Welcome to the Lansdale Life Church Podcast. If you're seeking a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, this podcast is for you. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome everyone to our Wednesday night study and we are creeping up on the end of Leviticus, not quite there yet, but we're getting there. A few more chapters and we'll be heading on to the next segment. So we are on Leviticus 22 tonight. How about if we have a word of prayer to open things up? Ask God's blessing over us.
Lord, we just pause after our day, whatever our day was today, whether it was work or leisure or around the home or whatever it was, God. We just pause after that and we give you thanks for this day, Lord, and we turn our hearts and minds towards you tonight, God. And we pray for your spirit here among us, Lord, that you would give us wisdom and discernment in your word, God. Give us a better understanding of you through your word, God.
We pray your Holy Spirit be here with us, God, in our conversation, Lord, and with us that your presence just settle here amongst us, God. We pray for those who can be here tonight, Lord. Those who are at home tonight, we pray, God, your favor and blessing on them. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. So Leviticus 22. And this chapter focuses on, and there's been a lot of this in Leviticus, which has been exciting to read about, the holiness and purity required of priests and of the offerings.
So it emphasizes both priests and the offering that they must be free from defilement or imperfection, just a reflection, really, of the holiness and purity of God. And this chapter just continues to build on this theme throughout Leviticus, of reverence towards God, the importance of approaching him with that reverence and the honor and respect that's due, due him. So what I'm going to do here tonight is I've got this broken down into three sections.
Let me, before I go any further, let me find Leviticus here. In my handy Bible. Should have had that right. 22, here we go. All right. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read through, I have four sections of Leviticus that I've identified. Now I'm just going to read through it and I'm going to go over this highlight. And then what I'd like to do is I would like to look at this from two perspectives.
One, I would like to look at it from the Israelites or the Jewish cultural or traditional perspective, how they would have seen these various laws. And then I'd like to take a shot at looking it through the eyes of Jesus, how he saw that. So let's start with one through nine. And this is all about the priestly purity.
So the Lord spoke to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons that they must deal respectfully with the holy offerings of the Israelites, which they consecrate to me, so that they do not profane my holy name. I am the Lord. Say to them throughout your generations, if any man from all your descendants approaches the holy offerings, which the Israelites consecrate to the Lord while he is impure, that person must be cut off from before me.
I am the Lord. No man from the descendants of Aaron who is diseased or has a discharge may eat the holy offerings until they become clean. The one who touches anything made unclean by contact with a dead person or a man who has a seminal emission or a man who touches the swarming thing by which he becomes unclean or touches a person by which he becomes unclean.
Whatever that person's impurity, the person who touches any of these will be unclean until evening and must not eat from the holy offerings unless he has bathed his body in water. When the sun goes down, he will be clean, and afterward he may eat from the holy offerings because they are his food. He must not eat an animal that has died of natural causes or an animal that has been torn by beast, thus become unclean, thus become unclean by it.
I am the Lord. They must keep my charge so that they do not incur sin on account of it and therefore die because they profane it. I am the Lord who sanctifies them. So there were some things in there that we've been talking about in the previous chapters as to what is unclean and what is not unclean and how to become pure from these things. So he's just kind of highlighting them. We're not going to go into all the detail of that again.
But this section is basically about priestly purity and the priests are cautions not to handle sacred offerings if they are ceremony unclean. So doing so it says you will profane God's holy name, reinforcing the idea that we must serve in this spiritual purity. He gets into these specifics. So that section is all about cautioning the priests of what they're doing. The next section, 10-16, talks about restrictions on who may actually eat these offerings.
So starting at 10, no lay person may eat anything holy. Neither a priest's lodger nor a hired laborer may eat anything holy, but if a priest buys a person with his own money, that person may eat the holy offerings and those born in the priest's own house may eat his food.
If a priest's daughter marries a lay person, she may not eat the holy contribution offerings, but if a priest's daughter is a widow or divorced and has no children so that she returns to live in her father's house, as in her youth, she may eat from her father's food, but no lay person may eat it. If a man eats a holy offering by mistake, he must add a fifth to it and give the holy offering to the priests.
They must not profane the holy offerings which the Israelites contribute to the Lord, and so calls them to incur a penalty for guilt when they eat their holy offerings for I am the Lord who sanctifies them. So it really comes down to only the priests and their household could eat from these sacred offerings. So no outsiders that came in could eat. There was all kinds of exclusions in there and they really kind of underscored this idea of the sacredness of what is given over to God.
And it doesn't really get into this, but it talks about this in some areas. Some of these offerings that came in really kind of worked as part of the compensation for the priests, providing for them and the food for their household. So God's being very, very specific here. So let's move on real quick. I'm going to move through this first section relatively quick because we've got a lot to cover under these things. So 17 through 30 talks about the unblemished offering.
So the Lord spoke to Moses, speak to Aaron, his sons, and all the Israelites and tell them when any man from the house of Israel or from the foreigners in Israel present presents his offerings for any of the votive or free will offerings which they present to the Lord as burnt offerings, if it is to be acceptable for your benefit, it must be flawless, a flawless male from the cattle, sheep, or goats.
You must not present anything that has a flaw because it will not be acceptable for your benefit. If a man presents a peace offering sacrifice to the Lord for a special vote of offering or for a free will offering from the herd or the flock, it must be flawless to be acceptable. It must have no flaw. Double emphasis there. You must not present to the Lord something blind or with a broken bone or mutilated or with a running sore or with festering eruption or with feverish rash.
You must not give any of these as a gift on the altar to the Lord. As for an ox or a sheep with a limb too long or stunted, you may present it as a free will offering but it will not be acceptable for a votive offering. You must not present to the Lord something with testicles that are bruised, crushed, torn, or cut off. You must not do this in your land. Even from the foreigner, you must not present the food of your God from such animals as these for they are ruined and flawed.
They will not be acceptable for your benefit. The Lord spoke to Moses when an ox, lamb, or goat is born. It must be under the care of its mother seven days but from the eighth day onward it will be acceptable as an offering gift to the Lord. You must not slaughter an ox or a sheep and it's young on the same day. When you sacrifice a Thanksgiving offering to the Lord you must sacrifice it so that it is acceptable for your benefit.
On the very day it must be eaten you must not leave any parts of it over until morning. I am the Lord. So basically God is commanding that these offerings have to be perfect. So you're not going and picking out the ones that are kind of lame and not serving your purpose but you're getting the best. It reflects God's holiness and this idea of the standard of giving the best and giving the first fruits which the Bible has talked about.
So no leftovers, no, okay well this animal served its purpose or this one is this, it's got to be the best and that's a mindset that was just born into the Israelites and I think it's something too for us to think about and keep near to our hearts in our lives that first fruit, that best of best whether it's our time, our talent or our treasure. So let's wrap this up here. This last section 31 to 33 talks about reverence for God's name. You must be sure to do my commandments.
I am the Lord. You must not profane my holy name and I will be sanctified in the midst of the Israelites. I am the Lord who sanctifies you, the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God.
I am the Lord. So the chapter really concludes with this call to obey God's commands, not to profane his name and a reminder to the Israelites this is where I brought you from and the God's identity is just tied and intermittent with this holiness, this worship, this obedience and the fact that the Israelites are set apart and this is something that has stayed with the Jewish culture to this day that they are set apart for God that they are different
and God is just continually reminding of that. So now that's the whole chapter. So let's take a look at this from the Israelite cultural or Jewish traditional perspective as to how they would have viewed this. There are some really, really deep insights into the Israelite's worship tradition and their theological mindset when it comes to the reverence of God.
In the broader context of Torah which we're still in this chapter really emphasizes that holiness and we've read about this before holiness is not just a personal thing to the Israelites or to the Jews. Chris and I were just talking a little bit about this yesterday, but it's a communal thing.
It really is about their community, even the whole of Israel like the things that they did and didn't do impacted the community not just the individual and they really saw it that way and that was kind of a weight that they carried with them. It's not just me. We're kind of all in this together. So the first thing is holiness to the Jews is contagious.
So when you're holy and you're just kind of living that life for them it was something that everyone kind of participated in and called on, but so is defilement or sin. They're both contagious in their own ways. When you're with a group of people that are just following hard after God, it's like, man, we are in this together. And it's just awesome and we're doing this thing but I've seen the same thing happen with sin. So in ancient Israel, holiness was not something that was taken for granted.
It was protected and preserved and it was approached with this intentionality. As you can see how we've read through Exodus and Leviticus, this attention to detail and the things and the systems that were in place that was such intentionality behind it. And this chapter just sets these very clear boundaries and identifies very clearly the risk that's associated with it. Bringing guilt not just upon themselves but upon the community as a whole.
So they took this approach to God like super serious and the word of God and everything was just, it was ingrained in their kids from when they were so small, kind of growing up, they were taught all of this stuff. I remember reading a story about the Jews when they were in captivity. So if you think, this Leviticus was coming forth about 1400 years before the time of Jesus and they came into captivity with Babylon at around 586 BC.
And I was listening to this rabbi teacher talk and he said, this was most of their laws and how they wrote and the scriptures and all these things. Most of it was oral tradition.
And these rabbis as they were in captivity, they said, we got away from God and His holiness and we got away from the word of God and we can never let that happen again and that's when they started having the scribes kind of write all of this stuff down and they kind of went into this idea we have to get back to this teaching and we have to really take this holiness like super serious like we used to because that's why we're here now because we got away from it.
So all of those years this idea of this holiness was like super, super serious to them and they had it in their hearts. Worship wasn't a casual thing. Sometimes I approach worship kind of just flippantly just come in and just kind of start worship and I don't prepare my heart and I don't think deeply about it but when you think about being in the presence of God the way Leviticus presents it it's a holy thing.
Now we have differences we're cleansed by the blood Jesus a little bit of a difference thing but the reverence of that to me is something that really, really caught me. Second thing, only the worthy may serve and partake ones that were set apart specifically the priests. So God sets limits on who can eat the offering the priests and their household not the ass. This preserved the sanctity of the sacrifices and reinforces this idea.
Hey, the priests are in this special role and their role is to guide us and this idea of access to God through the temple through what the priests are sustaining. It was something when you think about it's easy to I've said this many times as we're going through these it's easy to look at these things and say, wow, this is just too much. It's just too much. All this process and all of this sacrifice and all this I can do this and I can't do that.
But at the end of the day worship has to cost us something, doesn't it? Even us today, worship has to cost us something or we're not really giving up our full worship to God and that's how the Jews looked at this. And you talked to some, I've talked to Orthodox Jews present-day friends and I said, man, isn't it? Don't you hate doing this and not eating this and not doing that? And he said this, his name was milk wine stock and he said, no, no I don't. This is my offering to God.
This is what I give him. I don't look at it as, you know, hurdle for me or something that's, you know, I gotta do this again. He said, I look at it with joy in my heart to say I can give this thing to God. That really touched me when he said that. So, number three, God deserves the best, not the leftovers. So the animals offered, they had to be perfect. God demands excellence in worship and perfection. So in Jewish mindset, there's this word called Kavad, which means honor.
You know, and God is worthy of the finest to honor God, just like you would honor anyone of royalty or any of that. You know, you look up to someone and say, wow, look at them and the space that they're in, but God is so much beyond us. This idea of Kavad and honoring them was something that was sacred to them. Not what's convenient, not what's expendable, not what there's excess of, but the first, the finest. So sad sacrifices were this expression, you know, to God of purity.
Number four, the priests were guardians of the sacred order. So the priests were not just these ritual performers. I mean, they weren't just, you know, the people around the temple that were here to just execute these things. They were mediators of holiness, and they were guides to this access to God that he was providing. Because remember, this is all about God wanting to be with his people and providing access. And the priest's role was to guide the people through this.
And this was a weighty role for the priests. It was not something that they took lightly. So the role of leadership and worship was not about status, but responsibility to preserve this spiritual integrity as a nation. Now, later, we're going to read that it eventually did become about status, but we're not there yet. So, and last, worship was a whole community.
It was a covenant-based act, and we talked just a little bit about this, but the entire community or nation really benefited or suffered on how faithful this system was upheld. So improper offerings or mishandling of these rituals could defile the entire sacrificial process and bring shame on the person and the community. So worship to them, to the early Jews, it was not just this vertical thing between the individual and God, but a deeply communal, covenantal thing.
So everything that Israel did reflected the character of God. So that's kind of looking at this chapter and this grouping of scripture from a Jewish cultural perspective and how they would have seen it. So let's take a look at how Jesus looked at this. So by the time Jesus, you know, it was time it would have been roughly 1400 years later, you know.
And the religious leaders, particularly the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin, had developed this new system over the years, which really just emptied out, you know, what God was doing here in Leviticus. It just hollowed out the principles of sacrifice and purity and holiness and just turned it into this mess. And we're going to talk about that. So external ritual took precedence over the internal reality in the time Jesus was there.
So the religious rulers, they were known, they were known for their strict observance to the law. They had added over the years thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of laws around what God had done in the beginning. I forget the numbers, but it's like somewhere, I think there's somewhere around 600 and some odd laws in Torah. I'm not that right, it can somewhere 600, 613 laws in Torah. So think about this. These were the laws. This is what they were following.
So what the Jews did over time, this didn't happen right away in Leviticus. I mean, this happened over, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. They built fences around that. 1,000 more laws, 1,000 more, 1,000 more, grouping of like 3,000 laws. And then another grouping of 2, 3,000 more laws. So they had upwards of 5 to 6,000 additional laws that surrounded this 613 laws in Torah. So they had built this structure that God never intended for it to be there.
I always say this, I say, you know, God gives us a good thing and then man has just this way of rowing it. You know, it's just like this, you know, it's just what we do. I hate to say it, but, you know, man just has this way of taking these good things and just doing it. So they had added these layers and layers of law and oral tradition that became in their minds and what they were teaching to the people equal or even above the laws that were in Scripture and in practice.
They emphasized ceremonial purity like washing of hands and avoiding contact with sinners while neglecting the heart, the heart of the command. And that's what Jesus was constantly correcting the people on is you are missing the heart of this. Matthew 23, 25, he says, you clean the outside of the dish but the inside, but they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 23, 27, you are like whitewashed tombs which look beautiful on the outside but the inside are full of bones and of the dead.
That would have been a crushing insult to the Sadducees and Pharisees and the Sanhedrin. I mean, the thought of touching, you know, something dead was just like, oh, you know, can't do that because of all this just nonsense. So he calls them basically your whitewashed tombs inside. You're dead and defiled but on the outside you look just real nice, nice and clean is basically what he was saying.
So they turned God's call for holiness and reverence into performance-based religion focusing on the appearance rather than the transformation of the hearts. Next, corrupting the sacrificial system for profit. So the Sadducees who controlled the temple and the priesthood were largely this elite class and they collaborated closely with the Roman authorities. There's a lot you could read about the histories of the Sadducees.
They really, throughout years of captivity, they were just indoctrinated with this Hellenistic culture and mindset and what they did is they took this Hellenism which they liked because of the stuff that goes along with Hellenism and they merged it with their Jewish faith and they brought it together into this mishmash of things that just don't work together. But in their hearts they were Hellenistic. Make no mistake about it.
There's a lot you could research and read there and it's super interesting to do. But the temple system had become commercialized. So people were forced to buy approved animals at inflated prices and exchange their money at unfair rates. So this was just like a system that they developed to profit themselves.
So we all know the story of Jesus coming in cleansing the temple, clearing the temple and he said my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations but you have made it a den of robbers. So instead of guarding the sanctity of sacrifices and leading the people to God, they turned worship into a business, exploiting people by it. My little sidebar is are we that different as a culture? It's just that it's no work. What's that? It's just that it's no work.
We have monetized every aspect of Christianity. Monetized it. We are not that different than this and it's something we have to guard. Guard our hearts against and really try to press through to that purity and that devotional aspect that God calls us to. Legalism replaced mercy and justice. So in their zeal to obey the law, all of these rules and regulations that they had put around it, these leaders missed the heart of God.
Jesus said in Matthew 23, 23, woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You give a tenth of your spices, mint, dill and cumin, but you have neglected the more important matters of law. Justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. So in other words, they had weaponized the law using it to condemn, exclude and shame rather than to lead people towards restoration. And I can tell you, I used to do that all the time.
I used to weaponize scripture in a way that it would just cut people and just criticize people and say, you shouldn't be doing it this way. You should be doing it this way because of this and just putting it and using it kind of as a weapon instead of a venue of love and instead of drawing people in with it, I would use it to kind of, really kind of divide in a way. And it was something that God really, really delivered me from years and years and years and years ago.
But they had weaponized the law. Matthew 9, 13 says, go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. So they had forgotten the purpose of purity and sacrifice. It was to bring people into relationship with God. It was to draw people in to God, not create barriers through social and spiritual hierarchies. That's not what it was about and that's not what it's about today. God wants us to use his word and to be impacted by the spirit to draw people in, not create these barriers.
Pride and hypocrisy had replaced humility. These religious leaders loved the recognition and the titles and the public displays of righteousness while ignoring the humility and fear of God that Leviticus called us to. Remember we read about Aaron? They were humbled to be in the position where they weren't touting that above and saying, look at me, look at me. Matthew 23, 5, everything they do is done for people to see. They make their philocrities wide and their tassels on their garments long.
The philocrities with the scriptures that they had in the boxes that they carried around with them. Matthew 23, 6, they love the place of honor at the banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues. They loved that, that people would see that instead of that place of humility. Holiness that God is talking about in Leviticus is about this reverence towards God.
And in Jesus' day with the Pharisees and with the leaders and the religious leaders, it had become this stage of self-promotion, basically. So the principles here in Leviticus 22, honor, holiness, sacrifice and purity were meant to point the Israelites to a deep covenantal relationship with God. But it had gotten twisted into a system of control and profit and status in the generations to come. So Jesus never rejected the law. He participated in all of these festivals.
He said he came to fulfill the law. What he rejected was this distortion and this intent and this perversion that the people had brought into the law. His ministry was all about this radical return to the true heart of God, the true heart of worship, mercy, humility, authentic relationship with God. This chapter, again, like so many chapters in Leviticus just reminded me about this idea of approaching God with reverence, intentionality, integrity, humility.
So we don't live under this burden of these, I shouldn't call it a burden because some of the Jews didn't call it a burden, but we don't live under that system. But God still deserves our best, right? He still deserves the sacrifice that we should bring from worship and our hearts should honor him with that purity and that gratitude. So that's 22. You guys have your handouts.
I think we probably have enough here for why don't we break down into two groups and kind of have that wrestle through some of this stuff. Sound good? All right. Thanks for joining us at Lansdale Life Church as we praise God and discuss His Word. Don't forget to join us for Worship Live Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. Eastern on YouTube. Be blessed and have a great day.