Rules, anyone here into rules? You know laws, decrees, regulations, whatever it is that you want to call them. If you are here’s the good news the book of Leviticus is full of rules, aren’t you lucky? As a matter of fact rules is just about all Leviticus is about. There is really no story to it, no characters, no plot; just rules, page after page of rules.
There are rules about what you can do and what you can’t do, when you can do it and when you can’t do it. What you can wear and what you can’t wear, what you can eat and what you can’t eat. They just seem to go on and on and on.
Now I know that now that you’ve heard that Leviticus is about rules that you don’t want anything to do with it cause you don’t like rules. Maybe you’re like Katherine Hepburn who said “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun” Or maybe you’re like Princess Diana who said “I don’t go by the rule book… I lead from the heart, not the head.” I wonder if Di’s parents ever told her not to get into a car if the driver had been drinking, that’s a type of rule.
Or maybe it’s just natural when someone says “don’t” that you say “Oh yes I will.” (Video Clip from Lion King Starts at 29:10 finishes at 35:33). You see rules aren’t just implemented to annoy us or to make life less fun, they are often put into place to protect. Either to protect us or to protect others. Simba and Naula thought the rule about going into the elephant burial ground was kind of dumb, but they not only put themselves in danger they put Zazu in danger as well.
And there are rules in all aspects of our life.
There are rules that apply in our families. Curfews. Don’t smack your sister. Don’t smack your brother. What are some rules from families?
There are rules in school: Do your homework, no smoking in the halls. Any other suggestions?
Rules at Work. Don’t steal the paper clips, don’t shoot the other employees. What are some rules where you work?
How about Social Rules? I bet a rule at Shane and Debbie’s is “Don’t pee in the pool” that was certainly a rule when we had a rule.
And there are rules for society, some are rules about big things. Don’t blow up airplanes, others are minor “don’t throw litter out your car window.”
The book of Leviticus is the third book in the Bible and is probably one of the most neglected books in the Bible as well. If you’ve read it at all you’ve probably just scanned through it and didn’t really spend a lot of time getting the feel for it. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. The first is that the book seems so strange to our culture.
It talks about selecting and killing live animals for sacrifices, that just seems wrong. It tells us how the Priests should dress and behave what they ought to do and what they ought not to do.
It contains a whole list of prohibitions that we don’t consider to be all that relevant to life in this new Millennium which is in reality thirty five hundred years removed from when the book was written. So we start to read it and we think, yeah whatever.
And it breaks the flow of the story. Genesis takes us through a multitude of the bible stories we are familiar with and ends with Jacob’s family in Egypt, the book of Exodus picks the story up four hundred years later and chronicles the escape of the Israelites from Egypt and then just leaves them in the middle of the dessert building the tabernacle which was like a portable church. And then bang Leviticus is dropped into the mix and we get this whole list of rules and regulations which takes us through into the book of Numbers to chapter 10 where the narrative is picked up again. And it’s just way too easy to go from Exodus 40 to Numbers 10 and skip everything in between.
But if God had wanted us to skip it He wouldn’t have put it there in the first place.
So let’s not look at it as an interruption instead let’s look at it as a continuation. Exodus ends with instructions for the Israelites on where to worship God, the tabernacle and Leviticus begins with instructions for the Israelites on how to worship God in the tabernacle.
The Hebrew title for the book is Vayyikra and it literally means “He Called” and it is the opening phrase of the book. In Leviticus 1:1-2 The Lord called to Moses from the Tabernacle and said to him, “Give the following instructions to the Israelites:
Tradition tells us that the book was written by Moses around 1440 BC. Why was it written, well some have called it the Handbook of the Priests and that is an apt title. However we can sum what Leviticus is about this way: Right worship, right living with instructions on becoming holy and staying holy.
We can actually divide the book into five sections. 1) Dedication or the Offerings and this encompasses chapters 1-7, it deals with the various offerings which is the worship as well as instructions pertaining to those who make the offerings, or the worshipper. 2) Mediation or the Priests and this is found in chapters 8 to 10 and deals with the priest, who they are, what they do and how they do it.
3) Separation or the People This section which takes in chapters 11 to 22 tells the people what is clean and what is unclean. What foods they shouldn’t eat, what deeds they shouldn’t do and how they should behave toward God and toward one another. It is summed up in the scripture that Mike read earlier this morning Leviticus 18:1-5 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say this to your people, the Israelites: I, the Lord, am your God. So do not act like the people in Egypt, where you used to live, or like the people of Canaan, where I am taking you. You must not imitate their way of life. You must obey all my regulations and be careful to keep my laws, for I, the Lord, am your God. If you obey my laws and regulations, you will find life through them. I am the Lord. God is saying you are different then other people, so act it. Perhaps that is the same message that needs to be told to Christians in 2003; You are different then other people so act it.
The next section is 4) Consecration or the Feasts and in verses 22 to 24 we discover the Feasts that the Israelites were supposed to observe. Some you might be familiar with like the Passover, Pentecost or the Day of Atonement, they are still talked about today. As well this section deals with the consecration of the Oil and Shew bread which was used for temple worship.
And then finally the last section 5) Ratification or the Signs is found in chapters 25 to 27. This is interesting in that it deals with a number of different items. It talks about letting fields lie fallow for a year every seven years, it’s a Sabbath for the land. And it deals with the Year of Jubilee, we just celebrated that with Queen Elizabeth but this is different. Listen to what the book says Leviticus 25:8-10 “In addition, you must count off seven Sabbath years, seven years times seven, adding up to forty-nine years in all. Then on the Day of Atonement of the fiftieth year, blow the trumpets loud and long throughout the land. This year will be set apart as holy, a time to proclaim release for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you returns to the lands that belonged to your ancestors and rejoins your clan.
And neat things happened during the year of the Jubilee, remember property in the Promised land was to be given to specific tribes, so if that land was sold at any time every fifty years it was returned to the original owners. If a Israelite became bankrupt and had to sell himself and his family into slavery on the Year of Jubilee they would be set free.
If you were to go to Philadelphia and see the Liberty Bell and read the inscription you would discover it is from this particular portion of the book of Leviticus. “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” Leviticus 25:10 And within this section there are all kinds of regulations to keep the system from being abused. For example if you were to sell your property the year after a Jubilee year you would receive more for it then if you sold it the year before a Jubilee year, that makes sense. As well this section contains regulation concerning vows as well as the reward for obedience and the punishment for disobedience.
But the question remains: why? Why are there rules? Cause, that’s why. Why are there rules today? Same reason to protect you and to protect others. That is why you aren’t supposed to drive when you’ve been drinking, why you aren’t supposed to eat raw hamburger and why you aren’t supposed to sleep with everyone you meet.
Within God’s law there are laws that are laid down for people’s Physical Good: For example Leviticus 11:7 And the pig may not be eaten, for though it has split hooves, it does not chew the cud. They were also told they couldn’t eat other animals or reptiles or fish, because most of those critters were yucky, the technical term was unclean but it means the same thing. 3000 years ago it was difficult to cook pork the right way to kill the parasites that live in it, we know today that there are certain time of the year that you can eat shell fish and certain times that you can’t. We can read about it in the paper or hear on the radio but then, it was just safer to say “Don’t eat this stuff.”
Other rules are set down for our Social Good: Leviticus 20:10 “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death.” Don’t know if that was a deterrent but it certainly cut down on repeat offenders. Leviticus 19:11 “Do not steal. Do not cheat one another. Do not lie.” It is rules that keep society from disintegrating. They keep family together they protect us from each other.It was Edmund Burke who said “When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment, we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port to steer.”
Other rules are for our Emotional Good: Exodus 20:17 “Do not covet your neighbor’s house. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else your neighbour owns.” There are issues like covetness, hatred and lack of forgiveness that will destroy us inside if we allow them to. And so there are rules that deal with these issues.
There are also rules and regulations that are there for our Spiritual Good: There are rules against worshipping idols Leviticus 26:1 Do not make idols or set up carved images, sacred pillars, or shaped stones to be worshiped in your land. I, the LORD, am your God. There are rules against worshipping other gods Exodus 34:14 You must worship no other gods, but only the Lord, for he is a God who is passionate about his relationship with you. This particular section even deals with how much we are supposed to give God Leviticus 27:30 A tenth of the produce of the land, whether grain or fruit, belongs to the Lord and must be set apart to him as holy.
To be truthful we don’t know why God required some things, maybe for the same reason that we sometime require things as parents and so we have the Just Because Rules: Leviticus 19:19 You must obey all my laws. . . Do not wear clothing woven from two different kinds of fabric. How come? Just because. There is a lesson there that is lost on us but it wasn’t lost on the Israelites. Parents are fond of quoting Leviticus 19:28 Never cut your bodies in mourning for the dead or mark your skin with tattoos, for I am the Lord. But then they forget Leviticus 19:27 Do not trim off the hair on your temples or clip the edges of your beards.
Some rules cross over into several areas, Leviticus 18 deals almost exclusively with sexual issues, things which we would say are governed for social good. Without regulations concerning marriage etc the family unit begins to fail and we are starting to discover the results of that in Canada today. However they also fall in the emotional good category as can be attested by the devastation that is felt when you discover your spouse has been cheating on you, or even the damage done to yourself when you break your wedding vows. You understand that you will pay, Proverbs 6:27Can a man scoop fire into his lap and not be burned? By the way that verse deals specifically with the consequences of adultery, check it out for yourself. But the rules governing sexual conduct are also there for our physical good, the physical consequences or promiscuity cannot be ignored, whether it unwanted pregnancies or sexual transmitted disease there are a many things that could be eliminated by following the rules. I know and you know that AIDS is not simply a homosexuals disease but we also know that it was spread primarily because people would not listen to the rules, rules that said homosexuality is wrong, rules that said sex outside of marriage is wrong.
And you and I know that if they had of followed the rules that we wouldn’t have an problem with HIV and AIDS.
So where does that leave us on October 26th, 2003? When Christ came and offered himself up as a sin offering for each of us he made many of the laws in Leviticus concerning offerings and the priesthood irrelevant. But there are rules that govern our personal behaviour that still stand and I don’t think I need to tell you which are which, I think you can figure that out on your own.
And to quote many a wise man, “If all else fails read the instruction book.”
So where are you at?
Hope this message was helpful, PowerPoint may be available, contact me at denn@bccnet.ca
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