Being at the right place at the right time!
5/22/11
Leviticus 16
We all have probably used the excuse about “Being at the wrong place at the wrong time”. I didn’t mean to do it; I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time! If you have teens you know what I am talking about. But the title of my sermon talks about the opposite. It is not used in the negative but as a positive.
I have been the lucky recipient before by being at the right place at the right time and by doing so I received some kind of a reward. I can remember one time that stands out the most to me.
I had approached Richard about replacing the pews with chairs in the church. I had found 200 used chairs on the internet for $ 5,000.00. He didn’t see the value to do so because it would only add seating for additional 20-30 spaces to sit and the investment didn’t seem to be worth the return. I told him to take money out of the equation. And not to knock myself out of the blessing by telling you this, but I was going to absorb the cost. I had done my homework and I knew that I was proven that you people will sit closer together if they have chairs instead of pews.
Well by the time that we voted as the church to do so, the used chairs were gone. So instead of trashing the idea after we had already promised another church that they could have our pews, we went out and got quotes on new chairs. We chose to get 180 new chairs for the price of $ 10,800.00.
Well that was all good and everything. The chairs have been a blessing. But the problem was, I didn’t have $ 10,000 to pay for them. So the church agreed to pay for ½ and I was to pay for the other. The church sent the first ½ for their deposit and my ½ was due upon receiving the chairs.
In the mean time I had a car wreck, (Go figure) and I replaced my car with a newer one. I received a call that the chairs were done and were ready to ship in 10 days. I went to the bank account and looked in the savings. I had used part of that money on my car replacement. I was $ 2,700.00 short. I told my wife Hope to keep spending to a minimum and pray because we were short. I could not go back to the church now and renege on my commitment. So I was thinking that I would just go out and get a loan.
My sister was in the market for a house and I saw that a house was going to be going up for auction in the area and thought that I would just go check it out. Well when I got there the contents of the house was sold first and the house would go up afterwards. Now with money being tight, I have no plans of buying anything. But they held up a box with what looked like new full size sheets still in the plastic for sale. Some small voice said, bid! I was the only bidder at $ 5.00 for the whole box. Now Hope was not too happy with my purchase when I got home. But my sister was over and she said she could use the sheets. I gave them to her and within a few hours she called me in a panicked voice explaining to me that when she went to wash the sheets, over $ 300.00 fell out of one set of sheets. Now Hope was OK with me buying them. Then a minute later, she called me again. It ended up that there was a total of $ 2,730.00 cash in those sheets. I called the auctioneer and they just said congratulations, it was an estate sell and no living relatives. I had purchased the contents of the box which included $ 2,730.00 cash. I was in the right place at the right time.
So what does it take for us to be at the right place at the right time with God? As long as we have breath in our lungs and we are here on this earth; the right place is to be in God presence and the right time is always. If you have ever been in a church service where you can feel God’s presence and you leave the place feeling like you had church, which is the way we should strive to be, not just on Sundays but all the time. So how can we be in God’s presence all the time? I want to take us back to BC, (before Christ) so that we can learn from the example of how the High Priest and what he had to do to be in God’s presence. Turn with me if you would to the book of Leviticus, Chapter 16. Leviticus 16:3 "Thus Aaron shall come into the Holy Place: with the blood of a young bull as a sin offering, and of a ram as a burnt offering.
My favorite translation says it like this. “This is what Aaron must do in order to come into the holy place”. The holy place is where they would come into the presence of God to offer a sacrifice for their sins. We no longer need a priest to come into God’s presence. When He cried out from that cross, “It is finished” then the veil was ripped from top to bottom so that we no longer need a High Priest for the remission of our sins; We have Jesus Christ for our High Priest who took on the sins of the world so that we can boldly come into Gods presence. Hebrews 4:15-16 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
I want to be in God’s presence don’t you? How do we do that? The first thing that I want you to see, to be in God’s presence is…
You need to be CLOTHED!
Leviticus 16:4He shall put the holy linen tunic and the linen trousers on his body; he shall be girded with a linen sash, and with the linen turban he shall be attired. These are holy garments.
Now I am not saying that you need to wear fancy clothes or you need to dress a certain way to come into God’s presence. In fact neither God nor I care how you are dressed when you come to Him. I am not saying that you should come in a string bikini, but I am saying that you don’t have to have on a shirt and tie or a dress to be in His presence. You even read in the Bible about Jesus coming to the grave yard and a naked man came in His presence and Christ received him and he received Christ.
So what do I mean when I say that you need to be clothed? You need to be clothed in His righteousness. The bible tells us that there in NONE righteous, never has been, never will be. We are all sinners, just some of us are sinners saved by grace. We are not righteous but He is so we need to have a personal relationship with Christ to be in His presence. Isaiah 61:10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, My soul shall be joyful in my God; For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. You cannot come into God’s presence without being saved. You often hear us say that if you don’t feel the Holy Spirit then you better pinch yourself and make sure you are a Christian. That is why someone without Christ will leave when you experience the Holy Spirit moving and think, “I don’t get it”. You first must first be a Christian to be in God’s presence. God hates sin. He can’t stand to be around it. That leads me to our next point.
You need to be CLEANSED!
Leviticus 16: 4b Therefore he shall wash his body in water, and put them on. Before you are clothed, you need to be cleansed. How many of you take a shower and then put the same dirty cloths back on? You get cleansed by admitting that you are a sinner and then you ask Him to forgive you of your sins, being clothed in His righteousness, and being cleansed.
How many of you remember being born? While we might not remember, I can tell you from having two kids of my own, the first thing that they do when a baby is born is begin to clean that baby up. They clean up the air passage to make sure that the baby is breathing right. With my youngest Seth, they had to do an emergency C-Section on him. He had his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and was chocking himself trying to get out of there. When he came out there he was bloody and blue. I thought we had given birth to a Smurf who had just been in a bad car wreck or something. But they took that baby boy of mine and they cleaned him up and his color came to him and he turned out just fine. And when you accept Christ as your own personal Savior then you will become clean, old things have passed away, all things are becoming new.
But as Seth grew up, guess what. He had to be cleaned up several times. In fact we bathed him every day and cleaned his butt multiple times. And like all most kids, when he got older, he didn’t like to take a shower. There were times that he would even put his head under the sink and get his hair wet trying to trick us that he had taken one. Now my water bill has doubled because he goes in there and you can’t get him out. I have had to turn the hot water off to get them out before.
But a new Christian will fight taking a bath as well. Just as we are clean up as a baby, several clean ups had to happen afterwards as well. Once you accept Christ, that does not make you exempt from sin, you still will sin. But to be in God’s presence you need to be clean. You need to get rid of any sin that you have. 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
But to really get in God’s presence, you dig deep and get behind the ears as my mom would often remind me. We need to go God and say, “God is there anything that I am doing or I have done that is not pleasing to you? Do I have anything that I need to confess to make me clean for you? Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting. The next thing that we need to do is…
You need to be COVERED!
Verses 5-11 all deal with what and how the sacrifice was to be but then we get to the covering. Leviticus 16:14-15 He shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east side; and before the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times. "Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people, bring its blood inside the veil, do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat. Leviticus 16:18-19 And he shall go out to the altar that is before the LORD, and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. Then he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, cleanse it, and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel.
Sounds kind of gory doesn’t it? Blood everywhere! But the must be the shedding of blood for the remission of sins. And Jesus shed His blood for the remission of our sins. “What can wash away our sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!” We need to be covered by the blood of Christ to be in His presence.
When the Priest would put the blood on something it would be cleansed. And when we cover our sin with the blood we will be cleansed as well. You read in the Bible that when someone was a leper, they became an outcast. The only way that they would be accepted back into society was to be declared clean by a priest. You read about that when the ten lepers were healed by Jesus. Luke 17:14 So when He saw them, He said to them, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed.
So many times in this world, we have people who think because of something in your past that you need to be an outcast. Maybe you have had a divorce, or made a bad mistake, anything and Satan will try to keep you down. But we have a High Priest who covers us with His shed blood and we become justified or JUST IF I”D NEVER SINNED! So it’s wrong to look down on other. He gave His life for those sins. He made us whole, clean, by covering us with His Blood. Finally to be in God’s presence…
You need to CLAIM!
Not only do you need to be covered by that blood, but you need to claim that blood. Not only do people try to bring you down because of your past sins, but Satan will try to bring you down as well. But we need to claim God’s promises. Psalm 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
We read an example of this in Leviticus 16:21-22 Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.
This is by the way, this is where we get the expression, “scapegoat”. This goat was not guilty of the sins he bore, but he bore them anyway, allowing the guilty escape the consequences of their sins. Not only was Jesus the perfect High Priest, but He was the perfect sacrifice.
No matter who you are…not matter what you have done…YOU CAN BE IN THE RIGHT PLACE, AT THE RIGHT TIME.
You just need to enter into a personal relationship with Christ. Then continually cleanse yourself from your sins and cloth yourself in HIS righteousness by covering those sins by His blood, claiming the victory on the cross.
