40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 109 (Leviticus 1:1-2:9)

Episode Date: February 2, 2018

Chad and Daniel start digging into Leviticus. How has God provided a way for everyone to have their sins forgiven? How do old testament passages color in our view of atonement? and what does Leviticus have to do with Jesus clearing out the temple? They talk about it all. Have a listen!

welcome to another episode of 40 minutes in the old testament i'm daniel aaron price joined by chad bird chad you ready for leviticus episode two i am ready i i think we uh we actually might make a little more progress in the chapter this time we had a lot of introductory stuff last time yeah you think we're gonna get more through uh more than three verses yeah i think we could probably manage that we might even cover five this time all right you know one of the one of the things i didn't uh i don't think either one of us said last time but i i was was thinking about this this morning, getting ready for this episode, and posted something about it on Facebook. So I thought I'd repeat it here in case you

didn't see that. And that is, one of the remarkable things about Leviticus is that we're actually talking about it. We actually can read Leviticus. I was doing some research in one of the commentaries on Leviticus, and they pointed out that in a lot of cultures of the ancient world, like A lot of the Mesopotamian cultures, Egyptian culture, that ritual manuals, kind of like Leviticus, that the priestly manuals of those cultures were restricted to the priestly class. So books like Leviticus in those cultures would have been a closed book to anyone who was not a professional. So what makes Leviticus unique

And counter-cultural in that way Is that it's actually there for us to read In fact, the second verse God says to Moses, speak to the sons of Israel And say to them, etc. Everything else So the whole book is not for the priest The whole book is not for this special class

That's set aside and only they can read it Like it's some sort of magical formula All of Leviticus is just given to the entire nation of Israel Because they are a nation of priests, a holy people So that's one of the things that I don't think we always realize about Leviticus Is that in a lot of other cultures, it never would have appeared in their collection of sacred books That anyone would be able to hear and to study In fact, Leviticus is so open to whoever wants to read it

That for for the Jews, maybe even today, but I know certainly back in the in the early centuries that when that when Jewish children began to learn how to read Hebrew, the book they started with, like their, you know, their their kindergarten or their first grade book was Leviticus. That was how they learned how to read Hebrew. So that is it's kind of a remarkable implied fact about Leviticus is that here it is for us to to read, to study. to profit from. God wants us, in other words, to have these words. Yeah, that reminds me of I was talking to a Mormon once, and I was asking him some questions

about sort of the power structure and what goes on in the you know, when you get way up. What's up with the, you know, what goes on behind the closed doors? And he's like, he has no idea. He doesn't get to know, you know.

And so there's a there's something, there's a hiddenness to it that's not good, not a good hiddenness but a bad secrecy to it and Judaism wasn't like that

God wasn't like that with the Jews, he lets you know exactly what everybody was doing and supposed to be doing so Leviticus then isn't this manual that you receive after you take all of these steps and like okay, here's the sacrificial manual that only the priests get to know

and then the people gather around and they're like, we're not sure exactly what they're doing, but we know it's important. Yeah, just a bunch of hocus pocus. Yeah, which is very culty when it's like, I don't know how this thing runs, but I know that God's behind it. It's not a healthy thing at all. No, it's not. Yeah, I mean, even in those situations where, for example,

only the high priest could do something, like on the Day of Atonement, only he could go into the Holy of Holies and sprinkle the blood there. well nevertheless everybody knew what he was doing right so it wasn't like okay on on this day something really important and secret and mystical is going to happen that the high priest is going to take care of and god is involved and that's really all you need to know right they're like man i hope he's not sacrificing a virgin in there they don't they don't wonder that they know what they know what's happening yeah yeah yeah it just kind of it goes with god's approach to us that uh that he is he wants us to realize how he operates how he how he moves and acts in our midst

that he wants us actually to know how to approach him how to be blessed by him how for our prayers to be heard how we can be forgiven all of these things god doesn't want that to be some sort of secret that's reserved only for the the select few but it's for all of us this is the good news that is placed before the eyes of whoever wants to read it. Yeah, amen. So we are

free, in other words, to engage with Leviticus. There's no restrictions here. We had a good time last episode talking about sacrifice and various kinds of sacrifice. Not just biblically speaking, but also just the kind of sacrifice that we talk about in our

culture today and how important that is. And we're going to get more into one particular kind of sacrifice in the rest of Leviticus 1. So we start out here with a focus on what's called, chapter 1 is about what's called the olah in Hebrew, or the whole burnt offering. Olah comes from the verb alah, which means simply to go up. So the whole burnt offering is that which completely goes up in smoke before God. It's unique in that basically every part of the animal is placed on the altar in one way or another, and most of it then is consumed by fire and rises as this savory aroma to God. So other sacrifices, which we will get to in the next few chapters, don't operate that way. many of them have a part of the animal placed on the altar and part of the animal goes to the

priest or some of the sacrifices have the blood placed in the altar and the meat goes to the priest or part of the meat goes to the priest and part goes back to back to the people there's some sacrifices where part of the body is taken outside the camp and burn and burn there so we're going to see a whole lot of different kinds of sacrifices and that's not meant to be that's not meant to make it confusing, even though it might seem so at first. It's not meant to just simply complicate matters. Instead, what I think we should take away from this multitude of sacrifices is that God has a multitude of ways of dealing with us in gracious, sanctifying, purifying ways. So, He's not restricted just to one particular way of forgiving our sins or giving us grace or blessing us.

Instead, he has a whole number of ways by which he does this, just like he has a whole number of sacrifices by which sins are removed and other sacrifices where we actually consume part of the sacrifice. Some sacrifices are for priests, some are for non-priests. So in other words, God has all these different avenues by which we can approach him and he can approach us in order to give us the gifts that he he desires us to have. So the first one is this whole burnt offering. Let's look at some of the details here. I don't remember how far we got into the third verse, but that's where I'm going to pick it up here. So if you break down this chapter, and it's going to be the same for some of these other chapters as well, there's kind of a threefold repetition here between the various sections, depending on what kind of animal a person brings for the offering. So this chapter is focused upon what, you know, if I'm an ancient Israelite, OK, I wanted to offer a burnt offering to God.

This is what I would bring. This isn't about some kind of group or national offering. This is about individual or family offering. So I want to bring an animal to sacrifice to the Lord, me and my family or just me. And so this is what my options are. I can bring something from the herd. I can bring a bull, a young bull. That's what the first section is about. Or I can bring something from the flock. That's what the beginning of verse 10, that's what that section is about.

I can bring a lamb, a male lamb without defect, and I can offer it as a sacrifice. But when we get down to verse 14, suppose that I don't have a lot of money. I don't own any flocks of my own. Maybe I don't own any cattle. Maybe I'm just a servant. I don't have a lot of money. I don't have a lot of possessions, but I want to offer something to God.

Then I can offer a dove or a pigeon, which is the sacrifice that's ordinarily reserved for the poorer people of Israel. So you've got different kinds of animals that are brought. you got some from the herd you have some from the flocks and you also have the option of a dove or a or a pigeon you know you know something that's interesting about that is when you see jesus have his little freak out in the temple yeah and he and he sets out you see him like set free all these doves and pigeons uh-huh uh one of the things one of the things he does is uh this is you have so

the doves and the pigeons, as you just explained, are sort of for the impoverished. They don't have herds. They don't own cattle or goats or whatever to bring that, so they can go to the temple and buy a dove or a pigeon. And what was happening in the temple, the reason he was saying that it's a den of thieves and that it had become a marketplace is,

imagine if you didn't own flocks or herds, you're poor, and then somebody is upcharging to extreme amounts the worth of a dove or a pigeon. But you're cornered because you don't have any other options. So you've got to buy it. And so basically you have these people. The reason it's a den of thieves in a marketplace is because they're charging the poorest among the people

way more than they ought to for this dove or this pigeon uh and jesus is uh none too none too happy about that and uh and absolutely freaks out and uh and so uh you also have you know people wanting to give they have money changers going on there too they so they can uh a currency exchange and those rates were through the roof too and so basically you had people taking advantage of or well god puts in place a sacrificial system that is all encompassing for all people so that everyone is able to participate and then of course as sinners we exploit it yeah isn't that the way it always it always works yeah i mean it's it's such a contrast with what this was intended for right god is like bending over backwards to make it possible

no matter you know how much money you make how much money you have in order that every single person might be able to participate in in the in the offering and then the money changers and the people selling the birds in the temple courts turn that completely around and try and actually build walls and restrict people from able to do that unless they're going to pay these exorbitant amounts this kind of i guess this is kind of like uh that whole episode is like yahweh coming to his temple to take it back over and to make it the way that it that it's supposed to be to cleanse it if you will right before he actually in himself brings the whole sacrificial system to an end completely by the sacrifice of uh of himself yeah this is

essentially you trying to figure out how to make money off the forgiveness of sins which is which is not a good thing to do i mean this happened again later in the church there was there was times in church history where priests would charge you for confession and absolution and this sort of thing it's not any different yeah well you have the whole indulgences which uh of course led up to the reformation where that wasn't so much for the forgiveness of sins as it was her time out of purgatory but it's basically the same thing you pay in order to expedite getting right with god right we got we got to speed up the process to getting out of purgatory and the way we do that is by opening our wallet so yeah it's it's

taking over something which is which is intended to be free profitable for those who are the haves and making the have not suffer right sinners screw up everything they do they do it's a fact it doesn't matter how holy and sacred it is we have a way of messing up just about everything okay so uh uh back to back to what it says about the sacrifices we have a whole lot that's squeezed into verses three and four so if this it it says if his offering is a burnt offering from the herd so we're talking about cattle here shall offer to the doorway the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before the lord and then verse four and he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf now there's a lot of a lot

things that I think are worth mentioning here because we're going to see these repeated throughout the rest of the book. First of all, we have this language of without defect. The Hebrew there, it's tamim is the Hebrew. It comes from a word tamam, which means to be like, to be whole. Not necessarily flawless in the sense of absolutely perfect, but there can't be any obvious flaws with the animal. It can't be missing a leg. It can't have some tumor growing out of it. It can't be castrated.

They can't have these kind of normal physical defects that one would notice. Instead, it has to be basically an okay, a good animal. It doesn't have to be like some sort of award-winning show animal, but it has to be an animal that is without these visible defects. So an animal without defect gets a meeting that he may be accepted before the Lord. We have that language twice about being accepted before the Lord. And that gets us to one of the great blessings of the whole sacrificial system. About some sort of bloodthirsty deity who just couldn't get enough animals on his altar. God was not hungry.

He wasn't like a lot of the other pagan deities of the time that people thought they had to feed. People thought they had to placate by gallons upon gallons of blood. The whole reason that God set up the sacrificial system was not for him. It was for the people. It was so that they might be accepted by the Lord, that this might be the means whereby the chasm that is constantly created by sin could be crossed. So these sacrifices are the means whereby God establishes an ongoing way of making his people right with him. Now, everybody think about that, because I don't, I don't, at least in my experience talking with people teaching Bible classes over the years, I don't think that's the way that most

people think about the whole sacrificial system. But it really is, it is an Old Testament form of gospel. This was God's way of making people acceptable before him, God's way of reaching out to his people, God's way of forgiving them, sanctifying them, blessing them, keeping them right with him. So this whole, the whole book of Leviticus, all these sacrifices are really nothing but the ritual enactment of God's grace. So all these are rituals, they're sacred rituals, and every single one of them is designed as the means whereby God can be loving and forgiving and sanctifying toward his people. And that's what's all implied by this language of being accepted before the Lord.

Because of the sacrifice, there is acceptance. Because of the sacrifice, there is grace for the worshiper. So we're not reading a bunch of laws here which are necessarily making demands of us, But rather, the whole focus here is on God laying out a way of worship whereby he can come to his people and serve them and bless them and do good things for them. And I think if you read Leviticus that way, it gives you a completely different perspective. It ceases to be just kind of a bunch of dry, demanding laws, dead rituals, and becomes a book that's really alive with the gospel. It's alive with all these previews of how God would finally deal climactically with sin in the Lamb of God and his sacrifice for us. I don't know, Dan, as you talk to people, as you have interacted with them over the years, does that fit with what you see as people's perception of Leviticus?

It's more of kind of just a book of laws and this is what you had to do and that kind of stuff. yeah i think that all the time you hear people talking about uh you know maybe the first of the year they're starting up that that read through the bible in a year thing you know yeah and uh they know that like leviticus and numbers are going to be a grind because they're just like man it's just like this animal and like the fat of this animal it's all man it's icky it's bloody and you know you just gotta hunker down and get through it you know and then and read as fast as you can yeah just and it and i think that um yeah if you if you read it uh just as if you read it just as an instruction manual if it's just if you read it as just hey long time ago some people

made sacrifices and this is the way that they were instructed to do it and you and you that lends itself then to an interpretation that like this really doesn't pertain to me at all and it's no fun to read things that have nothing to do with you you know there's there's no way there's nothing for me to do with this uh except for file it away as an old practice that really has no bearing on me or my life but but if you if you're able to take it and uh and insert uh you know a hermeneutic over the top of it that says that uh okay jesus has stated that this is about him uh then then you then you go you need to do the fun job which i well i think it's fun anyway of finding him uh and i i read whenever i read anything in in the in the scripture i mean

as a guy who has to write sermons every week uh that's that's what i my sermon prep is like where's waldo that's how it's how it works uh my sermon prep is where where is jesus in this text and what's he doing uh i i i know i i've said lots of times you know like we we sing one song over and over and over again and that's not that's not to say that we preach the same sermon over and over again but what it does mean is that in every portion of scripture uh there are there's a key that it's all the scripture is sung in the in the key of christ and it's it's finding where that is it's it's it's pulling christ out out of that uh it's not simply uh using the the text as a vehicle to as like a launching pad to talk about law and gospel people do that all the time they're just

like all right here's the text i'm gonna launch off into into jesus you can do that what i recommend you do is you pull christ out of it which is a little more difficult but far more interesting uh because i promise you even in a book like leviticus he's all over the place it's there it's there and if you can can look and push aside things and and pull him out you will see that uh that leviticus is more far more than just a manual and every book is uh that that christ is most certainly being spoken of and and it will i mean if you're interested in this uh it will shape your view of christ it will help it will help you have a fuller more robust view of christ which i think is something that every christian probably is interested in having i would hope

yeah yeah i think that the more you the more you are uh conversant with with leviticus the more you're going to also see uh not just hints but direct references throughout the new testament to the language and the imagery of leviticus i was just looking this morning at a few scattered passages about one little aspect of it, and that is aroma, a smell. And it's amazing how many times Paul, as well as other New Testament writers, make reference to something being a soothing aroma, a soothing sacrifice, an aroma that's pleasing to the Lord. So that is taken directly from Leviticus. This is their way of giving us the key whereby we can understand everything that is foreshadowed in these verses. So yeah, I mean, hopefully what we're saying is resonating with all of you who

are listening, that when you're reading Leviticus, just read this, read this book with the prism of Christ in front of you, and then you'll begin to see what it's really all about. So back to the text, this sacrifice is offered that the worshiper may be accepted before the Lord. There's one other thing that goes on here, which I think is worth pointing out, and that is that the worshiper lays his hand on the head of the burnt offering. Now, we don't do a whole lot of laying on of hands in church today. There are some churches that do it more than others. In my own particular tradition, about the only time that we have laying on of hands is at the ordination of a pastor, or when a specific blessing is pronounced over a person.

For instance, if a person goes to the pastor and they confess their sins and the pastor pronounces forgiveness upon them, a lot of times the pastor will place his hands on the head of the one who's confessed while he says the words of absolution or forgiveness to that person. so there we there is and maybe other traditions have other other times where they where they do that i actually love it i love the the fact that there is a not just a word spoken but there's actually a physical connection that's made between the one speaking the words and the one hearing the words uh it's it's maybe just the old testament side of me but i love that that physical connection

that it makes. But here, it's a little bit different focus. What is happening here is the worshiper is laying his hand on the head of an animal. There's lots of different ways that this has been interpreted. Everything from simple identification like, hey, this animal is mine. I'm laying my hand on it to identify it as mine. Everything from that to identification like, I'm putting my hand on the head of this animal to designate it as the one who stands in for me. That's another way that's been interpreted. I, I tend to go the, the, uh, the route of, of the day of atonement and the day of atonement.

What happens with the laying on of hands is the high priest puts both his hands on the head of the animal and confesses, confesses the sins of the nation as he lays his hands on the head of the animal. So it's this idea of a transference that goes on, that those sins which are confessed are now placed upon the head of this animal who then is going to be offered as a sacrifice for the worshiper. So that's the way I, that becomes the lens through which I've used some of these other laying on of hands that happens with sacrifices. So this animal receives the sins, the uncleanness, the unholiness, everything about the worshiper that God doesn't desire is then transferred to

this animal who then, as the verse goes on, is making atonement on the worshiper's behalf. So the animal then dies having received the sins upon his own head from the worshiper. So the laying out of hands, it's going to happen here, it's going to happen several other places, And this is the way that I see the meaning of that being played out theologically. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's pretty vivid. I don't know how you can talk about that and not see the actual atonement. Yes, yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you read that in conjunction with, you know, there's a lot of different texts that you use for Good Friday services.

There are lots of good ones to use. You can use the crucifixion narrative in any of the Gospels, or there's a bunch in the Pauline epistles that you can use. By far my favorite, I have yet to read through this on a Good Friday service and not struggle. I get choked up every time to read Isaiah 53 in conjunction with I think it's just vivid what you have going on there

and so yeah you have this the placing of the sins and then the sacrificing of the animal and this kind of stuff and Isaiah just echoes this perfectly and paints a very vivid picture of exactly what all of this stuff

is ultimately going to is pointing to and what's actually going to take place in the atonement yeah i've i've always been almost astounded actually by how by by the vividness of passages like isaiah 53 and and psalm 22 it's it's almost as if we have more details of exactly the sufferings that christ endured from the old testament than the new i mean there's a lot that's written in the gospels about the sufferings that christ endured leading up to the actual placement upon the cross but what actually happens on the cross you almost have to turn to the old testament to to hear the most words the most vivid description of what's happening there's almost like the gospel writers at times uh just rush through that particular part maybe because

it was so horrific but the old testament writers in psalm 22 and isaiah 53 and then of course hinted at all through Leviticus, they flesh that out. They give us details about what's happening to him there. I think in the Gospel narratives, you see the narrative is explaining what physically is going on.

But if you want to know what is spiritually going on, you almost have to go to the Old Testament. Yeah. Isaiah tells us exactly 700 years before it's going to happen. He tells us exactly what is happening in the crucifixion of the Messiah. It was all there beforehand. and what the gospel writers do is simply tell us yes this is exactly what happened as as isaiah as

david as others as others prophesied yeah yeah but yeah that's uh this this laying on of hands and this transference that uh that happens here with with a bull or with a goat or with a with a bird all of these then are previews of the lamb of god upon whose head all the world's sins were were transferred in his in his crucifixion so uh as it goes on with verse five through five through nine is where it it kind of breaks down the various duties of of who did this and who did that in the sacrifice itself and one of the things i that i find interesting here is that the worshiper himself or herself uh man or woman off of these sacrifices, that the worshiper would be the one who not only brought the

animal, but killed the animal and took care of skinning it, butchering it, and all of those other activities. Now, the priest may have been involved in that, but the action is not ascribed to the priest, which is what you would assume. I mean, if you kind of know a little bit about Leviticus and how sacrifice worked and all of that. And you would kind of assume, well, the worshiper, they would bring their lamb, we'll say, and present it there at the tabernacle. And the priest would take over from there, right? But that's not actually what happened. The worshiper would be the one who brought the animal

and killed the animal and butchered the animal on the spot. Then the true job of the priest would come into play, and they would be responsible for taking the blood to the altar, for taking the parts of the animal to the altar that were to be burned. So the duties of the priest were more confined to the altar and not so much to the sacrifice itself. Now, what I appreciate about that is that this whole, the worship that's going on here wasn't just something that was the responsibility of a select few of the sons of Aaron

or the Levites, the priest. The worship that took place was a worship that involved the whole congregation. The worshiper did his part. The priest did his part. And then God did his part. You kind of got three different actors going on here, if you will, if you kind of picture it that way. You have the worshiper, you have the priest, and then you have God. Now, we don't think so much about God being an actor in all this because there's not a whole lot of activity that is actually explicitly ascribed to him.

But if we think about it, he's the one doing most everything. He's the one who sets everything up. He's the one who provides everything needed for the worship. He's the one who says, this is the way I want it to be. He's the one who accepts the sacrifice. He's the one who's pleased with the worshiper. So it's not as if he is sort of passively sitting back in the Holy of Holies, watching all this transpire and not really doing anything.

God is active in this whole process whereby he's making his people one with him and accepting them and purifying and sanctifying them so everybody has their part to play and and I think the reason I like that so much is because it has such an immediate carryover to worship today that's one of the what's one of the jumps I think we have to constantly make when we're looking at Leviticus is this is all about worship and so if it's all about worship it is also all about our worship today of course there's going to be differences but there's also going to be a lot of parallels and one of the things i like about leviticus with regard to worship and the involvement of the church is that it's it's really the same today uh when we go to church we don't go there as just observers

we're not there to just kind of sit back in our chair or pew or whatever and just watch what happens while the professionals take over we're not there just as observers we're not just there as an audience we are there to fully participate in everything that happens in in the service and it was the same it was the same for the israelites so they weren't there just to kind of watch the priest do their thing they were there to be fully integrated into the worship into the worship itself yeah this is just one of the reasons why the confession of sins corporately uh matters because yes you say we right so we have not loved you with our whole heart we've not loved our neighbors ourselves so it's we as the assembly uh confessing individually though uh you don't

have just one guy getting up there and speaking for everyone like okay i'm going to read this confession of sins you guys all listen and i'm going to use the word we so therefore you're involved no we say it together so as individuals confessing as a body or as an assembly that this is this is our confession uh and then and then communion uh while uh it is beautiful uh because they're at the altar you have something that you are doing corporately it is it is communion certainly with god and and then there's a there's a communal aspect of it together it's not a spectator thing so it's it's the the people together communing but also individually communing and so uh so you have you have this this assembling together which is important

which you do see in leviticus that this doesn't just like take place whenever you feel like it right like hey the temple's always open just you know show up whenever and we'll do this because it's a strictly individual thing. No, no, it's a corporate thing, but it's also not a corporate thing as in a spectator thing where it's like, hey, we're going to all gather and watch this person do these things. God is very much about you being part of the community, but also dealing with you and your sin and your forgiveness individually. And so we get the body of believers or the people of God because we need one another and he knows that. So we're a part a whole but then he also knows for the sake of the conscience specifically that we also need

individual forgiveness and absolution yeah yeah so it's it's kind of the uh it's the image really that paul uses in corinthians right that we are we are all one body individually members of it right it's the same thing that plays out in worship yeah we're there we're there not just as a sort of of a group of isolated individuals we're there as members of of one body we're not all hands, we're not all feet, we're not all eyes, not all noses, we're all different, and yet we're not all free agents. We are bound together in one body in Christ. And so when we worship, we worship together, and God speaks to us as a body, but a body also that's composed of these individual members, each of whom hears, together with everyone else, that they, as an individual,

are forgiven just like everyone everyone else is this is one of the reasons why in the absolution actually I think it's important to say your sins are forgiven as opposed to our sins are forgiven because one of them is more

individual you are speaking you are saying this to a number of people obviously an entire group your and the group is your but your is also personal as opposed to our is less because the root word of yours is you.

Right, right. So, yeah, the year is much more kind of a direct giving to the recipient. It's the for-you-ness of the gospel, right? And any time that you end up overemphasizing one or the other,

it leads to bad places. So if you overemphasize in an unhealthy way the individualistic nature of being a child of God, you will you will and people do this all the time you will end up uh asking questions like why do i really need the church should i even be there should i even go uh and people do all the time

i don't i don't need the church to be a child of god uh which is wrong uh you do it to be healthy you do um but then of course the other the other side of it is we see all the time churches uh where there's no for you-ness at all, and it's just about this church and what this body is doing, and that causes the individual Christian conscience to suffer. So neither left nor right is a good way to veer off, but straight down the middle where we acknowledge we are part of this community of children that God does deal with corporately and yet individually, because he loves his bride as a whole,

and he loves his individual children as individual people, and both need to be addressed. And I think you see that absolutely clearly in Leviticus, like this is how worship takes place. Yeah, yeah, both corporate and individual. We're just about out of time. I want to mention one thing to kind of wrap this up, and it really wraps up the chapter,

and that is the image that we have here in verse 9 of this offering being a soothing aroma to the Lord, that's a great way to kind of pull this chapter together because that is ultimately where all the sacrifice is leading. It's leading to the animal placed on the altar being reduced to smoke, a smoke that rises to God, is accepted by Him, a smoke that is a soothing aroma to Him,

that is a pleasing aroma to Him, and an aroma that indicates by its very essence that God is pleased with not so much the sacrifice as the one who has brought the sacrifice, as the worshiper. So the fire, the smoke, the soothing aroma is all God's way of saying to those who are gathered around him, I am pleased with you. I am sanctifying you. You are my people, and all the good gifts that I long to give to you,

I will continue to do so. Amen. That's Leviticus 1. That's it, man. Well, guys, I hope that you have found this interesting. Hopefully you gave Leviticus 1 a shot after our long introduction, and you're like, you know what? I think I might stick around for that.

So I thought it was good. I'm into it. And hopefully we'll see you next week. Chad, we will, at the very least, me and you will be here talking about Leviticus. We'll be here. We'll see you then. Thanks. © transcript Emily Beynon