What happens in Leviticus chapter 10? What happens? First sacrifice, right? After all the commandments are given about the sacrifice and being clean and what to do, what not to do, the first sacrifice is made in Leviticus chapter 10 and what happens? When they've made up a Nebihu, Aaron's two sons give the first sacrifice, what happens?

They gave, right, unauthorized fire and then as a result of that, God says, God punishes them. Fire comes down from heaven and consumes both of them. And then it's in that context, God says, Moses said to Aaron, it is what the Lord spoke, saying, by those who come near me, I will be treated as holy and before all people, I will be honored.

So basically God says to the nation of Israel, you can't just approach me any way you desire, right? So they approached God in a manner that God didn't tell them. So it doesn't spell out what it is. It was just something that God did not authorize. They put it up on the altar and as a result of that, they die.

And so that verse is kind of like the theme verse of the book of Leviticus because the whole point of book of Leviticus is teaching a sinful people how to have a relationship with the holy God. And so they needed to recognize what holiness is and holiness because of God's holiness, you can't just enter into God.

So book of Leviticus is kind of a microcosm of the whole totality of redemptive history. God is trying to teach the nation of Israel, God's trying to teach all of mankind that there needs to be a blood atonement that covers over the sins of mankind in order for that relationship to be restored.

And basically Leviticus is kind of like a play playing out in human history, showing them that this must happen. Ultimately, obviously this is preparing for the coming of Christ. I didn't have notes for you because again, if you've been here for the study of all of book of Leviticus, you've gotten this review twice, so I don't have it for you.

But those of you who want to have these slides, just email me and I'll forward it to you. Actually, we're probably going to put it up on the Facebook page. Okay. Can you take the dongle out and put it back in? Take it out and put it back in.

Oh, there we go. All right. So the title of the book Leviticus, it's appropriate considering that whole book of Leviticus is basically a record of God's laws, right? About how to approach him, what kind of sacrifices, what are acceptable, what are not acceptable, who can handle the sacrifices, where do they need to sacrifice, what do you do with the blood, what kind of clothes do you need to wear, what makes you clean, what makes you unclean.

So the whole book of Leviticus is basically a book of regulations and how to worship God. That's what that is, right? How many of you have ever studied the book of Leviticus before, other than those who've been sitting here? Okay. So a few of you, a handful of you, okay.

Book of Leviticus is probably one of those books that you probably read a couple pages and then if you don't get it, you're going to flip through and then you just kind of quickly flip. If you've been, if you're faithful in your Bible reading, you might've read it before, but may have just caught bits and pieces.

I can't emphasize enough how important this book is. Everything that we've been studying in the book of Romans is founded upon the principles that are taught in the book of Leviticus. So can you understand the gospel without Leviticus? Of course. But Leviticus is the precursor that prepared the nation of Israel to understand why the gospel was necessary, right?

So if you've never studied it or you didn't understand it before, Leviticus is really going to open up the New Testament to you. There's a lot of phrases and words and concepts that you probably already know, but may have attached your own understanding to it without realizing that it's not what the Bible says, right?

The idea of inheritance, the idea of punishment, the idea of atonement, holiness, all of these things are things that a lot of times you receive from sermons or maybe movies that you've watched or maybe bits and pieces of Bible studies that you've heard. Leviticus is what sets the foundation, the behind the scenes stories that set up for the gospel.

So again, I can't emphasize just how important this is in understanding our faith. The key to understanding the book of Leviticus is to do our best to decipher what it is a shadow of in the new covenant. So in Colossians 2, 16-17 it says, "Therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to festivals or new moon or the Sabbath day, things which are mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ." So everything that's mentioned in the book of Leviticus is a shadow, meaning the more you study the shadow, it builds anticipation for the reality, right?

There used to be a game show a long time ago where somebody would stand behind and then you would see their shadow and the whole game show was trying to match the shadow with the celebrity, right? And so basically that's what book of Leviticus is. It's giving the outline of the necessity of Christ so that when Christ came, you can match what you're seeing in Leviticus with what Christ did and who he is.

Does that make any sense? So the benefit of the study of the book of Leviticus, it points us to a deeper understanding of Christ and what he has done, right? Leviticus is not going to make any sense. If you don't learn how to connect that to the reality found in Christ, because it was meant to be a shadow, not the reality.

So if you study that this animal is clean, this animal is unclean, the end result is going to be, "Okay, so what?" We talked about menstrual cycle of women, right? Like they have to be isolated for seven days. If it happens to be a female child that is born, they have to be isolated for 14 days.

And you have all these strange laws that make absolutely no sense until you begin to realize what that points to ultimately. What does it teach about the gospel, about redemptive history, about sin, about God, about sacrifice, right? And so as we're studying through the book of Leviticus, our job is going to try to find what do these strange laws to us in and of itself, what does it point to in Christ?

Does that make sense? So whenever you're reading through the book of Leviticus, you have to ask yourself, "How is this fulfilled in Christ?" To give you a broad outline, the book of Exodus is the beginning of the relationship with Israel and God as a nation, right? So Exodus concluded with the tabernacle constructed and glory of the Lord filling it.

So if you remember in Exodus 40, 34 to 38, I'm not going to read all of it, but it says, "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle." Now the picture I have for you there is not the tabernacle, obviously.

It's a mountain, right? But the whole point of the book of Leviticus is God is trying to come near Israel, but the whole story in the book of Exodus is telling people what? Does God tell them to come? No. He says, "No, do not come. If they come, they're going to be destroyed." So the whole book of Exodus, God gives the law up in the mountain and they're not even allowed to come and touch the mountain until he communicates with Moses.

And then at the end, all throughout the book of Exodus, if you remember the content, God is giving instructions to set up the tabernacle. So he appoints the people. He appoints the people who are able to make it. How long, how big, where, what, what kind of poles to use, what kind of materials to use, even the garment of the priest.

So all these details of how to establish a tabernacle happens in the book of Exodus. So at the end of Exodus, the tabernacle is established, right? And then the glory of the Lord begins to come off the mountain to the tabernacle, and that's how the book of Exodus ends, right?

The glory of God moves from the mountain onto the tabernacle. And then in Leviticus chapter, in the beginning of Leviticus, it begins with the Lord speaking to Moses from the 10th of meeting. So Leviticus 1.1, it says, "Then the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the 10th of meeting saying," right?

And that's how the book of Leviticus begins. The very word of the book in Leviticus, "waikra," which means, "and he called," and that's the very first word that is used in the Hebrew Bible, right? He called, then he called. So Exodus ends with God coming. Leviticus begins by saying, "And he called," right?

And he's beginning to talk to them from the 10th, but they're not allowed to enter the 10th yet because the sacrifices haven't started, okay? So that's the picture of the tabernacle with the glory of God through the cloud hovering over it, and God is beginning to come drawn near, right?

Book of Numbers, 1.1, it says, "Then the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the 10th of meeting," okay? You notice that? So if you go back, it says, "They were not able to enter," oops, and then Leviticus 1.1, God speaks from the 10th, and then in Numbers 1.1, he speaks from in the 10th, okay?

So that's the progression, those three books, right? So you see the redemptive history of God. You know, Genesis begins with the fall, and then mankind rebelling against God, and as a result in Chapter 12, God makes a promise to Abraham and then his descendants, and his descendants begin to grow in number, and then we go to Exodus, and they begin, and they grow in mass number.

God delivers them. As soon as he delivers them, right, he says, "Let my people go that they may," do what? "That they may worship me," right? That's what God says to tell Pharaoh to deliver them for the purpose of worship. So as soon as they come out, God gives them these patterns of what to do in worship.

So the whole book of Leviticus is to establish how sinful people are going to worship God through the tabernacle, and then God draws near. Leviticus teaches them what specifically to do, and then so Leviticus is the beginning of that relationship. Does that make sense? And then numbers is when, is the actual practice of that.

The tabernacle in the camp of Israel is established right in the middle, okay? The four blocks that you see are the four different Levitical tribes, and then the 12 tribes, 3, 3, 3, 3, are the 12 tribes of Israel, and if you look at the way God tells them to be established, every single one of them are equal distance to the tabernacle, okay?

What do you think the point of this is? God's presence is at the center. So the tabernacle wasn't some far distant thing where they established up in the mountain and then the nation of Israel lived far off, right? God's presence was at the center, the tabernacle worship, just like any group of people, even today, right?

We talked about that many times. The central part of any saved Christian is the worship of God. And so that's what God was establishing in the nation of Israel, through this tabernacle to teach the nation of Israel that God is at their center, right? And the only way that God can be in their presence is through blood sacrifice, okay?

And all of this is a shadow that was going to ultimately point to Christ. So when we were going through the different offerings, we talked about how bloody the scene was, right? There was an animal being sacrificed morning and night, and they were being burned. So there's two things that they probably saw, right?

One is the smoke coming from the tent. It was probably constant. So if you were an Israelite, the smell of burnt animals was probably constant. It was like being at a barbecue, right? Nonstop. Even just on July 4th. It was like every day, morning and night, you smelled the animals being burned.

And then if you were near the tent, you probably saw blood just constantly. No matter how much you cleaned it, it was given morning and night, all the time. So it was a very bloody scene, right? And so you smelled it, you saw it, you probably heard the animals being slaughtered.

And so this is right at the middle of the camp, constantly reminding them that a holy God is in their presence, and sacrifice needs to be made. That's embedded in them. The ultimate goal of Leviticus is to reveal the extent of God's holiness and the need for a perfect sacrifice to atone for our sins.

Leviticus is the foundation upon which all the explanation of the gospel and the new covenant is built on. So some of you guys who were with us through the 17 chapters of Leviticus, what are some terms that are related to the gospel that are found in Leviticus that you remember?

I know it's been seven weeks, but... What do you remember? There's some obvious terms. Atonement. Huh? Clean and unclean, right? Pure and impure. Is that it? Blood sacrifice. Inside the camp, outside the camp. Holy and unholy. Peace with God, peace with man. It's been seven weeks, I understand. What else?

We just scratched the surface. The depth of sin, the devastation of sin, remember? Where did that come from? I see your brains hurting. Where did that come from? Remember we talked about the degree of sin, the devastation of sin? What was that related to? The skin disease, leprosy, right?

You don't remember? Okay, you remember. You just don't want to say it. So we just scratched the surface. Everything about the gospel message is embedded into the book of Leviticus, and it is that crucial. It's like if you understand the gospel only from the New Testament, it's kind of like you jumped into the middle of the story.

It's like 30 chapters and you started in chapter maybe 20. And so you got the gist of it, because you got the tail end of it, and you know how it ended, and you know the main characters, and you know all of that, but you missed 20 chapters, right?

Two-thirds of the Bible is the Old Testament. So if you have a very loose understanding of what God did to prepare the nation of Israel, in particular the book of Leviticus, you can still understand the gospel, but it's going to be very superficial. The word "holy" is mentioned over 93 times in the book of Leviticus.

When something is repeated that many times, you have to pay attention, right? God is holy. And not only is God holy, everything related to God is holy. And then He's trying to make His people holy, and everything that relates to God's holy people holy, right? So the whole point of this is holy people became unholy because of their sins, and by this blood sacrifice, He's trying to make them holy again.

And here's a word that reveals the meaning of holiness, the restoration of holiness that oftentimes we don't talk about, because typically when we think of holiness, we think of something pure or moral or something that's set apart, right? And that's the typical understanding of holy. The English word for holy, it comes from an old English word, "halig," which means "whole" or "to be healthy." Oftentimes, you'll see in the New Testament, when it talks about sound doctrine, it means healthy doctrine, right?

Right doctrine. So the word for right or healthy or whole is related to the word "holy" that we understand. And so as a theme, to be made holy means to be made whole, something that went wrong, to restore it back to what it was meant to be. Okay, do you understand?

So the whole point of holiness is not to simply separate from sin. That is true. But the whole point of holiness is to be set apart from what went wrong so that God can restore what He originally intended. So for human beings to become holy is to go back to the state that God desired when He first created us, right?

So everything that God is doing in redemptive history is to bring us back to what He originally intended, what He intended in marriage, what He intended in human relationship, what He intended for work, what He intended for women, what He intended for man. All of that is to be restored back, right?

And so that's why He's making us holy, not simply to keep us away from sin, but by doing so bring us back to what He intended, to be made whole. And so that's what it means, these five basic themes that are related in the book of Leviticus, that God is holy.

Now, He's never been unholy, right? He's always been the standard of what is right, right? So our idea of understanding of love, right? When people have a preconceived idea of what love is and then they go to God and God doesn't fit the idea of love in this world, what do they do?

God is unfair or He's unloving because He did this, this, and this. Well, the scripture says God's love is holy, right? God's love is the standard. God's love is what love was meant to be. You understand what I'm saying? So right and wrong starts from God. We don't have a sense of right and wrong and then we come to God and measure Him to see if He lives up to it.

God is King and He is holy. He is whole. So whatever doesn't fit His idea of right, whatever doesn't fit His idea of righteousness and love, something, we're the one who strayed, not Him. Does that make sense? So if you approach the Bible and you begin to study God and say, "Well, you know, this is what I understand, fairness," and then you go back to God and then begin to measure Him by our standard, we get into all kinds of problems, right?

Why did God do this? Why did God do that? I said, "Well, He's the standard, right? He's holy and so when we approach scripture, we're learning, right? That's what it means not to be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our mind because God is the standard of everything." And as a result of that, He makes His priesthood holy.

The people who are going to be the first of the ones who are going to represent Him to the world and world to God also need to be whole, right? So you can't have an ambassador for a holy God and Him give a different message, right? He needs to represent God properly so that's why after He gives sacrifices, the first thing that He teaches is the priesthood needs to properly represent God so they needed to be holy and all for the purpose of making the people holy, right?

Making them whole, making them what God intended to begin with. And fourthly, He makes the land holy. I'm not going to get into this theology much. We're going to get into this later on as we started Leviticus but the scripture does not just talk about God being holy, priest, man, but even the land being holy and there's a reason for that, okay?

I'm going to get to that not too much in Leviticus but at some point it's going to come up, right? Because the Bible talks about land being holy all the time. I might get into it a little bit next week, okay? And ultimately that leads to a holy Savior, right?

And so this is the theme all throughout the book of Leviticus. Leviticus is divided into, this is the general outline to your left, okay? Into two major parts. Chapter 1 through 15 is about the priestly holiness which gives instructions about sacrifices, rituals, which ceremony relate to holiness. And then chapter 17 to 27, the bottom part, deal with more of a practical holiness which worked out in the daily lives of the people, okay?

So holiness of the priest in the tabernacle and worship and then 17 to 27, holiness in the people of God, okay? So it's divided into two major parts. So this, if you look at this outline, it has an introduction and then starting from the priesthood, chapter 8 through chapter 10, priesthood and then 11 through 15, laws of clean and unclean things and then at the center is the day of atonement, chapter 16.

So if you remember the video, like, do you remember how they divided it? It's a little bit different than this. How do they divide it? There's only one thing that's different. 16, 17 was together. And the reason why they put it together was because chapter 17 describes what? Preciously of blood.

And so they connect that to that day of atonement that God allowed cleansing to happen because of shedding of blood. So they connected it together. In this outline, we separated it. We're 17, the clean and unclean and how to handle the blood and the purpose of it. But 17 to 20, again, it mirrors the other side where law of clean and unclean things, law of clean and unclean things as it pertains to God's people in their daily life and then the priesthood again.

What do you call this? Okay, the kiastic, right? It's a kiastic outline where the outline from the first part, right, goes and then the main point is at the center and then it mirrors it backwards. So when you see a kiastic outline, you're supposed to read the main point where?

Right in the center. Not in the beginning, not at the end, at the center. So the center of the book of Leviticus is chapter 16 and 17, which is the day of atonement. Okay? Okay, let me wrap up with the five major sacrifices. And I'm just going to put it up there for sake of time.

Okay? These five offerings gives a presentation or teaching of how God views sin and how to restore, be restored. And so much of this is reflected upon our Christian lives. Burnt offering was the most important and the most frequent. This was basically, remember we talked about that? What does it represent in the new covenant?

Justification, right? That's a sacrifice that needed to be given. It needs to be given repeatedly for general atonement for every sin. And so they had to give that morning and night. So in order to give the other sacrifices, their general sins needed to be atoned for. So oftentimes before they gave grain offering, they would give the burnt offering first.

Before they gave thank offering, they would give the burnt offering first. Because without the burnt offering, your sins aren't atoned for. So you have to have your sins atoned for before you can approach God and give the other offerings. So burnt offering was the most important offering, which represented justification, right, in the new covenant.

And then the grain offering was given for dedication and thank offering. And that's where the tithe offering was given, a tenth, right? It was to acknowledge the lordship of God. In the New Testament, again, the offering is a freewill offering that we give to God in dedication, right, confessing His Lord and Savior.

Third offering, the peace offering, it was for reconciliation and celebration. Remember what was unique about that offering? That was the only offering where the offerer actually ate. They had a picnic. So for our references, it's basically a picnic offering, right? They would give the offering, and then whoever came with them would sit on the side and eat meat.

So how special was that? Did that happen a lot? No. They didn't eat meat like we eat meat, right? They say, "Oh, I haven't had meat in a while. Let's just go tomorrow." Okay, done, right? So none of us are in a situation where you're starving for meat and you've never had meat.

It's been a year or two. In Israelites, it was a very, very, very rare occasion that they were able to eat meat. So that offering basically meant that because of peace with God, they were able to have peace with one another, right? And it pointed to the Old Testament in the book of Genesis when they sinned against God, right?

Fellowship between husband and wife was broken. And as a result of that, all human beings were tainted because of sin. So our relationship, human relationship, is directly connected to reconciling with God, right? That's what that offering taught. Sin offering was for cleansing of what we considered unclean. So if you touch something that you shouldn't have touched.

So if you remember, if we were going through the purification laws, all of it pointed to you have to give a burnt offering and then you have to give a sin offering, right, to be cleaned. Guilt offering for restoration and restitution. So if you took something that didn't belong to you, right, by accident, or somebody was offering something, you touched it and defiled it, you would have to give that offering.

And then you have to give how much more? Yeah, a fifth as restitution. So the guilt offering was for the purpose of restoration and restitution. So all of these offerings, the five major offerings, these are not all of the offering. This is not the total of all the offerings.

But the five major offerings give us an outline of our relationship with God, what God desires, not only in justification, but also in sanctification, right? Those of you who are married and who've gone through marriage counseling, you know, one of the things that I mention all the time is, you know, your priority first and foremost is your walk with God.

If as a Christian, if your walk with God is not right, and then you're trying to like, well, how do we communicate better? How do we love each other? You know, he's so insensitive. All these things are necessary and important. But the scripture clearly tells us that our peace with one another is directly linked to a peace with God, right?

So our priority is first and foremost, make peace with God, because until you make peace with God, you can have all the tools to do the right things and then not do it. You say, you know, if I say this, my wife is going to be pleased, but then she didn't please me, so why should I please her?

So you know what to do, but you don't want to do it, right? That's mankind. It's like, you know, proper communication is not rocket science necessarily, but the problem is our heart. We're hurt. We think it's unfair. Why is she or he doing this? And so the scripture tells us it's reconciling with God.

When we are compelled by the love of Christ, God gives us the fuel to be able to love sinners, right? So all of this have direct application to our Christian life, justification and sanctification, okay? I think that's it for the overview. All right. I don't have a handout for you, so if you can take a picture of it, this is for study for next week.

Next week's study is on sexual immorality, okay? So those of you who are jumping in, you jumped in at the right time. We're going to be talking about bestiality. We're going to be talking about homosexuality. We're going to be talking about incest, all kinds of stuff, okay? That's mentioned in chapter 18.

So these are all questions that are related to that. And I think this is, again, sexual immorality is probably one of the biggest issues that are eroding the fellowship of the church today. And so this goes into, again, how God feels about it. And clearly it was not just an issue of today, right?

It wasn't just the internet. They didn't have internet back then. And yet they had all kinds of, so they say, "What? They had incest? They had bestiality? They had homosexuality?" Yes. This is not a modern day problem. Every sexual deviance that came, we think, because of internet was never because of internet.

Internet was just gave a, made the access easier. This was always a sin issue of the heart, okay? So that's what we're going to be looking at next week. And if you can come, just at least do your best to answer these questions. For the rest of the time, I'm going to ask you guys to get into your small group.

So Pastor Mark is going to come and he's going to help us break up into small group. But the questions that I've asked, a couple of them are related to the retreat. And I know not all of you went to the retreat. And even if you didn't go to the retreat, you can still participate because the questions are broad enough that you're going to be able to participate.

It's pretty self-explanatory. I'll just give it to you. So today, since it's the first session, we're going to ask you guys to take some time to get to know one another and then try to go through these questions together. So Pastor Mark is going to divide us up, okay?