Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Give God Your Best? | Torah | Leviticus 1-7

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Are you prioritizing God with your time and resources or are you just giving him your leftovers? In today's episode, Keith uses Leviticus 1-7 to explain the content and purpose that Exodus plays in the bigger story of the Bible. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Leviticus 1-7

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. Leviticus is where most Bible reading plans go to die. Leviticus is the graveyard of good intentions. It starts with a desire to read your Bible, a great desire, by the way. Maybe you decide you're going to read through it in a year. You probably get one of those guides that are available to you online that help you know what portion of the Bible you need to read each day. Quick aside, I think the best guides assigned. a portion of the Old Testament and the New Testament for your daily reading.

But some people decide they're going to start with Genesis and go all the way through Revelation. Now, regardless of how you do it, you have to read about three to four chapters a day to make it through the Bible in a year. So you start in Genesis and it's fun to read, Creation of the World, Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, Abraham sacrificing Isaac, the whole story of Jacob and Esau and Joseph getting thrown in prison and then how he got out of prison. Well, anyway, Genesis is a blast, and you move into Exodus, and it really starts strong.

Great stories about the Israelites being enslaved in Egypt and Moses being raised up to deliver them, all the plagues, and they finally get out and go through the Red Sea. Now, it's true that Exodus does hit some dry patches, but overall, Exodus is another winner. But then you come to Leviticus. It's 27 chapters of laws and instructions. Who hasn't fallen behind and eventually quit their Bible reading plan in Leviticus? I know I have. I think a big reason why is that we don't have any context for the book. We don't have any idea of what it's all about, what the big picture is. So let me help you set the scene for Leviticus.

And it starts by understanding how Exodus ends. The book of Exodus ends with Moses not being able to enter into the tabernacle. Here's Exodus 40 verses 34 and 35 at the very end of the book. It says, then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. It's pretty clear that the glory of the Lord filled the temple and that's why Moses couldn't enter. So if you listen to our series in Exodus, you might be thinking, well, that's weird that he can't go in there because he's been in there before. And you're right, he has.

But it seems that when Israel created and worshipped the golden calf, something went wrong in their relationship with God. You see, God is holy. It's hard to reduce holy down to a simple definition, but if we're forced to do so, I think separate is as good as any. In other words, God is other than us. He is separate from us. He is perfect. He has set apart. He is like no other. Sinful human beings cannot be in the presence of a holy God. Because God dwell in the tabernacle, humans couldn't just waltz in there and be in his holy presence. So Leviticus is full of instructions. of how Israel can maintain their relationship with this holy God. How do sinners have a relationship with a holy God? That's what Leviticus is about. Here's how Psalm 151 asked the question. Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Remember, Moses couldn't go in there.

But who may dwell in that tent? Or as the verse continues, who may live on your holy mountain? Leviticus answers that question by saying it will involve sacrifice, purification, and obedience. So it's important to read Leviticus as part of the bigger story of the Pentateauk, the first five books of the Bible. Adam and Eve, they start in Eden. It's the Garden of Delight. Because of sin, God banishes them from Eden. They can't be in his presence.

One way to tell the story of the rest of the Bible is how human beings try to return to the garden to be in the presence of God. So after the Israelites get out of Egypt, God tells them to build the tabernacle. And inside the tabernacle, there is all kinds of imagery of the present. Eden. So the garden imagery in the tabernacle and then later the temple tells us this is the place that God dwells on earth. But now at the end of Exodus, Israel's mediator, Moses, can't enter into the New Eden because of sin. So if Moses can't enter, how are any of them going to enter to meet with God? Well, Leviticus answers that question. See, Leviticus isn't just filled with weird laws. It's telling us about how to live in God's presence, how to get back to the garden and the

tree of life. Now, Leviticus is full of protocols and rituals in approaching God that sound really bizarre to us. They're foreign. And it's true that they're unfamiliar to us in our modern world. But the idea of protocols and rituals, well, that's not foreign to us at all. For example, when the president gives the state of the union speech to Congress, there are all kinds of protocols that are followed. For example, there are certain people who enter before others, and that depends on their institutional rank. There are specific places that people have to sit. There are appropriate times to stand. The Supreme Court justices and the military generals play a certain role. The same kind of things play out when the president hosts a foreign dignitary.

The right behavior is laid out well ahead of time. There's a script to follow. They don't just make it up willy-nilly as they go along. So what's the point? Well, every culture has protocols to recognize a person's significance in the life of their community. Let's take one more example. The United States flag is a national symbol, and there are laws written about the proper care and use of the flag. How you treat the flag is how you treat the country. So those rituals are on the flag, they teach us something. And the protocols and rituals found in LeVocis teach us something about God. And what it teaches us is that God is holy, holy, holy. One of the things we see in Leviticus is a variety of offerings that people make. And all the

offerings teach us that sin needs to be atoned for if we are to enter into God's presence. The goal is a deep relationship with God. The sacrifices are how we get there. So the sacrifices are not the point. The sacrifice is a means to a greater end and that end is God himself. We see that in the word atonement. If you pull the word atonement apart, you get at one meant. That's the goal, to be at one with God. The first seven chapters of Leviticus are about five different offerings the Israelites were to make to God. They go by different names and different translations, but here they are in the NIV.

There's the burnt offering, the grain offering, the fellowship offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering. Now, we're not going to do a deep dive in all of those, but let me tell you a few basics. The burnt offering signified total surrender to God. The grain offering signified Thanksgiving to God. The fellowship offering signified being in right relationship with God and the community. Those three offerings were voluntary. The final two offerings, the sin offering and the guilt offering, were required to deal with sin. Here's Leviticus chapter 1 starting in verse 1.

The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. He said, speak to the Israelites and say to them, when anyone among you brings an offering to the Lord, bring as you're offering an animal from either the herd or the flock. If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, you are to offer a male without defect. You must present it at the entrance to the tent of the meeting so that it will be acceptable to the Lord. So do you see there's a cost to offering a sacrifice to God? because it means taking one of your prized animals and offering it to him. A sacrifice is a sacrifice.

The animal can't have a defect. In other words, you can't give God your leftovers. A priest would examine the animal for any form of disease. I mean, you can imagine it would be easy to give God an animal that was going to die soon. And you can imagine it would be easy to bribe the priest to look the other way and accept a sick or defective animal. In fact, later in Israel's history, that kind of stuff happens. Here's Malachi chapter 1. It is you priests who show contempt for my name, but you ask, how have we shown contempt for your name? By offering defiled food on my altar. But you ask,

how have we defiled you? Now catch this. By saying that the Lord's table is contemptible. When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animal, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor. Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you, says the Lord Almighty? So Malachi is calling out the Israelites because they are treating God in a way that is disrespectful. It is contemptible. And the way they're doing that is by offering God something that is not their best. They're offering God their leftovers. Do you offer God the best of your time, the best of your heart, the best of your money, the best of your resources? Or do you give him your leftovers? One more quick thing.

thing before we bug out today. In Leviticus 1, verse 4, it says this, you are to lay your hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on your behalf to make atonement for you. What's happening here when the person puts their hand on the animal to be sacrificed? It's easy to think the person is transferring their sin to the animal, but I don't think that's right. That does happen later in the day of atonement, but that's different than what happens here in Leviticus 1. On the day of Atonement, sins are transferred to a goat, and then that goat is sent out into the wilderness. We're going to cover that when we get to Leviticus 16. But here in Leviticus 1, we see the person laying hands on the animal and then offering that animal to God. Transferring sins to the animal

would defeat the purpose of it being without blemish or defect, and the aroma of the sacrifice ascending into the presence of God. You wouldn't want the aroma of your sin ascending into God's presence. By putting their hands on the animal, the worshipper is saying that he is the animal. He's identifying with the animal. That animal is taking his place in this ritual. The Israelite ascends into the presence of God through this blameless substitute of the animal sacrifice. So let's close with this. In the burnt offering, the entire animal is consumed by fire. It's all burned on the altar. So the burnt offering was a voluntary. offering, signifying complete surrender. All that I am, Lord, belongs to you. So maybe that's a good way to

end our time together today. By saying, God, I want to offer my best to you. I'm not going to give you my leftovers, God. You get the best of everything I am and everything I have. And Lord, I want to completely surrender to you. My whole life is devoted to you. Nothing is off limits. Every part of my life is surrendered to the God who loves me, the God who died for me, the God who wants a relationship with me. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week.

It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage, and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in the show notes to sign up. It'll help you deepen your journey with Jesus.