<Slide 1>

Leviticus: Introduction
Scripture reading
Leviticus 16:5-22
<Slide 2>

HW
1. Why study Leviticus?
2. What is the structure of Leviticus?
3. What is God’s holiness?

The HW is also the three points of this morning’s preach. I’d encourage you to think about each of these
questions during the week, so we are all ready for next week!
<Slide 3>
1. Why study Leviticus?
We believe ALL the Scriptures are trustworthy, including Leviticus, because they were inspired by God.
Jesus’ bible was the OT. He quoted from the OT extensively in his teaching as the authoritative word of
God….
18
For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one tiny letter or one stroke of a
letter will pass away from the law until all takes place. 19 Therefore whoever abolishes one of the
least of these commandments and teaches people to do so will be called least in the kingdom of
heaven, but whoever keeps them and teaches them, this person will be called great in the kingdom
of heaven.
Matthew 5:18-19
Paul’s bible was the OT. He wrote…
16
All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training
in righteousness, 17 in order that the person of God may be competent, equipped for every good
work.
2 Timothy 2:16-17
Not only are the words inspired but the way the scriptures are laid out, the structure, the patterns, the way
things fit together are not coincidences nor simply the work of human authors and scribes but also fully
authored by God. It is helpful maybe to think of the written word like this…
<Slide 4>
100% human + 100% God = Jesus
100% human authorship + 100% God authorship = Bible
When we think of the NT we probably, and rightly, think of the gospels, in a very real sense being the most
important books. In the OT, in a sense, the five books of Moses or Pentateuch or Torah are the most
important books. They are what the whole Hebrew bible is about and it is the Torah that Jesus is opening
up and applying in the Sermon on the Mount.
<Slide 5>
Leviticus is the central scroll of the Torah. It has been carefully positioned there because at the end of
Exodus, after the Golden Calf incident…
35
…Moses was unable to go into the tent of assembly because the cloud settled on it and the glory
of YHWH filled the tabernacle.
Exodus 40:35
…but the Numbers scroll, immediately after Leviticus begins…
1
YHWH spoke to Moses in the desert of Sinai, in the tent of assembly, on the first of the month, in
the second year after they came out of the land of Egypt…
Numbers 1:1
What happened in between? Leviticus. So, this is not the boring book it seems at first but was to show
ancient Israel that God was holy and how to God draws us close to himself.
<Slide 6>
2. What is the structure of Leviticus?
Leviticus’ place in the OT

The Tanakh or Hebrew bible has a different scroll order to the books in our English bibles and other
translations. This is because when Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew bible into Greek, because the
Jews no longer spoke Hebrew, they changed the order. I just want to point out a couple of things from the
Hebrew scroll order that have come up in other teaching.
The Hebrew bible ends with the scroll of Chronicles not Malachi. Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles
were written completely in exile in Babylon. The “former prophets” emphasise the failure of Israel to keep
Torah. Moses foretold in Deuteronomy that this would happen so Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings are
the fulfilment of Deuteronomistic curses for disobedience [Deuteronomy 28:15-68]. Some scholars, both
Jewish and Christian, think of Deuteronomy and the “former prophets” as the “Deuteronomistic history”,
the miserable history of mainly rebellion and failure by Israel. Chronicles retells this history but from the
perspective of God’s faithfulness, what God was doing all along and therefore giving the Jews in exile that
the day of YHWH would come, and they would return to the land. This is what is in the minds of the Jews
as they encounter Jesus.
But back to Leviticus! As we have said, Leviticus is the central scroll of the Torah…
<Slide 7>

…before Leviticus Moses cannot enter the tent/tabernacle because of God’s presence BUT after Leviticus
he can! So, what happened? In modern parlance, Exodus ends with a cliff hanger! Binge read the Torah!
The structure of the Leviticus scroll
<Slide 8>
The scroll itself has a very interesting and deliberate structure…

The book begins and ends with sacrifices [1-7] and feasts [23-25] which involve food offerings of animals
and plant-based produce like bread. RITUAL purity is difficult for us to understand some 3 500 years later.
For example, if a woman was menstruating, she was “RITUALLY impure”. That does not mean she was
MORALLY impure just RITUALLY impure. Similarly, people were RITUALLY impure if they had touched a
dead body, or a man had ejaculated and so on. I think what is happening here is a lot of acting out. Death,
blood etc. symbolise sin or the effect of sin and God’s solution.
<Slide 9>
 16
And YHWH God commanded the man, saying, “From every tree of the garden you may freely eat,
17
but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat
from it you shall surely die.”
Genesis 2:16-17
…the RITUAL laws were to remind the people of sin and death and that God cannot draw close if they are
sinful. But they also had to be MORALLY pure [18-20]. Just acting is not enough. The acting out was to
teach the people.
God does require obedience from the heart BUT he also wants his people to act out the need for purity.
Similarly, the priests acted out being pure [8-10].
Central to Leviticus and to the whole Torah is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement [16-17]. I mention the
Hebrew name as religious Jewish men cover the top of their heads with a kippur. Kippur means “covering”.
Yom Kippur, the centre of the Torah is the Day of Covering. Our sin must be covered before God. Now, here
is something else that is difficult to understand from our perspective. The ritual sacrifices often involved
the shedding of the blood of an innocent animal. The feasts like Passover, likewise, involved shedding of
blood. Huge numbers of animals were killed, and their blood poured out. [Btw unlike the nations around
them all the dead animals do get eaten. YHWH doesn’t need our food. The gods of the nations seemingly
did!] The Day of Atonement was to cover any sins that had not been covered by all the blood shed during
the year! The High Priest was to take TWO goats. ONE was a RITUAL purification offering, just acting out,
that blood poured out somehow covered the sins of the people. The SECOND was the SCAPEGOAT. The
word has got into English to mean the person who is blamed unjustly. This is exactly how it worked in Yom
Kippur. The High Priest confessed the sins of the people over the goat and then the animal was chased out
into the wilderness RITUALLY taking the people’s sin away from the camp!
And what happened in Eden when humans sinned?
21
And YHWH God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin, and he clothed covered them.

Genesis 3:21
They sinned they needed to be covered. Now did this mean they could stay in Eden? No. It was a symbol,
an acting out. If you sin you need to be covered to come back into the presence of God.
<Slide 10>
3. What is God’s holiness?
What does “holy” mean to you? In the bible God is all holy, perfectly holy. A human cannot approach God
without some kind of modification because God is holy. For example…
1
And Moses was a shepherd with the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he
led the flock to the west of the desert, and he came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. 2 And the
angel of YHWH appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush, and he looked, and
there was the bush burning with fire, but the bush was not being consumed. 3 And Moses said, “Let
me turn aside and see this great sight. Why does the bush not burn up?” 4 And YHWH saw that he
turned aside to see, and God called to him from the midst of the bush, and he said, “Moses,
Moses.” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 And he said, “You must not come near to here. Take off your
sandals from on your feet, because the place on which you are standing, it is holy ground.” 6 And he
said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
And Moses hid his face because he was afraid of looking at God.
Exodus 3:1-6
Taking off your shoes in the ANE, and the ME to this day, is very common. You take off your shoes to enter
someone’s home. The worshippers at a Mosque must remove their shoes before they enter. The sole of
the foot and the shoe are literally and metaphorically unclean. It is offensive to point your foot at
someone. In Orthodox churches you don’t cross your legs. The soles of the feet must remain on the floor.
Moses was commanded to act out being pure, removing the sandals, before he could take a step closer to
YHWH.
Moses at the end of his life would tell the Israelites…
23
Watch out for yourselves so that you do not forget the covenant of YHWH your God that he had
made with you and make for yourselves a divine image of the form of anything that YHWH your
God has forbidden, 24 for YHWH your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.
Deuteronomy 4:23-24
God’s holiness is a “devouring fire”. This is a common image, Think Pentecost! But at Pentecost the flames
do not devour! Something much greater that all the Levitical play acting has happened. Yes! Jesus’ life of
obedience, death, resurrection and ascension up to heaven is the reality. This is how God can draw near
without his holiness destroying us.
A modern-day metaphor is the Sun. The Sun is good, it gives life, it enables our bodies to produce vitamin
D and there is lots of data that suggests that overdoing the sunblock is detrimental to health. But too much
sun is bad. It burns us and damages our skin. Now, does that make the Sun bad? No. Now, if we flew in a
spaceship closer and closer to the sun it would evaporate us! Does that make the Sun bad? No. Now God’s
holiness is so powerful that if we were to sin in his holy presence we would be destroyed. Not because God
is bad but literally because he is so good, so holy. This happens in Leviticus...
1
And Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his censer, and they put fire in them and placed
incense on it; then they presented before [lit. “to the faces of”] YHWH illegitimate fire, which he
had not commanded them. 2 So fire went out from before Yahweh, and it consumed them so that
they died before [lit. “to the faces of”] YHWH. 3 Therefore Moses said to Aaron, “This is what YHWH
spoke, saying, ‘Among those who are close to me I will show myself holy, and in the presence of all
the people I will display my glory.’ ” So Aaron was silent.
Leviticus 10:1-3
<Beverley, Norman and David Carson’s story>
<Slide 11>
HW/Summary
1. Why study Leviticus?
2. What is the structure of Leviticus?
3. What is God’s holiness?