Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Drawing Near to God | Torah | Leviticus 8-9

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Can your relationship with God be healed after you sin? Does God even want to have a close relationship with his people? How can you draw nearer to God? In today's episode, Tanya uses Leviticus 8-9 to explain how drawing near to God might look different than you think. 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 8-9

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. Maybe one time you started a Bible reading plan and made it all the way to Leviticus until it just got too weird or detailed and you lost interest. Or maybe you've read all of Leviticus and you still made it to the other side. Maybe you don't even know what Leviticus is or where it is in the Bible. No matter where we are, the text sounds kind of like. like a technical handbook for priests sometimes. But in the context of God's greater story, it's a story of a God who desires to be close to his people. And who wouldn't want to read a

story like that? Now, because we're going to get into some strange stuff today regarding animals and sacrifices, let's get a handle first on what's going on in context with this ancient scripture. And then we're going to bring it to the present day. So among pagan cultures of the time, animal sacrifice was common. And it was kind of like, I hope the gods, find the sacrifice acceptable. I hope this appeases them. It was hopeful, but it wasn't certain. It was deliberate, but it wasn't relational. It had to be down over and over, and the participant always wondered if the God would accept it this time or desire more. So that's where we are culturally, but where are we biblically? Well, in the story of Eden, animal sacrifice was also pretty

well understood. Adam and Eve were the first to sin and the first to use animal skins to cover themselves. So God's story is a story of a holy God who moves towards sinners and provides the way for them to draw near to him. Now, the more I study Leviticus and read what scholars say about it, the more of that term draw near to God keeps coming into my thoughts. We left off at the end of Exodus with a group of people camping at the base of Mount Sinai, who were not able to enter the tabernacle because they built a golden calf and sent against the Lord. Now Moses, even though he wasn't involved in that whole calf debacle offered himself as a sort of sacrifice for their collective sin so even Moses is not able to enter the tabernacle. But Leviticus is the story of the healing

relationship between God and his people. It's the story of God's desire to live among his people. And so we're going to look at the way that he allows them to enter that tabernacle and come into his presence. Last April, I was at Aubrey's soccer game when she tore her ACL. I'm glad I was there because I was supposed to be in North Carolina that day. So that in itself was a good thing. Anyway, the event was rather uneventful, so to speak. She was carrying the ball down the field. She moved the ball from her right foot to her left foot.

She pivoted and she fell down. I knew when I saw it, but I didn't know. And that was the same for the medical team. They knew, but they didn't know. The ACL test where they move your knee to see if the ACL will hold the tension showed that it was definitely torn, but she didn't have any pain and she didn't know. have swelling, which are the main things they look for. So the only way to know for sure was to see

with her own eyes. And the MRI showed this black space between her bones where the ACL should have been at a bunch of white floating matter that used to be an ACL floating around. Okay, now here's something about Aubrey. Before having this surgery, she couldn't stand to be at school, or I say that, she didn't like to be at school during a blood drive, because thinking about the needles made her feel sick to her stomach. So we needed to bridge a pretty big gap between thinking about needles and having surgery. And a desire to play soccer again, to be fully restored with a functioning knee, helped her bridge that gap. So the procedure, the pain, the needles, the scars, the rehab, all worth it for the life she'll be able to have with surgery that she couldn't have without.

Now, because God wanted his people to live in a restored relationship with him, he created a system. He appointed priests and had them ordained to mediate on behalf of the people. Then these priests would perform daily ceremonies in the morning and the evening so the people could draw near to God. So Leviticus 8 and 9 tells us about the first worship service in the tabernacle. And the whole point of this was to make a way for the people to come before the Lord. And also just to remind them with sights and smells how and why they could draw near to the Lord. And there were four parts to the daily service. First, there was the right of atonement. So the priest would slay a lamb without defect and splash its blood against the altar. And the lamb symbolically took the sins of the people on

itself and died for them. And the Lord pardoned and cleansed his people. Next, there was intercession. So after the priest slayed the lamb and washed his hands and feet, he would burn incense on the altar while he wore a robe with the 12 tribes inscribed on his shoulders. So this ritual itself, was the act of intercession, and with it the Lord showed his acceptance for the people. Next was the right of ascension, and the priest would come out from the holy place and lay the meat on the altar, and the fire would transform the animal into smoke that was offered up on behalf of Israel every morning and evening, and the people could see the pillar of smoke ascending, and they would know God approved of them because of the sacrifice and wanted to meet with them.

And then finally the priest would give a benediction. And the words of the erroneous blessing must have been as beautiful to their ears as they are to ours today. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Now, I wonder if you can relate to this thought. I know the Lord desires to be with me, but if I'm all, honest, and that's not something I want a lot of the time.

I have entire days where I don't pray or open my Bible or think about what God is doing in my life. Well, that was the little thought bubble over the head of the Israelites as well. And God ordained this whole procedure to step into it, to heal it. This is the gap the Lord solves for us so that we want what he wants to be in relationship with him. In John 129, when John the Baptist sees Jesus, he says, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. And we understand that he is finally able to see the one that all these repetitive sacrifices are pointing toward. While the priest of Moses had to perform these rituals tediously and perfectly and repetitively and daily,

we live in the space of the cross, a restored space where God lives among his people. and we're invited into a thriving life with God. Now, a few days after her surgery, our small group friends were over for dinner, and one of Aubrey's favorite guys in the whole world said, wow, that is going to be a gnarly scar. You're going to look like a real soccer player out there. I thought his wife was going to kill him,

but Aubrey just smiled. She agreed. The scar, the screws that she can feel through her skin, those are evidence that she's better off than she was. She was proud of that scar. She could have chosen not to do the surgery, but the scars themselves are evidence of restoration, movement and ability. She wouldn't have otherwise.

The language of Leviticus might sound graphic or tedious or strange or ancient, but every detail points us toward the healing work of Jesus. Hebrews 1022 reminds us about the life that Jesus gives us. It says, Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled, clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. So we don't have to be sitting by a fire in a cabin in the woods with our Bibles open or on top of a mountain with our hands in the air to draw near to God. You can draw near to God early in the

morning in the car line for school, waiting for a latte at Starbucks, walking across campus a class while you're braiding your daughter's hair in the middle of a conversation when your heart is broken when you break into a smile when you feel overwhelmed when you grieve for someone else when you are exhausted when you're at the end of your rope when you see your sin clearly when you know you are forgiven the heart of god made a way for us to imperfectly draw near to him at any time on any kind of day under any kind of heart condition and as we draw near our lives will be more and more marked by worship and celebration and rest that the difficulties of life don't have the power to destroy.

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