Drawing Near to the Living and Holy God
Seven chapters of Leviticus. One sermon. Who’s ready? Be honest. How many of you are somewhat mystified by the details of the sacrificial system? My modest goal this morning is to demystify it, a little. The goal will be simply to orient you and give you some categories for approaching the system.
If you want to probe deeper on your own, I want to recommend some helpful resources:
Alastair Roberts’s Commentary on Leviticus (YouTube)
Peter Leithart’s Lectures on Leviticus
James Jordan’s Lectures on Leviticus.
Jason DeRouchie’s What the Old Testament Authors Really Cared About
Living in Language
How many of you believe that English is a complicated language? Most native speakers don’t have a problem using English. But those who have learned English as a second language find many of its spelling and grammar rules to be very confusing.
Are you familiar with the Brian Regan sketch about the spelling bee? His teacher asks him how to make a plural. “You put an ‘s’ at the end.” “What’s the plural for ox? Oxen. What’s the plural for box? Boxen. What’s the plural for moose? Moosen.
The joke works because you know the rules, and you know the rules because you use them all the time. You’re familiar with them.
The reason that Leviticus feels complicated is because we’re unfamiliar. It’s like a foreign language. Think for a minute about what goes into a language.
First, you have an alphabet. And then you can arrange the letters into words. And there are different kinds of words–nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, adverbs. And we arrange the words into sentences with meaning and purpose.
But you have to arrange them in certain ways in order to make sense. “Bill throws the ball” is very different from “The ball throws Bill.” It’s important to arrange the words rightly in order to communicate well.
The sacrificial system is like that. Instead of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, we have people, places, sins, animals, animal body parts, and actions, and they are all arranged in various ways in order to communicate something.
But there’s another way that the sacrificial system is similar to learning a language. We don’t actually learn language by first learning the ABC’s, and then learning words, and then arranging words into sentences. We don’t move from the smallest parts up to greater wholes.
Instead, we learn sentences first (simple ones like “Help, please”), and then as we mature, we learn more complex sentences, until we’re old enough to begin breaking down words into letters, and then sentences into subjects, verbs, and direct objects so that we can learn the rules of spelling and grammar.
The Bible teaches us the sacrificial system in the same way. We get glimpses of it from early on–God providing Adam and Eve with animal skins after their sin. Cain and Abel offering tribute to God. Noah offering whole burnt offerings of clean animals after the flood. Abraham offering Isaac, and God substituting a ram at the last minute. Offering and sprinkling blood at Sinai. And then finally, in Leviticus, it’s like we pick up a grammar textbook that sets forth more detailed rules for how all of this is supposed to work, in the new covenantal arrangement established by God with his people after the exodus.
So with that paradigm, my goal is to give you some of the basic spelling and grammar of the sacrificial system as it’s set forth in Leviticus. But in order to do that, we need to know what God is saying through this language system.
The Problem
Last week, Pastor Jonathan identified three major themes of Leviticus: holy God, sinful people, substitutionary sacrifice. I want to build and expand on these statements to help make sense of the sacrificial system. So let’s expand this way:
The living God is holy.
We are a sinful people in a world of death.
That’s the basic contrast: holy and living vs. sin and death. And that creates a problem because that God wants to live with that people. The living and holy God desires to dwell with a sinful people in a world of death.
So here’s an image: It would be like if the sun–the giant ball of flaming gas in the sky–wanted to come live in your neighborhood. No atmosphere to protect you. No sunscreen to shield you. Just the blazing inferno of the sun and your weak, frail self.
How would that work out for you? Can you handle that heat?
Perhaps we can use two biblical images to represent the problem here. On the one hand, picture the scene in Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve have rebelled against God and incurred his judgment. He covers them with animal skins and sends them out of the garden, and he places a holy cherubim–an angel–with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life. Life is in the garden. The holy presence of God is in the garden. And there’s an angelic bouncer between you and it. You can’t draw near without losing your head and being burned up. That’s one image.
The second image is at Mount Sinai. Yahweh has just delivered his people from bondage, and gathered them at the holy mountain. Again the living and holy presence of God is at the top of that mountain. And he says to Moses,
“I have borne you on eagle’s wings. If you obey my voice, you will be my treasured possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Do you feel the tension between those two images? Life and glory on the mountain; angel guarding the way. Life and glory on the mountain; “you are my people and I intend to dwell with you.”
Something has to give. Because we can’t handle that heat.
Yahweh’s answer to the problem of the living and holy God desiring to dwell and meet with his sinful people in a world of death is the whole Levitical system. It’s an entire language and symbolic system that’s meant to enable the living and holy God to dwell with his sinful people in a world of death. At the heart of the system is atonement, a God-given covering so that you can handle the heat.
The Basics of the Grammar
So what are the basics of the grammar of this Levitical language? Let’s think in terms of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Start with nouns. Do you remember the three basic categories of nouns? People, places, and things.
Start with people. First, we have men and women. The book opens with a call-back to Genesis:
“When an adam brings an offering…”
The word adam reminds us that we are sons of earth, since adam was taken from the dust of the adamah. But we aren’t merely “earth-men” (or dirtbags), we are men and women, ish and ishshah. And those words are related to the Hebrew word for fire (esh).
And in the Levitical system, we can break God’s people down even more. We have the congregation as a whole. Within the congregation, we have the Levites (priests), and especially the high priest. Beyond that, we have the leaders or rulers of the people. Then we have individual Israelites, some of them rich, and some of them poor. But the Levitical system recognizes these distinctions in terms of people.
What about places? Here we need to connect sacred geography and sacred architecture. Leviticus is built on Genesis, especially the early chapters. And there, we remember the Garden, in the Land of Eden, and the World beyond (unsubdued and unfilled). Garden, Land, World. And the Garden was on a mountain, and a river flowed down to water the Garden, and then from there split into four rivers spreading out over the earth. So in terms of geography, think in terms of a summit, a mountain, the land around it, and then the waters/ocean at the edge.
This sacred geography is repeated at Sinai, with the cloud and fire at the summit (and Moses ascends into it), and then the mountain (where the elders wait), and then the base of the mountain where the people gather, and then the wilderness surrounding them.
The Israelite camp reflects this sacred geography. The Tabernacle is a mobile Mount Sinai. At the edges, you have “outside the camp,” which corresponds to the waters of death and chaos. Then you have the camp itself, with the tribes arranged around the Tabernacle. Then you have a courtyard, where there is a bronze basin for washing vessels and the altar for burning sacrifices. In the middle of the courtyard, you have the tent. Inside the tent, you have the Holy Place, with a Lampstand (like the Tree of Life), the altar of incense, and the table of the bread of the presence. And then at the heart of the Tabernacle (or at the top of the mountain), there is the Most Holy Place, with the ark of the covenant, with the cherubim on top, as God’s throne room.
So the Israelite camp is a mini-cosmos, a horizontal mountain. As you move in, you move up. And as you move from outside the camp inward (or upward), you move closer to the sun. And in order to be close to the sun, you have to be sun-like, acclimated to the sun. Or, to use the language of the Bible, you have to be holy, because the sun (Yahweh) is holy. The further up and further in you move, the greater holiness required. At each stage, there is a boundary with a gate. And in order to pass through the gate, you must have the necessary qualifications, the right status and covering. The Levitical system recognizes these distinctions in terms of place.
Next we have things. We might first think in terms of the various objects involved in Israel’s worship: clothing, vessels, bowls, instruments, and things like that. But we can also think in terms of animals and their body parts, as well as grain. Leviticus distinguishes a number of different types of animals. There is a basic distinction between animals of the herd (cows and oxen) and animals of the flock (sheep and goats). And Leviticus distinguishes these different animals based on sex (male and female) and age (lambs vs. mature adults). Beyond that, there are birds (doves and pigeons). And beyond that there are grains (flour and such). And then there are various other elements, some forbidden (such as leaven and honey) and others required (such as salt). And all of these have symbolic value. They mean something in this system.
And then the body parts of the animal have meaning in the system. The animals are dismembered into the head, and to the fat portions (the heart, kidney, liver, and so forth), and then the entrails and legs. These parts are frequently burned up in the sacrifice. Then you have other parts of the animal: skin, bones, meat, and so forth. So the Levitical system makes distinctions in terms of things.
Adjectives
Next we move from nouns to adjectives. Here we need to think in terms of interlocking distinctions. A basic one is life and death (living and dead). Life is tied to blood. A related distinction is clean and unclean. Another set of distinctions relates to holiness. On the one hand, holy can be the opposite of sinful. On the other hand, holy can be the opposite of common.
In the first case, unholiness or impurity involves moral contamination. Think of sinfulness as a kind of moral state, something that we just are. We are sinful people in a world of death. In the second case, when holy is distinguished from common, being common isn’t a problem in itself. Common things are perfectly fine. But common things are not holy things. But common things can be made into holy things through rituals of consecration. God establishes rituals that move people and objects from common to holy, from ordinary to set apart. And they are set apart or consecrated in order to make it possible for the living and holy God to dwell with his sinful people in a world of death.
So this bowl, through a process of washings and so forth, could be moved from common to holy, for use in the offerings. Or this robe could be consecrated so that it could be worn inside the courtyard or inside the Holy Place. Let’s bring some of these nouns and adjectives together in Leviticus 6:9-11.
“Command Aaron and his sons, saying, This is the law of the burnt offering. The burnt offering shall be on the hearth on the altar all night until the morning, and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning on it. And the priest shall put on his linen garment and put his linen undergarment on his body, and he shall take up the ashes to which the fire has reduced the burnt offering on the altar and put them beside the altar. Then he shall take off his garments and put on other garments and carry the ashes outside the camp to a clean place.”
This is a simple task: dispensing with the ashes from the altar. But a consecrated and holy person (a priest) has to put on consecrated and holy clothes to approach the altar (to pass through the gate up the mountain). Then to take the ashes outside, he has to pass through the gate going the other way, and so he needs to change into common clothes, and take the ashes to a clean place (not an unclean place, such as where everyone goes to the restroom).
Why is this so important? Earlier I mentioned the idea that for God to dwell with his people, they have to be acclimated to the sun. Think about acclimation. Think about the difference between the way we respond to 48 degrees in October vs. 48 degrees in March. In October, when it hits 48, we bundle up–puffy jackets, gloves, beanies. In March, when it hits 48, we’re in t-shirts and shorts. Why? Because of how we’re acclimated. In October, we’re acclimated to warm weather, so 48 feels cold. In March, we’re acclimated to cold weather, so 48 feels warm.
As a sinful people in a world of death, we are tempted to become acclimated to sin and death. The Levitical system was designed to press against that worldly acclimation, against the felt sense that sin and death are normal. It was designed instead to acclimate Israel to life and holiness, to the presence of the living and holy God.
So when you move from the cold and death outside the camp toward the sun at the top of the mountain, you have to put on the right clothes and the right gloves–holy ones. When you move back down the mountain, away from the sun, you have to take off your holy clothes and put on your common clothes. For the common to come into contact with the holy is to contaminate the holy, rendering it unclean. And it is to make the common holy in an inappropriate way. We’ll explore this more deeply in later sermons, but holiness is contagious. And you don’t want to catch it–you don’t want to get holy on you–unless you’ve been properly consecrated, properly covered. Because unless you’ve been consecrated and covered, you can’t handle the heat.
Verbs
This brings us to the verbs of the Levitical system. We call these sacrifices or offerings. The more basic meaning is “near-bringing.”
“When a man brings near his near-bringing” (Lev. 1:2).
The basic point of offerings is to draw near to God.
There are five basic types of offerings identified in these chapters: burnt offering, grain offering, peace offering, sin offering, guilt offering. But rather than these names, many commentators prefer to highlight what the basic function or action of the offering is.
So the burnt offering is the ascension offering. The grain offering is called the tribute offering. The peace offering is the peace offering, provided we recognize that peace is about shalom and communion with God. The sin offering is called the purification offering. The guilt or trespass offering is called the reparations offering. The first three are clustered together and they are the basics of the Levitical system; they maintain it. The last two repair breaches in the system in particular circumstances. The first three are like food; they maintain health in an ongoing way. The purification and reparations offerings are like medicine; they are used when you’re sick with a particular illness.
The offerings involve some of the same basic elements. The worshiper brings the animal to the courtyard and lays his hands on it. The worshiper kills the animal and the blood is drained out. The blood is then used in various ways in the rite: sprinkled on the horns/corners of the altar, or at the base of the altar, or on the altar of incense in the Holy Place. Then the priest dismembers the animal and arranges certain parts in a certain order on the altar to be burned up. Other parts are taken and burned outside the camp. And in some cases, some parts are eaten, either by the priest or by the worshiper. Lay hands, kill animal, sprinkle the blood, arrange and burn certain key parts, dispense with and/or eat other parts. And all of these are designed in one way or another to make atonement, to provide a covering so that you can handle the heat.
So let me start with the medicine. All of the offerings assume that we are a sinful people in a world of death. But we aren’t just sinful; we also are sinning. That is, we commit concrete acts of sin, and become contaminated. We become impure. And when we do, we need to be purified before we can draw near to God. The purification offering deals with these sorts of sins and errors.
The Torah distinguishes between high-handed sins and “unintentional sins” or sins of error. High-handed sins are brazen, defiant, and unrepentant. There is no sacrifice for such sins, because there is no repentance. You can’t be purified from sins that you don’t repent of.
Sins of error include real sins, but the sinner “realizes his guilt.” That is, he’s convicted of sin and wants to be restored to fellowship with God. He’s repentant. Sins of error includes sins of omission (neglect or forgetfulness, when you don’t do the “do’s”) as well as sins of commission (when you do do the “don’ts”). The key is that the worshiper has become contaminated and impure somehow, whether through willful action or inaction, or through neglect and ignorance, and then has realized his guilt and is repentant.
And this is where people, places, and animals become important. Different people are linked to different animals within the system. If the congregation sins, or if the high priest sins, they (and he) are represented by a bull of the herd. If a leader of the people sins, he is represented by a male goat of the flock. If a commoner sins, he or she is represented by a female goat or a lamb. If the person is very poor and can’t afford livestock, he or she can use two birds. If that’s too much, he can use flour or grain. But the important thing is that people and animals are linked in this language.
Moreover, the purification offering has a special focus on the blood of the animal. If the congregation sins, the blood is sprinkled not only on the altar in the courtyard, but also on the altar of incense in the Holy Place. If a commoner sins, the blood is only sprinkled on the altar in the courtyard. Congregational sin, or high priestly sin, is a bigger deal than an individual sin.
The reparations or guilt offering is similar to the purification, but the difference is that the sin committed is related to the desecration of God’s holy things or robbery of others. In both cases, the idea is that the sinner has stolen something and needs not only to be purified, but also needs to make restitution somehow (often 20% more than what was stolen).
In both cases, the purpose of these offerings is to fix a breach in the system based on a concrete action (or inaction). “Don’t get holy on you.”
Offerings
And this brings us to the three basic offerings at the core of the system. The ascension offering is the most basic offering. In it, the worshiper lays his hands on an unblemished animal, so that the spotless animal now represents the sinful worshiper. The animal is then killed, and its blood (which is its life) is sprinkled on the altar. The animal is then dismembered and arranged on the altar, with particular focus on the head and the fat portions (which are closely tied to the emotions in the Bible). The altar is like a mini-mountain. Altar, then fire, then wood, then head, then fat portions, and all of it is burned up and ascends to God in the smoke as a pleasing aroma.
This offering signifies the total surrender of the worshiper, the heartfelt desire to draw near to the living and holy God, despite our sinfulness and death. There is both death and resurrection in this offering, as the animal dies and then is transformed through fire in order to rise into God’s presence. By faith, the worshiper ascends to the presence of God in the smoke, and God is pleased with the faith of the sinner who comes to God represented by the life and death of an unblemished animal.
This is the core offering, in which the worshiper offers himself. But then, in addition to offering himself, the worshiper can also offer tribute to Yawheh. He can bring a representative portion of his wealth in the form of the grain or tribute offering. This offering is not offered by itself, but always accompanies the ascension offering. The ascension offering is like a hamburger, and the tribute offering is like a side of fries.
So the worshiper offers purification and reparation offerings in order to repair breaches in the relationship caused by sinful and impure actions. Then the worshiper offers himself in total surrender to Yahweh, drawing near to him as a pleasing aroma in the ascension offering. And he may offer a tribute to Yahweh for all of his kindness to him. But even these aren’t the end.
All of these–from purification, reparation, total surrender, and tribute–are meant to lead to communion. There are two words for the tabernacle in Leviticus: tabernacle, or dwelling, and tent-of-meeting. God doesn’t just want to dwell with his people; he wants to meet with his people. And he doesn’t just want to meet with his people; he wants to dine with his people.
The peace offering was the culmination and climax of Israelite worship. Parts of it resemble the ascension offering, with the fat portions and guts burnt and offered to God as a pleasing aroma. Parts of it resemble the tribute offering, consisting of unleavened loaves of bread. But what set the peace offering apart is that the worshiper was invited to eat with God. Whether giving thanks for a particular blessing, or giving thanks because God enabled him to fulfill a vow, or just a general thanksgiving to God as a freewill offering, God made provision so that his people could draw near to him and fellowship with him in peace. The living and holy God dwelling with, meeting with, and eating with his sinful people in a world of death.
The Table
Which brings us to this Table. Israel’s altar was both a mountain and a table. The cloud of smoke from the fire on the altar ascended to heaven and reminded Israel of the cloud of glory descending in fire on the mountain. But it was also a table, where Israel offered herself to God and ate with him.
So too at this Table. Here, God invites us to eat with him. And he offers himself to us, in the person of Jesus Christ, represented by the bread and wine. And it draws our minds back to another mountain–Calvary, Golgotha, the Hill of the Skull–where Christ offered himself as the unblemished Lamb of God, slain for us, and then raised from the dead and ascended into heaven on our behalf. Thru him, we draw near to the living and holy God and eat with him in peace.