04 April 14, 2013, Leviticus, The Way To Wholeness

LEVITICUSTHE WAY TOWHOLENESSApril 14, 2013

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCHJACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

USA

APRIL MEMORY VERSEMicah 6:8“Mankind, He has told you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness,

and to walk humbly with your God.” 

Micah 6:8

Sunday, April 28—175th Anniversary of First Baptist JacksonOne Worship at 10:30 a.m. Message by Dr. Frank Page and Music led by Larry Black

NO SUNDAY SCHOOLFollowing the 10:30 Worship Service, You are invited to Dinner on the Grounds on The Capitol Lawn.Details of what to bring and instructions are in The Baptist Record.

VBS at DOWNTOWN CAMPUSJune 3-7, 20139:00 AM to 12:10 Noonfor children entering 5K in August 2013- completion of 6th grade

Last week:

CALLED TO HOLINESSExodus 19

How do we become holy?

SALVATIONJustification

(of spirit)Sanctification

(of soul)Glorification

(of body)

1 Thessalonians 5:23HCSB

23 “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. And may your spirit, soul, and body

be kept sound and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 Thessalonians 5:23 HCSB

Hebrews 4:12 HCSB 12  “For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and

marrow. It is able to judge the ideas and thoughts of the heart.”

Hebrews 4:12 HCSB

Holiness(Godliness)

2 Peter 1:33 “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.”

This week:

LEVITICUS

THE WAY TO WHOLENESS

Ray C. Stedman with James D. Denney (2003). Adventuring through the Bible: A Comprehensive Guide to the Entire Bible. Discovery House Publishers

Imagine a large factory owned by a friend of yours who was about to give you a tour of the facility when he was called away to deal with a pressing issue.

As you waited for your friend to show you his operation, you wandered out onto the factory floor and looked around.

Your first impression as you stepped into the huge building was one of tremendous clamor.

The noise was thunderous!

Great machines were pounding away, big trip-hammers were smashing down, and other machines were grinding up metal and spitting out parts.

You couldn’t even hear yourself think.

Your next impression was one of mass confusion.

People were running here and there paying no attention to one another and getting in each other’s way.

The machines were all working away with no apparent harmony or connection at all.

Then your friend joined you and y’all began your tour of the plant. He showed you one area of the factory and explained exactly what they were doing there.

He explained the workings of various machines, and he told you what the various workers were doing on each machine.

You went from department to department, and in each place he explained how all the seeming chaos of the place was actually controlled chaos, all

carefully planned and executed in order to produce a finished product.

Finally, you arrived in the shipping department; there, packaged in glistening shrink-wrap and tucked neatly into cardboard boxes with Styrofoam packing

material, was the finished product!

Suddenly, you understood the factory. It was not all “sound and fury, signifying nothing,” as you had originally supposed. It all made perfect sense.

The noise, the activity, the seeming confusion were all carefully orchestrated to produce the desired effect.You were no longer confused.

Instead, you were amazed and impressed!

The goal of Leviticus

Reading the book of Leviticus can be a lot like visiting a factory without a guide.

Coming into this book, you find many strange ceremonies and sacrifices, many odd restrictions, and various other details that seem practically meaningless.

But the more you understand of the book of Leviticus, the more these strange details seem to merge and become a complex, cohesive, intricately articulated

relationship, moving toward a purposeful goal.*What is that goal?

*You find it stated clearly in a verse near the middle of the book.

*If you grasp this one verse (the finished product), you understand the essence of the entire book:

Leviticus 20:26 NASB

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.”

God is saying to the people of Israel, “I have separated you from all the nations around you in order that you might be Mine.”

When we Christians read this, we must understand that we are the people of God today.

What God said to Israel He also says to us, for in the new relationship we have in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile.

We are one body in Christ. The promises that appear in picture form in the Old Testament belong also to us who live this side of the cross.

Holiness and Wholeness

When the Lord says to the people, “You are to be holy to Me because I, the Lord, am holy,” many of us have to ask ourselves,

“What does that word holy really mean?”

Most of us associate it with some kind of grimness or solemnity.

*We think holy people are those who look as if they have been steeped in vinegar or soaked in embalming fluid. *It is easy to think of the word that way.

*Viewed in that light, the concept of holiness is not at all attractive to us!

*Yet Psalm 29:2 is a verse that speaks of “the splendor of His holiness.”

Psalm 29:2b NIV

“worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness.”

*What in the world is so splendid about holiness?

*However, holiness is indeed a splendid thing!

If you want to get at the real meaning of this word, you must go back to its original root.

The word holiness is derived from the same root as another, much more familiar word: wholeness.

Holiness actually means “wholeness,” the state of being complete. And if you read wholeness in place of holiness everywhere you find it in the Bible,

you will be very close to what the writers of Scripture meant.

Holiness/wholeness means to have all the parts that were intended to be there and to have them functioning as they were intended to function.

So God is really saying to His people in the book of Leviticus, “You shall be whole, because I am whole.” God is complete. He is perfect.

There is no blemish in God. He lives in harmony with Himself and has none of the inner conflicts and turmoil that we humans often experience.

God is a beautiful Person. He is absolutely what a person ought to be. He is filled with joy and love and peace. He lives in wholeness.

God looks at us in our brokenness and says, “You, too, shall be whole.”

We long to be whole people.

In life, we are continually reminded of our own brokenness, of our lack of wholeness.

We know how much we hurt ourselves and each other.

We are aware of our inability to cope with life. We sometimes put up a big facade and try to bluff our way through as though we are able to handle anything,

but inside, we are running scared. That is a mark of our lack of wholeness. When man first came from the hand of God, he was whole.

He was made in the image and likeness of God. Adam functioned as God intended man to function. But when sin entered the picture, the image and likeness of God was

marred and broken. We still have the image, but the likeness is broken.

God knows how to make us whole -

God has made a decision to heal our brokenness and to make us whole again.

He knows how to do it, and He says so:

“I am the Lord your God, Who has set you apart from the nations” (Leviticus 20:24).

*Our brokenness is rooted in our involvement with the brokenness of our own human race. *Our attitudes are wrong. *Our vision of life is distorted.

*We believe illusions, take them to be facts, and act upon them. *So God must separate us. *He must break us loose from the bondage of the thought patterns,

attitudes, and reactions of those around us (world). *God never forces us to become holy. *We become holy only as we voluntarily trust God and respond to His love.

Voluntarily – by a choice of our will we choose to participate in the sanctification process.Sanctification is imparted to us as we allow Him to make us holy (whole).

Learning to trust Him

Imagine you tried to coax a doe (a deer, a female deer) out of a thicket so you could feed her an apple from your hands.

She was wild and scared, but she saw the apple and obviously wanted it.

She would venture a few steps toward you, then retreat into the woods, venture forward, then retreat.

Then she would come out again, stand still and look around for a minute, then casually graze as if she were indifferent to that apple.

You stood perfectly still, holding out the apple, waiting for her to come to you in trust.

Now, it was perfectly possible for that doe simply to walk right up and grab the apple and start eating it.

You never would have hurt her or tried to capture her, but she didn’t know that. You stood there a long time, at least half an hour, trying to get her to come

out of the woods.

Finally, she came about halfway toward you and stood there with her neck stretched out, trying to muster the courage to reach for that apple.

Just as you thought she was going to do it, a four wheeler passed nearby and she was gone.

You would have had to eat the apple yourself!

*That is a picture of what God contends with in reaching out toward human beings. *It takes infinite patience and love on His part to overcome our fear and

doubt, so that we will trust Him to give us what we need.

That is why God gave us the book of Leviticus.

He starts us out in spiritual kindergarten. He starts with pictures and shadows, with visual aids, in order to show us what He is going to do someday.

All the ceremonies and offerings of the Old Testament are shadows and pictures of Jesus Christ.

Christ is as present in the book of Leviticus as He is in the Gospels, but because He is present in symbols and signs, you must look carefully to see His image.

Jesus is on every page of the Old Testament, you just have to look more closely to see Him there.

Jesus is the focus of Leviticus, and the theme of this book is that God has made His holiness/wholeness available to us through Jesus Himself.

“But,” we might say, “the people of the Old Testament didn’t know that the pictures and shadows of Leviticus pointed to Jesus!”

True, the Israelites did not fully understand that the Old Testament sacrifices and tabernacle pointed to Jesus, but that doesn’t matter.

*They were hurting and broken and fragmented, just as we are.

*Christ was available to them through the symbols and pictures of Leviticus.

They met Him through the form of worship that God gave them in Leviticus, and as they placed their trust in God, they came into the same joy and peace that we

now have as New Testament believers.

The sacrifices, rituals, and ceremonies of Leviticus are a foreshadowing of Jesus and His saving work, and they can teach us a great deal about how Jesus Christ can meet our

needs now.

*This is why Leviticus is such an important book: It is not just a historical book.

*It is a tremendously practical manual on how to live for Christ.

The key theme of Leviticus

We return to the key verse and the key theme of Leviticus, found in Leviticus 20:26 -

“You are to be holy [whole] to Me because I, the Lord, am holy [whole], and I have set you apart from the nations to be My own.” Leviticus 20:26

It is important to note the verb tense of that last phrase.

In our English text, it is in the future tense: “You are to be…My own.”

But the Hebrew language incorporates into this one phrase all three tenses—past, present, and future. It is as if God is saying, “You were Mine, you are Mine, you will be Mine.”

*If you pursue this idea throughout the Bible, you can see how true it is:You were God’s,You are God’s andYou will be God’s own possession.

“You were Mine” *You may know from personal experience that after you became a Christian, there was a sense in which you had belonged to God all along.

He was active and involved in your life long before you became aware of Him and you realized that He had already had His hand on you for a long time.

The apostle Paul expressed this thought when he wrote,

“God set me apart from birth” (Galatians 1:15).

Yet prior to his conversion Paul was a fanatical enemy of Christianity!

This is a verification of the amazing love and patience of God, Who draws us to Himself even when we oppose Him.*He pursues us with a pardon in His hand.

God says:“Even though you were against Me, hostile to Me, and fighting Me, you were Mine and you are Mine!”

“You are Mine”Then, in the present tense, God looks at us in our brokenness, pain, and imperfection, and He places His loving hand on us and says,

“You are Mine, right now, just the way you are. You belong to Me.”

“I love you as you are, not as you ought to be!”

Some years ago, a children’s service was held at a rescue mission in a city in the Midwest. One of the children who was taking part in the program was a six-year-

old boy with a pronounced humpback. As he walked across the stage to give his recitation, it was clear that he was very shy and afraid and very self-

conscious about his physical deformity.

As he crossed the stage, one of the cruel boys in the audience called out,

“Hey, kid, where are you going with that pack on your back!”

The little boy stood there shaking and sobbing in front of the audience.

A man stood up from the audience, went to the platform, and lifted the sobbing boy in his arms.

Then he looked out over the audience.

“Who said that?” he asked. No one answered.

“I thought so. It takes a real coward to make a remark like that.

This boy is my son, and he suffers for something that is not his fault.

Whoever you are, you’ve hurt this boy for no reason whatsoever.

But I want everyone here to know that I love this boy just the way he is. He is mine. He belongs to me, and I’m very proud of him.”

That’s what God is saying to us. He sees our deformities, our hurts and our brokenness, and He says, “You’re Mine! And I love you just the way you are!”

“You will be Mine”*But that’s not all. *Because of His power and wisdom, God also addresses the future, with all the hopefulness and optimism of a loving

Father. “You will be Mine,” He says in the future tense.

“You will be healed and made whole.

All your blemishes and deformities will be corrected, all your faults will be straightened out, all your sins were erased, all your tangled relationships unsnarled.

You will be whole, for I am whole.” That is what this book of Leviticus is about, that is what the Bible is about, and that is what Jesus Christ is about!

Ray C. Stedman with James D. Denney (2003). Adventuring through the Bible: A Comprehensive Guide to the Entire Bible. Discovery House Publishers

The structure of LeviticusThe book of Leviticus falls into two main divisions. The first part (Leviticus chapters 1-17) speaks to human need and tells us how we should approach

a holy God.

It reveals our inadequacy as a sinful people and sets forth God’s answer to that inadequacy.

The second part (Leviticus chapters 18-27) reveals what God expects from us in response, instructing us in how to live sanctified, whole (holy) lives, distinct from the world around us.

Outline of the book of Leviticus:I. How to Approach God (Leviticus 1–17) II. How to Live: Sanctification and Holiness (Leviticus 18–27)

Part I: Human need in approaching a holy GodThe first seventeen chapters of Leviticus are all about how we, as sinful people, can approach God.

They contain four elements that establish human need and reveal what we are like.

The first is a series of five offerings that symbolize in different ways the offering of Jesus Christ upon the cross for our sins.

Perhaps God gave us five fingers on each hand so that we can remember the five offerings:

First element: a series of five offerings1. the burnt offering2. the meal offering3. the peace offering4. the sin offering5. the trespass offering

These are all pictures of what Jesus Christ does for us, but they are also pictures of the fundamental needs of human life.

They speak of the two essentials for human existence: love and responsibility.We can never be complete if we are not loved or if we do not love.

Love is an essential ingredient of life.

Nothing harms, distorts, disfigures, or injures a person more than to deny love to that person.

But there is another essential: In order to be whole, in order to have self-respect and self-worth, we must have a sense of responsibility.

We must be able to accomplish what is worthwhile.

So we need both: love and responsibility.

Second element: the priesthood

The second element in the first seventeen chapters is the priesthood.

In the Old Testament, the priesthood was comprised solely of the sons of Levi (which is where Leviticus gets its name).

But the priesthood takes a new form in the New Testament.First there is our Lord and High Priest, Jesus Christ, Who has pierced the veil of the tabernacle, the Holy

of Holies, and given us free access to God the Father.

Second is the priesthood of all believers, the body of Christ, where we are all made priests (1 Peter 2:5). We love one another, confess to one another, pray for one another,

encourage one another, exhort one another, and perform for one another all the functions that, in the Old Testament, were performed by the priestly class, the sons of Levi.

That is why we need each other in the body of Christ.

Third element: a standard of truth

The third element that we see in these first seventeen chapters is the revelation of a standard of truth.

By this standard we are able to tell the difference between the true and the false, the phony and the real the helpful and the hurtful, the life-giving and the deadly.

Isn’t it strange that human beings in their natural condition cannot tell the difference?

That is why there are millions of people who are doing things that they think are helpful but that end up to be destructive—and they don’t understand why!

Because God is loving, He points us to the truth and warns us to avoid the actions that would destroy us.

Fourth element: an opportunity to respond to GodThe fourth and final element that we see in these first seventeen chapters is an opportunity

to respond to God.

This opportunity is completely voluntary.

God never imposes His will on any of us.

This opportunity is provided by means of something called “the Day of Atonement.”

If, when we thoroughly understand our need and God’s provision to meet it, we say no to Him, He will let us. But we must recognize that we may never return

to the moment of opportunity again.

God always gives us a long period of preparation in which He leads us into a full understanding of the choice that He sets before us; but our rejection of

Him tends to be progressive, resulting in a gradual hardening of our hearts. *We reach a point where our rejection of Him becomes tragically final.

Part II: Holy living for the people of a holy GodThe second section of the book, chapters 18 through 27, describes the holy, sanctified lifestyle that God makes possible.

This section of Leviticus is all about how we should live as obedient people who belong to a holy God. Notice that God does not tell us how we should live until He has first told us

about the provision He has made to enable us to approach Him. First, He discusses the power by which we are to act, then He talks about our behavior.

We in the church often get this backward. A great deal of damage has been done to people by insisting that they behave in a certain way without giving them any

understanding of the power by which to do so.

New Christians and non-Christians are sometimes taught that they must live up to a certain standard before God will accept them.

That is totally wrong!

That is the deadly, legalistic lie of Satan, designed to keep people away from God’s truth and out of God’s church.

And that is what God endeavors to correct in the book of Leviticus.

He wants us to understand that He has first made the provision, and His provision gives us the basis upon which to build a holy lifestyle.

First element: the blood

The second part of Leviticus, like the first, is built upon four essential elements.

First, there is a need to understand the basis for wholeness, which is blood. Anyone who has read the Old Testament knows that it is full of blood.

In fact, a river of blood flows throughout the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament.

There are sacrifices upon sacrifices, including sacrifices of bulls, calves, goats, sheep, and birds of all kinds.

Why all this bloodshed?

Because God is trying to impress us with a fundamental fact: Our sin condition runs very deep and can be solved only by a death penalty.

The death that is pictured in each and every one of these animal sacrifices is, of course, the death of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ.

Second element: the practice of loveThe second element that runs through the concluding part of Leviticus is the practice of love in all the

relationships of life. The Bible is intensely practical. It is not nearly so concerned with what you do in the tabernacle as what you do in the home

as a result of having been to the tabernacle.

So this book deals with relationships in the family, among friends, and with society in general. It shows us exactly the kind of love relationship that God makes possible

in all these areas of life.

Third element: the enjoyment of God

The third element in this last section is the enjoyment of God—His presence and His power.

This section tells us how to live in relationship to God, how to worship God, and how to experience the living presence of God!

That’s a great thing to know because we will be in His presence forever!

The most important thing in life is not rituals and laws but an experience of the living God Who is behind all the rituals and laws!

Fourth element: the choice of life

The fourth and final element is the choice that God calls us to make.

He makes us aware of the important issues at stake, of how our entire lives hang in the balance, and that a decision is required of us.

God shows us that, in the final analysis, the choice is entirely ours.

God never says, “I’m going to make you leave your misery.” Rather, He says, “If you prefer being broken and don’t want to be healed, you can stay

right where you are. But if you want life, then this is what you must choose.” *God never forces His will on us, but He does expect a response. The choice is ours to make.

The key theme of Leviticus

We return to the key verse and the key theme of Leviticus, found in Leviticus 20:26

“You are to be holy [whole] to Me because I, the Lord, am holy [whole], and I have set you apart from the nations to be My own.”

It is important to note the verb tense of that last phrase.

In our English text, it is in the future tense: “You are to be…my own.”

But the Hebrew language incorporates into this one phrase all three tenses—past, present, and future. It is as if God is saying, “You were mine, you are mine, you shall be mine.”

If you pursue this idea throughout the Bible, you can see how true it is. You may know from experience that after you became a Christian, you realized that there was a

sense in which you had belonged to God all along.

He was active and involved in your life long before you became aware of Him.

The apostle Paul expressed this thought when he wrote, “God set me apart from birth” (Gal. 1:15).

Yet prior to his conversion Paul was a fanatical enemy of Christianity!

This is a verification of the amazing love and patience of God, Who draws us to Himself even when we oppose Him.

“You are Mine,” God says to us. “Even though you are against Me, hostile to Me, and fighting Me, you are Mine!”

“You are Mine”Then, in the present tense, God looks at us in our brokenness, pain, and imperfection, and He places His loving hand on us and says,

“You are Mine, right now, just the way you are. You belong to Me.”

Some years ago, a children’s service was held at a rescue mission in a city in the Midwest. One of the children who was taking part in the program was a six-year-

old boy with a pronounced humpback. As he walked across the stage to give his recitation, it was clear that he was very shy and afraid and very self-

conscious about his physical deformity.

As he crossed the stage, one of the cruel boys in the audience called out, “Hey, kid, where are you going with that pack on your back!”

The little boy stood shaking and sobbing in front of the audience.

A man stood up from the audience, went to the platform, and lifted the sobbing boy in his arms.

Then he looked out over the audience.

“Who said that?” he asked. No one answered.

“I thought so. It takes a real coward to make a remark like that.

This boy is my son, and he suffers for something that is not his fault.

Whoever you are, you’ve hurt this boy for no reason whatsoever.

But I want everyone here to know that I love this boy just the way he is. He is mine. He belongs to me, and I’m very proud of him.”

That’s what God is saying to us. He sees our hurt and our brokenness, and He says,

“You’re Mine! And I love you just the way you are!”

“You will be Mine”But that isn’t all. Because of His power and wisdom, God also addresses the future, with all the hopefulness and optimism of a loving

Father. “You will be Mine,” He says in the future tense.

“You will be healed and made whole.

All your blemishes and deformities will be corrected, all your faults will be straightened out, all your sins will be erased, all your tangled relationships unsnarled.

You will be whole, for I am whole.” That is what this book of Leviticus is about, that is what the Bible is about, and that is what Jesus Christ is about.

Ray C. Stedman with James D. Denney (2003). Adventuring through the Bible: A Comprehensive Guide to the Entire Bible. Discovery House Publishers