A statistics report says every person in Bangalore creates an average of one-half to one kilogram of garbage. The whole city creates 3,500 tons, and one ton is 1,000 kilograms, so that is 35 lakh kilograms of garbage in just one day. Imagine for a month, and for a year, that is 1,277,500,000 kilograms, more than 1.2 billion kilograms. That is just one city; imagine the huge amount for the whole nation of India. What a burden this would be for the nation. Imagine if every person and every family were asked to keep their garbage within their house and could only dump it once a year. What a huge burden it would be for every person, every family, and the whole nation. If the garbage van doesn’t come for two days, we get so tense, and it becomes a burden. For a year, what a burden that would be.

This is a dim example of the great burden every Israelite’s conscience felt. God had made them realize how holy he is, and on the other side, from Leviticus 11-15, he made them realize the burden and guilt of sin and the importance of maintaining a ritually clean life. The uncleanness from birth, the surrounding land, water, air, animals, leprosy of body, garment, and house, and continuous bodily discharges, meant every man’s household had accumulated tons and tons of uncleanness in the eyes of God throughout the year. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, every Jew and every family would have uncleanness accumulated through daily violations of divine commandments. If you could measure it by size and weight, it would be an infinitely big mountain, a vast, shoreless ocean.

All these accumulated burdens of moral impurity are big, immeasurable tons of garbage. We may even see in our mind’s eye a spiritually immeasurable, vast, vast amount of unclean garbage on each person’s conscience, burdening him, uncleanness that has been accumulated through the year. The whole nation was pressed with the burden of their guilt, the accumulated weight of sin, and their unworthiness to stand before this God of burning holiness.

This is not just a problem for Israel, but it is every son of Adam’s problem. Created in the image of God, every breath, every atom of his being, yearns for the face of his Creator. He was created to glorify and enjoy this God. The great hindrance from his side to come to God is his own guilty, burdened conscience. Today, each of our greatest problems is a guilty conscience. What does it do? The same thing it made Adam do. It is what makes you hide from God like Adam and Eve, and what makes you shift blame to everyone else for all the wrongs you do, like Adam blamed Eve and even God. The Bible describes the wicked as being like a “tossed sea, for it cannot be still”; it is the cause of all restlessness, constant inner turmoil, a persistent feeling of unease, anxiety, fear, regret, tension, and an inability to find peace or rest. A guilty person may isolate themselves from others, feeling unworthy, unable to have or maintain any proper relationships with others, and always irritable. They engage in negative self-talk and self-criticism, always grumbling, saying negative and harsh things about themselves, headlines like “no use trying anything,” which damages all confidence. They may experience despair, depression, boredom, loss of interest in activities, and difficulty concentrating. Insomnia and sleep disturbances make it difficult to sleep. Sometimes, it even leads to self-inflicted punishment in various forms, such as destroying their body with drugs or drinks. Even as believers, we suffer from those feelings of guilt and unworthiness. These are all symptoms of a guilty conscience that is away from God’s face.

How can you be delivered from a guilty conscience and enjoy God’s face? How, then, shall people come to God? They can try 1,000 ways, but they cannot solve this problem. The only solution is God’s appointed way. He himself devised the way, and He has taught it to us by a parable in this chapter. This is God’s appointed way of access to God for every person. God’s wise plan is to resolve this problem by two means: the High Priest mediator and sacrifice. The mediator and His atonement.

This is a great chapter in the whole law of Moses because it treats a matter that is of the very highest importance to all of us. Practically, even as believers, it teaches us how we can overcome the blocks that sin creates in our life to enjoy God. Grasping this truth can teach us a way to enjoy constant, unceasing fellowship with God. Oh, may the Holy Spirit open our eyes to learn this lesson, so that we may enter into the fullest fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, in the only God-appointed way. Hebrews calls it “the new and living way.”

On this great day, if these people of Israel were to survive in the presence of holy Jehovah, all this one-year’s garbage must be atoned for and removed and put very far away. That is what happens on the blessed Day of Atonement. We saw the wonderful High Priest mediator, AHRAE—he was appointed, humiliated, righteous, atoned, and entered as the mediator. The amazing fact of the Day of Atonement is that all the work on this day should be done by the High Priest, he alone. Verse 17 says, “There shall be no man in the tabernacle of meeting when he goes in to make atonement in the Holy Place.” On other days, almost all the work of the temple was done by other priests. On this Day of Atonement, no one else was to do any work; all work was done only by the High Priest: sacrificing, taking blood, smearing it, all by him. This is a beautiful type that our High Priest, and He and He alone, will do the final work of atonement, alone and unassisted. He was alone in the garden, alone on the cross, with only two of the worst thieves who could not have helped him in any way. No disciple was crucified with him, no angel helping him. He was alone. “I have trodden the wine-press alone.” Oh, bow down and adore Him, then give all the glory to His holy name, for alone and unassisted, He made full atonement for your guilt.

Aaron, the priest, is a dim shadow and type of the perfect priest who will come, so he brings his own tons of sins to the tabernacle as he needed to atone for his own uncleanness accumulated throughout the year. So verse 6 says, “Then Aaron shall offer the bull for the sin offering which is for himself that he may make atonement for himself and for his household.” Now, having made atonement for himself, he is to turn away from the problem of his own personal defilement to turn to the heavy burden of the nation in their unclean problem. Aaron had to provide a bull for himself. The congregation gave Aaron for their sin problem two goats for a sin offering. When you read the chapter, it may look confusing because the bull and goats get mixed up. If you remember the bull is for Aaron and his household’s sins, and the goats are for the people’s atonement, things will be clear. So we will skip all references to the bull for Aaron and only look at what he does for the people, as that is what Christ fulfilled. What he does for the people is the two-goat ceremony. Notice verse 5: “And he shall take from the congregation of the sons of Israel two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering.”

Today, I want to focus on simply the two-goat ceremony. The two goats typify and emblematize the God-prescribed remedy for the terrible problem of a guilty conscience.

• Selection and Casting of lots
• Sacrifice of the first goat
• Deportation of the second goat

Selection and Casting of Lots. Verse 7: “He shall take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of meeting.” Two goats are selected. Where did they get these? They would buy them. These two goats will be purchased by the public treasury of the temple. So, Jesus Christ was purchased by the public treasury for “thirty pieces of silver,” which is what they had valued Him at, so they brought Him to be offered. Verse 8: “Then Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats: one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat.” These two goats will have two strikingly distinct roles in the atonement. Which goat will take which role will be decided by casting lots. It is like writing on a paper, like a coin toss today. Why? They could just decide one for this and another for that. No, God says to decide by casting lots. Why? Proverbs 16:33 says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” The people cast the lots, they put the toss, but who will decide the outcome? It is the sovereignty of God that will decide which goat will take which role. Lots are put by human means, but the result is always by an invisible hand. How marvelous we see in the Gospels who decided to put Jesus on the cross. We think it is the people who had the lots, as the historical drama is unfolded: the leaders, the Sanhedrin, Judas, came on that dark night in the Garden of Gethsemane, seized the Lamb of God, and put him on the cross. It is true it was all by the instruments of men, but it was God’s appointment and decree, as Peter says in Acts 2:23: “You nailed Him to the cross by the hands of godless men, but he was delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.” Okay, the lot is cast. One is selected for a sin offering and is offered, and another as a scapegoat. It is told that to identify each goat and not mix them up, they would tie a scarlet cloth on the horns or forehead of the goat where hands were to be laid on its head, and it would be sent into the wilderness. A scarlet cloth would be tied around the neck of the goat that would be offered to God by cutting its neck.

Sacrifice of the Sin Offering. The first sacrifice is the sin-atoning goat. This sacrifice is a satisfaction of Jehovah’s justice. There are two stages. First: In verse 15, we see a bloody slaughter. Aaron will take the sin-atoning goat, and verse 15 says, “Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people, bring its blood inside the veil, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat.” Imagine in your mind’s eye: Aaron would drag this goat, take a knife, cut the throat of the innocent goat. Blood would gush forth; it would immediately collapse, marking its agonies, struggling for life, a thrashing back and forth that would take place. It would be a very horrible, pitiable sight. This is a sin offering.

Brothers and sisters, behold your savior. Do you see Him there in your mind’s eye? Your savior arrested, sentenced to be sacrificed, casting lots, beaten, scourged, with a heavy beam placed on him? Do you see Him staggering and collapsing under the weight of the cross beam as He’s on His way to Golgotha? His body placed on the beam, and spikes being driven into His hands and into His feet? Rising at the pillar? Do you see Him suffocating as for hours He’s being outstretched on the cross? Do you see Him crying in dereliction, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” This goat dying on Atonement Day foreshadowed all of that.

The Father’s sword of justice must be quenched in one or two places. Either by you sinners being cut to pieces on the day of judgment or it being sheathed in the heart of His own Son. We see it here in this dying sacrifice, the sheathing of the Father’s sword in the heart of His Son. And behold, behold the blood flowing from His open side as the goat typically spilled His blood. So we see a sin sacrifice, we’ve seen a bloody slaughter.

Now the second stage is a bloody sprinkling. We also see that in verse 15. Then the High Priest, with his humble dress of a linen white tunic, imagine, he sacrifices the goat in the outer court, and then the High Priest goes inside the holy place, crosses the thick veil, and, holding his breath, enters into the Holy of Holies behind the veil, standing breathlessly inside the veil and sprinkling the blood on the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. The mercy seat, under which the tablets of the Ten Commandments lie, cries out in wrath because we have violated it all our life, all ten commandments, in billions of times every second in our mind and heart, words, and actions. Every second we have not conformed to that law, loving God with all our heart. Infinite wrath is boiling in God’s heart against our sins. Oh, praise God, but all wrath and judgment is appeased by this blood. This is appeasing blood. This is propitiating blood. This is wrath-satisfying blood as we have violated all the ten words in the two tablets below.

Blessed be God for the Lord Jesus Christ. We can see that our high priest, as our representative, the Lord Jesus Christ, did far more than going inside the veil. By offering himself and crying out “it is finished,” he hung his head down and died. Where did he go? Where he entered, he said to the thief, “Today you will be with me in heaven.” So he entered heaven and sprinkled his blood on the mercy seat and completely satisfied the justice and wrath of God against all sins and completely fulfilled all the demands of his holy law. That is why God didn’t wait until his resurrection, but as soon as he died, what happened? The earth shook, and the veil was torn wide open. And then there was the resurrection on the third day, all pointing to a perfect atonement. There was a public display of satisfied justice.

You see even that public display is shown in types here. So beautiful. What took place inside the Holy of Holies was between Aaron and God. How do people know? So we see verse 18: “And he shall go out to the altar that is before the Lord, and make atonement for it, and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around.” Verse 19: “Then he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, cleanse it, and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel.” What is he doing? He is making public a private transaction, what took place in the secret Holy of Holies between the High Priest and the Holy God, so the whole nation can grasp hold of the significance. There is a public spectacle then made for the burdened nation. Imagine the whole nation standing, holding their breath: our representative High Priest, bearing all our sins, went inside. Will he come back or die like his sons before the burning holy God? Oh, what joy when they see the High Priest coming back from the veil. They all watch him coming back from behind the curtain, out into a public stage where all the nation’s eyes are focused on him.

Notice: So we see verse 18: “And he shall go out to the altar that is before the Lord.” This is the altar in the outer court. Others can see this. “And He is to make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and the blood of the goat and put it on the horns of the altar on all sides.” The horns of the altar were like his pulpit, and four horns would come out of each corner. And these horns were a symbol of strength. This could be the altar of the golden altar of incense, which represented the prayers of God’s people, and the bronze altar of sacrifice. Incense was burned daily. What a wonderful picture. God’s people are able to see the transaction that happened inside the veil, that God has accepted the atonement sacrifice, and their sins have been atoned for by the smearing of the blood on these four horns of the bronze altar. Now, the blood on the horns of the altar of incense tells us that this blood is so powerful that it not only cleansed our uncleanness but it has cleansed even the most holy services like our prayers; sacred things are cleansed and accepted by God now because of the blood. God has not only cleansed us, but even our prayers are accepted by God. The blood purified the altar from the “uncleanness of the children of Israel.” Verse 19: “Then he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, cleanse it, and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel.” How beautiful! How many times? Seven times. What does it mean? A complete, perfect, finished atonement and a complete cleansing by the blood from all uncleanness is displayed by the seven sprinklings. So we have seen the sin-atoning goat.

Now, the transfer to the scapegoat in verses 8 through 10. Verse 20: “And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place, the tabernacle of meeting, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat.” Verse 21: “Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man.” Verse 22: “The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.”

The word “scapegoat” in the Hebrew is called “Azazel.” You will find this in most English Bibles. It’s a puzzling word that has multiple interpretations. So many explanations are given; some strongly say this goat is given to Satan. Verses 8 they explain: “One goat offered to God and another sent to the wilderness for Satan,” giving the meaning of “desert demon, Satan who mostly lived there,” as Satan also had to be appeased because he held us captive. Some good preachers also explain it by saying Satan is an accuser, and the scapegoat announces to the accusing evil one that sin has been atoned for. The goat is sent out to announce to Azazel, the devil, that sin has been taken care of. But all this has no Bible basis. You will find many explaining it that way, but that notion is totally foreign to any Old Testament or New Testament theology. We find in both the Old Testament and New Testament that God alone is the offended party. God alone is the one whose wrath needs to be appeased and needs to be propitiated.

I believe it simply means a desolate place, a desert, as verses 21 and 22 say. Azazel is best understood as the place of cutting off, a wilderness, a far place from the camp. Far away from God. Far away from the people of God. Deep into the wilderness. Out of sight. Where there will be no return, a barren land beyond the camp of God’s people. The first goat put away sin by sacrifice. The second goat carries it away into oblivion, as if it never existed. The first goat satisfied God’s justice. But now the second goat shows another dimension, and that is the dismissal of sins.

It’s interesting that the first ritual was done inside the veil, but this sending away was fully done in public view. The whole nation, millions of people, stand and behold each and every element of this ritual. This ritual shows the outcome or fruit of the Day of Atonement. If you ask what is the benefit of the Day of Atonement, what is the effect? God says, “I’ll tell you what the effect of the atonement to come is.”

It is shown in two acts. The first act is hands on the head. We see it in verse 21a: “And Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins. And he shall lay them on the head of the goat.” Hands on the head, we see here. The high priest who is the representative of that sin-burdened nation, those millions of people with heavy trucks of sin and uncleanness upon their backs. We see this representative takes both of his hands and presses them down upon the head of this scapegoat. And what does he do there? He confesses all of the iniquity of the sons of Israel and transfers everything onto the head of this scapegoat. It will not be just a few minutes, maybe a long prayer. You can even see as he would stand there and confess sin after sin, as he would confess sins of presumption, sins of ignorance, sins of uncleanness, sins of omission, heinous sins and more heinous sins, and ceremonial neglect. It’s almost as if you can see standing behind him, one by one, each Jew comes and drops off the heavy load, mountains of garbage, accumulated over one year of his sin, upon the back of that scapegoat. One after another, hundred after hundred, thousands after thousands, billions. “Lord, we have broken all ten commandments; been idolatrous. Lord, we have blasphemed your name. Lord, we have been Sabbath breakers. Not only have we been picking up sticks on the Sabbath, deserving to be destroyed by stone, but we have made a profit on the Sabbath. Lord, we have our children who have not obeyed their parents. Husbands have not loved wives. We have been murderous in hating. We have been adulterous in our lusting. We have robbed you of tithes. We have been deceitful in not telling the truth. We have been covetous in being discontent.” As he would go on and on, rehearsing the sins of a nation.

And you can see, brethren, the mountain of wrath-deserving defilement being stacked upon the back of that scapegoat. As the camp of Israel, because of their sin, what do they deserve? They deserve to be cast far away from God and not get any of his blessings, far away to destruction by fire and brimstone. Look at the face of the poor goat. The millions of trucks and barrels of iniquity, as it were, are placed upon that goat. And what do we say, brethren? Oh, what a beast of burden. What a beast of burden was this substitute, a poor animal. You should see its face. Just keep watching him. Suddenly in graphics, his face turns into the face of a man. Do you see the face of a man? Oh, what a beast of burden is our Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. It says in Isaiah 53:6, “He has no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” His face was not like a human face at all. Why? God has “caused the iniquity of us all to fall upon Him.” “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.” It was all transferred to our scapegoat, Christ. He became our scapegoat, who bore not only a one-year truck of household garbage but all the life of infinite, dirty garbage from birth that kept flowing. It was poured on him one by one until he who knew no sin became sin for us.

And not only your sin. When you think of the weight of the guilt that was placed upon Him on Golgotha, it was a mountain range of the sins of the elect, barrels of sin from men and women from every age, from every tribe, from every tongue, from every kindred, from every nation. From Adam, the first believer, all the way to the last believer who will embrace the Lord Jesus Christ until he comes back. All of those heavy barrels of uncleanness placed upon the back of our Beloved. And as John the Baptist said, “I say to you, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Transfer on the scapegoat.

Now the second act: the sending away of the scapegoat into the wilderness. After transferring all this guilt, see the face of the goat. Will we feed and give water to the poor goat? No, most cruelly. And that’s in verses 21b and 22, where it says, “And He shall send it, the goat, away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness.” “And the goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities, all the oceans of garbage on its back to a solitary land, to the depths of the wilderness. He will go to a place of no return.”

Now what is all this? Brethren, this is a public visual aid for the burdened conscience of the ancient people of God. Burdened. They hear of the law of God. They hear of His moral law. They hear of His civil law. They hear of His ceremonial law. And they see they don’t keep the law as they sweep up day by day the sins of themselves and their families. They’re burdened by how much there is there, violating the law of God. And when they come annually at the Day of Atonement, they are burdened in conscience by their sins. But we see here, we see this visual aid as an appointed escort accompanies the goat deep out into the wilderness. It may be that a rope was tied around the neck of the goat and he carried him out miles and miles away to Azazel. He was to go so many miles that it was to be assured that the goat would never find its way back. He was to go to Azazel, a place of removal, cut off, where there will be no return, a barren land beyond the camp of God’s people. It is told they had different men placed at different places to take it very far, so it can’t be seen anymore.

All the people see the scapegoat carrying all their burdens, going, going, going far. After some time, they lose sight of it. A fit man goes with it, and they wait, and after a long time, the man returns back, waving, “The goat is gone.” And says, “He can no longer see it; it is gone so far, it will not return.” You should see that moment. There will be a celebration of clapping hands, blowing of trumpets, because all these burdens of their nation’s sins are all gone very far; they will never come back. All these sins have been carried into oblivion.

Leviticus 25:9 says, “Once every fifty years on the day of Jubilee, you shall sound a ram’s horn on the day of atonement; you shall sound a horn through all your land.” The sounding of the ram’s horn there on the Day of Atonement speaks of how the debts of God’s people have been canceled. Jubilee was a year of deliverance. Whatever debts you owe to someone, if you are a slave, if you sold your land, all will be returned to you every Jubilee year, every 50 years. Imagine what joy some people had gone into debt. They had to sell themselves into slavery. They lost their land. They lost their house. But on the Day of Jubilee, all debts were canceled. They were given back their land and their house.

When the flags came back and the report came back, “Our sins are gone,” there was rejoicing. Then was the horn to be sounded. Then was the celebration. “Now is Jubilee, for all the debts have been canceled.” And we can see the blessed blasts would be sounded, speaking of liberty. “Our sins are gone. Our debts are gone. Our sentence is gone.”

Do you see the blessed theological drama that is found in these old covenant shadows, depicting perpetual truths? Our scapegoat, the Lord Jesus Christ, has taken away our sins upon His head, just as the scapegoat, and he took it so far from us. All past, present, and future, it can never come back. He made it a non-entity in the eyes of God. Oh, soul, can you see your sins all gone? See that goat, keep seeing it until you lose sight. Rejoice, your sins are gone like that. They are utterly cast into the wilderness of forgetfulness, where they shall never be found anymore against us forever, not even on the Day of Judgment. But mark, this goat did not sacrificially make the atonement—it was a type of the sins going away, and so it was a type of the atonement. For you know, since our sins are thereby lost, it is the fruit of the atonement, but the sacrifice is the means of making it.

Think of that burdened scapegoat; it would go far, far away, with no water, no food, to burn in the hot desert, starve, alone, and die. Oh, what a picture of what our Lord went through. He was sent far away, to the utmost place, and suffered. So far away he had to cry, “My God, my God, why did you forsake me?” Billions and billions of miles he traveled, very far, carrying our sins to a place where they would never return. Praise his name.

Application Blessed be God the Father of Lord Jesus Christ for the Day of Atonement. Oh, suffering, guilty conscience sinners, even believers, may the Holy Spirit help us to grasp this truth. How can the burden of mountains and oceans of guilt that press us be removed? How can you be delivered from a guilty conscience? Behold the answer in these two goats. One by a suffering substitute that bears all punishment and wrath for our sins, and then the scapegoat that carries our sin far. Our Jesus Christ accomplished both these works.

How can you and I participate in that work and experience a cleansed conscience? By doing what the High Priest did: by our placing our hands on the forehead of God’s appointed scapegoat. That is the only way that our sins can be removed from our conscience. The only means appointed by God. We must rest the full weight of our souls upon Him, the Lord Jesus, the goat of God, the Lamb of God. There is nowhere else, sinner, nowhere else where you can unburden your guilt. It will not leave you all this life and even for eternity.

God’s sword of justice will pierce in only two places. It must either be plunged into Christ on crucifixion day or cut you to pieces on judgment day. Which will it be? There is no other place for the sheathing of that sword. This is the only means of the removal of our sins. What must we do? We must have faith in Him. That’s what the idea of hands are, hands of faith, grabbing hold of, placing weight upon. Faith is typified by the laying on of hands while confessing sin. “Lord, I am a wretched sinner. I have violated Your law. I have been ungodly in Your presence. I am unclean and unfit to be near You.” And then we have to rest the full weight of our hope. If we are to experience deliverance from a guilty conscience and enjoy the light of God’s face, for which our soul yearns, this is the divinely appointed means. And our hope rests exclusively on His work alone.

And now I ask you, I ask you who are here sitting here, “Have your hands touched the scapegoat’s head?” If not, your loathsome load remains; your conscience will torture you all your life. There is no way to rid your back of the heavy load. No way. Stagger, stagger now with all of the weight of your sin to this Lamb and put your hands upon Him. “Oh, I’ve been there before, Pastor, I’ve done this. But why do I feel guilty again, not happy?” You have to learn how to deal with guilt as a believer. Every time you feel guilty, you have not learned to come back to this scapegoat and lay your hands, confess it, repent, and send all our guilt far away. 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

What a visual aid is found here for our spiritually disabled souls. We are mentally disabled children spiritually, so it is difficult to grasp theological truth. And then, once having grasped it, we have such a hard time remembering it. And therefore, God gives us visual aids here in the old covenant in dealing with His immature people. Every time you feel the burden of sin, don’t feel the light of God’s presence, remember the two goats. Put your head down, send your goat far away. You will experience what the Pilgrim Christian felt when a big burden fell off; how much joy he felt, he said, “glad and lightsome.” It rolled and was buried in a tomb, never to be seen again. “Come to me, you who are weak and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” How tranquil it is to muse upon and ponder these things.

Believe God’s promises. Psalm 103:12: “As far as the East is from the West, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” It is an infinite distance; you cannot go from East to West. Brethren, our sin is profoundly unretrievable. Isaiah 38:17: “Thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.” That means out of God’s sight. It’s behind His back. Jeremiah 31:34: “For I will forgive their iniquity; I will remember them no more.” My sins are banished from them, non-existent in the mind of God. God’s all-searching eye finds it no more. Isn’t that glorious? Micah 7:19: “He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, Thou wilt cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” As a scapegoat is sent out into the depths of the wilderness, sunken in the wilderness, never to be seen again. Oh, why does the Holy Spirit give such promises and pictures? To give assurance to a staggering, guilty conscience. May the Holy Spirit screw it tight into your conscience, so you won’t forget it.

What should be our response to the Day of Atonement? Hebrews 10 tells us that is the purpose of the great Day of Atonement. Hebrews 10:19-22 says, “Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

The great achievement of the Day of Atonement is that we should draw near to God by a new and living way. How? With boldness, full assurance, and a cleansed conscience.

First, we should have boldness, freedom, and liberty to enter God’s presence. When we realize Christ’s blood has been sprinkled on the mercy seat, all sins are atoned for, and the law is satisfied; if we truly believe that, it gives us a bold access into the presence of God. Smearing the blood on the altar not only removes our sins, but all our prayers, worship, songs, and services are so pleasing and acceptable to God. Not because they are perfect; everything we do is unholy. Our poor prayer is an unholy prayer, for we have uttered it, and that which comes out of unholy lips like ours must be tainted. But, ah, it is a prayer that has been sprinkled with blood, and therefore it must be a holy prayer. It is the most pleasing prayer, the most pleasing worship.

It is so pleasing. I told you he comes with perfume, showing how pleased God is. So pleased. Do you know Aaron was alone in the Holy of Holies? God always has two other creatures always with him: two cherubim angels forged in gold. You see the presence of the cherubim in Revelation 4 and 5 always; four creatures who are ever surrounding the throne, worshiping the living God. You see, the cherubim are very delightful in the presence of God. God delights in the eternal and perpetual worship of the cherubim. No one else is allowed to come so close to God’s Holy of Holies than these beings.

Do you know something? When we as sinners, because of the sprinkled blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, can now offer up to God and his presence in bold access a worship that is delightful to God, as is the worship of the cherubim. Think of it. We, in our prayers, come into the presence of the living God. Our sin has been covered by the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus Christ. When we pray, our prayers are received as so delightful to God; praise like the highest cherubim. God delights in them. Oh, as delightful as the cherubim.

In the fullness of redemption, when we go to heaven, does God delight in our presence? It says he will sing and rejoice. Oh, yes. It will be as delightful as the worship of the cherubim. Why? Because of the blood. The blood of this beloved lamb. This goat who has been sprinkled on our behalf.

Secondly, you’re supposed to draw near with full assurance of faith. You’re supposed to draw near with assurance because your sins have been forgiven through the work of Jesus Christ. See, full assurance, not any doubt. Trusting God’s promise, we draw near.

Third, with a clean conscience. We should draw near to God with full assurance and a clean conscience. This enjoyment of a clean conscience should make us draw closer to God. In fact, it kind of automatically happens. As soon as the conscience is cleansed, there is a peace of God that transcends all understanding. He feels a strong pull to come to his satisfying creator.

So, the great achievement of the Day of Atonement is that we as creatures yearning for God’s face, now because of Christ, can draw near to God with boldness, with full assurance, and with a clean conscience.

Secondly (verse 23): “Hold fast without wavering.” If the Lord has done this for you, if He has shed the blood of His own Son, hold fast without wavering! Don’t turn back, keep on going! Persevere!

Thirdly, look at verse 24. Hebrews tells us to encourage one another to love and obedience. “Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works.” That’s what we’re to do. If Jesus has given this full and final sacrifice on our behalf, what should we do? Encourage one another to love, encourage one another to be like Him.

In verse 25, what are we supposed to do in response to this? “Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.” Isn’t that interesting? Don’t stop going to church! That’s the application that the author of Hebrews gives. Because of the full and final sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we’re not to “forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as is the habit of some, but to encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Because you can experience drawing near to God with boldness, full assurance of faith, and a clean conscience and enjoy his graces only by these means. So, don’t stop going to church.

When my son was small, I would mostly tell him Bible stories, but sometimes I would tell him history, stories about kings. I remember once telling him about the Mysore Raja and the great Dasara procession parade, describing how the king would come sitting on the Jumbo Savari elephant with a big procession of elephants, dancers, horses, different kinds of long colorful dolls dancing, chariots, and various depictions of palace life, forests with animals, and varied Karnataka history and culture. I kept describing the amazing sight. It created a big dream and desire in him to see the Mysore Dasara procession. Inevitably, we took him once, but you know how crowded it gets. His grandfather and I tried to get near, but there were four or five rows of people standing on footpaths and walls; the whole street was jammed. He could hear the dancing and music and maybe catch an occasional glimpse of the marching band or clowns, but he couldn’t see anything clearly. He was very upset, stretching to get even a momentary clear view of it all. Then I decided to stand on a small, tall stone and said, “See, John, Daddy cannot stand here for a long time. If I fall, you will also fall. So I will stand on this stone and you sit on my shoulder, and slowly you can stand up and watch the procession for one or two minutes.” So, for two minutes, I still remember the smile and joy on his face and him shouting as he saw the beauty and color of his very first parade. But it was just for a few minutes. At that age, it was the thrill of a lifetime. Now, he doesn’t even care.

Well, the Old Testament believers were like little John. They had heard so many things about the Messiah from their childhood. He would come and do marvelous things. Like little John, they yearned to get a clear glimpse of this Messiah and his work. But there were many centuries standing between them and the coming of Christ. They only caught a fragmentary glimpse, just a few glimpses, of the coming King of Kings through the old covenant types and shadows.

However, in Leviticus 16, the Heavenly Father compassionately lifts the Old Testament saint upon his shoulders and shows him a clear view of the Messiah’s work in these 34 verses. It’s to catch an almost clear sight of the coming Savior of the world on the Day of Atonement. Old Testament saints like Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and David would feel thrilled like John for those two minutes when they could see the glorious work of the Messiah in this chapter. We come to that chapter today. The sacred law of Moses attains its highest and supreme glory in this chapter. If Isaiah 53 is the highest Messianic prophecy in all the books of the prophets, Leviticus 16 is the highest Messianic chapter in all of Moses’ books of law. The coming Messiah and the great need for his work are pointed to us with a clear distinctness here like in no other place in the entire Old Testament. In fact, Leviticus 1-15 is preparation for us to come to this chapter. So we have come to a very high, majestic, lofty point in the book of Leviticus. This is the highest festival for Jews: Yom Kippur, the great Day of Atonement, the high point of the year in the life of Israel.

And this hour in our brief time together, with the limited strength of a Sunday evening, we are going to superficially gaze upon the glory of this chapter and maybe dip into this deep well of living water for another week or two to drink in the wonderful truths here.

Two headings: a dangerous flashback (1-2) and a glorious mediator of God.

Notice verse 1: “The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they had approached the presence of the Lord and died.” This takes us back to the shocking flashback event in Leviticus 10. When the people of God, joyfully after instituting the temple and anointing the priest, gathered to offer their first worship in Leviticus 10, these two priests, with all their eagerness and sincerity, came to worship God with a “strange fire” which he had not commanded, but what was right in their own minds. There was nothing wrong in the eyes of all the Israelites, elders, and other men; no one stopped them. Maybe men clapped and whistled for them when they smelled the sweet fragrance. They came with a casual, irreverent attitude to worship and fatally misjudged the holiness of God. What did God do? He did not break their legs or give them leprosy, but God killed them on the spot in a second, with a destruction by way of consumption.

On a good day, starting a wonderful chapter, what is this unfortunate flashback? I believe this is one verse that opens the door to see the glory of this chapter. The Holy Spirit wisely makes us realize that flashback of this event, but also all that God taught from chapters 11-15. Because if we don’t stop and realize the lessons from this flashback, you will never be able to see the glory of this day.

In my language, there are two lessons God wanted us to learn in all these Leviticus chapters. Leviticus 1-10 teaches us “Who is God?” Leviticus 11-15 teaches us “Who is man?” These are two amazing realities. The more we understand the depth of these two questions, the more we will be able to see the glory of the Day of Atonement.

Through all the five sacrifices, ordaining the priests, and tabernacle rules, what is God teaching? Again and again, almost 150 times, using the word “holy” in Leviticus, God is making them realize, “I am a holy God.” In Leviticus 10, when Aaron’s two sons died, remember how Moses interpreted that. Verse 3: “And Moses said to Aaron, ‘This is what the Lord spoke, saying: ‘By those who come near Me I must be regarded as holy; And before all the people I must be glorified.'” That is the sharp lesson. These men misjudged God’s holiness. “Realize who is God? I am not a god of your imagination, I am not one of the idols your father taught you to worship; I am one true, living, holy God of heaven and earth. I am a God of glory, a God eternally worshipped as holy, holy, holy. I have historically showed my holiness from the beginning. I banished sinful Adam from the Garden of Eden for only one disobedience. When I smelled the whole world corrupted in sin, smelled the hearts of men that were always sinful at all times, it became so unbearable that I destroyed the whole earth with a flood and had to control myself by a covenant with a rainbow. When I heard the outcry of the sin that came up from Sodom and Gomorrah, I buried it under a heap of fire and brimstone. Now I chose you, in infinite mercy, and I condescended, humbled myself to come and dwell among you in a most holy place. So, because I have humbled myself and am dwelling with you daily, have come closer to you, I know that anything with man that is closer and more frequent becomes common and is taken for granted. Familiarity can breed a casual contempt. But don’t do that with me. Don’t fall into casual thoughts about me and my worship; don’t become irreverent. I am holy. This means don’t get so used to me and take me and my worship casually. Remember, O Israel, the Lord God who dwells among you is holy.” Who is God? This is a holy God. We will be amazed by that reality of God dwelling with man if we grasp one side, that is, who is God, and secondly, who is man?

Who is man? Leviticus 11-15 taught deep lessons about man. Chapters 11-12 say man is not only born defiled and depraved, but he lives fully surrounded by uncleanness in the land, water, and air. Remember the unclean animals and foods that can defile a Jew anywhere he goes. Chapters 13 and 14 show that this birth defilement can get worse; a soul’s leprosy can break out in the soul, with outward traits, and in houses. Then the terrible chapter 15 gives a terrible picture of a continuous bodily discharge. Mark 7:21-23: “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.” It is continuously flowing and defiling us. We are an ever-flowing stream of uncleanness in the eyes of God; this is the distressing vileness of our cursed nature.

Think of these two beings: on one side, this thrice-holy God, and on the other side, this unclean man. If you understand the distance between these two, the most universally impossible thing is to bring them together. Every man’s conscience realizes this: “I am a sinner, and God is holy. How can I come to him?” All the miseries of man are because of this distance.

How? When you again ask who is man, man was not created so sinful like this. He was created holy in the image of God. The bond between the Creator and his creature is the most profound, intricate, and powerful relationship conceivable. A dim example of that is the bond between a mother and child. Whatever pain or fever the child may have, if it can get into its mother’s lap, it can feel warmth and sleep so peacefully. That mother didn’t form the child in her womb, but this God formed every nerve, artery, and bone. This bond between man and his God is woven into the very fabric of existence, foundational to our being, and ultimately, our purpose. God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” That bond makes every breath yearn for a bond with his creator. We do not just exist because God created us; we continue to exist because He sustains us every second. In him we live, move, and have our being. Our life force, our very animation, comes directly from Him. The image of God creates an inherent likeness that forms an unbreakable connection that no fallenness can fully erase. This indescribable bond was created for eternal communion, and no fall can erase this.

All souls listening to me, every soul breathing on earth now, all our restlessness in life is because we are living outside this great bond. That is what accounts for the restlessness of humanity. It is the cry of the human spirit for the face of God who created me, like a child separated from its mother. You can show it some toy or some entertainment and make it temporarily stop crying, but after some time, it will keep crying to see its mother’s face.

We can never be happy in life until we have a face-to-face encounter and satisfying communion with the living God. That kind of relationship alone fills every aching void of our lives. If God makes you see deep within your heart, you would find a hunger and a cry after that very thing.

The devil, through sin, snatched us from our Father from whose breath we came to live. Whatever we do, we can never forget the fact that we were made to walk in daily fellowship in the cool of the garden with a living God. We still long for that, and no human relationship can quite satisfy that yearning. We have all found that even the nearest and dearest to us can go only so far in meeting that desire. Then their efforts begin to fade, and a void is left unfulfilled. That void, that cry for something more than your dearest companion can give you, is the cry of your spirit for the face of God. “Our hearts are restless until they find Thee,” is a famous quote from Saint Augustine of Hippo.

But do you see the great problem of mankind? We cannot live without God, but we cannot enjoy face-to-face fellowship with this God because on one side he is so holy, and on the other side we are so sinful. If this is how holy God is, and if this is how defiled I am, with all this defilement from birth, inside and outside, continuously affecting me, with the shameful habits of our life, the memory of what we have done and been comes back to haunt us, completely clouds and veils us from the face of God and doesn’t give me any boldness or confidence. In one word, my greatest problem is that I have a defiled conscience, and I cannot come to see the one face for which I was created. Oh, this is the problem of all mankind. This is what every son and daughter of Adam is struggling with daily.

The great question is, “How can I come and enjoy his relationship that fills every aching void in my life?” The answer is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Here, beautifully, God shows in Old Testament types how God deals with the delicate matter of defiled consciences.

Even as Christians, is this not a great struggle? “I know that God has forgiven me, saved me. And yet I seem to feel so guilty all the time, my conscience is so haunted, and I feel ashamed to come to God. I feel that I am unworthy.” We wrestle with these problems and are troubled by thoughts even while we are trying to pray. Why? Because we have not grasped the glorious atonement. This is the great need God is dealing with on the great Day of Atonement. When we grasp this truth and grasp it with faith, we will be able to see the Father’s face clearly and enjoy his presence regularly and daily, and live with all the peace, joy, and love in his presence.

How does God bridge this vast problem between him and man? Ages were asking this question. Old Testament saints were yearning for a full understanding, like John wanting to see the parade. We will see five scenes of a procession that show how God deals with this great problem.

Five steps: Appointment, humiliation, righteousness, atonement, entrance of the mediator. (AHRAE).

First: The Appointment of a Mediator. Since a sinful man cannot come before a holy God, God’s great wisdom appointed a mediator between these two estranged parties. This mediator will stand between the two and bring full and satisfactory reconciliation for both parties. We see that mediator as the High Priest Aaron here. Imagine the drone view: a full desert, with all twelve tribes’ camps in an outer circle, then the Levites’ camps, and in the center, the tabernacle. It has an outer court, a Holy Place, and a Most Holy Place. The whole nation is trembling, “Who can go into the presence of God for us?” God says Aaron can come for the people. This mediator was not selected by the people; this was not Israel’s or man’s idea. God, in his great mercy, appointed and anointed this mediator as we saw in chapter 8. Hebrews 5:4 says no one takes the honor to himself. It is God who initiates and appoints a mediator.

Blessed be God for the Lord Jesus Christ. To accept us into his awful presence and solve our deep problem, to redeem us, Revelation 5 shows how impossible it is. An angel announces, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?” the scroll of God’s salvation plan for the whole universe. Verse 3: “And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll.” John weeps unbearably. Verse 5: “But one of the elders says, ‘Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.'”

Praise God. He didn’t choose a prophet, an angel, or an archangel. No, our problem was so deep; it needed someone infinitely great. The living God called his only beloved Son to do this wretchedly irksome task. God-man alone was capable for this great task of bearing all our sins, who alone can stand between the consuming fire of God’s wrath and our destructible sinnerhood. Praise God for this God-appointed mediator. 1 Timothy 2:5: “There is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus.” He said, “I am the only way. No man comes to the Father except through me.” 100% exclusive! Because no one can do what he did. Christ alone! People in their arrogance question, “How can there be only one way?” May God make us realize the depth of our problem so that we are filled with amazement and praise God that there would be one way. He alone is that way. So we see the appointment of a mediator.

Second: The Humiliation of the Mediator. The mediator can come to God, but how should he come? Notice verse 4 says how: not wearing his royal dress. Remember we saw Aaron’s very expensive priestly uniform dress in chapter 8. What a description! Beautiful colored materials, intricate embroidery, gold rings, a breastplate with precious stones, shoulder stones, an ephod, gold and jewelry made him look like a king. On this day of atonement, he should remove all that glorious outer garment and come inside with inner white garments. Notice verse 4: “He shall put the holy linen tunic and the linen trousers on his body; he shall be girded with a linen sash, and with the linen turban he shall be attired. These are holy garments. Therefore he shall wash his body in water, and put them on.” A shirt, shorts, a sash, and a turban, all made of linen. He should remove his whole high priestly uniform. This simple four-garment white linen dress actually made him look more like a slave, even plainer than the vestments of the ordinary priests and even all the Israelites standing there. On this great Day of Atonement, the High Priest was humbled to the lowest level. In those days and even today, when someone is officially made to remove all their uniform and walk with only inner garments, it is a big humiliation. The Israelites may have gotten a glimpse of this at the time.

But today, what a beautiful picture of our Lord Jesus. How will this mediator redeem us? Not by coming with all his kingly royalty. No. Philippians 2 says, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient, obedient to the point of death, even death upon a cross.” Oh, what a stoop. The King in history becomes a slave. God becomes a man. As Isaiah 53 sadly talks about the depth of his humility: “He has no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him… He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” So lowly. What a colossal stoop took place when the glory of heaven became a man and was even cursed on the cross. He became poor to make us rich.

Third scene: The Righteousness of the Mediator. Aaron’s linen garments were not only garments of lowliness, they were also garments of the purest white. Ask Google about the purest white dress; it is linen. It talks about glorious, majestic righteousness. Yes, we are by birth unclean, defiled by uncleanness in the world around us, defiled by our actions, leprosy from head to toe, defilement continuously flowing like an unstoppable gutter. But look at my mediator. Oh, wherever you look, it is all purity and righteousness. You see his birth; he was born pure and holy, not like us, as we saw in Leviticus 12, defiled with the curse of original sin. Luke 1:35: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.”

Think of his inherent, spotless purity of nature and character. Personal righteousness, inner righteousness which only God can see, the righteousness of his thoughts, his attitudes, his reactions. Not like my heart proceeding with all evil thoughts. Not one single thought of lust, murder, covetousness, deceit, or pride. I am an ever-flowing stream of uncleanness in the eyes of God, but he was an ever-flowing stream of righteousness. What he thought, felt, and willed was all righteousness. In all the life of the Lord upon the earth, there was not one moment when that inner righteousness was not perfect. Not only negative sins; a catechism says sin is not transgressing law, but any lack of conformity. So our mediator not only did not negatively break the law, but he positively always conformed perfectly, every single second. He loved God with all his mind, heart, strength, and soul all the days of his life. He never fell short of the standard and perfectly met all the requirements of the law of God. So that all-piercing eye of God opened the sky and said, “This is my beloved son; I am pleased with him.” So spotless.

Though he lived with the same uncleanness and defilement everywhere—land, air, water—he was tempted in every way, but never once was there a yielding to the pressure to sin. He did not even allow the whole world to give him one sinful thought. Never an impure thought, or word, or act. Hebrews 7:26 says, “For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners.” We see Aaron had to offer a sheep and a bull for his sins and his family’s sins because he was a type, but he was sinful. Our high priest comes sinless from the virgin’s womb, unstained by Adam’s sin, unstained internally, unstained externally by the world. Pure, spotless, inherently. So Christ didn’t need any sheep or bull offering. He himself was the innocent, pure lamb of God.

We see Aaron wearing such a pure white dress, and then it says he has to bathe; he was preparing himself to enter the Most Holy Place on this great day. In the same way, our High Priest girded himself with white purity throughout his life. He prepared himself to enter the most holy place of heaven for 33 years, earning a perfect righteousness. He lived a perfect, pure life without committing one sin, preparing himself as spotless by putting on the linen of perfect obedience to the Father through glorious active and passive obedience so he could enter the true Holy of Holies which is heaven, and this tabernacle was just a model of that.

Fourth: Atonement of the Mediator. We see the atoning sacrifices of the mediator. Verses 5-6 talk about Aaron giving a sin and burnt offering for himself and his house. Here is the provision made for the fact that Aaron was not, like Christ, without sin. Hebrews 7 points out that Jesus needed no sacrifice for himself. Verse 7 talks about the highlight of the Day of Atonement with two goats. I want to see that in detail next week. It is a type packed with marvelous truths. Before he entered, he did the two-goat ceremony, sacrificing one and sending another away into the wilderness. It could never come back. This shows the glorious work of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.

This work shows how perfectly the work of Christ satisfied God’s justice and holiness. We always see it from our angle—Jesus died on our behalf, which is true—but there are glorious truths from God’s side, and the cross of Christ glorified God’s holiness like nothing else can do.

Forgiveness is not an easy thing for God. He can’t forgive as many people seem to think he can—simply look at our evil and say, “Oh, well, that’s all right. Forget about it. I love you anyway. Just go on.” If that were the way that we are forgiven, then God would deny his character as a just God. His justice chases us away from his presence and drives us far away never to come back to see his face. We have to be forsaken, like the scapegoat driven away, and we have to be punished for all our sins. That is shown in the two-goat ceremony, both of which our mediator fulfilled. He took upon our sins and he was also driven away from God’s presence. He cried, “My God, why did you forsake me?” That was the great atonement Christ fulfilled.

Now since God’s justice is satisfied in the death of Christ, when he hung on the cross, God did not spare him a thing! He poured out upon him every bit of his wrath against sin. Every bit of his justice was satisfied in the death of his Son upon the cross. Thus God is vindicated. The whole world can now look at that event and say, “Yes, God is just—but through that work of atonement, God can show grace and accept us.” The death of Jesus freed God to show his love to us and welcome us. Apart from his death, you and I would never have known that he is a God of mercy, of compassion, and of tender, forgiving grace. We would never have seen that he is willing to suffer for us on our behalf, that he had that kind of heart. Thus, God himself is magnified, his character is glorified before us by the death of Jesus. It is the atoning work of this mediator that freed God to shower his grace and love on us and accept us as reconciled children.

Fifth: The Entrance of the Mediator. All this appointing, humiliation, righteousness, and atonement is all preparation for the mediator to enter the presence of God. The awesome event of the Day of Atonement is the High Priest entering the most holy place. Verse 3 says Aaron is allowed to enter. In the Old Testament type, Aaron was a type of Christ, the perfect High Priest, but Aaron was a sinful High Priest, so there were limitations. Verse 2 says he “should not come at just any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, lest he die.”

Think of the scene if we see it from a drone angle in that desert. The living God is among these people, yet he is separated from them. Our drone view shows a full desert and neatly arranged tents, with twelve tribes arranged neatly in the outskirts like concentric circles. The next circle is the camps of the tribe of Levi, as the first level of security. Then a circle of priests, the second level of security. With these different circles as a target, in the center of the concentric circles is the tabernacle. There is an additional layer of separation in the tabernacle compound. You enter the outer court and its bronze altar, and then you enter more inside, behind the first veil, into the Holy Place. Then, only after you cross the Holy Place do you have the Most Holy Place. No Gentile can enter the outer court compound. Only Jews are allowed in the outer court, and then only priests are allowed inside the Holy Place; no Jew can come. Into the Most Holy Place, no one, only the High Priest, only once a year on this Day of Atonement. He cannot enter presumptuously. Verse 1 reminds us of the flashback of his sons’ death, and verse 2 says he “should not come at just any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, lest he die.” He should come only when I summon him on this day and how I tell him to come with the right dress and sacrifices.

Though there was all kinds of noise outside, verse 2 talks about inside the veil, a wonderful phrase. Remember, “within the veil.” It is a very thick curtain between the Holy and Most Holy Place. The presence of God is inside that veil, a profound presence of God. Just like at the burning bush, a place of majestic and awful silence. No one can go inside the veil. There was the Ark of the Covenant, a rectangular box, on top of which were two cherubim with covering features. It was called the mercy seat. Inside the box were the Ten Commandments, the objective expression of the moral glory of God.

When they moved, the Levites would remove the veil and wrap those items; no eyes were to see the place and the Ark of the Covenant. This was the separation and barrier between the holy God and sinful man.

Aaron alone is allowed to come inside the place, once a year. It was like Aaron entering into another world, another higher dimension. No human eyes were ever to gaze directly upon the Ark of the Covenant inside, so notice verse 13. He “shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of incense may cover the mercy seat.” It is like another veil, another screen to prevent even the High Priest from directly seeing the Holy presence. It says if he doesn’t have such smoke, he will die.

So Aaron comes, and in verse 14, where the blood of the bull is to be sprinkled on the mercy seat. And in verse 15, the blood of the goat is to be sprinkled on the mercy seat. This blood was sprinkled for the sins of the nation and propitiated them. Sprinkling it on top of the Ten Commandments indicates the satisfaction of the law’s demands through sacrifice. The law had been broken. The blood of sacrifice sprinkled on the mercy seat on which the ten commandments lay intercepted the condemning justice of God. The blood sprinkled by the mediator effected reconciliation between God and man. Remember, the High Priest is coming, representing the twelve tribes. The blood sprinkled satisfies the justice and holiness and intercepts the wrath of the living God. Notice verse 14 says seven times, which means perfect satisfaction. There is full atonement. There is appeasement. There is satisfaction for the vast mountains and oceans of sins of the entire nation, accumulated sins throughout the year, all atoned for at once on this Day of Atonement.

What is all this? Oh, what a wonderful type of the true mediator. Hebrews 9:24 says this tabernacle was a copy of the true holy place, heaven itself. This appointed, humiliated, righteous, atoning High Priest entering this tabernacle. I see a direct view of Christ’s redemptive work. Standing on his shoulder, we get a colorful picture of the work of our Lord Jesus. Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Day of Atonement in Jerusalem offered up Himself on Golgotha, and rose again. Hebrews 9:24-25: “For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another.” Verse 28: “so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.” Leviticus 16 is a shadow and a copy. But the Lord Jesus Christ entered heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us. For whom? For the elect.

He didn’t take all the sins of one year, but what a high, what a broad, what a wide mountain range of sins of all the people of God the Lord Jesus Christ swallowed up in the sea of His mercy by absorbing the wrath of God on our behalf. He took his blood and sprinkled it seven times, satisfying all the demands of the law that we broke, and perfected us before God eternally by one sacrifice and once entering heaven for us. Hebrews 10:12: “He offered one sacrifice for sins for all time. And He sat down.”

That is when he said, “It is finished,” and died. Matthew 27:51: “the curtain of the temple inside which Aaron went was torn from top to bottom.” What does this mean? The barrier between sinful men and the Holy God is removed by our High Priest.

All those for whom Christ died come to God without any hindrances or barriers. They are broken now. At that time, even a Jew entering the presence would die, but now even Gentiles can cross the Jewish camps, the Levites, the priests, and enter the outer court, the Holy Place, and even the Most Holy Place.

Men and women, boys and children, your greatest need is to come back to the Father and see him face to face. God has removed all those hindrances objectively in the work of his son. The great hindrance for us to come to God today, even as believers, is a guilty conscience. Satan complicates the problem by accusing us constantly with “fiery darts of the wicked one” (Ephesians 6:16), all those little suggestions to us that we really aren’t accepted and loved by God. Evil thoughts even before we pray. We come to pray, but some filthy thought, some hostile reaction, anger, a welling up of anger or impatience comes in. All the haunting memories of our past shame, our feelings of unworthiness, our filthy thoughts, and the flashes of fear that come upon us. What do you do with that? Your immediate temptation is to say, “Good night, what’s the use? I am not coming to God today.” We live far away from our greatest need of seeing his face. Now, what do we do?

Well, we are simply to imagine putting them right on the head of Jesus and say, “Like that goat took away my sins, you have taken all my sins. You have atoned for all these things.”

You know how you can come to God today and see him face to face? Don’t listen to Satan. Accept and receive the truth that the blood of Christ not only completely satisfies God about you, but it completely cleanses your conscience.

Believe God welcomes you into his presence not on the grounds of your works, devotion, the depth of your knowledge, or victory, but on the ground of the blood of the Lamb. This discovery of this glorious secret has enabled saints not only to overcome an accusing conscience and Satan but to enjoy close communion with God; to enjoy free access to the throne of grace, and full liberty in their service. They believed that God fully accepted them.

The passage in verse 13 says Aaron has to come full of sweet incense. This is the first deodorant used in Scripture! When we come to God trusting in the righteousness and sacrifice of Jesus, God smells the sweetness of Christ and does not smell any of our defilement. This is the way by which the evil odor of our own failure is eliminated and the sweetness of Jesus Christ is sprayed completely on us. This is what we are to remember when we come before God in prayer at any time.

So, on the basis of the great work and life’s work of this great high priest here on earth and his continuing ministry in heaven, my greatest need is met: coming to God anytime and seeing him face to face. I can boldly come before God’s presence with a clean conscience. Our deep, dark, scarlet past sins are all covered and have become as white as snow. Here I am, Lord; I present myself. I want to serve with liberty and a clean conscience. That is the purpose of the great Day of Atonement.

Hebrews 10:19-22: “Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

This is the great goal of the Day of Atonement. It teaches that as we come before his presence, we are to come clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ, based on his blood. We are fully accepted and loved. We will experience the full satisfaction of his presence only through this.

Great church father Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” The reason our hearts are restless is that each of us has great soul needs. We need to be loved, to have peace, joy, freedom, and to belong. The most basic and deep need you and I have is to be loved. This is a fundamental urge in our lives. We yearn to live every minute knowing I am being loved, someone loves me, and someone is pleased with me. We were created to live with that pleasure of love. We try to fulfill that need in several ways. That is why we want to have a family; it gives some level of satisfaction. We will be very restless if we don’t have a family. But that never fully satisfies us.

One guy said, “My wife said before marrying, ‘I love you so much, I want to spend the rest of my life just making you happy!'” “Wow,” he thought, “this is a beautiful woman dedicating herself for the rest of her life to making me happy!” So he married her. The first week of their marriage, he said to his wife, “You know, on Thursday nights I’ve been accustomed to going out with the fellows. So tonight I’m going to go out with them. I’ll probably be very late so don’t wait up for me.” His wife reacted very strangely. She said, “But, you can’t leave me all alone! How can you do that? Did you marry me for this?” And he remembered saying to himself, “What happened to her promise? Here is her first chance to make me happy and she has blown it completely!” Slowly as weeks went by, he realized how foolish it was for him to think his yearning to be loved would be fulfilled by marriage. His heart was still crying. Then He thought he would find his need met in parenthood. And as he held that first little child in his arms, he anticipated with joy that now he would find his sense of being loved by the new life he had given. As years went by, he realized sinners born to us only take from us and don’t respond in gratitude and love until God changes their hearts. Though family meets that need to a level, the cry of your heart is, “I want more.” This deep cry to be loved is the reason why many young people take wrong paths and some even destroy their lives. Some try to satisfy this need in 101 wrong ways: fame, money, wealth, and sex.

This deep need was created by the Creator, and it cannot be fulfilled by any creature. We are like a child separated from his mother as soon as he is born. I heard a child was so restless, kept crying, crying, crying, and finally died. If the bond between a mother and child is so much, and so many children actually survive, our bond between God, who created us in his image, is 100 times stronger. Until we find acceptance with God, and love with God, our hearts will be restless. We will keep crying all our lives, and one day, we will die. Our deep need to be loved can only be fully met by God, but the problem is we are guilty, depraved sinners. How can we ever be reconciled and accepted to live in loving fellowship with a holy God in such a way that he regularly satisfies our need to be loved? I believe that is what Leviticus teaches us.

It teaches us in the earliest primitive way; remember it is the third book in the Bible. Like a bird that is hurt, scared, and bleeding, it is so scared to come near us. But we want to help stop the bleeding, put medicine, and heal it. So we use all kinds of sign languages to tell it, “You are hurt, losing blood. Come, come. I will heal you. Come, come to me.” God, through this book, is doing that with various divine types. He says, “See, your heart is crying for my love, for my acceptance. Come to me.” It is a book rich with divinely ordained typology. God uses persons, events, rituals, and things here to point to the true spiritual reality revealed in the New Testament. For example, leprosy is a type of our depravity and defilement by sin. The atonement sacrifice and the priest are all types of Christ. Incense is a type of prayer. It’s like the ABC visual aids of nursery children.

A simple overview of the book: Chapters 1-16, he shows us our spiritual disease and how to deal with it and come to him and be reconciled. Chapters 17-27, the end of the book, show how to maintain a state of fellowship and wholeness where we continually enjoy the fellowship and love of God. That is a wonderful overview of the whole of Leviticus. It may seem like the same sacrifices are repeated, but we should understand they are shown from different perspectives. One set will describe from the guilty sinner’s offering, another set will show the perspective of the mediator priest. As we study these types, we will realize the grandeur of the gospel and the New Testament as never before. It will deeply impact our relationship with God and help in bringing us closer to God.

As we open this mysterious Leviticus, the first verse is verse 1. The very first word of the book of Leviticus is “and.” Now, it’s appropriately added as this connects it directly to the book of Exodus. The God of heaven was now not only talking to people from Mount Sinai, but he had come in their midst, in their camp, into the tabernacle. In Exodus 40, he was filling the tabernacle with the Shekinah glory, the manifest glory of the presence of God dwelling in the midst of Israel—right smack-dab in the middle of his people. Leviticus is a continuing instruction of how sinful people can come to the living God dwelling in the tabernacle. It is a ritual for access to God to enjoy the presence of God. The first five chapters and five major offerings show us how our defilement of sin can be dealt with in a way to enjoy God’s presence. The first of those offerings is the burnt offering. If we grasp this offering, this chapter will become so precious. I was enjoying and calling it, “Oh, my burnt offering.” If we understand the burnt offering and how it is fulfilled in Christ, we will realize the unchanging, constant love of God in our hearts. So let us start our first chapter.

See, I need your help to help you understand these wonderful chapters. If you can take about 10 minutes before Sunday or sometime in the week to read the chapter and come, it will be very easy for me to go to the explanation, and you will grasp it very easily. So I will test you with a quiz to see whether you read it or not.

This chapter is about the burnt offering. What do we know about it? The only burnt offering we know is when our wives forget to switch off the stove. The burnt offering did not start in Leviticus or even in Exodus, but we see it in the first book of Genesis itself. God would have told Adam to offer a burnt offering, that is why we see Abel also offered a sacrifice. But the first time the Bible directly mentions a burnt offering is in Genesis 8:20, after the flood, Noah offered a burnt offering. Abraham went to offer his son as a burnt offering. So it was a practice before Leviticus, but here God regulated the burnt offering as worship with certain rules.

Method of Burnt Offering and Purpose of Burnt Offering

Method of Burnt Offering

So let us understand five rules of the burnt offering.

1. It was a personal, voluntary sacrifice. The burnt offering regulated in Leviticus chapter 1 was viewed primarily as a personal offering, done voluntarily by the individual Israelite. Elsewhere, the burnt offering is often a corporate offering, but as it is regulated in Leviticus 1, it is viewed as a personal, private offering. Thus, verse 2 reads, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When any man of you brings an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of animals from the herd or the flock.'” From here on, the personal pronoun “he” is employed, referring to this individual Israelite. During general festivals and national worship, God allowed them to come as a whole congregation into contact with him. But here, this is given in a way where a man, in the ordinary course of life, recognizes his defilement and wants cleansing and wants to experience the presence of God. The burnt offering was the way given to the individual believer in Israel to have an opportunity to draw near and come into contact with the living God, and God’s presence was experienced.
2. The burnt offering was suited to every man’s economic status. Just reading on the face of the chapter, a financial theme can be seen. You can see an outline in verses 3 through 9. It speaks of the offering of a bull from the herd. Then all verses until 9 describe how to sacrifice a bull. This is all for rich guys. Okay, I am middle class, I don’t have a herd or maybe two or three bulls. As a burnt offering, then in verse 10, we see the offering up of a sheep or a goat. Okay, I am not even middle class, very, very poor, on the poverty line border. You can also offer a burnt offering, and then in verses 14 through 17, we see the offering up of a dove or a pigeon as a burnt offering, while these differences.
3. Though it was according to each man’s economical status, it was a painful and expensive sacrifice. Nevertheless, for everyone, it was a heavy financial sacrifice. To offer up a burnt offering means an expensive sacrifice. It was expensive in four ways. Firstly, it is a valuable resource. A man cannot bring a sacrifice of an animal that he somehow hunted in the forest, a wild ox, or a deer, but from his own herd. We may not realize this today, but in those days, how was the wealth of people measured? Not by land, house, or gold, but by how many bulls or sheep a man had. Verses 3 and 10 say a man has to reduce his wealth by taking from his herd, something that was part of your property. It was very difficult and painful. We ourselves don’t feel like cutting the hens we raise and eating them. Typically, they don’t eat meat as we do, and even the rich were very reluctant to give from their herds. Remember the story of Nathan to David: a rich man who had a visitor went to his poor neighbor and took his young suckling lamb to give for the meal of the visitor, because the rich man wasn’t willing to take it from his own flock. People considered their own flock a great resource, with a lot of affection.

But a man has to feel the pain and bring from his own herd. Next, you have to take a male, the strongest. Thirdly, “without defect,” meaning the choicest, the best. Even a poor person cannot bring any old pigeon. Verse 14: You would bring the young pigeon. Because the young pigeons were the best pigeons. Fourthly, bring and do what? From your herd, young, without defect, and burn it. Most of the sacrifices benefited the offerer and the priests. The offerer would eat some of the meat of the sacrificial animal, and most often, the priest received a portion of it. Thus, when one offered a sacrifice to God, one’s mouth would water, knowing that he would be able to partake of the sacrifice. Not so in the case of the burnt offering, however. Neither the offerer nor the priest partook of any of the meat, for it was all burned in the fire. You see in all of these things that the essential ingredient for a burnt offering was that it was painful and expensive.

4. There was whole and complete participation in the burnt offering. Consider here with me two elements. First of all, it’s personal engagement. If you offered up a burnt offering, you were personally engaged. You could never remain detached or distracted when you were offering up a burnt offering. Imagine you are a Jew, wearing a Jewish robe and sandals, coming to the ancient tabernacle. You have to select and bring the bull or goat from wherever you are coming. Then you bring the animal to the outer court of the Tabernacle. Verse 4: “Notice what it says. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering.” It is a poor translation; he would press the full weight of his body on the head as much as possible, like fully laid on it. Probably there was an explanation that was given, and the person explained to the priest why he was giving this sacrifice. We find them in verse 5 having laid their hands on, “he shall slay the young bull,” or verse 11, “It says he shall slay the lamb.” See the engagement is so intimate. You put your hand on the beast and you take a knife and you cut the throat of the beast and the blood itself pours out. Then the priest will come and collects the blood as it pours out of the dying animal now. Then verse 6, “And he shall skin the burnt offering and cut it into its pieces.” Wow. We find that in verses 9 and 13, the entrails and the legs are to be washed. Intestines of the animal. I know this is not pleasant stuff. But the intestines and the legs are to be washed, and the reason why is because excrements may be present during this process of sacrifice, so you would then wash things off, so the sacrifice is clean. Do you see a distracted detachment act? No, you are very engaged there. There was great personal engagement and complete participation.

You know, it is said that Gandhi was reading happily through Genesis and Exodus. And he got to Leviticus, and when he read these verses, he closed his Bible. Now maybe it’s because we were talking about slaughtering bulls, and maybe his Hindu sensibilities were offended by slaughtering sacred animals, at least in the eyes of his own homeland.

5. Fifthly, it’s not only personal engagement, but also notice it’s priestly assistance. It’s priestly assistance. Both the worshiper and priest are fully engaged in this process, but all this is happening outside. Only killing an animal will not bring God’s presence. The worshiper’s personal effort is totally inadequate. Someone has to go to God’s holy place and present the blood and sprinkle it and offer the animal as a burnt offering. A defiled sinner cannot do that, walk into the Tabernacle, and offer the sacrifice. You needed the God-appointed priest. You needed one of the sons of Aaron so that he could catch the blood and sprinkle it on the altar and offer a burnt offering. Verse 7: “The sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar, and lay the wood in order on the fire.” He will take the meat that had been cut up by you and will be placed in pieces on top of the fire, for no one ever dared to approach the House of God without a sanctioned mediator, one of the sons of Aaron. So you need the help of the priest.

So we see five methods of offering a burnt offering: 1) it was personal, voluntary; 2) suited to every man’s economic status; 3) it was a painful and expensive sacrifice; 4) complete personal involvement; 5) priestly assistance. The next time you read Leviticus 1 with this outline, the whole chapter will be clear.

Now if you understand why all this is done, the chapter will become very precious. The regulations for the burnt offering are very important, and violations are taken very seriously. Follow God’s regulations precisely. One need only read of the death of Nadab and Abihu in chapter 10 to have this point vividly underscored (cf. also Lev. 17:8-9).

Now, what is the purpose of the burnt offering?

The burnt offering is one of the most common offerings. It was offered regularly every day, in the morning and the evening (Exod. 29:38-42; Num. 28:3, 6, cf. 2 Chron. 2:4, etc.). An additional burnt offering was to be offered up each Sabbath day (Num. 28:9-10). Also, at the beginning of each month (Num. 28:11), at the celebration of Passover on the 14th day of the 1st month (Num. 28:16), and all other festivals. Personally, for many defilements, like a leper’s cleansing, a woman who gave birth to a child, touching a dead body, or a discharge from the body. Then obviously when a man commits any sins. Job early on would offer a burnt offering thinking his children may have sinned in any way in their heart.

What is the purpose of the burnt offering? It is clearly stated in verse 3 and 4. “Then he shall put his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.” The purpose is that the worshiper may be accepted. Wow. This is a marvelous means God divinely ordained for sinful man to be accepted.

The animal that was sacrificed not only identified with the sins of the man, but with the depravity of the man. When the offerer laid his hands upon the animal, he was fully identifying with it. The animal was killed and burned not only for the specific sins of the man, but rather for the offerer’s general state of sinfulness. The burnt offering was required by, and served to remind the offerer of his total depravity. For his defilement, he had to be not only killed but completely turned to ashes. As a depraved, defiled, unclean sinner, there is no way he can come before God. If he approaches before God, he will anger and provoke the holy wrath of God. You and I as sinners are always in danger of angering God. How many times we see Israelites did that and they were destroyed by plagues in God’s wrath. Fierce judgments and sudden deaths. Israelites understood their depravity and danger in the presence of God.

It was not just certain sins which separated man from God, but the whole depravity and sinful state of man. The burnt offering was thus not so much to gain forgiveness for a particular sin, but to make atonement for the offerer’s sinfulness. The burnt offering seems to provide a divine solution for man’s fallen condition. It is a holocaust, a complete sacrifice, turning to ashes.

How do we know this? The first mention of the burnt offering itself teaches the purpose of the burnt offering is not just for specific sins, but our condition. Genesis chapter 6:5, before the flood: “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” The verse talks about not any outside sin, but the depravity of man inside his heart. Verse 6: “And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.” Verse 7: “So the Lord said, ‘I will destroy man whom I have created from…'” Man was a stench in God’s nostril. And then after he destroyed the whole world, chapter 8:21, Noah gives a burnt offering. Verse 1: “And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma.” It was a soothing aroma in God’s nostril. The same phrase as in Leviticus 1. And then he makes a covenant with Noah, that pleasure of the burnt offering makes him do a covenant.

He tells us what the burnt offering has done to him. It brought about the covenantal promise of God that he would never again destroy every living thing by a flood again (Gen. 8:21). Why? Amazing, he mentions the depravity of man, “for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.” This promise was not due to the fact that all sin had been destroyed from the face of the earth. The fact of man’s depravity (as will soon be manifested in Noah and his family) is still present, for God can still say, “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21), man’s depravity is specifically stated. The basis for God’s covenant promise is the result of the burnt offering offered up by Noah. This is glorious truth. The burnt offering atoned not only for man’s sin but man’s depravity and turned away his wrath.

Thus, the Israelites saw that the burnt offering was a means of avoiding God’s wrath and of obtaining God’s favor. God’s blessing was the result of a burnt offering, not of man’s good deeds. The only way a defiled sinner like you and me can live and experience the presence of a thrice-holy God is through the burnt offering, the love of a holy God even in a depraved state.

Now what happens when a burnt offering is given in Leviticus also? In verses 9, 13, and 17, what does it say? In verse 9, “and the priest shall offer up in smoke all of it on the altar for a burnt offering and all offering by fire. Listen now of a soothing aroma to the Lord.” And that phrase is repeated in verse 13 for the lamb, “of a soothing aroma to the Lord.” Look at the end of verse 17, for the pigeon. What does it bring, that soothing aroma to the Lord? This offering brings a pleasant scent into the nostrils of God, as it will sedate his fury.

It is this burnt offering that is the appointed means whereby peaceful coexistence between a holy God and sinful man becomes possible. See, something strange is happening in that Tabernacle. God of heaven, an infinitely Holy God, has come and dwells among sinful man into close proximity and their intimate fellowship in the midst, and the fierce anger of God against sin. How can he? What happened to his justice, holiness, and wrath? All that is appeased by a burnt offering. Yes, there is a constant friction between sinful man and his holy maker. We don’t know when the bomb will burst and destroy the sinner, but it is the burnt offering that prevents God’s displeasure from rushing out on that sinful man.

Now the question is what is there in the burnt offering that can make God dwell and fellowship with the sinner? What does the burnt offering do to the justice of God?

Verse 4 tells the answer. “When the sinner who has been burnt in hell, lays his hand on the head of the offering, putting all his weight on the offering, he is symbolically transferring his identity of guilt and sins to that beast.” The innocent animal takes the place of the sinner and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. It provides glorious atonement. The sacrifice turns God’s wrath on me by carrying my defilement and sins and thereby making God pleased with me.

This is the atonement provision by God’s infinite grace given to sinners. “Atonement on his behalf.” To make atonement, or to make ransom. Paying a ransom meant to satisfy justice. Exodus 21: if a man’s ox gores someone and kills, the man must die, or he may ransom, a substitute, an equal atonement. In the burnt offering, an innocent animal is cut and burned in the fire, a merciful depiction of the dreadful punishment deserved on the part of the worshiper. And that ransom he pays through that animal is temporarily sufficient to turn away the wrath of the living God against his sin. As the smoke goes to God, it will be a soothing aroma to the Lord and God’s fury against him will be at peace.

So this is the explanation portion of Leviticus 1. Oh my burnt offering, the burnt offering became very precious to me.

Application

Yes, we don’t have to offer physical animal sacrifices now as Christ offered his once for all, but there are principles taught in this offering. We have to offer a New Testament spiritual burnt offering. In three ways.

First, we have to offer a burnt offering if you have to be saved and reconciled with God. How can man find atonement for sin? First, when a man has a true sense of sin, when a man recognizes his depravity, not only what I do is sinful, I myself am a totally depraved sinner. “Oh what a sinful, defiled heart I have. Like a leper, I am unclean, unclean,” with a true sense of sin. His conscience is burning with guilt and accusations, “You should be burnt by God’s hell for all eternity for your depravity.”

Second, with a true sense of sin, the man sees God’s great provision through the burnt offering on your behalf. The Israelite at that time may have had a vague idea. Though the blood of bulls and goats cannot cleanse his conscience, when his conscience looked in faith, “I am laying my hand on this innocent victim, and I have sinned, but I am cutting this animal, the whole animal is burnt and reduced to ashes.” Would he not see that here was a manifest substitution of an innocent creature in the place of the guilty, and that that very substitution was the means of reconciling the sinner to his God?

But now this side of the cross, what a striking monument to the grace of God. God didn’t just provide the animals to atone for our sins, to reconcile such a depraved man as we are to be reconciled and be loved before a three-times holy God. He had to give his own son. Christ was the ultimate fulfillment, the antitype of the burnt offering. John the Baptist indicated this at the very outset of our Lord’s ministry, when he greeted Him with the words, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Christ has come as the Lamb of God and died “once for all.” There is no longer any need for the burnt offering, the type of which our Lord is the ultimate and final antitype.

How do you offer a burnt offering to be saved? So you realize your depravity, realize God’s mercy in Christ, God’s provision. Follow the five steps taught to old Israelites. Firstly, it has to be voluntary and personal. Nobody can force you to come to God through Christ. A man has to realize his conscience is burning, his life is all wrong, and he can no longer live without God’s presence and love. You have to come on your own.

Secondly, God makes it available to everyone. So everyone needs this. Whether you are rich, middle class, or poor, everyone can offer a burnt offering. Whatever state you may be in life, age, situation, if you desire, you can go to the tabernacle of God’s presence to offer this burnt offering.

Thirdly, realize it was a very painful and expensive sacrifice. See the marvelous grace of God revealed in the New Testament. You don’t have to bring anything from your own herd or wealth. But to atone for your sins, God gave his greatest wealth, his only son, to be offered as a burnt offering. Peter says not by gold or silver, but by the blameless blood of the lamb of God, you are redeemed.

Fourthly, complete, complete participation. You have to identify yourself with the sacrifice. The one who was to benefit from the death of the sacrificial victim had to identify with that animal. The offerer placed his hand upon the victim, put his full weight symbolically identifying himself with the victim, which he killed in his place. Apart from identifying with the sacrificial animal in this way, the sacrifice had no benefit for the individual Israelite.

How do we offer a burnt offering now? By resting the full weight of our souls on Christ for our peace with God. Hebrews tells us that the blood of bulls and goats cannot forgive sins. “Could not give the guilty conscience peace, or wash away the stain.” No, these sacrifices clearly pointed to the lamb of God. When we hear the Sinai thunders in our conscience of the accusations of the law, the only hiding place is Christ. When you and I recognize our conscience is burning with the guilt of sin, the guilt of how depraved we are, and because of that, we don’t feel like coming to God, feel so unclean, undeserving, the only way to quench that burning conscience is to offer the burnt offering of Christ by putting the full weight of our souls on Christ for our peace with God.

This is the way to be saved and find acceptance with God. This is what your deep heart is seeking: to be loved by God. Like a child that lost its mother, madly doing 101 things. All of you sitting here, have you offered your burnt offering to God by putting the full weight on Christ? Have you seen yourself as a defiled, depraved sinner with a sense of guilt? “Oh, I am unclean. A rebel lawbreaker.” You’ve broken the laws of the living God. Maybe not outwardly killed someone, but I have a murderous, hateful heart. I have committed adultery in my heart so many times. A great crime of stealing all those attitudes of covetousness? You see, you must see yourself as a rebel against the living God. Oh my depravity. When you see that…

Fifthly, see when you come to God, identify yourself with Christ. Remember the priest takes the blood and goes to the temple. Just like that, Christ, our great high priest, takes his blood and, showing his one offering, brings us to God and makes us acceptable before God.

Behold, in this burnt offering, behold a lamb that God has provided for a burnt offering. He has provided an unblemished, male, painful, very, very expensive male, in fact, an only son. Oh my guilty, burning consciences, show them one who hangs between heaven and earth on Mount Golgotha. God’s wrath for sins is poured on him. He alone can absorb that eternal wrath. Oh, he was roasted by the fire of God’s wrath. Totally consumed, offered as a burnt offering on the altar of Golgotha for sins. It was this offering that brought a soothing aroma to God, and he shook the earth and raised him from the dead, announcing to all that anyone who offers him as his burnt offering, my wrath against all his sins will be turned away. I will forgive all his sins. I will be reconciled with him. In spite of his depravity, I will accept him. His burning conscience will be quenched. I will pour my peace and love into his heart.

Maybe this is the first time you’ve heard this, or the 10,000th time that you’ve heard this, but I plead with you. Run and grab, put the full weight of your soul upon him, grabbing him with the hands of faith. My question is not whether you have heard this before, but have you offered your burnt offering by putting your weight on Jesus? That is the only way. The only way to find peace with God.

I cannot do this for you. The priest cannot do it. The offerer must be deeply engaged in this burnt offering, or he cannot be saved. Identify yourself with the cross of Christ. “Lord, I trust in Christ, and I offer him as my burnt offering for my sins.” Make sure you are deeply interested in this burnt offering. Press your hands with full weight on the lamb, on his work on the cross, and there you will find peace. There your conscience will rest. You will go home praising God, experiencing peace and love of God as never before.

Amazing third book in the Bible. So in olden times, this whole chapter was an invitation from God: “Come to Me, and come to Me by these sacrifices.” You will find the echo of Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:29-30: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

If you don’t, all that stored wrath of God will come on you one day, you will cry to rocks and mountains to hide you from that wrath, and it will burn you for all eternity. Ask your burning conscience, it will give witness to this truth.

Think of how much wrath will fall on you now that you are hearing this and rejecting it. If God, in those primitive years, thousands of years ago, taught the Jews to be reconciled through those symbols, he found peace through that ritual. Now we are living under the meridian light of the Gospel, still you reject God’s sacrifice. Those Jews will rise up in judgment against you, “Oh, stupid fellow, what an eternal fool. If you would have asked us, we just had a little revelation, we would have taught you how to find peace with God.”

So firstly, we offer a burnt offering by resting the full weight of our souls on Christ for our peace with God.

We offer a burnt offering for regular communion and fellowship with God. The principle applies equally to Christians today. While it is true that Christ died for our sins, once for all, it is also still true that we will not be freed from sin’s presence until we are in the presence of God, with transformed bodies. There is still remaining sin and depravity. It is still our depravity that takes us away from God’s fellowship. We lose our standing with God’s presence. We lose God’s fellowship by sin, and our consciences start burning. How do we deal with that?

Though we are justified Christians, this does not nullify the necessity of a continual burnt offering. We have to offer a burnt offering not for justification, but for sanctification. This is a continual and ongoing process. When we miss God’s presence and peace, we offer a burnt offering by confession of sins to quench our burning consciences and keep our conscience clean before the living God.

Last week I was very troubled. I was praying, saying this and that, but still wasn’t happy. I read the Bible, but nothing happened. But when I grasped this, my standing with God isn’t about who I am or how godly I have become, but it’s about my sweet burnt offering. I fully pressed my mind on Christ on the cross. I asked the Lord for your presence, love, and peace because of Christ. What can I say? Peace like a river flowed into my heart. The burnt offering became so precious.

Remember, he is the offering and he is also the priest. We can regularly come to this priest who is so sympathetic to us. We need the present intercession and mediation of Christ every hour, every moment.

Yes, he has accomplished the burnt offering. The burnt offering also symbolized the Old Testament saint’s continual acceptance before God. That is why there was a morning and evening burnt offering; it was always burning. As long as the burnt offering of Christ is burning in our hearts, we will continue to enjoy God’s peace and love. Even as believers, we have to lay full weight on Christ’s offering for our peace with God. It is the burnt offering of Christ on the cross, roasted by the wrath of God. Our identity with him gives us access to God. For constant communion and a walk with God, we need to maintain the morning and evening burnt offering in the temple every day of our lives.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. How often is that to be prayed? The previous verse says, “give us this day our daily bread.” But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is a continual and ongoing confession of sins.

We have to offer a burnt offering for our families. We must ask for forgiveness for our children, offering Christ’s sacrifice as Job did.

A third way we offer a burnt offering is also an expression of worship and service to God.

Do you remember Paul’s words in Romans 12:1-2: “Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice, acceptable to God…” Paul is drawing on this very language, out of the book of Leviticus and the Old Covenant sacrificial system. Remember again: voluntary, personal, economical (so all can give), painful and expensive, with complete participation and priestly assistance.

Do we voluntarily worship God who has given such gracious access to us dirty sinners to come to him through a burnt offering? Not on Sunday, as compulsory worship, but is there voluntary worship in your life? We all can do this, not using the means to satisfy self-righteous pride, but as a means to worship God and have fellowship with God.

“Through him let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God…” (Heb. 13:15-16; cf. Phil. 4:18; 1 Pet. 2:5). What about complete participation? If the shadow of worship involved so much engagement, how much more do we have to be engaged every minute? We have to go beyond attending church. We have to join prayer in spirit and loudly say amen, sing songs from the deepest heart, hear scriptures and sermons as the very word of God by not just listening to the words, but considering the principles of prayer when the word is read, so you carefully ponder it. Don’t expect the pastor to say everything in small, easy pieces with jokes, making it simple and easy to digest. If he gives you a big piece of food, you close your mouth. No, you should be willing to work and to labor along with the preacher. This is mental isometrics, the mind of the congregation pushing up against the mind of the preacher. There should be responsiveness in your eyes. The bright eye, maybe a smile when a point is made. Maybe a nod, maybe an Amen. It indicates that you are participating in this. It’s not just me spraying you with truth, while you are yawning, sleeping, and looking here and there. Is that your offering?

I have repeatedly said, you cannot complain that preaching is boring. A preacher becomes very energetic based on the audience. When people listen with vigor, God sees that and the sacrifice is accepted. God’s spirit comes on the preacher, and he blesses the ministry.

Be very carefully involved. Don’t go back to what we did on Saturday and what we will do on Monday. What basic lesson do we learn here? Be totally engaged in the sacrifice when worship takes place at this Tabernacle and ask God to forgive any distractions. Avoid every distraction. In 1 Peter 2:5, you, as living stones, are a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

How about service to God? Our service is described by the New Testament writers by the use of the same sacrificial terminology. We saw in Philippians how Paul used his service as sacrificial service. He was offering himself as a drink offering. The services we do for God are offerings that are pleasing to God.

And those are the new Covenant ways in which we can offer up a burnt offering. First, we have to offer a burnt offering if you have to be saved and reconciled with God, by resting the full weight of our souls on Christ for our peace with God. For regular fellowship with God, by offering frequent and timely confession for specific sins and by engaging our souls wholeheartedly in worship and service to God.

Again, the regulative principle of worship. If the Israelite learned anything from the meticulous rules and regulations which God laid down for the burnt offering and all of the rest, it was that He is very particular about the way men approach Him. This speaks of a personal voluntary religion, of heart religion, of a heart motivation to worship the living God. He went into minute detail. Why? Because He cares how we worship Him. The rebellious nature of fallen man inclines him to want to approach God his own way. The song, “I did it my way,” illustrates this tendency. God did not allow men to approach Him their own way, but rather only in accordance with the means He Himself established. Men could only approach God by means of the tabernacle, the priesthood, and the sacrifices. Today, men can only come to God God’s way, through the person and work of Jesus Christ, who, as the sacrificial lamb, died for our sins, making a way of approach to God. Our Lord conveyed the exclusiveness of His death as the way to God when He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6).

If you wish to approach God, to be assured of the forgiveness of your sins, and to dwell in His presence forever, my friend, you can do so only through faith in the person of Jesus Christ, who came to earth and died in your place. No other way is acceptable with God. In no other way can you be found acceptable in Him.

The principle of acceptance with God. There is a great deal of emphasis these days on self-acceptance, or self-satisfaction in worship. If I feel good, it must be right. Today we are told, even from the pulpit, that we must first feel good about ourselves, we must first love ourselves, and then we will be able to love God. The Bible tells us that the ultimate acceptance we must seek in all religious acts is God’s. People today want to “feel good about themselves” in worship. We must look for God’s favor and presence and acceptance in worship by worshiping him according to his word. The Bible portrays God’s acceptance as the highest good of all.

We looked at the burnt offering in the first chapter. I am finding just the first chapter extremely useful in my personal relationship with God. Our soul’s deepest desire to be loved and accepted by God can only be found when we come to God through the burnt offering. Every morning, whatever situation and confusion I am in, it is as if I get up and give my burnt offering in my mind, thinking of Christ’s work for me. I come to God only through Christ’s work for me, identified with his life and death. Oh, what love and joy we experience from God. You know what, there is a spontaneous expression of gratitude and love to God that wells up in my heart for the gracious way he has made for sinners like us to come to him and experience his presence.

Now, there is a great need to express that thanksgiving. How do I express my overwhelming gratitude? I believe that is what today’s second chapter of Leviticus teaches us through the grain offering. Again, this meets another basic need of our souls. I have always believed one primary reason we are not as happy as we should be is because we are not grateful. Our blind, selfish, proud heart tends to think we are more deserving and takes things for granted, never allowing us to be grateful. Romans 1 accuses people who, though they knew God, did not thank or glorify him and so fell into all kinds of sinful miseries. This is the cause for all our sadness. Our greatest joy is to learn how to gratefully respond to all God gives us. May God help us learn that from this old lesson of the grain offering. You will realize as we end that you are not happy in life because you are not offering the grain offering.

There are three headings: Elements of the grain offering, the method of offering the grain offering, and the purpose of the grain offering.

Elements of the Grain Offering

There are four kinds of grain offerings.

Verses 1-3 introduce the grain offering and focus on the offering of the grain in an uncooked form—flour. It must be fine flour, maybe wheat or barley. The person would pour oil on it, which is mostly olive oil, and put frankincense on it. Olive oil was mixed with the dough or smeared on it, and a spice was added to enhance the aroma when it was burned on the altar.

Verses 4-10 provide the regulations pertaining to the grain offering in several cooked forms. In verse 4, there is the grain offering of bread baked in an oven. In verse 5, there is another type of grain offering that is bread prepared on a griddle, in a flat or grill frying way. In verse 7, there is bread cooked in a pan.

So, there are four grain offerings: flour, oven-baked, grill/griddle cooked, and fry pan cooked. These are the four basic kinds of grain offerings. Though there are different ways of cooking, all are made from barley or wheat flour.

I think this may all seem very strange. Last week, I was in our village and even did some agricultural work, and I saw some of their rituals. They may be able to very clearly relate to all this from an agricultural lifestyle. You have to remember that in those days, Israelites were primarily agricultural people, with no office, business, or city work. Agriculture was their livelihood.

This offering is different from the burnt offering. The burnt offering was a very bloody offering. Here, there is no blood, no laying on of hands on the part of the worshipper on the sacrifice, and no atonement for sins is being symbolized. But you will notice the grain offering was always given after the burnt offering, just as it comes here in the chapter following the burnt offering. So, we’re looking at the basic elements of the grain offering and we’ve seen first of all its kinds.

In the element of the grain offering, we see that it is closely identified with the worshiper. There has to be close engagement on the part of the worshiper. In the grain offering, the worshiper may not go to his flocks to bring a sacrifice, but he goes to his field. It cannot just be any plants of spontaneous growth. It has to be grain from either barley or wheat; it has to be the result of the labor of their hands. Oh, there is so much labor. I was just trying to do some work with two cows. In a few minutes, I got into the clay and tried to walk the two cows. I could not even walk properly, sliding, with the hot sun, and back pain. Imagine the preparation of the land, loosening and digging the soil by plowing and leveling, and adding manure. Sowing: planting seeds, adding nutrients: adding manure and fertilizers, irrigation: regular care with water for months, protecting from cows, birds, worms. Oh, when the harvest comes, it is like pearls. I have seen them kissing the crop. The work is not over. They have to cut, gather the mature crop, make it into grain, and store it. This isn’t something that grew wild. This is something that grew by the sweat of the brow. This is the product of my labor.

Notice you cannot just bring wheat and offer it. The grain to be offered had to be “fine.” Verse 1: “fine quality,” finely ground flour, which is to be offered. We do not understand how difficult it was in the days of no electricity or motor machines. You cannot just go to a shop and buy fine flour. To obtain fine flour entailed a great deal of extra effort on the part of the person who ground it. The flour would have had to have been ground on a primitive grinding millstone, a process which, at best, usually produces only a coarse flour. Then, for hours, they ground it to make it fine. Usually, ordinary people would not have it so fine. Such “fine” flour was that which was fit for a king (cf. 1 Ki. 4:22) because it was so much labor; it was expensive.

Then it had to be cooked. So, you see in all this, he doesn’t bring to God something detached from himself. You see it involved close engagement; it is the labor of his hands. He spends months to grow this, and then a lot of effort to fine-grind it and cook it. For an agricultural people, this grain offering represents their being. It is a part of me; this is the work of my hands; it is my soul. The original says, “When any soul offers a grain offering,” I am bringing before the Lord my very soul and person to the presence of God with that grain symbolically.

Verse 11: Ingredients: no leaven or honey. “No grain offering which you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven, for you shall burn no leaven nor any honey in any offering to the Lord made by fire.”

Verse 13: Required (salt). Fully salt added. “And every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt; you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt.”

Verse 14-16: Early grain offerings. Then it says you should do it compulsorily during your harvest time. “If you offer a grain offering of first fruits to the Lord, you shall offer for the grain offering of your first fruits green heads of grain roasted in fire, crushed new grain.”

So those are the elements of the grain offering.

Method of Offering the Grain Offering

Put yourself in the place of a Jew going to the tabernacle to offer a grain offering. You have prepared the harvest for months. Take that grain and, in your own tent, make it into fine flour. And then you would pour costly olive oil into it and add frankincense. You can decide whether to give flour, oven bake, grill, or fry. Now you wouldn’t put leaven in, nor would you put any honey on it, but you would heavily salt it. Verse 13 emphasizes salt three times. Then you have to add frankincense. It was an expensive and highly valued perfume and so made the offering a more precious gift. It also enhanced the pleasing smell of the offering burning on the altar.

You would take that portion now, how much would be brought before the Tabernacle? It’s not specified here, but in Numbers 15 and Deuteronomy 26, we find it says you can bring 1/10 or 3/10 or 2/10 of an ephah/ether before the Lord. It is not clear to us. Some estimates say to bring maybe 10 kg of this grain offering.

You see yourself now in your mind’s eye. You’ve got your sandals on. You’re heading towards the Tabernacle with your basket of grain that represents you and your labor. Then you come to the Tabernacle through the front door, into the outer court, and there at the Tabernacle. You present that basket of grain to the priests, Aaron’s sons. “He shall bring it to Aaron’s sons, the priests, one of whom dipped his hand into the basket. He shall take from it his handful of fine flour and oil with all the frankincense.” Only a handful of that mixture. “And the priest shall burn it as a memorial on the altar.” The little handful of the big basket is a memorial portion that is consumed entirely in the smoke. The smoke, which goes skyward, and with the frankincense it brings, it says in verse 2, “a sweet aroma to the Lord.” It is an offering by fire, a soothing aroma to the Lord, that is spoken of the burnt offering, the grain offering, and also the peace offering. So the little handful gets offered up, but what about the rest of the basketful? What about the major portion? Verse 3: “The rest of the grain offering shall be Aaron’s and his sons’. It is most holy of the offerings to the Lord made by fire.” It is the priests’ property. Notice what it says, “A thing most holy of the offerings to the Lord by fire.” So that is the basic element of the grain offering.

So that is the method of giving a grain offering. The same way for all cooked grain offerings. Yes, this was just an outward ritual God made the Israelites do thousands of times, but God, through this ritual, was reinforcing a truth and the faith in the minds and hearts of God’s people.

Times and Purpose of the Grain Offering for the Jew

Generally, every time a burnt offering was given, it was always followed by a grain offering. Every morning and evening, there would be a burnt offering, and right next to that, a grain offering. See even in this book, just after the burnt offering in chapter 1, the very next chapter is the grain offering. They are specifically inseparable companions. You should never miss a grain offering after a burnt offering, and you should not give a grain offering before a burnt offering.

There is great significance in seeing the connection and order between the burnt and the grain offering. First a burnt offering, and then a grain offering. As a Jew comes with the guilt of sin, offering a burnt offering provides atonement for his sin. He experiences God’s reconciled presence and forgiveness. His heart overflows with gratitude for this gracious way to come to God, and as an expression of his gratitude for the unspeakable gift that he, being a vile, wicked, defiled sinner, having been reconciled to the living God by the blood of this substitute, this goat or bull, he offers a grain offering as an expression of his gratitude. The grain offering was an overwhelming response of gratitude and worship for the atonement and way of reconciliation provided by God. All godly Jews understood this, and that is why you will notice whenever there was a burnt offering given, there would always be a grain offering as an expression of gratitude.

Secondly, the grain offering was always offered at harvest. This is intimated to us in the 14th verse, “If you offer a grain offering of first fruits to the Lord.” First fruits. In Deuteronomy 26, they actually had a festival of First Fruits, where they offered lots of big grain offerings. Turn and see something very interesting. We find in verse 5 the issue begins as the man has brought the basket. He set it at the foot of the altar and in verse 5, he is made to think back where he was and how much mercy God has shown to him now, lest he forget that and become ungrateful and fail to offer this grain offering. He’s told that he is to rehearse the history of God’s merciful dealings with the people of Israel, beginning with, “my father was a wandering, nomad, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, but there he became a great and mighty and a populous nation. But the Egyptians treated him harshly. So, we cried out to the Lord,” verse 8, “with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. God delivered us,” verse 10. In verse 9, “he brought us into a land of milk and honey, and it is from the pastures and the fields of this land of milk and honey that I have brought this grain offering to the Lord.” Notice the climax in verse 9: “and he has brought us to this place and he has given us this land, the land flowing with milk and honey. And now, behold, I have brought the first of the produce of the ground which you, Lord, have given me, and you shall set it before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God.”

You see, at this harvest celebration, this first fruit ceremony, the worshiper is returning to God some of the agricultural produce to the Lord. It’s an act of Thanksgiving. It’s acknowledging God’s goodness. This offering kept them from becoming ungrateful and hardened in sin, like he warns in Deuteronomy 8:12: “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. … then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’ And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth.” The grain offering was a wonderful way that made them realize where they were and what God had done for them, keeping them always grateful. So God continued to bless them.

So, for a Jew, the grain offering is an expression of God’s mercy in providence by providing him a harvest and in redemption, by providing him an atonement.

Let’s see some aspects of how rich this is. Just like the burnt offering, verse 1: “When anyone offers a grain offering to the Lord.” This was a personal, voluntary, spontaneous expression of gratitude. Nobody can force people to be grateful; then that is not gratitude. Yes, there are compulsory offerings morning, evening, Sabbath, at the beginning of a church, but personally, if a worshiper had any sense of gratitude to God, it was the worshipper himself or herself who decided to bring an offering. They were not compelled to; they came with their offering when they felt constrained to do so, when they wanted to do so.

There was plenty of freedom of expression of gratitude. They could prepare the bread in a variety of ways, pretty much any way they liked. Why do you suppose a worshiper did it in one way or another? No doubt because he liked his bread served that way, because he liked to cook it that way; they thought it tasted better. It shows the depth of his gratitude.

Verse 2 says it has to be a memorial. The offering itself was a form of remembrance of God’s goodness and grace.

Verse 2 says after the handful is burned, the remaining part, verse 3, “The rest of the grain offering shall be Aaron’s and his sons’.” That it was most holy meant, in practice, that it became the exclusive property of the priests. Only they can eat it and could not be eaten by anyone else or anywhere else but the sanctuary. Holy offerings, not most holy, such as the fellowship offering, could be eaten by the priests, their families, and by the worshiper and his or her family.

Also, the grain offering provided for the needs of the priests. Remember, every tribe got land to farm and to till except one tribe who didn’t get any land. That was the Levites. Their job and vocation was not agricultural. It was spiritual. They were to be serving the Temple of God. How was that tribe provided for their needs, their salary, and support? It was through offerings like the grain offering, the goodwill offering of the tithes.

The grain offering has to be an expression of unhypocritical gratitude and devotion. It is symbolized in not adding any leaven. No honey could mean many Canaanites offered honey in worship to Molech, Ashtoreth, and Baal. They loved honey; it was a symbol and identity of their gods. In a way, God says, you have to be sincere and have no competing allegiances to any other gods, so you don’t add that honey. It is an expression of continual covenant faithfulness. That is why salt is added. “And every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt; you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt.” Salt in all cultures was always a sign of faithfulness. We say we should betray the house where we ate salt. Remember you have eaten the salt of God; never be a traitor to his covenant. God is loyal in the covenant, so we should be. Don’t be a hypocrite in gratitude or unfaithful in the covenant.

Great Goal of all this offering: These grain offerings promote and secure favor because, as it says in verse 12 of Leviticus Chapter 2, they bring a soothing aroma before the Lord. When we do that, oh, we receive God’s favor. The favor of the Lord. It is such a blessing. The favor of the Lord is better than life. His favor surrounds us. Read the concordance; when we have the favor of the Lord resting on us, we see his favor in all we do: in our family, at work. Such joy in life to live with a sense of God’s smile and presence on us, his favorable presence, the light of God’s countenance on us. Nothing is more joyful than this.

If this is all for the Old Testament Jew, oh, how rich it must be for us today. The literal details of the grain offering were temporary and are now obsolete. I will not ask you to bring wheat flour next week for Sunday service. But even though those literal details are now obsolete, the spiritual principles of the grain offering are perpetual. New Covenant religion is built upon the elementary principles of old covenant religion. Can I tell you there is a grain offering God expects from us in the New Testament? When we fail to offer that, we don’t experience the favor of God.

So what was the deep meaning of the minhah, the grain offering, to us? Well, how about this for a summary: “Those who have grasped the mercy of God in providence and redemption will offer voluntarily themselves and the best they have to the Lord.”

Like the Israelites, we can offer our grain offering in two ways for redemption and providential mercies.

Redemption: Like I said, the grain offering was always offered after the burnt offering. You become reconciled to God first, and then you offer a grain offering. The purpose of the grain offering is not atonement, but worship, acknowledgment of God’s divine provision of the needs of the Israelite for life itself.

The grain, as it indicated to the Israelites, with an overwhelming sense of gratitude, means all that I am and all that I accomplish by the labor of my hands, I offer to you. First you must be reconciled to God to offer a grain offering. In New Testament words, justification precedes sanctification. All who have grasped the burnt offering will offer a grain offering. We can say the evidence or sign of your reconciliation to God is the expression of the grain offering. In New Testament words, sanctification always follows after justification. In fact, the New Testament says sanctification is evidence of justification. What we see in Leviticus 1 of reconciliation through the burnt offering, Paul elaborates in the New Testament fulfillment in the first 11 chapters of Romans, talking about justification, explaining the way of God’s grace in the salvation of sinners. Then, as an inevitable consequence, as a reasonable, right response to that redemption, in Romans 12, he says, “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

You can’t give yourself as a sacrifice to God unless and until he has provided a sacrifice for you. The Christian life flows from the atonement that Christ made on the cross and is the only true and fit response to it that a person can make. Since Christ is your burnt offering and made atonement for you, Paul wrote in effect, now give your grain offering to him!

So the grain offering in the New Testament is grasping the great work of God through Christ for our atonement, and we offer ourselves to him. In the words of a hymn writer: “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

We see God making it a regular worship, as a routine they always do as a routine in the New Testament as part of worship. Now at this fundamental method of ritual of New Testament daily and Sunday worship, Sunday by Sunday, our ritual or order of worship is designed to drive the same truth deep into our understanding. We come to God through the burnt offering first. We confess our sins and receive forgiveness through the blood, the death, and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ every Sunday, and then we offer ourselves again and anew to him. The order of the gospel is essential to its meaning. You can’t work first and believe second. You believe and practice. Christians don’t serve the Lord in order to be saved, but because they have been saved. That is the basic order of our relationship with God. God made it an Old Testament ritual to be settled deep in our hearts.

But, as the grain offering reminds us, we must dedicate ourselves to the Lord; we must respond to his love and salvation with gratitude and service. It is the only proper response to the Lord’s making a covenant with us, providing forgiveness for our sins, and continuing to do so in spite of our constant failure to live worthy of the grace we have received. There must be the burnt offering and the grain offering, just as there must be faith and obedience.

The Israelites may remember his redemption from Egypt, but we should remember ours. Oh, we were under the whip of our taskmaster. Far worse than Pharaoh. His name is the devil. The Lord Jesus has delivered us from his scourge by himself taking the scourge on our behalf. Well, thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you. There ought to be great offering principles here of frankincense and oil and joy.

Providential Mercies

Just like the Israelites showed their gratitude by a grain offering of providential blessing during the harvest, do you know there is a principle in the New Testament? Do you know the grain offering we give to God in the church is a tithe from our harvest of salary? “Pastor, how can you say this?” I want to talk about money. You may think I should be ashamed to talk about this because false teachers only talk about this. But see, we don’t often talk about tithing. We don’t ask for money. An offering is very silently done. A quiet little box is over in the corner that most visitors never even notice. But when we come to something in the word of God, and God speaks about that, we should, so we don’t miss out on God’s favor. Why is it that we are never happy with our income? We may say we don’t earn that much. Can I tell you, contentment and happiness do not come with more salary, but with the favor of God on our income? We get that only when we express, like the Israelites, a grain offering of our harvest as tithes to the work of the temple.

We see Paul uses the same principle in 1 Corinthians 9. Paul is referring quite clearly to the grain offering. Verse 13: Here is Paul speaking about his right to receive remuneration for his gospel labors. Notice what he says. “Do you not know that those who perform sacred services eat the food of the Temple? And those who attend regularly to the altar have their share of the altar, so also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel.” Do you see here how an Old Covenant practice, the grain offering, is the justification for a New Covenant provision? He says in verse 14, “Even so the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel.” Where did the Lord command? In Luke 10:7, Jesus sent out the 70 to the lost sheep of Israel, and he said, “Don’t take with you any purse. No money because as you are out, the laborer is worthy of his wages.” You are to be able to live comfortably off the gospel. People will provide for you in your gospel labors, just like the old covenant priests in the Tabernacle.

I want to highlight this because someone told me, “Pastor, it will be very difficult for you to get another good full-time pastor because you have been doing all these years without taking any pay, and you plan to live like that till the end. You are proud about that, but the ministry and church may suffer and not grow because of that. Why? No one would want to come and take pay and do the ministry here in church. They will not only feel unnecessary guilt, but the church people will look at them with lower respect.” While Scripture clearly has commanded people should provide for the pastor, you may become like the Brethren who would oftentimes say there should be no paid ministry; all should work. There was a subtle and unspoken conviction that somehow it is unspiritual for a man to earn a living by church work. Even if you decide to pay, you will not pay a comfortable salary, so no one will come. You will be like many churches who wrongly think, “Let us keep pastors poor and godly.” That made me think a lot.

I am not saying I am going to take the money from now on, but we have to seriously think about this. Sometimes our wrong, unbiblical thinking can hinder the growth of the church, dangerous seeds we may be sowing that will hinder the growth. For the church to grow, we need more pastors. We need full-time pastors. Otherwise, we will continue to struggle and not progress. That is wrong. We may lose God’s favor because of this. The principle of the grain offering teaches us as God’s people that it is our duty and an expression of gratitude for his providential mercies that we need to support God’s ministers so they can do God’s work without any hindrance. Yes, there is a lot of abuse of money in Christianity, but we shouldn’t go to the other extreme. I’m cautioning against the opposite problem. If we get into an attitude, “Oh, we should not pay anyone full time,” we as a church may not be able to grow and do much for the gospel. That is wrong.

The principle of the grain offering teaches we ought to offer a grain offering during our harvest. It is not once every six months, but at the beginning of every month when we get our salary, we have to offer as cheerful givers. God loves a cheerful giver with oil and with the frankincense of joy. We will see in Philippians 4:18 how Paul sees the gift the Philippians sent to him: “Indeed I have all and abound. I am full, having received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God.”

Here’s another clear reference to the grain offering. They had sent much provision for the apostle Paul. And Paul says thank you. “You’ve given a grain offering to the Lord. It is a soothing aroma.” Leviticus 2. It is part of our spiritual worship and our new covenant sacrifice.

Attitude with Which We Should Offer Grain Offering for Redemption and Providential Mercies

We have to do it with thankful hearts. I thank you for all your redemption atonement mercies through Christ, and also providential mercies in the harvest you have given. It was Thanksgiving. Ascending heavenward. And this is underscored even by the ingredients of oil and frankincense. This is an indication of doing it cheerfully with thankful hearts.

Yes, there was voluntary, but the grain offering was always a regular part of their worship. At harvest time, every Sabbath, every morning and every meeting, at Passover time, a grain offering at the first of the month. It is a reminder to keep them with thankful hearts.

Remembering God’s mercies will enable us to do it with thankfulness. That was a peculiar disease of the people of God in ancient times: to forget. We find in Deuteronomy 8 he warns them: “Make sure you don’t forget when you come into the land and you inherit orchards that you didn’t plant, and homes that you didn’t build in walled cities that you didn’t construct, remember and do not forget that it is the Lord who has given these things to you and given you the ability to make wealth.” Make sure that you don’t get into an atheistic enterprising apart from the Lord. We can become like the nine lepers, who, in the full flush of health, having been cleansed and made whole by the Lord Jesus Christ, neglected to return with the grain offering principle of Thanksgiving to the Lord Jesus. How many times have we been doing that? How often do we sense health and sense blessings from God, and we run about doing many things, but we do not bring the grain offering to the living God? We must resolve to deliberately and premeditatedly as well as spontaneously schedule it into our lives.

When we get our salary, why doesn’t it fill us with joy? “Oh, only this much.” I will tell you, with 10 times more, we will feel the same. This attitude we consider in our mind, that this is the salary that God owes me? How many times have you thanked God for the salary? As a family devotion, have you thanked God for the salary as a family? Have we taught our children to thank God for the harvest? We sit in front of a table that is overflowing with bounty: mutton biriyani, so many chicken items, fish. Do we consider that this is the deserved ratio that God owes to us? Or is this not rather an undeserving feast, that as the Holy God looks down on us, his undeserving servants, who have defiled his table, as it were, and have treasonously rebelled against him even this day? But instead, look what the living God comes with, his arms filled with grocery bags, and he pulls it down upon our unworthy table. And he says, “Look what I have brought for you.” We offer from our heart gratitude of a grain offering.

Can I tell you, we are not happy in life because we are not regularly offering a grain offering. You see, sometimes our prayers are so monotone, with no feelings of choking thanksgiving and tears. Why? All pride, no gratitude. If we are, there’s a great offering Thanksgiving. “I am thrilled and exhilarated with what you have done. I bring the joy of oil and frankincense and not merely a bland, monotone sacrifice of prayer or the gift that God has given us.”

We have to do it to honor God’s authority over us. The actual Hebrew word for the grain is called Minha. The word means tribute. It is an acknowledgment of God’s sovereign authority over us, and we pay tribute. We respect and love his authority by offering a grain offering. In the Old Testament, when people hated the authority, they refused to pay tribute. Like we see in Judges, when people loved the king, they paid tribute, like in the days of David and Solomon. Jehovah is our king. By offering a grain offering for redemption, we say, “Lord, we love you. I will be faithful to you. I will submit to you and I have great affection for you as I bring this grain. All of the labors of my hand, I will enlist to serve your name. Oh, great King of mine.”

Do it with sincerity, as shown with no leaven. No hypocrisy, cheerfully, joyfully.

We have to do it with covenant loyalty, as shown in the salt. Grain offerings had to be heavily seasoned. Salt also indicates a perseverance. Salt was something that couldn’t be destroyed by fire. It couldn’t be destroyed by time, and therefore to add salt to the offering was a reminder that the worshiper was in an eternal, not temporary, covenant.

We see when worship was proper in Israel, with these two things, there was God’s blessings in the whole nation. The nation prospered, priests were provided, God blessed them, and the people.

Introduction to Leviticus

Today we begin a book that has stopped more people from reading the entire Bible than any other. People start with Genesis, with its nice stories, and the first part of Exodus with its very dramatic 10 plagues. Then you come to Leviticus, and you read about different offerings, rituals, diet, and skin diseases. The verses seem so strange to our times. We’ve never met a person with leprosy and aren’t overly interested in the exact way of examining a head scalp sore or the color of a hair—white or black. If you are reading in the morning, you might try with two or three cups of coffee, but your mind is still not working. After reading a few chapters, your interest in reading the Bible evaporates, and that’s the end of your resolution to read through the Bible. Isn’t that right?

I think that is the experience of many. Yes, it is a difficult book. In fact, in our over 15 years of ministry, our mornings focused on the New Testament and our evenings on the Old Testament. We went through Genesis, Exodus 20, skipped Leviticus, and started Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, and 2 Samuel. All of the sermons on the Old Testament that go verse by verse, chapter by chapter, are stored on our website. When I was going through Exodus, I was frankly a little scared to start Leviticus, so I skipped it at that time.

By the providence of God, I plan to start a study on Leviticus in the evenings. I am aware that some of you may not share my present enthusiasm for this series through the Book of Leviticus. I’m trying to get you interested, much like my wife trying to get me interested in a shopping trip—19 years, and she still hasn’t accomplished that yet. People may even make fun of me, asking if this is really needed. “Pastor, okay, you want to study. You finished 2 Samuel, so let us continue on with 1 Kings. Why go back to Leviticus?” I want to give you not just one reason, but seven reasons for this. I not only want to answer all of your objections but also wet your appetite and make you as eager to study as I am. If anyone asks me next year why I am studying Leviticus, I will tell them to listen to my first sermon. Okay.

Seven Reasons to Study Leviticus

I want to wet your appetite and make you eager to study.

1. When you see big statues like the Statue of Liberty or the Statue of Unity, do you know that those statues stand on a large pedestal that is stronger than the statue itself? This foundational pedestal holds the statue in a strong grip, making it stand tall and strong. Otherwise, it would bend and slowly fall. Most of us think about the Bible, and we think about the great towering texts of the Bible. We think about the gospels, the cross of Christ, and the great books that explain the work of Christ, such as Romans, Ephesians, and Hebrews. But do you know that all of those texts stand tall on a foundational pedestal? The truths of these texts will be strongly grasped and implanted in your heart in an unshakable way only when you grasp the foundational pedestal passages. Without these pedestal books, our grip on those truths will be very superficial. Just as without a pedestal, those tall statues can’t withstand strong winds and storms, you will not be able to hold the glory of those texts high and believe in them strongly during storms of trials, doubts, and winds of life if you don’t have a grasp of the solid foundation passages. Many of the great New Testament truths are based on the pedestal of this lowly book of Leviticus. Many of the New Testament books and passages will become so clear and confirming once you understand Leviticus.

2. The second reason is that as we become Bible readers and finish one year, you can read all other books by yourself and get some message. But before it comes, you feel scared and tired of the Book of Leviticus. But after this study, with God’s help, you will eagerly want to come to Leviticus, and every chapter will be so clear when you read it. It is just like now people tell me, “Pastor, you taught Genesis to 2 Samuel, and now reading it, how several lessons God brings to our mind when we read it.” The reason Leviticus seems so confusing is that it is like going into a car manufacturing factory without a guide. We go and all we see is different activities. We are very disturbed by the noise of grinding, hammering, and machines running, and we see different people doing different things. We are very confused about why they are doing that and what they are doing. But when a guide comes and takes us step by step through each department and activity and tells us what each department is doing and how it is all related to one another, and then step by step brings us to the showroom, we will be in awe. “Wow, now it is so clear!” In the same way, after this study, I will help you understand Leviticus like a guide, and it will become an awesome and very interesting book to you.

3. There are rich treasures in this book that you will find nowhere else. Just as the spies saw the land flowing with milk and honey, when I spied this, I can see that this is a land flowing with rich theological milk and honey. If you don’t read this, you will miss it. Remember, in all Scripture, 2 Timothy 3 says that it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate for every good work. All Scripture has a work that will have an effect in our lives. I believe that this book will have a peculiar effect that no other book could.

4. I don’t know about you, but as soon as you finish reading this book with difficulty, what is your feeling? Even though you didn’t understand most of it, my feeling has always been, “How holy we should be as God’s people, right?” Just a superficial reading, and I always have that feeling. This book, more than any other, will help you grow in holiness.

5. Did you know that the Book of Leviticus has more direct words of God than any other book? You know how in your New Testament, some of you have red-letter editions where the words of the Lord Jesus are all in red. If there were a red-letter edition of the Old Testament where the words of Jehovah himself would be all in red, the book of Leviticus would be the reddest of all the books in the Bible. The book repeatedly says that these are the very words God gave and spoke to Moses from the tent of meeting. The phrase “Then the Lord spoke to Moses” is repeated again and again 56 times in the 27 chapters of Leviticus. The contents are not just inspired by the Holy Spirit, but they are a direct revelation from the mind of the living God. And therefore, when we take this Book of Leviticus and hold it in our hands, what do we have? We have the very word of God spoken directly to Moses.

6. The New Testament itself directly cites or refers to the Book of Leviticus over 100 times, and there are countless other indirect allusions. So much of the New Testament truth will become clear, especially the Book of Hebrews.

7. We studied the mark of Christian rejoicing in Jesus Christ. You will see as we read the glory of Christ and his work so marvelously shown in this book in those early times. Think of it, this is the third book of the Bible—a very early revelation, in the crawling stages, written over 3,500 years ago, that so richly shows the coming Messiah and his work. These are primitive sketches of our Lord Jesus Christ that are drawn in this book. They are sketches that are very, very profound, so that this book may be fittingly entitled not merely “Leviticus” but “The Gospel According to Leviticus.”

In the providence of God, today is the day we will break ground on an extended series with the help of God. I am sure your souls will drink in this milk and honey and become spiritually nourished and strong.

An Introduction to the Book: Historical Context and Central Theme

As an entrance to the book, let’s look at a few background details, starting with the historical context. Leviticus is found connected with history. As we open the first book of Genesis, God created the world, man fell, sin multiplied, and God brought a flood. After the flood, sin grew strong again as there was a wholesale defiance of the sovereign name of the living God that climaxed at Babel. Man, thinking they were civilized, resolved that they would build a city and make a name for themselves. God, in his mercy, confounded their language and multiplied tongues. It was an act of mercy because if God had just allowed it, mankind’s sin would have increased and become more heinous than before the flood, and God may have had to bring a greater judgment. Separated and distinct, men could not be as heinous and as wicked as they would be as a unit. So, God scattered mankind all over the face of the earth as men went to the four corners of the earth.

After the flood and after Babel, the world was full of darkness. Yet, God in his mercy, shined a torch light on a man called Abram. He chose Abram and revealed himself. In the whole dark world, there was a tiny flame of true religion. God promised to bring a nation through him that would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands on the seashore. We know the rest of the Genesis story: Abraham, Isaac born in old age, Jacob, Joseph going to Egypt, and the whole family going to Egypt at the end of Genesis.

As we come to Exodus, there was a vast nation of Hebrew slaves in Goshen. God delivered the crying nation from their bondage through a colossal display of 10 plagues that broke the jaw of Egypt’s pride and made Pharaoh bow down. God made them cross the Red Sea and brought them to Mount Sinai, where God gave his blessed law to the people of God through thunder and lightning. God cut a covenant with the nation and vowed to personally dwell among his people as he made provision. God came into a covenant relationship.

But you know, these people sinned with the golden calf, and God’s holy anger was upon them. This covenant relationship was damaged by their sin. The question is, how can sinful, guilty Israel be reconciled to a holy God? Leviticus shows us how God graciously provides a way for sinful, corrupt people to live in his holy presence.

In chapters 25 through 40 of the Book of Exodus, we read about the building of the tabernacle. It says in Exodus 30, verse 34, that “When the cloud covered the tent and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle, and Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle, the God of creation, the God of redemption, was now dwelling among his people.”

And thus, the Book of Leviticus opens. Leviticus is really just an extension of the Book of Exodus. Verse 1 says, “Then the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from that same tent of meeting.” God had drawn near to his people, and his dwelling was among them. Now, to ensure that Jehovah would be sanctified among them, God taught the people how they could live in the presence of a holy God. For approximately 40 days, God gave instructions to Moses as to all of the activities and the motions that would take place around the Tabernacle, determining how men ought to dwell in his presence and how men ought to draw near to him in worship. There are specific details given for 40 days on how men were to move, live, and approach God while he was in their camp. That is the historical context of the Book of Leviticus.

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Having seen the historical context of Leviticus, let’s go to the central theme of Leviticus. The book itself states the goal and central theme of this book in chapter 20, verse 26: “And you shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine.” The central theme of Leviticus is one word: holiness. God is among us. How should we live? How should we approach him? The Hebrew word is kodas.

The central theme of holiness has a two-pronged meaning. First of all, and most strikingly, holiness means separation. God is presented as holy, which means that God is set apart, or there is a wide gulf between him and sinful men and all of his creation and creatures. He is unique, independent, and in a different class. He is different from sinners. Man is dying every day, but God is full of life. Man is weak; he is almighty. Man is sad, and God is full of joy. Man is defiled; God is pure. There is a wide, infinite gulf, as God is set apart from all of us. When God is holy, the place surrounding him is holy, separate from all creation and sins.

When you consider the Tabernacle itself, that theme of God’s holiness is profoundly depicted. In Numbers 2 and 3, there is a map drawn out concerning the configuration of how the Tabernacle was to be set up. The Tabernacle is set in the center and is surrounded by a large space and a wall. Outside the compound, we find that in the North, South, East, and West, there are the 12 tribes—Dan, Asher, Issachar, Judah, all the way around—and in the middle of them is the Tabernacle of the Living God.

But there is a profound sense of separation between God and all the tribes because there is to be a band of one tribe that insulates God from the rest of the tribes. What tribe is that? The tribe of Levi. But then there is more separation. We find at the east side of the Tabernacle, which is where the door is, the entrance, there is a peculiar brand of Levites who are to be here, and who are they? The priests and the line of Aaron. So, God is set apart from the nation as a whole. Really, God is set apart from all the nations, then set apart from the nation of Israel, and then, with the Levites, the priestly tribe, he is set apart even from them.

Set apartness does not end there. Once you come to the Tabernacle, there is the outer court, but God was not yet there. There was to be cleansing. Then one would come into the court, but God was not yet there. Then one would come into the Holy Place, but God was not yet there. Ah, then one would come into the Holy of Holies, and in the Ark of the Covenant was the manifestation of the living God. The 10 words, 10 commands, the Decalogue. Do these circles and all this insulation from the outside not indicate that God is a holy God? God is set apart from sinful man, profoundly so. So, we see that the concept of holiness is the concept of separation. God is separated.

Now the question is, how can sinful Israel live among God and enjoy God’s blessings? They also need to become holy, and sin has to be dealt with. The amazing Book of Leviticus shows how God graciously deals with all of our defects of our depravity and our sin problem and makes a way for us to live in the presence of the living God as holy people.

Now, God’s people are to be holy, as God is holy, in that they too are to be separated from the nations around them, and this is a striking theme in Leviticus. It graphically teaches holiness: “You are therefore to make a distinction between the clean animal and unclean animals, birds, in the way you eat and live. You have to be holy, separated from the unclean. Thus you shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am Holy; I have set you apart from other peoples.” “I know that all peoples can touch certain kinds of animals, but not you. You want to be different. You want to be distinct. You want to be set apart because I have set you apart from the nations.” So, one distinct thing about holiness is the theme of separation. God’s people ought to be different than the people around them.

“26 And you shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine.”

But the second prong of holiness, having seen separation, is the theme of imitation. We find that the people of God, when they ask, “What are we to do? What are we to be like?” are told one thing: to be separate from the people around, as God is separate, but also we are to be like God in that we are to imitate God. Notice what it says in Leviticus chapter 19, beginning at verse 2, as the Lord again spoke to Moses saying, “Speak to all the congregation of the Sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.'” “Lord, you want us to be separate and distinct from the nations around, not to live their lifestyles?” “Yes, that’s right. Have separation as a principle, but also have imitation as a principle.” Notice the list then of principles that come. In verse 3, how are we to be holy? “Everyone of you shall reverence his father and his mother.” Well, that’s the fifth commandment. “And you shall keep my sabbaths.” That’s the fourth commandment. Verse 4: “Do not turn to items or make for yourself more than gods.” Well, that’s the second commandment. Notice verse 11: “You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another.” There are the eighth and ninth commandments. And in verse 12: “You shall not swear falsely by my name. And do not profane the name of your God.” That’s the third commandment.

So how are we to be holy? First, turn from the nations around; don’t live like the world. Separate from the nations; turn your back. Then, in the front, follow and imitate the character of God. What is the character of God? Come with me into the Holy of Holies; open the Ark of the Covenant. The 10 words. That’s the character of God. The 10 commandments are the character of God.

“Be holy by imitating me. And by separating yourself from the nations round about.” So that is the central theme of holiness. God’s people are not only to live separate lives from the evil nations, but they’re also to imitate their God, taking as the paradigm of all of their life the moral excellence of God’s character found in his law, which, by the way, is permanent and perpetual. Does God’s character change? No, the God of Israel changes not. All ten are perpetual principles of God’s character. So that then is the central theme of Leviticus: holiness.

Explanation of Holiness

Some of us have such a wrong understanding of holiness that we turn off when we hear this. What picture comes into your mind when you hear holiness? Maybe seriousness, grimness, no joy, no fun, as though holy people are weird, peculiar individuals. This is the wrong idea of that. Holiness was not attractive to me at all; it repelled me. Scripture uses the phrase “the beauty of holiness” (1 Chronicles 16:29, 2 Chronicles 20:21, Psalms 29:2, 96:2). I asked myself, “What in the world is beautiful about holiness?” Until I understood biblically with context what it means, it became a beautiful word. When I found out, I agreed that holiness is indeed a beautiful thing.

One preacher, beautifully explains this. The original word for holiness is from a very attractive English word: wholeness. So that holiness means “wholeness,” being complete. We all know what wholeness is. It is to have all the parts that were intended to be there together and to have them functioning as they were intended to function.

When God talks about holiness, that is what God is talking about. He says to his people, “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. He 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. And he looks at us in our brokenness and says to us, “You, too, shall be whole.”

That word wholeness has the power to awaken desire within us. We long to be whole people, don’t you? Don’t you want to be what God made you to be, with all the ingredients of your personality able to be expressed in balance? That is to be a beautiful person, and that is what God is after. That is what the book of Leviticus is all about. It is a book that will make you whole.

To realize our great need, we need to realize that we are not whole. We are damaged. Our soul and body faculties are terribly damaged, like a crashed car. In Eden, man lost his way. He was made in the image and likeness of God. When man first came from the hand of God, he was whole. Adam functioned as God intended man to function. He was functioning in the image and the likeness of God.

After the great fall, we have lost that likeness. We still have the image, but the likeness is gone. Every man feels this lack. All of Adam’s children cry, “Oh, where is the life I have lost?”

Isn’t that the question so many millions are asking today: “Where is the life I have lost in trying to live? Why don’t I know the way out? How come I am so uptight, so hurting, so broken?”

We are so aware 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, half the time, we are running scared. That is a mark of our lack of wholeness.

We also know our diabolical power to irritate, to enrage, and to inflame others—and ourselves. But this great statement in Leviticus 20:26 declares that God knows all about human brokenness and hurt. He knows that we are out of that way. He sees this in sharp contrast to his own wholeness. And his love reaches out and says to us, “You shall be whole; for I am whole.” “That is my purpose,” he declares to his people. God determines to heal man’s brokenness and to make man whole again. And he knows how to do it—he says so: “You shall be whole; for I am whole.”

This is a process that takes infinite patience and love, because God never makes us holy forcefully. It has to be an act of free will. It is voluntary—God never forces us into it. It can occur only to those who trust God enough to respond to his love.

We are like fearful birds. Imagine a hurt animal or bird. When we want to apply medicine and feed them, they don’t come near us. They are so scared that we will catch them and hurt them. They come and stand, think, hesitate, and one sound, they suddenly run away. That strikes me as such an apt picture of what God contends with in reaching out toward man. Man is scared. “Oh, if I come, will he catch and hurt me? More so, will he make me holy?” It takes infinite patience and love to impart the necessary understanding to fearful, hurting men and women like us.

That is why God gave us this book. He starts in kindergarten with us. 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. So Christ is here in the book of Leviticus. God shows us, through his people Israel, his way of healing human hurt. This is God’s way to wholeness.

To those early days—infant revelation—the way they saw him was through these pictures. Thus, as they understood what these pictures depict and laid hold of that, they came to the same joy and peace that we have.

If you do not believe that, then read the Psalms and see how much David understood of the presence and the grace of God in his life. He was a man who was healed by God. He came to understand that God was his strength and his very life, and that God could meet every need of his heart and work out all the tangled relationships in his family and in his personal life. He reflects all this in the Psalms he wrote.

So, the first two steps for the process are: First step to make you whole is separation. “I have separated you from the peoples.” It is a process of separation. The reason we are so broken is that we are involved in a broken race. Our attitudes are wrong. Our vision of life is twisted and distorted. We believe illusions and lies, take them to be facts, and act upon them. We are following phantoms and fantasies and delusions. So, God must separate us. He has to break us loose from conformity to the thought patterns and the attitudes and reactions of those around us. He has to deliver us from all that, straighten out our thinking, set our minds and hearts aright, and correct our tangled, fouled relationships.

The second step is to follow him, learn his thoughts, see what he teaches, and follow him. Do not conform to world, but be transformed in your mind by its renewal.

Leviticus, then, is full of Christ. All the sacrifices, the rituals, the ceremonies, and all the rest pictorially describe Jesus Christ and his work, and how he was available to men and women then. And as we read this book from our vantage point on this side of the cross, we will learn a great deal about how Jesus Christ can meet our needs now. Therefore, this is not just a historical book. It isn’t just for Jews. It is a tremendously practical manual on how to live as a Christian. We will see this as we go along.

But there is even more. When you read the book of Leviticus and understand what it is saying, it will help you to understand yourself. All the work of Jesus Christ was to meet our greatest needs as depraved sinners. So, as you read this book, you will understand more about yourself and about what your great, crying needs are, and about how you operate.

We are a mystery to ourselves. We don’t even understand how we think. We are baffled by our own experience. Don’t you feel that way? Remember the way Paul expresses this in Romans 7: “The good things that I want to do I cannot do; and the evil things that I don’t want to do are what I do,” (Romans 7:19 RSV). This is a picture of life. It is a very penetrating, probing analysis of what is going on in your life and mine. This is what the book of Leviticus will show us—the reasons why, the understanding of ourselves. It is designed to meet the hurt of man, just where we are. And as we learn how to accept the healing of God, it will show us what we can be.

So let us start the Leviticus journey!