticus, God shows us that we participate in the holiness of God and meet with God through substitutionary sacrifice and consecration, and also through a lifestyle of enjoying what God loves and avoiding what God hates. These two concepts relate to justification and sanctification (the two theological terms which describe the initiation of our salvation and the continuation of our salvation), and they form the two halves of the book of Leviticus:
I. Ch. 1-16 is about being made right with God with sacrifices and purification leading up to the Day of Atonement, and
II. Ch. 17-27 is about sanctification – living a holy life, culminating in the sabbatical and jubilee years.
· We’ll get into those concepts of sacrifice and consecration and holy living later, but for today, let’s apply the structure of Leviticus by cultivating a desire to meet with God and embrace His holiness:
o In the New Testament, the book of Hebrews exhorts Christians, “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb. 4:16, NASB) and again, “Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” (Heb 10:19-25 NASB) Don’t be afraid to meet up with God!
· Now, moving from the structure of Leviticus, let us look at the...
· In Hebrew, the very first letter of the first word of the book of Leviticus is a vav (or waw if you’re old school); this is a conjunction. It does seem odd to start a book with the word “and,” but I believe it is unfortunate that the ESV and NIV have omitted this first word which is in the Hebrew text.
· Why does the book begin with a conjunction (“And/Now/Then”)? Because it is a continuation of the narrative of Exodus! It gives us the setting.
· Not only that, but it is a continuation of God’s narrative in the Bible. It starts in Genesis with the creation of all things and humanity’s rebellion against God and God’s judgment against sin, then proceeds to the story of God redeeming a nation of people and forming a covenant with them in Exodus and these people responding by developing a holy place for God in their midst.
· In the last chapter of Exodus, the tabernacle is completed and the glory of the Lord descends into it, and that’s the end of the book. Leviticus continues the narrative by relating what it was that the Lord said after descending upon the newly-built tabernacle.
· This places the date of Leviticus around 1,440 BC. However, Liberal critics have claimed that Leviticus was written over a thousand years later, after the Jews had returned from exile in Babylon. However, the claim that it is post-exilic is absurd:
o It would be totally hypocritical to teach such exacting standards of holiness while passing off a forgery.
o There is also the unlikliness of getting so late a concoction of laws accepted at all,
o or, what is even more incredible, getting post-exilic Jews to believe that this body of brand-new information was directly mediated by God to Moses and not delivered to them until a thousand years later.
o In addition, there is the problem of foisting a new legal code designed around wilderness survival onto a big city with an international economy instead (K&D). It just wouldn’t work.
· No, Leviticus was written by Moses. I count 53 times in Leviticus where it is explicitly stated that God told Moses something to relate to the people.
· The book is called Leviticus because in this book, the tribe of Levi is consecrated to be God’s priests and special service-people. The Levites also were entrusted with preserving and teaching God’s word and overseeing the holy ordinances of the sacrifices, so it was definitely pertinent to the Levites, but, as Dr. Gordon Wenham points out in his recent commentary, “It would be wrong to describe Leviticus simply as a manual for priests. It is equally, if not more, concerned with the part the laity should play in worship.” In fact, it is something we all need to know, because the book is about living in the presence of God.
· What difference does it make in everyday life to me know that Leviticus starts with an “and”?
o It indicates that meeting with God is part of a process, and we need to study Leviticus in order to get the whole picture of how God meets with us.
o Although the circumstances and details are different than they were 3500 years ago, it’s the same God and the same human beings meeting, so the general principles are the same: God calls us and speaks to us and makes us holy and draws us into a lifelong covenantal relationship with Him.
o It is an ongoing personal process with both a history and a future.
§ Don’t stop with Genesis and the brokenness of sin and unfinished business.
§ Don’t stop with Exodus and God’s redemption and deliverance in the past – as wonderful as they truly are.
§ Keep going into the Levitical life of holiness in an ongoing relationship with God,
§ and, I might add, keep reminding yourself of God’s word like Deuteronomy does.
§ And don’t stop at the Old Testament and all its cozy culture. Press on to the New Testament and get the global view.
§ God’s word hangs together, and God’s work in your life is an ongoing relationship that we must nurture.
· So, we’ve looked at the structure of Leviticus which tells us we need to meet with God but we need His holiness to do so, and we’ve looked at the setting of Leviticus and seen that meeting with God is a relational process. Now, what does Leviticus tell us about the beginning of that relational process?
· The Jews call the book of Leviticus by the very first word of the book ויקרא “and He called.”
· It is interesting to see three different root verbs used in the first verse, all with a parallel meaning of verbal communication. They are translated as the 3 English verbs: “call,” “speak,” and “say.”
· This tells us at least three things about God right off-the-bat: God is personal, God is communicative, and God is the initiator of the meeting/process/relationship.
o God is personal; He is self-aware and distinct from us; He thinks and feels and perceives and loves. Therefore we must respond to Him personally in a relational way.
o Also, He is communicative, so we must listen to what He says (or read His words) and expect that He will continue to communicate with us.
o And thirdly, since He is the initiator who “calls” us into relationship with Him, we must be responders to His initiative and let Him take the lead.
· This book of Leviticus proves that God is very interested in His creation, not only because He speaks to us in words, but also, as we’ll see in the chapters to come, because He engages every physical aspect of human life with His law—our food, our bodies, our businesses, our social systems – even our vacations!
o By taking an interest in what God said in Leviticus and by reciprocating with an interest in God and His holiness, we respond to His calling in relationship with Him.
· The fact that Jehovah “called” or “spoke” to Moses is mentioned over 50 times in the 27 chapters of Leviticus. But notice in Leviticus 1:1 that there is a new development in God’s call which was not in the book of Exodus: In the Book of Exodus, God spoke from where? [Mount Sinai] But in the Book of Leviticus, He speaks from where? [A tent within the camp of Israel!] Since the cloud of the glory of the LORD had filled the tabernacle, Moses was not able to enter into the tent of meeting, so the Voice was heard by him proceeding “out of” (“from”) the tent (Soncino).
o Now that God had formally set up a covenant relationship with this group of people (the nation of Israel), He moved in with them!
o The book of Numbers – the next book after Leviticus – maps the layout of the Israelite camp as they migrated through the desert. Three tribes camped on the North side of the tabernacle, three to the South, three to the West, and three to the East, so the tabernacle was in the center of their vast encampment.[1]
o Yes, God is omnipresent – everywhere, but God also displays His special presence in certain places.
o He is “Emmanuel,” the “God [who is] with us” – who “moves in” with certain people, and at end of Exodus and beginning of Leviticus we see God doing just that, moving His special presence from the distant peak of Mount Sinai right into the center of the Israelite camp.
· Now, God doesn’t just shack up with anybody; He chooses who He wants to associate with and He carefully defines the relationship before moving in.
o In Genesis, we see God choosing Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and giving them promises.
o In Genesis and Exodus we see God defining that relationship formally through promised blessings for those within the relationship and promised curses for those who compromise or reject the relationship, and definitions of the contractual obligations (such as the 10 Commandments),
o and now in Leviticus, we will see covenantal ceremonies to seal the relationship.
o This is, by the way, the reason that followers of this God – Christians in particular – treat marriage the way we do. Ephesians 5 teaches us that God intends marriage to picture His relationship with us. We follow the pattern of our God by not shacking up with just anybody, by choosing a mate who is fundamentally different from us, and by formally defining our marriage relationship in a wedding ceremony before moving in together. In this way we show the world how God unites Himself with human beings in a covenant relationship.
· Praise God that He initiates communication with us and moves in with us, rather than leaving us to wander on our own! Let us respond to His calling by meeting with Him, listening to his words, and engaging with the processes He defines for holiness.
o 2Thess. 2:13-15 NASB But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.
o 1Cor. 1:9 NASB God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
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1 וַיִּקְרָא אֶל-מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר:
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Lev 1:1 And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying |
1 Καὶ ἀνεκάλεσεν Μωυσῆν καὶ ἐλάλησεν κύριος αὐτῷ ἐκ τῆς σκηνῆς τοῦ μαρτυρίου λέγων |
1 And Yahweh called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting to say, |
1 And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, |
1 Now the LORD called to Moses, and spoke to him from the tabernacle of meeting, saying, |
1 X The LORD called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, |
1 Then the LORD called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, |
1 X The LORD called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting. [He] said, |
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2דַּבֵּר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם ... |
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them... |
2 Λάλησον AAD-2S τοῖς υἱοῖς Ισραηλ καὶ ἐρεῖς FAI-2S πρὸς αὐτούς ... |
2 “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them |
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them... |
2 "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them... |
2 "Speak to the people of Israel and say to them... |
2 "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them... |
2 "Speak to the Israelites and say to them... |
[1] According to some passages, the tent seems to be outside the camp (Ex. 33:7-11; Num. 11:24-30), but according to others it was located in the middle of the camp (Ex. 25:8, Num. 2). Literary critics have traditionally explained these passages as coming from two sources, E and P, with P not reflecting a historical situation. It is, however, entirely possible that there were two successive tents called ‘ohel mo’ed. The first was Moses’ tent, which was used before the completion of the tabernacle… (HAW).