Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Can Modern People Get Anything Out of Leviticus? | Questions You're Asking

Starting point is 00:00:05 Welcome to 10 Minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we are answering questions you're asking. A lot of these are coming from our Facebook page. So, follow 10-minute Bible Talks on Facebook, vote on your favorite questions, or you can just give your own, and you might hear it right here on the podcast. Can modern people get anything out of Leviticus? Now, I don't want to assume that everybody listening to.

Starting point is 00:00:34 listening to this knows what's actually inside of Leviticus. And in that case, I'm going to tell you a story. A few years ago, I was talking to someone who loves studying her Bible. But she told me, every time she tries to read the Bible straight through, she gets stuck in one place, Leviticus. So I said, well, why is that? And she goes, well, what's up with all the blood and all the sacrifices and offerings and rituals? I mean, isn't that stuff over for us? I mean, if we follow Jesus, does any of it really matter? I loved that question. It's a great. question. And the simple truth is that if you hop straight into Leviticus today, it does kind of feel like a handbook for a priest trying to do sacrifices responsibly. I mean, the first seven chapters,

Starting point is 00:01:18 they outline the different kinds of offerings and sacrifices out there and how to do them properly. So is that something that Christians really need to know? Is that something that can really benefit modern followers of Jesus? I mean, just check out Hebrews 727. Jesus has no need. like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered himself up. So if Jesus is the once for all sacrifice and offering, do we really need to worry about Leviticus? Well, it's only going to get worse from here, because Leviticus 8 to 10, what happens after all of those sacrifices, it talks about the ordination of priests. But now Jesus is our high priest, and we are all called to be a priesthood of believing.

Starting point is 00:02:04 verse. Leviticus 11 to 15, these are chapters that talk about ritual purity laws. You know, stuff like don't eat shellfish and pigs and what makes you clean and unclean. But of course, Jesus declared all foods clean. So do we really need that stuff? And then if we fast forward all the way to Leviticus 21 to 24, we begin to learn about all of Israel's annual festivals. And the apostle Paul tells us that followers of Jesus, they don't have to worry about those festivals anymore. This ends up getting followed by a bunch of laws about living in the promised land, which again, none of us live in right now. So let's just stop reading Leviticus, right?

Starting point is 00:02:39 It's outmoded. It's useless. Wrong. It would take an entire series of podcasts, which could be fun through the book of Leviticus, to unpack how the various parts of Leviticus can still shape our walk with Jesus today. But I want to draw out three incredibly important ways I think Leviticus can shape how we walk with Jesus. Okay. Thing number one, the Holy King wants to live with you. You see, that's what the book of Leviticus teaches you. We have to keep the book of Leviticus in its context. It takes place in the

Starting point is 00:03:10 months after the Exodus from Egypt. You know, that's when God rescues his people from slavery and Pharaoh, and he takes them to Mount Sinai, where he gives them his law, and he instructs them about how to build a tent called the tabernacle. And God's plan, believe it or not, is to come and live in this tent. And now, after that comes Leviticus. God's tent has been built. His glory is filling it, right? So just pause and think about that. God has moved into the neighborhood. His tent is right in the very center of Israel's camp. God has moved into their neighborhood. They could go out for their morning stroll with the kiddos and walk past God's house and say, hey, kids, that's where God lives. This is actually God's vision for the

Starting point is 00:03:53 entire earth, by the way, and for every single human. He wants to move into the neighborhood and live with you. Israel was a tiny little picture of God's mission for all of creation. But there's a problem with this, isn't there? God is a transcendently holy king. His holiness threatens to destroy anyone, absolutely anyone, polluted by sin and evil. So it's amazing that God's moved into the neighborhood, but it's also kind of terrifying because what do I, a sinner, do when the holy God is living next door? How can sinful people come before him?

Starting point is 00:04:25 What do they do if they want to eat a meal with him, to give thanks to him, to make things right with him when they wrong him. If you're trying to live with the Holy King, you need answers to those kinds of questions. And that's what the book of Leviticus is all about. That's what all those sacrifices and offerings, all those passages, that's what they're about. And they ultimately point us forward towards Jesus, whose death and resurrection makes it possible for God's own spirit to move into our hearts, to move into the neighborhood of our hearts, whose sacrificial death, his death, is what ultimately cleanses our world from evil and from sin, and it cleanses it so that heaven can come down to earth so that a new creation can begin so that God can move into the neighborhood

Starting point is 00:05:08 of planet Earth. Your heart's deepest longing, you might not know it, but your heart's deepest longing is to be in the same neighborhood as God, to live with your holy king. And Leviticus reminds us how devastating our sin is to that longing. It shows us that, yes, we want to live with the Holy King, but we have to deal with this problem that we have. And that points us forward to Jesus as the one who can deal with that problem, who can deal with our sin, who can make it possible for us to live with our king, with God. So how does Leviticus apply to modern people? Well, number one is it shows us that the Holy King wants to live with us,

Starting point is 00:05:43 and it shows us how that happens. Number two, it shows us the power of habits and rituals. Now, that might sound a little bit weird. So let me begin by asking you a question. What turns a concrete bowl full of thousands of people chanting and singing and yelling and cursing and high-fiving? And at the center of that bowl, there's 22 men and they're slamming into each other right in the middle of it all. What turns all of that into a football game? It's the rituals.

Starting point is 00:06:12 You see, Leviticus has rules for priests and there are also rules and football for the players on the field. Leviticus has celebrations and songs and chants. But when you're at a football game, we have the National Anthem, Team Cheers, and grown men hugging each other. Just like there are rituals that happen in Leviticus, there are rituals that we have at our particular stadium with our particular team when we score a touchdown. Now, at the time that I'm recording this, sports aren't really happening because of COVID or they're happening in bizarre ways. And different leagues are trying to figure out how to have games without many fans there. And I think this is really interesting. One decision that one group made was to put flat screen TVs in stadiums so that it would look like they had fans.

Starting point is 00:06:59 And they even added in crowd noise to the broadcast, right? Even if there's no crowd there. Why in the world would anyone need to add these things? Well, apparently, we may actually love sports for the ritual of it all. We need the illusion of the rituals, of the crowd, of the cheers, of all the things that go around the sports to make it real, to make the football game real, to make the basketball game real, to even be able to enjoy them. As I've talked to my friends about these strange choices, different groups are making to make sports work during COVID, we all agree on one fact. It would be super weird to watch a game without fans, without crowd noise.

Starting point is 00:07:36 And it's because the communal experience of the rituals of a game, they're part of what makes football real. They're part of what makes these games fun. It's not just a bunch of guys hitting each other in the middle of a concrete bowl. It's all of the rituals, all of the rules. It all comes together to make something that wasn't there before. The rituals that God gave to the Israelites, they made a new reality too. They didn't make the reality of a football game, but they made a new reality. One where they were always living in God's presence and for God's glory.

Starting point is 00:08:06 It was a way of making a new creation. It was a way of making a world of love, justice, and mercy right in the middle of this old corrupt creation. Rituals aren't just empty things. They have the power to create worlds. power to create new realities. And this is why throughout Christian history, we've always valued the real-life power of things like communion and baptism. It's not because they're empty rituals. No, they have a real effect. They make worlds. It's why we've valued spiritual disciplines like

Starting point is 00:08:37 habitual prayer and scripture reading, solitude, and community meals. They're not just about having a relationship with God. They're about God shaping our reality. They're about doing little practices is that change how we see our lives, what we love, what we long for. I think all this is really important because our lives are actually filled up with all kinds of rituals that train us to love things that aren't Jesus. Just think about your smartphone checking rituals, right? How does checking your smartphone first thing when you wake up every morning? How does that change how you see the world? How does that affect how you see yourself, how you see others? How does your smartphone checking rituals during work affect your productivity? How does your smartphone checking rituals affect your

Starting point is 00:09:19 friendships when you do it in the middle of a conversation? You see, that smartphone and everything that comes with it, it's just these tiny little rituals, but it begins to shape your world, your perception of reality. Leviticus reminds us that rituals, habits, they shape our reality. And so God actually cares deeply about the rituals and habits that we build into our life. Okay, number three, and we'll end here. Leviticus shows that Jesus cares about everything. I just want to end with the story. Back when I was in seminary, I spent a week living levittically. It was an extra credit assignment, and I am a sucker for extra credit.

Starting point is 00:09:54 So there you go. I spent a whole week following all of the laws and rituals in Leviticus. And it was a crazy experience. I had to pay attention to my clothes. I was looking to see, oh gosh, is this made of mixed fibers? I can't wear mixed fibers. I had to pay attention to my food. I love pig, but no more pork, no more shellfish.

Starting point is 00:10:13 I had to change my schedules so that I could fit in a Sabbath because at the time I wasn't practicing a Sabbath. I could keep going on and on and on, but here's the point. As a result of having to think about what I wore, what I ate, how my schedule worked, I was thinking about God all the time because I was trying to make sure that I followed those Levitical rules and just totally ordinary parts of life, getting dressed, eating, scheduling. And I realized that all of those rituals, they underlined one fact. Jesus is in everything. Jesus cares about everything. Jesus owns every aspect of my life. While those rituals didn't necessarily

Starting point is 00:10:50 make me into a different person, they did remind me that Jesus was watching over everything that I did, that he cared about everything that I do. I so easily forget that. I so easily keep Jesus on Sunday mornings instead. But Leviticus reminds me that all of my life, from the clothes I wear, to the food that I eat, to the schedule that I keep, my whole life matters before God, and that I live my whole life before the face of God. So maybe Leviticus can remind us to reclaim some of those moments, to give our whole life to Jesus every little inch of it. Would you pray and do that with him now? Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating.

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Can Modern People Get Anything Out of Leviticus? | Questions You're Asking

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