[0:00] Leviticus 17 makes a great transition. It's a transitory chapter in the book of Leviticus. Leviticus chapters 1 through 16 speak directly to the reference of God's holiness and how man may approach his holiness through the sacrificial system.
[0:17] Many would say that Leviticus chapters 1 through 16 deal with the theological truth. That is, this is what is true of God, this is how he is holy, and this is theologically how man can approach a holy God in his presence through these sacrifices.
[0:35] Leviticus 17 through 27, which is the rest of the book, now refer to the application of that truth. So it is the practical truth. It is not theological teaching about God and his holiness.
[0:48] It is practical teaching about man and his life. Leviticus 1 through 16 tells us how man can approach a holy God. Leviticus 17 through 27 tells us how that man which has approached a holy God lives his life for the rest of his days.
[1:04] It is really practical Christianity, if you will, in the Old Testament. Paul does the same thing with a number of his letters. For the first eight chapters in the book of Romans, Paul is dealing with theology, who God is, how man can approach God, how man can be forgiven of his sins.
[1:19] And then we get 9, 10, and 11, which speak of what? The nation of Israel. So it is kind of this pause. And then we have, starting in chapter 12 of Romans, to the end of the book, which is chapter 16, we have the practical side of that.
[1:33] Romans 12 is probably one of the most practical chapters in all of Scripture, that if we are forgiven and if we have been redeemed, then these things should be true of our life. This is what our life looks like.
[1:43] In the book of Ephesians, the book of Ephesians is six chapters. The first three deal with theology, who God is, how man can be forgiven, how man can, that's all theology is, right? Theology is the study of God.
[1:56] It is theology. Theo being the study of God. And it is studying who he is, his holiness, his splendor, his grace, his mercy, how he forgives. But we don't study a truth or a subject just to gain information, at least not biblically, right?
[2:11] There are some things we learn in life simply because we collect information. But the things that stay with us are those things which are informative that move us and shape us and change us.
[2:22] And that's why the last half of the book of Ephesians, four, five, and six, deal with practical aspects of since these things are true, then this is how we live. The Bible is probably the greatest example in all of books and all of knowledge and all of study of taking a truth and applying it.
[2:41] Since this is true, then this must happen. Since God is holy and this is how we approach him, then this is what our life should look like. And this is really what we have in the book of Leviticus.
[2:53] God takes 16 chapters and speaks of his holiness and what it takes for man to approach that holiness. And then he takes the remaining chapters, 17 to 27, of this is what man's life looks like practically.
[3:07] Because belief without practice is what? Really, unbelief. Because if we do not practice what we claim to believe, then we really do not believe it at all. And belief without practice is just false profession.
[3:21] There's a lot who claim things. There's a lot who proclaim things, but do not practice those things. And we need to join those two together, and that's what scripture does for us. So starting in Leviticus 17, we begin with a series of what we would read as laws or standards or requirements.
[3:37] That God is saying, do this, don't do this. And we are reading an Old Testament covenant, right? A covenant of sacrifice, a sacrificial system. In which God was setting the standards to what man could and could not do.
[3:51] Paul tells us that the law is what? A tutor, leading us to Christ. That it was, for the Roman, or for the Jewish people, that it was the safeguard.
[4:02] It was kind of the fence. Some describe the law, the Old Testament, as the corral which held the people of God in until the Messiah came. Right? It was showing them the parameters in which they should operate.
[4:13] We no longer operate within those parameters because now we no longer have the law on the outside of us binding us in. We have Christ on the inside of us compelling us forward.
[4:25] That's a big difference. We no longer have a legal system on the outside of us telling us what we should and what we should not do. Rather, we have a living relationship through the Spirit that's inside of us moving us in the direction that we should go.
[4:39] And as the Bible tells us, we now have the mind of Christ. But these laws were not given just so God could be seen as being a ruler and a dictator and one who determined every aspect of the individual's life.
[4:53] God gave these laws and these rules so that the people would be able to live out what he had said about himself. It is really a gracious act of mercy in God dictating these laws because he was giving man the opportunity to practice the truth he had just learned.
[5:13] God is holy. And God requires a sacrifice for man to be redeemed and to come into his presence. And God requires holiness. The theme of the book of Leviticus is what? Be holy as I am holy, says the Lord.
[5:26] So God's call for mankind was holiness. God has called us to live holy lives by the way. Same call. God did not change his call just because he changed the covenant.
[5:37] The covenant has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And we now live by the covenant of the blood of the Lamb, not the covenant of the works of the law. But it does not mean the call has changed because we have still been called to be holy as I am holy.
[5:50] That is a repeated theme even in the New Testament. So God sets parameters and said, and this is what your life will look like as you live in holiness. And he begins in 17 exactly where he ended in the first half of the book of Leviticus.
[6:07] I believe his name, Daniel Akin, is one of the editors of the series, Christ-centered exposition, which points through all of scripture to Christ. And he is very well in saying this, that Leviticus 1 through 16 concludes with this aspect of worship, this great aspect of worship.
[6:24] Because Leviticus 16 is probably the greatest day of worship in all of the nation of Israel. That was Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Remember that? Where there was this great celebration of their sins being forgiven.
[6:35] And the second half of Leviticus, Leviticus 17, picks up with that theme. And that theme is worship, which shows us that theologically and practically, God cares about our worship.
[6:47] Our worship is something that must be based on truth and must be lived out in practice. It is something that is rooted in an absolute truth, but is lived out in an authentic life. And so I want you to see tonight in Leviticus 17, living a life of motivated worship.
[7:03] Leviticus 17, God sets parameters so that his people would be motivated to genuinely, practically worship him throughout the day. That God had set parameters, and there's just two in Leviticus 17, two parameters that are set that would enable his people to live a life of motivated worship.
[7:24] Unfortunately, in today's time, worship is not something as easy to come by as it used to be. Many of us have to be led to worship, or moved to worship, or inspired to worship, or to get a feeling of worship.
[7:39] And some of that is our society, because our society throws so many different things at our direction and gives us a lot more to think about, a lot more to contemplate, a lot less to dwell on the things of God.
[7:50] A.W. Tozer used to say, read the mystics. Now, if you don't know who the spiritual mystics are, the mystics are people, when you read their writing, it's confusing to you, okay? They weren't necessarily people of any particular denomination, but they were people from ancient days who just wrote, some of them, many of them wrote hymns, many of them wrote poems, and many of them wrote just great truths.
[8:10] And he'd say, read the mystics, because the mystics were these kind of weird people who would sit around, and all they did all day long was think about the things of God. And they had plenty of time on their hands.
[8:20] Now, I'm not saying we all have that freedom and that ability, but he would say, I read those because they lead me to a greater sense of worship. Those whose hearts and minds have been set on thinking and contemplating and then pausing to be still and know deeply the things of God, truly worship Him in a greater way.
[8:41] This is the benefit we have when we open up Scripture and we see it and we study it and we are moved by it. It leads us and it motivates us to a greater worship. And what God does in Leviticus 17 is He begins to set parameters so that His people would worship Him and worship Him in practical life.
[9:00] Not just when they came together for the Day of Atonement, but when they lived their life each and every day. Just two things, but we'll break down those two things that God sets as parameters here. Number one, we see the importance of a set-aside place.
[9:14] The importance of a set-aside place. The Bible says, Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, So He's beginning something new here. He's saying it again. Speak to Aaron and to his sons and all the sons of Israel and say to them, This is what the Lord has commanded, saying, Any man from the house of Israel who slaughters an ox or a lamb or a goat in the camp or who slaughters it outside the camp and has not brought it to the doorway of the tent of meeting to present it as an offering to the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord.
[9:40] Blood guiltiness is to be reckoned to that man. He has shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people. And we see here, by the way, it answers a little bit of the question we had last week of God speaking to the sons of Israel and the aliens who sojourned among them, that there would be the same standard for the Israelite nation and the people who were living with them.
[9:57] But He begins to shift this standard here. Now He's going from sacrifices that you bring for atonement and forgiveness, and now He's just speaking of your daily life. And He really begins with what we would say mellow a little bit.
[10:08] And He says, God gives this command, this parameter, which seems to kind of make us scratch our hands. He says, Any man, now they didn't eat meat a lot. They just didn't. They were more of a farming ripe blood bread and wheat and grains and things of that nature.
[10:23] Not a lot of meat diets because that costs too much. It would be hard to slay your animal. He kind of needed that. But they ate it sometimes. And so what God is shifting to now is when a man is slaughtering an ox or a goat or a sheep, and He's not bringing it necessarily as a prescribed sacrifice, one of the five prescribed sacrifices, but one that He is slaughtering and preparing to eat, one that we would say He is butchering or He is cutting up the meat.
[10:50] He is getting ready to feed His table. He's getting ready to feed His family with this meat. He's processing the meat which He has grown. God says, If this man does not bring it to the doorway of the tent of meeting, He is guilty of blood guiltiness and will be cut off from His people.
[11:06] Now, we say, when it's cut off from your people, what does that mean? Well, it meant a lot to the Jewish nation. Because it would be cut off from your people was to isolate you, separate you from the opportunity of worship, to separate you from the blessing of God's forgiveness, and to leave you in the wilderness by yourself, which is a dangerous place to hang out.
[11:26] So God is saying, I'm going to set that man aside. He's an outcast. He's an outcast. Simply because He did not first bring the meat before meeting. And what we see here is that God is setting up a set-aside place.
[11:39] Now, that set-aside place, we know, is the tabernacle. It is the doorway of the tent of meeting. That doorway which is facing towards the east we spoke of this morning, right? God says, Before you process your ox, or before you process your goat, or before you process your lamb or your cow, bring it to the doorway of the tent of meeting.
[11:57] Everything flowed from this place, this set-aside place. Everything had to happen at this place. And there are three practical reasons why God set aside this place.
[12:11] And it was a gracious act of parameters which God said, and which God gave the nation of Israel. Before you do anything, you have to bring it here to the tabernacle, to the doorway of the tent of meeting.
[12:22] The first reason, the first practical reason that God did this, is that this would give the people an opportunity to worship. This would give the people an opportunity to worship.
[12:33] Now, when you killed any animal, there was one part of the animal that you were not allowed to eat. Remember that? It went through the five sacrifices. That was the fat of the animal. You didn't eat the fat.
[12:45] Because the fat was considered the delicacy, or the best part. And the Bible says that the fat belongs to the Lord. You were giving him the prime, right? You were giving him the prime cut. So what God was saying is, if you're slaughtering an animal, and you're preparing this animal to eat, before you do that, you bring it before the tent of meeting.
[13:02] Why? Because, first of all, I'm going to give you an opportunity to worship. You say, well, I haven't sinned. I haven't fallen short. I have no faults in my life. Maybe it's right there on the same day as the Yom Kippur.
[13:13] Maybe it's the day of the atonement. It wouldn't be, because you wouldn't be doing any work. That's the Sabbath. So it wouldn't be that day. Maybe it's the day after. Maybe you're living this life of newfound purity. And you just decide, you know what, I want an ox teabone tonight.
[13:23] So we're going to slaughter an ox. Well, God says you have to bring it to the doorway of the tent of meeting. Why? Because you're going to have the opportunity to worship when you do that. Because he says here, the reason is so that the sons of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they were sacrificing in the open field, and that they may bring them into the Lord at the doorway of the tent of meeting to the priests and sacrifice them as sacrifices of peace offerings to the Lord.
[13:49] There it is. Here is the opportunity to worship. God says you've been used to processing it in the field or outside the city and in the open field. You're taking care of your needs yourself.
[14:00] And you would go out. If you wanted something to eat, you would go get it, and you would slay that animal. You'd bring it in, and you would eat it. No thought, because this is an animal you raised. You paid for. You established. And this is yours.
[14:11] But God says what you're forgetting is that all things come from the hand of the Lord. Everything is a reason to worship. So when you bring it to the doorway that's in the meeting, now you're going to offer it as a peace offering.
[14:22] What was the peace offering? The peace offering was the offering that you brought to the priest. He essentially processed it for you, right? He filled it, drank the blood. He offered the fat on the altar. And then he gave you back your offering, and you had to cook out with it.
[14:35] Remember, that's the one where you had the fellowship meal. So what that was is it was now a peace offering, saying, God, you and I are at peace. And since you are at peace, I'm going to present my offering to you, and you got it back.
[14:47] So now look at this opportunity God is giving you because of this set-aside place, because of a specified place and a set-aside law. Rather than you going into the field and killing your animal, going in and eating it, now you go into the field, you get your animal, you worship the Lord your God as you prepare it to eat.
[15:05] Now all of a sudden, mealtime becomes worship time. Mealtime is no longer about just getting to eat. Mealtime is about worshiping the Lord. And you have all of a sudden transformed an everyday aspect of your life into an opportunity to worship.
[15:19] All because God says, before you do it, bring it before me. Mealtime is always important in Scripture. The table is always important in Scripture. And what God was doing in a law that may seem legalistic and a law that may seem restricted, God was actually opening it up and saying, now when you sat down, rather than rejoicing in the animal you raised, you will be celebrating in the God you're at peace with.
[15:41] Big difference. This set-aside place gave God's people an opportunity to worship. Number two within this, this set-aside place, not only gave them an opportunity to worship, it gave them an opportunity to share responsibility.
[15:53] One of the other practical aspects of this is the sharing of responsibility. You say, what do you mean? Well, it says that when you bring it to the doorway of the tent of meeting, that is the tabernacle, you would bring it before the Lord, and who did you give it to?
[16:07] You gave it to the priest. Right? You gave it to the priest. Now, when you brought your ox, or your goat, or your lamb, to the doorway of the tent of meeting, you brought it alive.
[16:19] You didn't go out into the field and slaughter that animal and process it yourself, or you would be outcast, you would bring it to the priest. The priest would do a lot of work. The priest would be the one who would slaughter the animal, he would skin the animal, he would take the hide of the animal outside the camp and burn it in a place of refuge.
[16:33] He would offer up on the altar the fat of the animal, and when he gave it back to you for your consumption, the priest would keep heart for him, right? He would keep his portion.
[16:44] Why? Because the priests lived off of the offerings of the people. They were really dependent upon the people. They were dependent upon the nations. They didn't have an inheritance among the tribes whenever they went to the promised land, because the Lord their God was their inheritance, right?
[16:59] So they lived a life of surrendered dependence upon everyone else. And if we want to see what it looks like when the people failed to bring their sacrifices, those of you reading through Robert Murray McShane's Bible reading plan, you just finished that great and uplifting book, the book of Judges, right?
[17:15] I said that tongue-in-cheek because the book of Judges does not make you feel better. It actually makes you feel worse when you read it at times. And there's this Levite in the book of Judges who is wandering around from Bethlehem, and ends up, well, the long story story becomes a Levite from the tribe of Dan.
[17:30] The tribe of Dan is not counted in one of the tribes of the book of Revelations because Dan is one who is rampant with idolatry. So God kind of said, okay, since you are so full of idolatry, and it's probably the most idolatrous nation, or idolatrous tribe of the nation of Israel, and it's not reckoned among the tribes in the book of Revelation.
[17:50] Well, they had themselves a Levite. This Levite left Bethlehem and was wandering around, and he ended up at a house of an individual, and then that individual had some members from the tribe of Dan come by and say, well, you're going to come follow us.
[18:01] You're going to be our priest. You're going to be our Levite. The whole reason that Levite was walking around is because people weren't bringing their offerings into the house of God. So he had to go out and find work.
[18:12] And when he found work, he found someone who would pay him to be their priest. And then he found a group of people that would pay him to be their priest, which led to idolatrous practice of the tribe of Levi, I mean the tribe of Dan.
[18:24] You see, what happens is when God's people fail to provide for God's workers and God's laborers, then the things of God began to fall through the cracks. And one way that God required that the people would provide is they would share the responsibility.
[18:39] It wasn't for one individual to be responsible for the care of the priest. It was to be the nation. And if the nation was so consumed about providing for their own meal and failed to bring it before the God and they were not providing for the priest who in turn would leave, Nehemiah makes the same thing.
[18:53] Where did that? All the priests were gone. Nobody was in the temple. Nobody was there. I don't want to sacrifice. Why? Because people weren't bringing their tithes into the storehouses. This is Old Testament theology. This is Old Testament one another.
[19:05] Take care with one another. Share the responsibility for one another. So when God set this place aside, he was saying, I'm going to give you the opportunity to minister to one another. And you can share your abundance with that person's need.
[19:17] And you can share responsibility with others. So the importance of this set-aside place practically is it gave an opportunity to worship. It allowed them to share responsibility. And it also, in practice, it was a safeguard to idolatry.
[19:30] When God set aside a specific place, he gave them a built-in safeguard for the idolatrous practices of the people around them. They just left Egypt. Okay?
[19:41] Egypt was full of idolatry. Egypt had a God for everything. As a matter of fact, many of the ten plagues really took on, had on, the gods of Egypt.
[19:52] They worshipped frogs. And so God said, you worship frogs, I'll give you all the frogs you want, right? They worshipped the river, the river now. He said, you worship the river now, I'm going to turn it into blood. All right? So I mean, a lot of these things.
[20:03] They worshipped Pharaoh and they said that Pharaoh was God. His descendants were the sons of God. So that last plague, the slaying of the firstborn, was him taking on everyone.
[20:15] Everyone of the plagues is God taking on their little gods. And they had all these gods and all these false idols that they set up. So they just left the place of idolatry and they were moving towards a place of idolatry, Canaan, the promised land.
[20:29] As a matter of fact, God was using the nation of Israel to judge the inhabitants of Canaan for their idolatry. You had the Baals and the Asherahs and all these other false gods, the Molochs. Molochs are probably the one that I hate the most in scripture because it was in Moloch that they would build this brazen cow or this big metallic cow and they would essentially have a furnace inside of this beast's belly and it would almost be like they'd have a lid on it and they would offer their children inside this cow.
[20:55] They would burn their children alive just in case we think that God is being mean when he calls the nation of Israel to drive out the inhabitants of Canaan. These are the things that were going on inside of Canaan, right? And all the false worship there and God was judging them for their idolatrous practices.
[21:10] So they left the place of idolatry, they were going to the place of idolatry and they were walking around in the wilderness surrounded by people who worship false gods and were living idolatrous practices. So God wanted to give them a safeguard for idolatry.
[21:23] So he said this, everything you kill you bring it to me before you kill it because if you're out in the open field, he said, you will no longer offer a sacrifice to the goat demons. He said, what's going on?
[21:34] When you're in the open field you may be saying you're preparing your meat, you may be saying you're just preparing supper, but a lot of times what you're doing is you're worshiping the goat demons. And you're offering a false sacrifice to a false god.
[21:47] And since I want to provide a safeguard for you, everything you kill from now on needs to come to me because let me tell you something, standing at the doorway of the tent of meeting and handing a lot of animals to a priest, you're not going to offer that to the goat demon.
[22:00] It's a lot harder to fall into my bellotry standing at the doorway of the tent of meeting than it is standing in the open field behind your house. And God says, everything you do flows through this place because I'm going to give a safe card to you.
[22:15] Friend, listen to me, we no longer come to the doorway, we come to the door. We no longer come to the tabernacle, we come to the one who is the tabernacle and that is Jesus Christ.
[22:27] Everything we do flows through the set aside place and that place is a person. And in that person we have an opportunity to worship. Everything we bring before him, listen, even the small, minute details of our lives give us an opportunity to worship.
[22:43] Ask anything. When you ask of anything in my name, he says, and when we bring it before him and we come to that place with anything, any burden, any rejoicing, any celebration, any meal, all of a sudden now we have an opportunity to worship practically.
[22:59] We have an opportunity to share responsibility for one another because we come to that person who is Jesus Christ. and when we're standing with that person, Jesus Christ, it is impossible to fall into the trap of idolatrous worship.
[23:16] It is only when we isolate ourselves and we neglect the set aside place that God has provided that we will fall into the things and we will fall into the practices of those who surround us. God set this parameter and said, everything you do flows through here.
[23:32] And what this is going to do is give you an opportunity to live a life of motivated worship. That here is no longer a tabernacle nor a temple. That here is Jesus Christ. Everything in the believer's life today must flow through the work and the person of Jesus Christ so that we can worship and we can share and we can have a safeguard in our life for his glory.
[23:53] That's the first, first standard which God set. It was the parameter of a set aside place. The second one that we find in Leviticus 17 is no longer just the importance of the set aside place.
[24:06] God laid out for them the establishment of a sanctified payment. There is this establishment of a sanctified payment that is what it cost for their atonement. The biblical theology of redemption and forgiveness is found in Leviticus 17.
[24:22] Leviticus 17 verse 11 really is the study of man's forgiveness forgiveness. And it is the base on which biblical truth of man's redemption is resting on.
[24:36] And it is this, for the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.
[24:47] Which means that any teaching which separates forgiveness from the shedding of blood is false. All teaching in the scripture which speaks of man's atonement or forgiveness is rooted on this, that is, the blood.
[25:01] So we have now here the establishment of a sanctified payment, what it cost for man to be atoned. And it again follows the practices of the people around them.
[25:12] God sets out for them in verse 10, and any man from the house of Israel or from the aliens who sojourn among them, that's that mixed multitude, who eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people.
[25:26] Some have said Leviticus 1-16 tells us how we can be forgiven and we can be forgiven and accepted into the holy presence of God while Leviticus 17-27 speaks of the things which will not be forgiven us.
[25:39] That if we do these things, God says, I'm going to set you aside, I'm going to set you apart. And now he begins to speak of the eating of blood. This was a common practice among the people that they were sojourning with. This was a practice among the people that they were living among.
[25:52] It was a practice that history has recorded. One of the strengths, I don't know if you realize it or not, my favorite restaurant to eat at, let's go ahead and tell you this one, my favorite restaurant to eat at is a kind of an odd restaurant I love the people, I guess a lot of people know of it and they probably like to do the Giener's Grill immersion.
[26:10] I love my Mongolian food. I love that primarily because I can go in there and just tell them to stack up the meat and eat all this meat, right? But they have this saying on the wall, it's in the strength of the Mongolian army.
[26:21] It says, you need to eat like the soldiers of the Mongolian if I can't really get it right. It says that their strength was found not in their advanced warfare but in their good diets, that it was good food to motivate them. And every time I say that, I laugh because the Mongolians didn't have a good diet.
[26:34] As a matter of fact, the thing that made them strong is that they could ride their horses without stopping days on end. And the way they did is they would slit the neck of their horses and they would drink the blood of their horses as they drove them so that they would be able to sell out themselves and that they would get to see the Mongolian for a nice people, by the way.
[26:50] And they would, I actually had an extension from Mongolia who came to Christ when we were down in Normandy using our youth group and he did not look like the picture of the Mongolians that I had envisioned, right?
[27:01] He was an armored, a little skinny fellow, I never would have thought this. Anyway, came to Christ, had a chance to baptize him, he went back to Mongolia. I pray that he is doing well. But the historical Mongolians, what they would do is they would get on their horses and they would pursue you and they would pursue you and they would pursue you and you would stop to get something to eat but they would cut the horse's neck and they would drink the blood out of the horse's neck as they rode that horse so that they didn't have to stop.
[27:26] And then they would take the dead bodies of the other individuals and use them as a shield as they captivated your city. I mean, it's pretty wicked people. I mean, they did a lot of things that were just hideous. But this was a practice that was going on even in a time when God is commanding his people, don't drink the blood of other animals.
[27:42] And God is doing this here because he is showing this sanctified, this set apart, sanctified means to be set apart for holy purposes, right? This sanctified payment for our forgiveness.
[27:56] And he said, that which is purchasing your forgiveness is the blood of animals. It is set apart. Long before science realized this, long before man figured this out, God told them this.
[28:09] He said, the life is in the blood. It took science a long time to figure out that the circulation of blood inside the body was actually that which caused life. As a matter of fact, you may have read some of the historical records and even medical records where they used to think that if somebody got sick they had bad blood.
[28:26] So the best way to take care of that was just to bleed them out, right? They would put leeches on you and let them suck it out of you or they would touch you so that you could bleed out your blood and get rid of your bad blood. Well, people were dying and they couldn't figure out why they were dying.
[28:36] I mean, science and medical research had to do a lot that said circulation of blood had a lot to do with saying a lie. They could have just opened up their Bible and that Exodus, I mean, look at the 17 and seen that the life is in the blood because God commanded it long before man figured it out.
[28:50] That is a common theme throughout science and history. A lot of things that God declares and man just now figures out. The fact that we have holes in our ozone and the fact that these things are, and I'm not trying to talk about global warming and all this other stuff and everybody telling us that the heavens are looking as if they're going to fall apart while Isaiah said that he stretches out the heavens until they break and he will one day roll them up as a scroll.
[29:12] If he was prophesying that in 500 BC, I'm thankful that man is just now catching up with that, right? That this world is not built to last eternally, that it will fall apart eventually and it's going to happen because God has already proclaimed it. But the good news is this, he's going to build it again and when he does it again, he's going to renew it, it's going to be right and that one's going to be eternal.
[29:28] But what we see here is that God makes this bold declaration that life is in the blood. And in this declaration, he gives them two things that reminds them, the first thing he gives them because of this sanctified payment is it gives an increase in the respect for life.
[29:44] There is nothing else in the world that leads to a greater respect for the sanctity of life, of all life, than the Bible. Sure, it leads to the sanctity of human life, but it also leads to the sanctity and the appreciation of all life.
[29:56] Because no longer could the shedding of blood be counted as something little or small. even if you were out hunting and you killed an animal, did you see it? If you killed an animal, you had to drain its blood and cover its blood with the earth, which means you had to bury its life.
[30:10] You had to give it a proper burial because you had to appreciate that animal which just gave its life, shed its blood to feed your family. It was something that you needed to understand this increase in the appreciation of life.
[30:24] And God is setting a standard and showing this stuff that runs out of us. It is a representation of our life. It is not just some liquid form that is coming and this thing that is running out of this animal. That is its life and it leads to this increase in respect for life.
[30:39] To shed blood was to take life. And God was showing them that they needed to see the sanctity of all life. Secondly, when he established this repayment, it was a constant reminder.
[30:52] It would serve as a constant reminder of how much forgiveness costs. It would be a constant reminder that this is what it takes for me to be forgiven.
[31:03] Every time they saw the blood of an animal being shed, whether it was in the preparation for a meal or it was in the hunting for an animal or if it was in the offering of a sacrifice, every time blood was seen, they were reminded that is what it cost for me to be forgiven.
[31:20] It was literally a life given for a life spared. a life for a life. It was one life shed because the blood is in the life for one life spared.
[31:37] That what God was showing them is that now when you see this stuff, you will be reminded constantly of exactly how much it costs for you to be redeemed and for you to have a tone for your sins.
[31:52] God is reminding his people that the sanctified repayment for their sins is the life of something else. Now we know ultimately all these things are precursors.
[32:04] They point to Jesus Christ. And we know that we are not saved by the blood of bulls and rams and goats and ox and lambs but rather the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
[32:18] And the shedding of his blood is a constant reminder not only of the sanctity of all life but a constant reminder of how much it cost for us to be forgiven.
[32:29] It didn't just cost him some discomfort. It didn't cost him some unfortunate set of circumstances. It cost him his blood. It was messy. It was gruesome.
[32:45] It was the ultimate form of discomfort. I don't believe in all the theories. I mean there's the swoon theory that he passed out.
[32:55] There's this theory that he was God up to the point and he came on the cross and the spirit of God left him. No, that was fully God and fully man shedding all his blood for my sin because that's the sanctified payment.
[33:10] The set aside price for my atonement and when I am reminded of that it leads me to a life of motivated worship.
[33:23] They lived in such a blood filled society that when they brought this before the doorway of the tent of meeting and you could not help but see the blood that was being splattered all over the tent of meeting and you could not help but see the blood that was being shed you were reminded it was a visible reminder of how much it costs to be forgiven in the presence of a holy God which led his people to worship him in practical ways.
[33:54] I believe at times when the greatest disjustices we have done is we have taken the blood out of the gospel and we need to always remember the blood of the lamb.
[34:10] It's uncomfortable at times it's unpopular but the blood is the price that he set and the blood is the price that he paid so that we could be forgiven and in that we ought to have lives of motivated worship.
[34:27] Let's pray. Lord we thank you so much for this day. we thank you for the privilege and the opportunity you've given us to look at your word and God we pray these truths would captivate our hearts.
[34:41] Lord that as we prepare to bring this service to a close that our lives from this moment on would be motivated to worship you to adore you and to proclaim your goodness and your grace and your mercy and Lord to declare your praises to the people near and far and we ask it all in Jesus name.
[35:00] Amen. Amen.
[36:00] Amen. Amen.
[37:00] Amen. Amen.
[38:00] Amen. Amen.
[39:00] Amen. Amen.
[40:00] Amen. Amen.
[41:01] Amen.