(Through The Bible) – Leviticus: Zac Poonen (Transcript)

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It’s a whole book in which the primary theme is holiness.

Now holiness is a word a lot of believers are afraid of. I know people are accused me of preaching holiness, and unattainable standards. But I’m not afraid, I’ll continue doing that as long as the Lord gives me life, because I believe that is the nature of God. The Spirit He gave us is a Holy Spirit.

And when Isaiah got a vision of God, he saw Him in His holiness, and he considered himself an unclean man. Holiness is like health.

How many of you are afraid of health? How many of you are afraid of perfect health? We’re not afraid of perfect health; we want perfect health.

Why are you afraid of perfect holiness? Sin is like sickness, and you see that in this book. The Lord gives rules concerning holiness and rules concerning health. The two are similar: one is for the spirit; one is for the body.

Holiness for the body is what we call health, and health for the spirit and soul is what we call holiness. So we need to get rid of this fear of holiness and we must come to the place where we desire total holiness like we desire total health.

And just like I want to be free of every sickness in my body, I want to be free of every sin that defiles me in my life. To tolerate dirty thoughts is like tolerating tuberculosis or leprosy; to tolerate anger and say what to do brother, I can’t get rid of it, and you allow it and make allowance for it, it’s like making allowance for AIDS or some serious sexual disease.

SIN AND SICKNESS ARE VERY SIMILAR

Sin and sickness are very similar. And in the Book of Leviticus, we find some details concerning leprosy in one of the chapters. That’s describing actually about what to do when people have got some type of skin disease. But it’s a picture of sin.

The word ‘holiness’ appears in this book more than 150 times, emphasizing that this is the theme of this book: a book with 27 chapters where 150 times the emphasis comes on holiness… holy, holy… must be an important book. And yet there are no stories here like in all the other books of the Bible, and there are not many interesting verses.

But there’s a lot of description of offerings and feasts and things like that, and I want to try and take out some of the important parts from this book, and try and show them to you, and also to give you a brief understanding of the main offerings and feasts that the children of Israel had to offer or celebrate, so that we can get an understanding of the Old Testament and see how they apply to us in this New Covenant age.

We know that in Hebrews that God is finished with all offerings and sacrifices but those sacrifices pointed to Christ and to us, and therefore it’s good for us to see how these things apply and what they symbolize and picture.

In the FIRST SEVEN CHAPTERS in the Book of Leviticus, he’s basically describing five offerings and all of them in a sense were picturing Christ and His perfect life and His death… not just His death but His perfect life as well. We should not think only of His death, because there are some offerings in these five offerings in which there is no blood; there is no animal. And that’s obviously not referring to Calvary; that’s referring to Jesus’ perfect life; and that is also one of the offerings.

So when we look at Jesus, a lot of people think only of that offering of Himself on the cross, but what we learned from Leviticus is the way He offered His life day by day to God without any blood being shed as an offering for us like on Calvary.

And now two of these offerings were compulsory: the sin offering, and the guilt offering. And three of the offerings were voluntary. And they were called the burnt offering, the meal offering, or the grain offering… and the grain offering did not have any blood in it. And the third was the peace offering. So these were the five offerings: two compulsory ones called the sin offering and the guilt offering; and three voluntary ones called the burnt offering, the grain offering, and the peace offering. And all these pictured various aspects of Jesus’ life and depth. And that’s why they are applicable to us.

LEVITICUS CHAPTER 1: Burnt Offering

Now the first offering mentioned in Leviticus 1 is the burnt offering, where it’s a picture of a total presentation of everything to God, like it says in Romans 12:1: ‘I beseech you, brethren, present your bodies a living sacrifice to God…’ all of it totally to God. And the burnt offering was totally presented to God: it was cut into pieces to show that there was no defect in any part, and it was offered. You couldn’t take a whole bullock and put it there.

You know, everybody didn’t have to offer a bullock; some people were poor, and God was very considerate: you could offer a bullock; you could offer a sheep or a goat or even a dove or a pigeon, according to your ability. And the offering was cut into pieces and put there to show… because it had to be… and there shouldn’t be any defect in this offering: the offering had to be without any blemish, perfect and therefore everything had to be cut and exposed, and offered to God.

Now in all these things, there is meaning: you know, take this matter of offering our bodies to God, I believe the burnt offering is a picture of the way Jesus presented His body right through His earthly life and finally on the cross… not just on the cross, all through His earthly life, He kept His body perfectly pure and presented finally to God an offering that was perfectly pure.

Now you need to see that, because very often we think, Oh, Jesus died for my sins, but that death on Calvary would have been no use if that offering had not been absolutely perfect for thirty three and a half years. And that meant not just that Jesus didn’t have dirty thoughts, it meant that when He was hungry, He would not turn stones into bread, if the Father did not need Him. That was the type of being perfect that we are talking about, where He would not do something without the Father’s prompting, even if it was a good thing like turning stones into bread or in one place, we read that there was a great revival, when we read in the last part of Luke chapter 4 and the people pressed on Him to say ‘Why don’t You stay here and continue this ministry?’

But Jesus said no; before He met those people, He had met His Father alone in the wilderness, and He had heard the voice of the Father saying, go somewhere else and He went. And if He had not gone, and He had stayed here conducting a revival, it would have been sin.

Now how many of you believe that conducting a revival can be a sin? It would have been; that was the sensitivity with which Jesus lived.

You see, we think of sin as getting angry, yelling at people, and dirty thoughts, and jealousy, and bitterness… it’s such a low level; it’s kindergarten level. In Jesus’ case we’re talking about sin at the PhD level. You know, little things like even if you are going to conduct a revival, if God’s not told you to be here, wants another place you should go there, if you stay here you’re sinning.

You see, you don’t get to a PhD overnight, you sort of graduate over there, and gradually as we progress we begin to find that a lot of things which we never thought were sin becomes sin for us. That’s one mark of spiritual growth, that certain things which I never thought were sin five years ago, now I see to be sin which other people don’t even think about.

So when we look at Jesus’ life we don’t think just of His death on Calvary but His whole life where He presented Himself totally to the Father and said ‘never do I want to do My will in this body;’ that is the burnt offering. And this burnt offering is what is referred to in Romans 12:1: you also present yourself like that; we can’t give ourselves for our sins on the cross but we can give ourselves to God just like Jesus gave Himself.

So this burnt offering was completely offered to God and it was burnt totally. It says in verse 17: you burn it on top of the wood, fire on the altar; it’s a whole burnt offering made by fire, very pleasing to the Lord, an aroma to the Lord. Paul speaks about our being an aroma of Christ in 2 Corinthians 2:15, totally pleasing to the Lord when it is presented totally to God. And that’s how Jesus presented Himself.

Now when we give our bodies like that, you know it’s very easy to say, Lord, I give my body to You… but hang on, just wait a minute, we got to cut it up, and which when we cut it up we realize that we are not giving our bodies to God at all.

What does it mean to say I give my body to God? It means, Lord, here are my eyes; I’m cutting it out, I mean metaphorically, and here it is Lord. I have used these eyes for the devil and for myself for many many years, but here I’m laying it on the altar, I never again want to use these eyes to look at or read anything that’s dishonouring to You, and I never want to use these eyes to sin any more. Okay that’s just one part of the body.

Then we cut out our tongue, and say Lord, here is my tongue… this is the burnt offering. I say Lord, I’ve used this tongue for the devil and for myself for many many many years, but I never want to do that anymore; here it is; it’s Yours from this moment onwards totally completely Yours; You can have it. And here are my feet, here is my heart, here are my passions, I cut this bullock into pieces this offering and laid out and say Lord, everything is Yours; let Your fire come and consume it.

And we read in the Book of Leviticus how the fire of God came and fell upon the offering and consumed it. Let me show you that verse in Leviticus in chapter 9: when they put this whole burnt offering on the altar… Leviticus in chapter 9, it says here: Aaron slaughtered the bull… we’re down at the end of the chapter and it says in the last part of verse 21…

Leviticus 9:21-22: “Aaron lifted up the breasts and thighs as an offering to the Lord, and Aaron raised his hands, and blessed the people and he presented the whole burnt offering, and he stepped down from the altar.

And verse 24: “fire blazed forth from the Lord’s presence and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the altar.”

You know what that fire coming down is a picture of? It’s a picture of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire. And it came when every part of that burnt offering was on the altar; if one part was left out, there would be no fire.

And when you don’t have a fire, then what do you do? And this is what we see in Christianity today.

In chapter 10 of Leviticus, just couple of verses down immediately after that, we read very next verse actually…

Leviticus 10:1: ‘Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective fire pans and put fire and placed incense on it, and offered strange fire before the Lord which He had not commanded them.’

When we don’t have the real fire of God, and we want to join the club of those who have the real fire, the danger is that we shall imitate in order to say, yes, we also got the fire… a strange fire. And God was so angry with these people who were imitating the baptism in the Holy Spirit who were imitating that genuine fire of God, that it says a second time: (Levi 10:2) fire came out from the Lord and this time not to consume the offering but to consume these hypocrites.

So there are two fires that came out from the Lord once in chapter 9 verse 24 and one in chapter 10 verse 2 and they died before the Lord.

Now if God were to do that in Christendom today, a lot of people would die. A lot of people are offering strange fire because they don’t have the real fire. And why don’t they have the real fire, because they don’t lay everything on the altar. They want to get it cheap.

Other people who got a real fire in their life they paid a price for it. They put everything on the altar; they put all their money, all their bank account, their eyes, their tongues, their hands… everything on the altar; they examined their life, made sure that every part of the offering was there; no small part was left out… everything, all their property, all their money, everything consecrated… all their ambitions and desires and the fire came.

And you see the life of such a man, anointed powerful, and you say, boy, I want that; but you’re not willing to pay the price; you’re not willing to pay the price that man paid.

Then what happened? But you still want to show that you’re also an anointed servant of God, then you fall into the danger of Nadab and Abihu of trying to produce strange fire to work up your emotions and to imitate the genuine thing. And of course, since more than 95% of believers don’t have much discernment, they think that you got a real fire, but you haven’t got a real fire.

Now I want to tell you my dear brothers and sisters, learn this from Leviticus: there’s a lot of strange fire in Christendom today. And the reason is because they’ve not presented a whole burnt offering to God. That’s the reason: be willing to pay the price. Paul said ‘I count everything as loss’ (Philippians 3:8); that’s how he came to know the Lord.

Okay, that’s one offering: the burnt offering. That’s mentioned in Leviticus chapter 1.

LEVITICUS CHAPTER 2: Grain Offering

in Leviticus chapter 2, we read of another offering called a grain offering. And this grain offering… there was no blood, no animals in it; it was a flour and roasted grain, and salt, and oil. And one of the things that the Lord said in: don’t use any leaven, (Leviticus 2:11). There should be no leaven in it.

And leaven was a picture of sin. But salt had to be added. And salt is a picture of an eternal covenant. You know, the Lord often spoke about having salt and I just want to show you a verse in the Book of Numbers in chapter 18, where it says here:

Numbers 18:19: it’s an everlasting covenant of salt… Wherever you read about salt being offered in the Bible, and Jesus using it in the New Testament too, think of Numbers 18 19: it’s an everlasting covenant of salt. You know we use salt to preserve things for a long time, and that is the picture used here of something everlasting: I give myself to God and it’s not just for two days; it’s not just for a week; it’s not just for five years; it’s not like people say I’ll go and serve the Lord there for five years. There is no such thing like that. It’s total permanent everlasting; it’s like marriage; we don’t get married to somebody for five years; it’s permanent, total. And say Lord, I’ve decided to serve You, and when I get to heaven I’m just going to continue that. It’s everlasting; there’s salt in my sacrifice.

So the grain offering is the second offering that we see here, and that was without any blood in it; it was a picture of that perfect life of Jesus and we acknowledge when we give this that all that we have belongs to the Lord permanently.

LEVITICUS CHAPTER 3: Peace Offering

The third offering mentioned in Leviticus chapter 3 is the peace offering. It’s called the peace offering here in the Leviticus chapter 3 and this… he had to lay his hand (verse 2) on the head of the animal. It was an animal, and he would present it to God, and it was, as the word says, an expression of the fact that through this offering I have come to peace with God, like it says in Romans chapter 5:1: ‘Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God…’ is a very important requirement of the Christian life, that I’m absolutely convinced in my life, one; that my sins are all forgiven; peace. No sense of guilt.

Jesus Christ, I put my hand just like this man who had to lay his hand, it says in Leviticus 3:2, on the offering, I say Lord Jesus, I lay my hand on You on Calvary; You took all my sin and I have no more consciousness of saying it’s finished, the ‘promises your sins and iniquities, I’ll remember no more’… peace. A lot of believers don’t have peace even though Christ died.

I want you to know that the will of God for you is that you might have perfect peace… perfect peace. Total assurance that all the guilt of your past is removed, at rest. The New Testament speaks about rest in our heart, peace because my sins are forgiven, and peace, because I know God has accepted me just as I am, not after I changed but just as I am.

Do you have that peace that is… what is symbolized in this peace offering which I make before God?

LEVITICUS CHAPTER 4: Sin Offering

And then the fourth offering is in Chapter four which is the sin offering and it’s very interesting to see here that again and again, it’s spoken about unintentional sin. Notice in (verse 2): “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying: ‘If a person sins unintentionally in any of the things which the Lord has commanded, if it may be anointed priest who sins, it could be the priest, he’s also got to bring to the Lord a sin offering’.”

Sometimes leaders, Christian leaders act as though they don’t sin. That’s a word for Christian leaders. When a priest, and it starts with a priest… when God judges sin, he always starts with the leaders. If a priest sins, he has to bring an offering.

And can you picture this in Israel, if you’re one of the ordinary Israelites, and you saw priest one day bringing an offering, you’d say boy, that fellow is our leader, but he has sinned too.

Don’t we sin? IS THERE A MAN ON EARTH WHO DOES NOT SIN? Don’t give the impression to people that you’re perfect when you’re not.

You know, one of the wonderful things that encourages me about the stories of Godly men in the Bible — we saw that about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob — was the Bible reveals their mistakes openly, the mistakes that the Apostle Paul made: that he shaved his head as an offering and circumcised Timothy, he had a quarrel with Barnabas and separated from him; he shouted at the high priest towards the end of his life. Those are written in the Acts of the Apostles and they are an encouragement to me that this man was an ordinary man who made mistakes.

There is a lot of biographies that I read nowadays of Godly men, it looks as if they’d never made any mistakes in their life. And they don’t encourage me as much as Scripture which tells me honestly that these leaders made mistakes.

And I want to encourage all of you who are Christian leaders… I’m not asking you to confess your sins in public; that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is don’t give people the impression that you never make a mistake, that you never sin, that you never have to apologize to anybody. I’ve had to apologize numerous times to my wife, to my children, and to people in the church, to young people, to people who are much younger than my youngest son, because of one reason: I am NOT God; there’s only one Person who never needs to apologize, and that’s God. Humble yourself.

If a priest, an anointed priest (verse 3) sins, he has to bring an offering, and let people see it. This man coming with a bull, and he shall bring the goal to the doorway of the tent. He can’t do it in secret, because I’m an anointed priest, my reputation will go down, Lord; let me do it in secret. No no no no no no no, right in front of everybody, the doorway of the tent of meeting, lay your hands upon the bull and admit that you have sinned, and take some of the blood of the bull and dip his finger and then offer it before the Lord.

Now the interesting thing I want you to notice here is that if you turn to verse 14 and verse 13: ‘If the whole congregation of Israel commits a sin, and it has escaped the notice of the assembly and they commit any of the things, they also must bring a bull.’

Now, you know, there were different offerings made here, for example, verse 22: when a leader sins, and verse 27: if a common person sins, and when a common person sinned he only had to bring a goat, (verse 28) a female goat which was supposed to be less in value than a male goat.

But when the whole congregation sinned, verse 14: they had to bring a bull and when the priest sinned he also had to bring a bull. Now the point I want you to notice here is that God put the priests and the congregation in the same level. One anointed priest sinning is equal to a whole congregation sinning; that’s not the same as a common man sinning.

You see a lot of people don’t realize this, that God does not see the same sins in the same way. If it’s an anointed leader who sins and a common personal sins, doing exactly the same thing, what the anointed priest sins is far more serious; he has to bring a bullock. This man’s only got to bring a female goat.

These are the lessons we learn from Leviticus that the more responsibility we have, the more anointed we have, the anointed priest (verse 3) is different from one of the common people (verse 27). His sin is far more serious…. to whom more is given, more will be required.

The other thing I mentioned is this matter of… four times it says unintentionally verse 2, verse 13, without knowing it, unintentionally, and verse 22, unintentionally, verse 27, unintentionally.

What about intentional sin? You know there is sacrifice for intentional sin, but I want to read you a verse in this connection in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 26. You can understand Hebrews 10:26 only when you understand Leviticus chapter 4: those four times where it says unintentional.

In Hebrews 10:26, it says that if we go on sinning intentionally, then there will be no more sacrifice for sin. You understand that, when you go to Leviticus 4, that the sacrifice was for unintentional sin. In other words, once you have turned to the Lord, and you have become one of God’s children, we should not want to sin. If you’re really born-again, you don’t want to sin anymore. It’s one of the marks of being born again; you may sin; we will all sin but you don’t want to. You’re not taking advantage of God; you’re not doing something wrong, getting some benefit out of that, and then confessing it to the Lord, and say Lord, forgive me. I don’t think such a person is born again at all. He tries his best to avoid it; he may fall. That’s the type of sin for which God was talking about sacrifice in the Old Testament. Please keep that in mind.

Now we have all sinned deliberately even after we are born again. We got to admit it; we have done it. God has been merciful. But what we read in Hebrews 10 is if you go on sinning wilfully, that means you take advantage of that, there would be no more sacrifice for sin. There would be no forgiveness.

LEVITICUS 5: Guilt Offering

And the fifth offering is what we read in Leviticus 5 which is a guilt offering and here it talks about not only sin against God but against man as well. You know there are certain sins which are only against God. When I have a dirty thought, I don’t harm anybody else; I sin against God. There are many sins which are inward motives where I sin against God.

But there are other sins which involve other people too. For example, it says here, if any of the people are called to testify about something they witnessed but they refuse to testify, they’ll be held responsible and be subject to punishment.

You know what God’s law was, that if you’re called to testify by God’s servant about something that you have witnessed, and you refuse to testify, because the chap is your friend; you will be held responsible. And like that it talks about various types of sins or (verse 4) if they make a rash vow of any kind whether the purpose is good or bad, they’ll be considered guilty even if they were not fully aware of what they were doing at that time. And when they become aware of their guilt, they must confess their sin and bring their offering to the Lord. This is out of sin offering.

And we read here again in Leviticus 5:15: ‘if any of the people sin by unintentionally defiling the Lord’s sacred property, they must bring to the Lord a ram.’

Now here it speaks also about restitution that’s the point I want you to notice. It says in verse 16: ‘they must make restitution for whatever holy things they have defiled, and they shall add one-fifth (20%) and give it to the Lord.’ If it’s against the Lord, and that principle applies even in Numbers where we are told that when we make restitution to some person, if we have cheated him or robbed him, we are to give back 20 percent more, that was the law. Whenever you make restitution, you don’t just give back the exact amount, you give back twenty percent more so that it cost you something. If I stole 100 rupees, I don’t give 100 rupees back; I give 120, so that I’ll be a little more careful.

So here the Lord speaks about restitution and a guilt offering, it speaks about concealing truth and rash vows and sins like that.

Now the Lord says one more thing which I want you to notice here in Chapter 7 about the guilt offering.

Leviticus 7:30: ‘You must present it to the Lord with your own hands as an offering given to the Lord by fire.’ Give it to the Lord yourself; admit it, acknowledge it.

Those are the five offerings. Okay, the burnt offering, the grain offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering. Now we come to a number of other chapters here which deal with various laws on holiness, laws concerning health, and I don’t want to go into all those details.

But it just shows God’s intense interest in little little things in a person’s life. Sometimes we think God is not interested in these small small things in my life. One of the things I find from the Book of Leviticus is God is interested in the little little details of my life. It speaks about if a lizard falls into a pot… now for lizard falls into a pot in your kitchen, you think Almighty God in heaven is bothered about that? You read the Book of Leviticus and you find He is bothered about that. He wants to tell you that that’s not good for you to eat. That is an example of the care with which God gave instructions. He gave them instructions on taking a bath. Is God interested in your taking a bath? Do you believe God’s interested in things like that?

Do you know the number of times it speaks about such things, he must cleanse himself when he’s defiled himself in some way, read some of those chapters. It talks a lot about sexual purity. There’s a lot about sexual purity. Let me just show you one or two things here.

First of all, Leviticus 10:8-9 here for leaders, ‘the Lord spoke to Aaron saying, ‘Don’t ever drink wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sons with you, when you come into the tent of the meeting, so you shall not die.’ That’s how you make a distinction verse 10 between the holy and the profane so as to teach verse 11 the sons of Israel all the statutes to the Lord.

Don’t allow yourself to consume something that will pollute your body. If you’re a leader, you need to have a much higher standard in everything compared to other people.

In Leviticus 11 God speaks here about clean and unclean animals, the type of animals you can eat and the type of animals you should not eat. And He gives a big list.

Now what I get from all this is God’s intense interest even in what I’m eating. I mean forget about the list, I’m not going through this list of what you should eat and what you shouldn’t eat.

The essential message I get from this is: God is interested in my eating habits. The Bible says 1 Corinthians 10:31: whatever you do, whether you eat or you drink, do all to the glory of God. And it mentions eating and drinking. So there He gives a whole lot of things, He says these are things which are not good for your body; don’t eat those things.

The essential message there in a nutshell is don’t eat those things which are not good for your body. There are rules on hygiene; here it is in verse 33: if an animal dies and falls into a clay pot, everything in that pot is defiled, and the pot must be smashed. And if water used to cleanse an unclean object touches any food, all of that food will be defiled.

He’s talking about water: if the water is not clean and that water is poured upon some food, that food is defiled. He’s talking to them about hygiene, about cleanliness. You know it’s one thing to disobey all the rules of the human body, and then say Lord, I want you to heal me.

A lot of people are stupid like that. If you disobey the laws which God has made for the human body: laws of hygiene and what you should eat, what you shouldn’t eat, what’s good for you and what’s not good for you, and then you get sick, you got nobody to blame but yourself.

What we read in Exodus 15:26 the Lord says, ‘You obey My laws and I will be your healer.’ Yes He will. He will give me health but I need to obey those laws.

And you see in the Book of Leviticus, how keen the Lord was to teach His children rules on hygiene.

Now when you come to chapter 13, I want you to see some interesting things here.

First of all, Leviticus 11:44: See what God says here: ‘I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy for I am holy.’ That is the essential message of the Book of Leviticus which comes right in the middle of the book: you consecrate yourself if you take the Lord’s name upon you, because I am holy, you must be holy. That’s what Peter quotes in 1 Peter 1: ‘we are to be holy because the one who has called us is holy.’

Now when you come to chapter 13, I want you to notice something here. It says here, Chapter 13 is concerning the tests for leprosy. If a man, verse 2, has on the skin of his body a swelling or a scab or a bright spot, it becomes an infection of leprosy, he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons the priests. And the priests shall look at the mark on the skin of the body, and if the hair has turned white and it’s an infection of leprosy, the priest has to look at him, he shall pronounce him unclean. But if the bright spot is white and it does not appear to be deeper than the skin, the priests shall keep him isolated verse 4 for seven days, and look at him again.’

Now I want you to apply this not to leprosy but to sin. When you see what you think is sin in a brother, a spot, it’s a very precious passage on judging other people, this passage. When you see a spot in another brother or sister, what should you do?

What were the Israelites supposed to do? Don’t pass judgment yourself; you may be wrong, it may not be leprosy. It may not be what you think it is; take him to the priest, take him to the Lord, to Aaron who symbolizes Christ, or to one of his sons symbolizing the elders in the church. If you follow this principle, I believe you can be saved from so much which destroys Christendom today.

The simple principle in Leviticus 13: if you see a skin, a swelling or a scab or a bright spot or an infection or anything that you suspect is sin, verse 2, take him to the Lord or take him to the elders and say please examine this brother. I’m not a priest, I’m not an elder, I don’t know how to handle this but here’s something… and the priest… he doesn’t immediately pass a judgment on the basis of what he heard. Some stupid elders are like that; as soon as they hear there is something they’ve already passed the judgment.

The priest says no, bring him here, and he must look, examine, talk to the person, find out is it really sin… just think what a lot of salvation there would be in the Church if elders followed these rules.

And then the Lord says, be very careful; it may not be as serious as you think or it may be more serious than you think; examine it carefully, make full allowance, and then you may have to pronounce him unclean. He’s unclean, he has got to be put out of the church…

or the priest may say verse 4 well I’m not very sure. I’m not very sure whether this is so serious but let me wait: put him aside for seven days and wait. We don’t like to wait sometimes when we see some brothers sin.

The whole purpose of the priest is to somehow bring him back into the camp healthy. And that’s what we learn in Leviticus 13: to bring the person back, always his hope is for healing.

verse 6: the priest will look at him on the seventh day, and if the infection has faded and the mark has not spread on the skin, the priest says praise the Lord; it wasn’t as serious as I thought; it’s not leprosy; he’s clean; it was only a scab, it’s fallen off, he can wash his clothes, and be a part of the brotherhood again.

See, the whole attitude of the priest is so different from what I see in a lot of Christians today who are only out to tear up other believers and pull them down. This is so different.

And if you want to be a priest of God, this is how you must treat sin that you find in another person. This is the mature way to deal with sin in the church. And I want you to notice further down in a number of places, it says again in verse 26, isolate him seven days, verse 31 the last part isolate him seven days, repeatedly again and again and again and again: isolate him seven days.

And there’s one interesting verse here, one very interesting verse, verse 12 if the leprosy breaks out further on the skin and the leprosy covers all the skin from his head to his foot, then the priest shall look, and if the skin disease has covered all his body, what’s he going to pronounce him? Unclean or clean? Clean! How is that? You can’t understand, it’s all white; he is clean. But if the raw flesh appears again, verse 14, then he’s unclean.

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS? If a man acknowledges I am a sinner; from head to foot I’m a sinner; there is nothing good in me; the Lord says he’s clean.

But if he says, no but I think I’m not all that bad… you know how people are when you try to point out something wrong in them, they say well I mean I did something wrong, but not all that bad… he’s unclean.

But if he says, oh it’s absolutely right brother what you see. I must have had a bad motive in doing that. I did it wrong. In other words, this man is not justifying himself at all. This bit of raw skin that makes him, raw flesh that makes him unclean is a bit of self justification. God says he’s unclean.

But from head to foot it’s totally covered, he’s clean; that’s amazing. It really has an application for our time.

Now in Chapter 14 I want you to notice it speaks here about the cleansing of this leper. And this leper when he is cleansed, there’s an amazing thing that we see here in verse 14 and 17, when the leper is cleansed finally, the priest has to take some of the guilt offering 14:14 and put a drop of the blood on the lobe of his right ear on the top of his right hand and the big toe of his right foot.

Now the thing I want you to notice this is that if you read Leviticus 8:23 that was exactly the thing that was done to Aaron, and what I want you to notice is the privilege of the high priest was given to the leper, exactly like Moses put a drop of blood on the right ear of Aaron and the right thumb of Aaron and the right toe, the leper also gets the same thing.

It’s wonderful this gospel here that I such a rotten filthy sinner have been lifted up to the highest place equal to the greatest. And then here is a picture of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and then after you put the blood, then verse 15 you must take some of the oil and put that oil and dip his right hand verse 16 in the oil and sprinkle some of the oil seven times before the Lord and the remaining oil on top of the blood, he must put it on top of the right ear on top of the right thumb there’s already blood there and he puts the oil there and the oil on top of the right foot and the rest of the oil… here’s the baptism the Holy Spirit verse 18 he’ll pour it on the head of the one to be cleansed.

Who is this a leper, a leper who’s cleansed, gets a cleansing from head to foot and gets the Holy Spirit… not only the Holy Spirit coming in but poured out upon him. And here in this Old Testament picture is you find these two ministries of the Holy Spirit: first bringing us to new birth and then the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It’s all pictured there in this Book of Leviticus.

Now I don’t have time to go into all this. It’s getting so interesting this what we thought was a boring book, we could go on and on.

FEASTS OF THE LORD

But I want to tell you something about the feasts of the Lord mentioned here in Leviticus. There are a lot of laws concerning little little things, how you must respect older people, how you must treat strangers with consideration, many many things, it’s really worth reading that you should not have anything to do with fortune-telling and witchcraft and the standards for God’s servants those who are to be, priests should have no defects in them, you read that in Leviticus 21:16-24: no defects… any defect will disqualify a man to be a priest. Very high standard; God had very high standards for the priests, just like even today God has very high standards for those who are called to stand before the people as the servants.

LEVITICUS 23

I want to come to chapter 23. In chapter 23 we read about the SEVEN FEASTS and we saw the five offerings in the beginning and God wanted to show His people that religion is not a boring long-faced affair; it’s an exciting thing, it’s a time for rejoicing and He ordained feasts when they were to have holidays, national holidays, they were to travel to Jerusalem as a family like a picnic and have a great time. And those feasts were first of all the feast of Passover where they remembered the time when God saved them their forefathers from Egypt. Throughout the generations they were to celebrate number one: the Passover Feast.

And then secondly, see all these feasts were between April and October. You know God selected a particular time when it was clear and the farmers were not busy in their fields, and they could move to Jerusalem for these feasts. And the first one was the FEAST OF THE PASSOVERwhich Jesus celebrated with the apostles too, celebrating the redemption from Egypt.

The second one was the FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREADwhich immediately followed the Passover for seven days. And that was, they ate unleavened bread in Egypt, is talking about their deliverance, it reminded people about leaving that leavened bread behind, leaving the old life behind.

The Passover reminded us about being redeemed from Egypt reminding the people and the other was we have left an old life behind, we’ve got a new life in front of us by God’s grace.

The third one was the FEAST OF THE FIRSTFRUITS that you read… they’re all in Leviticus 23; it is all described there. FEAST OF THE FIRSTFRUITS and that was when they gathered in the harvest, and they offered the first fruits to God, saying ‘Lord, we acknowledge that this is not the result of our cleverness; it’s Your goodness that’s given us this harvest, and we want to offer to You the first fruits.’

And the fourth was the FEAST OF PENTECOST that was 50 days after that… when the Feast Of Unleavened Bread began and after seven weeks, 50th day — Pentecost means fifty days — and that was a time at the end of one harvest, in the beginning of another harvest, they were again showing their expression, their joy to God for the bountiful harvest day.

You see, they had harvest of barley harvest for a week, and they were expressing their joy to God at that time. And that was the time in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit was poured out.

And the fifth feast was the FEAST OF TRUMPETS, in the beginning of the seventh month, and they used trumpets in Israel to gather people for worship or for war. And here was a time of worship, or sometimes in the wilderness when they had to move on, they blow a trumpet, time to move.

And there was a Feast Of Trumpets where they celebrated before God, expressing their joy and Thanksgiving to God, the time of singing and praise.

And then the most important feast of all was the DAY OF ATONEMENT. It’s called the day of atonement: once in a year the high priest could go into the most holy place and offer the blood upon the altar. Aaron looked forward to that day… he prepared himself for many hours, (we saw earlier in the morning), he wore that white dress once in a year: he could go into the most holy place; he could never go there any other time of the year with blood, and he was making an atonement for all the people of Israel. And that expresses Calvary which has brought us back into fellowship with God.

And the last one is what is called the FEAST OF TABERNACLES or the Feast Of Shelters or the Feast Of Booths where the children of Israel lived for seven days in little shelters, and they reminded themselves of how our forefathers wandered in the wilderness and they did not live in comfortable houses like we are living in. So they made little booths and they expressed themselves in Thanksgiving to God.

MEANING OF THESE FEASTS

Now all these feasts have got a spiritual meaning for us. You know, Passover speaks about the death of Christ; the unleavened bread speaks of our fellowship with God without any sin; the firstfruits speak of our offering ourselves to God in gratitude for all that He’s done for us. Pentecost speaks of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; the Feast of Trumpets speak about the coming of the Lord… when the sound of the trumpet the Lord will come again; a total atonement will be done for all our sin; the benefits of Calvary will be completely realized at that time. And the Feast of Tabernacles speaks about that eternal time when we’re going to be with the Lord forever and ever where each man, figuratively it says in the Old Testament, he’d sit under his own vine and fig tree.

Now apart from these feasts, there were many Sabbaths… every seventh year was supposed to be a sabbatical year. The Lord told the people that you must not till your ground on the seventh year. I want you to just see one verse here in Leviticus chapter 26: 34-35… it says here that: ‘if you don’t keep the Sabbath years for the land, because you want to make more money by making your land producing land from it the seventh year also, I will punish you and I will send you into captivity for disobeying My commandment.’

And the reason why the children of Israel went for 70 years to captivity in the land of Babylon was because for 490 years, they did not give the land a rest. They did not obey this commandment, and so God’s promised punishment came upon them; that’s just for your information.

God gives His word, and if we don’t take it seriously, we suffer the consequences.

LEVITICUS CHAPTER 27

In Leviticus chapter 27, we read about someone giving a voluntary gift to the Lord. If someone makes a special vow, (verse 2) to dedicate something to the Lord… you know, the Lord has given the opportunity not only to make specific offerings which are commanded, but voluntary offerings, freewill offering… somebody just wants to give something to the Lord, it says go right ahead and give it.

And if you dedicate a house to the Lord, (verse 14) or you dedicate (verse 16) a piece of your ancestral property to the Lord, or (verse 22) you dedicate a field that you purchased to the Lord, or anything like that you could perhaps dedicate 10% of your animals to the Lord.

But if you want to redeem them, also He gives us instructions… now there’s just one thing I want to say here in closing.

And that is, supposing a man is dedicated, it says here… I want to read (verse 32) onwards: the Lord owns every tenth animal counted off from your herds and flocks; they are set apart is holy.

And the tenth animal (verse 33) must not be selected on the basis of whether it is good or bad; that means you count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten… this is the Lord’s; and you say hey this is a good one, let me exchange it. The Lord says: no, if you exchange it for something else, then you’ve got to give that one and the original one to the Lord; no cheating.

See, one of the things I see in the Book of Leviticus is that the Lord was telling these people, how important it was to be holy, how important it was to keep your word, how wonderful it is to give to the Lord, how wonderful it is to make a free-will offering to the Lord. Don’t be calculating, that’s that closing verse of Leviticus.

Don’t be calculating that you gave something to the Lord, maybe a piece of your ancestral property or something, I say oh I wish I hadn’t given that. No, give it, be cheerful; happily give, because the Lord will give back to you much more.

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