Published: May 22, 2025 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Leviticus - The Parable of Leviticus 2 - Part 14 | Scripture: Leviticus 1-17
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6 and see that passage at the end of the chapter where Paul says to them uh and this is the context of not being unequally yolked by the way that's the context when he when
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he says do not be bound together with unbelievers for what partnership has has righteousness um right righteousness and lawlessness or what fellowship ship has light with
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darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Bile? Or what has a believer in common with the unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the
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living God. Just as God said, "I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Therefore, come out from their
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midst and be separate, says the Lord, and do not touch what is unclean, and I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and
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daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. Now, again, that's all Levitical language. Touch nothing unclean. Come out from among them, be separate. All these the holiness terms. And then
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immediately, and we have it as chapter 7, Paul says, "Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh
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and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." Well, that's essentially the book of Levit Leviticus. That's a summary statement of
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much of Leviticus, including the holiness code that we're going to get into, Lord willing, next time we return um to um to Leviticus. cleanse yourself from that
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which defiles both in body and in spirit. Okay? And perfect holiness in the fear of God. So that one statement 2 Corinthians 7:1 is like a summary of the
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of the whole book of Leviticus. And so Paul's using that to the Corinthians. And if you read the rest of Corinthians, you realize that they needed it. But so do we. The church
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always needs to hear that message of of purity because we we tend to uh swing between two extremes. The one is a
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practical works practical works salvation where we doctrally accept the principle of justification by faith but in practice we live out our
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lives and we think of our walk with Christ and in the face of God. We think of our lives as being somehow measured by our by our performance. That that's one. I mean,
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some go all the way to illegalism, but I'm not going there. I'm just talking about things that we all struggle with. You know, if I'm a believer, how can I keep thinking these thoughts or doing these things, right? So, there must be something wrong. The other extreme of
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course is course is isngnosticism where we believe that we have or or a higher blessing type of of teaching where we believe that we have actually we no longer sin. You know that we we've actually
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convinced ourselves that we no longer sin that that God's actually pleased with us and we're doing fine. So there's these extremes that that Christians professing Christians seem to bounce
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between. Um, and I'm not saying the balance is in the middle, but I am saying that it does recognize a definite tension. And I think that tension once
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again is is just absolutely uh unquestionably summarized in Philippians 2:es 12 and 13. Work out your salvation with fear and
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trembling, for it is God who is at work within you, both to will and to do according to his pleasure. So, you see, it's okay. um to uh quote Henry
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Krabendom uh or professor from seminary, he said it's not 50% God and 50% man. It's 100% God and 100% man. But the 100% God is
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prior. The 100% God is what puts the whole thing together. It was 100% God to choose Israel from among the nations. It was 100% God to to guard Israel when it
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was in captivity in Egypt or in slavery. It was 100% God to redeem Israel. Okay. But having redeemed them graciously as and that's the other similarity and that
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is that this
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grace. And yet neither with Israel nor with the church does that abrogate obedience. or does it uh abrogate
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purity? And and I understand those are difficult things to hold in tension in our minds. It's it's very analogous to the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Those are two
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concepts that just seem to fight one another in our minds. How can they both be true? Well, we have to start with the biblical foundation that they are both
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true. and never yield that that position. They are both true. And never allow any understanding of any passage of scripture to in any way diminish the
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truth of either one. Does that make sense? And then just simply accept at times I don't quite understand how that all works out. But I know that God is absolutely sovereign and his grace is
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completely prior and certainly not motivated by any merit or work on my part. That's fundamental. But does that mean I just let go and let God? You know, does that mean
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everything's okay? I don't have to worry about once saved, always saved. I don't have to worry about how I live. Well, that's purely that's purely unbiblical. You you have no basis to think that either from the Old Testament
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or the New Testament. Okay? And so, Leviticus also helps us realize that God called these people to himself and yet says, "You will be holy,
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for I the Lord am holy." And yet he never said, "If you're not, I'm done with Israel. Forget it." In fact, many times he says, "It's because I love you
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over all the nations that I have rebuked you, that I have disciplined you." And yet he still he has put his love upon Israel. He has put his love. We are accepted in the beloved because he has
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put his love upon his son Jesus Christ. And we by his grace are in Christ. So we don't lose our salvation, but we also are
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somehow in the wrong. We are impure. We are unclean when we disobey God. And that is attention. And I don't
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think I think it's meant to be attention. And I think that the proper approach once we get it, once we
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understand grace is as Paul says in Corinthians again, he says, "The love of God or the love of Christ constrains me." That when we
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understand that God so loved us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, he manifested his love for us. When we understand that then our primary
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motivation is love. We desire to approach God. And so that's the the next similarity is
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similarity is that the fundamental
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issue is the approach to Yahweh.
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Now, if we look at these, we're going to see that there is a difference in each one. These are fundamental common ground
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between the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, and the New Covenant. But there are because of the work of Jesus Christ fundamental Christ fundamental differences that while while we're
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placed in a similar circum situation, our fundamental orientation to God is radically different. So let's just look at some of
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them just just hopefully to to explain this. We are the people of God, okay? But we are now
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We have received the spirit of adoption. So in Christ, we are now the sons and daughters of God. We are joint hes with hes with Christ. That could not be said of
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Israel. In fact, Paul in Romans nine makes it very clear that that cannot be said of all Israel. That all Israel is not Israel. And he points out that the
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the Israel as he does in Romans 2 that the true circumcision is that which is made without hands. So whereas the people of God under the old covenant
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were signified by the by the covenant sign of sign of circumcision, the people of the new covenant have circumcised hearts. And so they are true Jews in the
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in the Pauline sense in Romans chapter 2. Okay. 2. Okay. We dwell in his presence and he dwells in our midst.
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geographically, 1 Peter 2 4 and 5. And coming to him as a living stone. See, there's that approach. Now, it's not the tabernacle. It's more the temple this time. the the uh metaphor
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that he's using is the building of the temple. He says, "Coming to him as a living stone, you as living stones are being built together into a spiritual habitation." Okay? But it's not physical
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anymore. So all of the holiness zones that we talked about that were so important to the geographic orientation of Israel, where they stood versus where
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they had to be when they were unclean outside the camp perhaps versus where they're going to go when they bring their offering to the tent of meeting. Every holiness zone required greater
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purity as you move toward the center. And so um that's gone. And and it's very important that that's gone. And let me
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let me go ahead and explain that. I I'm not following a mad libing. Um but let let me let me take that idea of the
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geography and try to show how the church has refused to let go of that. The geography of holiness. All
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right. So that's the the thing we talked so much about.
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Does anybody want to venture a guess where we see the geography of holiness in the in the church? Well, yes, the altar or really more than that, the
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architecture, especially of the cathedral, but not only the cathedral. Okay? But if you look at the architect architecture of the medieval cathedral,
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you see in miniature the miniature the camp complete with its tent of meeting and its holy place and then the holy of
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holies that only the priest can enter. You have the mediatorial priesthood, but then you have essentially the the uh the uh revivification of the of the
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geography in church
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architecture. Now, you may think, well, well, I'm not only a Protestant, I'm a Baptist, so I mean, I don't go for any of that stuff. But really, we do. I mean, it's fairly common for even
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unbelievers to think that a church is somehow a holier place, right? Or we we we go to the church and and that we have to do it in the church because that's that's getting closer to God. God is in
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church. No, I mean, we meet in a building, but we don't meet in a building because God's there. God is there when we meet in the building. He
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comes with us and goes with us. That's that's the truth of scripture under the new covenant is now that geography has been in a sense blown away. And yet we
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want to constantly keep rebuilding it, reestablishing some type of geography along with the clerical priesthood. And we want to say, as I said to Moses, you go up and we'll stay
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here. you know, we want to have some representative to do the dangerous stuff, which we don't even consider dangerous anymore, and we'll just stay here and get what you bring back. So,
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this is, as I see it, this is this is what we're doing when we when we focus on the in our mind, even if we inadvertently or unc subconsciously think that there are different parts,
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you know, um it's very easy, for example, to think of that room upstairs as being holier than this room down here. down here. Because down here we just have Sunday
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school and lunch in. And up there we worship. Is is that not easy to think that? And so somehow that's the and and that's the sanctuary. We use that word,
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don't we? The sanctuary. Um we're using Old Testament tabernacle or temple terminology and we're using it incorrectly. In fact, we're using it kind of
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kind of selfdeceptively. All right. So that's different. Um, redemption is purely grace. Well, that's not that's not different at all. I mean, that doesn't change. Um, except that it is now
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full. Um, our Exodus or our uh redemption is full and complete in Christ. Whereas the generation that left
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Egypt, all but two of them perished in the wilderness. And and the writer of Hebrews makes it very clear that it was because of their unbelief. And so we see that that the call of God in the Old
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Testament was not 100% effective in the sense that not 100% of the as of the Israelites were in fact saved. Okay?
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Whereas you cannot be in Christ and not be saved. Of course, you can be in the church and not be in Christ just as you could be in Israel and not be Israel. So
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that's still true. And then this the fundamental issue is approach to Yahweh. Um but once again there's a difference in that it's no longer
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no longer mediatorial. Now we come boldly to the throne of God because the veil has been removed. Okay? So that's a that's a real big difference. The Israelites were were
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undeniably approaching Yahweh and were blessed in doing so and forgiven and atoned when they brought their sacrifice to the doorway of the tent of meeting.
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But they didn't go any further. And in fact, only one man one day a year came into the presence of Yahweh. So in that sense, we are so much
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better off. Hebrews 4:16 where it says we come boldly. In fact, we are we are admonished therefore enter boldly into
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the to the throne of God. Okay? So it's no longer
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boldly into the throne room of God. Hebrews 4:16. So I guess to to summarize this section of the
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of the summary, what we see in all this does not radically change when we come under the new covenant in the sense
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that what was true of Israel as the people of God in the midst of the nations is true of the church as the people of God in the midst of the nations. that the Israelites approached
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God for their for their blessing, for their atonement, for their um for their sustenance. That hasn't changed. We're not now all of a sudden on our own.
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We're we're actually admonished to come into the throne and to pres to cast our anxieties upon him. You know, we're we're told to come into his presence. So, that approach to Yahweh is still our
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goal. is now we have a new and living way. So, um let's just take a look at some of this. Does anybody have a
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comment or question so far about this this just this overview of where we've been? Because I I want to do it um in the actual sections that we've studied.
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Just get fed up with it. Well, I think that that that that thinking that it was such a burden
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is is largely a product of um Protestant thinking in general as to what the Old Testament was all about because we've been basically taught from really from Luther on that
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the Old Testament was an unbearable burden that it was a works salvation and yes it was supposed to teach us it was to lead us to Christ but only because we
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realized how we could not we just completely fail. We can't do it that way. As if there was a if we could have done it that way, it would have been okay. David says, I think it's David in
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the Psalms. Oh, I have it in the notes. Um, and I actually have it. Let me see if I can find it very quickly.
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Absolute. It was a des Yes. It was the desire of their heart. Listen to this psalm and understand that this is representative of faithful
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Israel. Psalm 10. I'm pretty sure it's David's. No, that's not it. That's that's the mocker. I'm sorry. Um, yeah, that is that is the scoffer.
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Ah, I thought I had written it down. Basically, um, ah, I'm gonna miss it. I'm going to paraphrase it. Do I
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have it in the notes? Did you find it? Psalm 84. Okay. What page is that on? Thank you. I didn't want to paraphrase it because I know I botch it. Um, thank
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you. For a day in your courtyards is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God. That's the entrance
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of the tent of meeting. Okay? I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness. It wasn't this feeling of
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guilt and fear and burden. They desired to approach God. They did these things, the faithful ones among them, because they desired to
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approach God and they recognized him as a holy God. That can't have changed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, right? That's that desire should be in
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each of us as it was in Moses or David. They wanted to be near God. A day in your courts is better than a thousand
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elsewhere. And so all of this still remains the paradigm of the church's life, its existence in the world. And apart from all that we see in the Old Testament,
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the church has no meaning. It has to make up its own. And I would submit to you that that's what the church has done for most of the last 2,000 years. It's
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made up its own identity and its own purpose. And it continually does that. it because it doesn't understand that its purpose is already laid out for it
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in the scriptures of the Old Testament except seen now through the lens of a completed work of a finished
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sacrifice of a torn and removed veil and yet all the imagery is still there. So we envision ourselves as believers. We envision ourselves as the people of God
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dwelling in the presence of God and God dwelling in our midst. And yet then we recognize the tension of Leviticus that in order to maintain that relationship
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and again I don't mean you can lose your salvation but it is possible for a ch church to lose its lampstand right it is possible for the spirit of God to depart
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from a congregation is it not it doesn't mean that the individual believers within that church have lost their salvation but that church as it were has lost its lampstand
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So that that whole and what is the um what is the criteria? You shall be holy for I the Lord am holy. So the criteria for that
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continued dwelling in the presence of God and his blessed dwelling in our midst is the purity and holiness of
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Leviticus. When we read the holiness code, hopefully you'll see that many many of the provisions that are in that, they are not ritual. They do not involve the shedding and manipulation of blood. They
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simply involve things like not not gleaning your grapes twice, not harvesting into the corners of your field, you know, things like
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that. And you think, what's this all about? Um, it's really about how it's about the one anothers of Paul. It's the one and others of Moses is Leviticus 18-27. And we take the one and anothers
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of Moses and we read the one and anothers of Paul and we basically summarize and said, you know, think of others as more important than yourself. Have this attitude which is in Christ Jesus. Okay. So the similarities are
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remarkable, but now we're empowered by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So it's this and more. Okay. But without this, we really have to kind of
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come up with our own thing. Well, what is the church? You know, in the dispensational point of view, we're really at a loss because we're told that the Old Testament scripture has nothing
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to do with the church. And therefore, we don't we don't even have an operating manual for this thing. We don't have an instruction manual to put the pieces together. And so, we've kind of done our
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own thing for 2,000 years in different versions. And largely because we don't spend any time in the Hebrew scriptures to see what God meant when he said, "You are my
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people and I am your God." Okay? You will be my people and I will be your God. Or you will dwell in my presence and I will dwell in your midst. Okay? So let's look at some of the the the
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sections that we've been through. All right. We start um just a general outline uh as a summary. You have the
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the priestly consecration. Leviticus 8 through10.
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Then the purity the purity laws, Leviticus
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than the holiness school. Now, first thing I would do is say that's the primary that's the that's halftime right there. That's where we
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are. And this is halfway through the book thematically because as I said tabernacle 17 times, tabernacle twice. Okay? So everything is oriented around
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the approach of Yahweh, approaching Yahweh. Okay? So everything up here is
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Everything down here is here is dwelling in the presence of
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Yahweh. And the common denominator between the two is the holiness of Yahweh. And so within what we've been through so far, there are two key
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chapters around which everything orients itself. The first one is Leviticus
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10? What happens? Levit Leviticus 10ab and 10ab and Abhu, right? And immediately afterward, what does Yahweh say to Aaron? By those who come near me, I
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shall be holy. Okay, so Leviticus 10, this is the the first um watershed.
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There's the death of Nadab and Abhu. And then there's the statement by those who come near
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me I shall be holy.
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Everything before that is moving inexurably with inexurably with excitement. The tabernacle has not only been erected, but the shikina has descended upon it so that even Moses couldn't go into the tent of meeting.
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And now we have all the sacrifices and okay, this is how you approach Yahweh. And then we see the high priest decked out in his priestly regalia. and we see his sons and everything is clean and
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shiny and it's it's gonna get started and then Naab and Abihu are consumed by the fire of fire of Yahweh and it's as if God says don't get
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too familiar our God is a consuming fire by the way that's from Hebrews okay our God is a consuming fire so yes you are
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approaching you dwell in the presence of God you are approaching a holy God. But don't forget it's a holy God. Like Naab and Abbey who forgot and boom, there is
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a direct parallel. I I I often don't see it in commentaries on Acts, but I I've never thought otherwise as long as I can remember, but Ananas and Safh are the
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Naab and Abbew of the church. And one of the problems that the Old Testament and the New Testament both remind us of is that because God does
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not manifest his wrath in such immediate ways, we think he's fine. We think he's happy. And so you have this, but you
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don't have another one. You know that priests of Israel in the ensuing generations are going to do it wrong. The prophets tell us that. But
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this is the only time that the fire leaps from the altar and consumes them. And I cannot believe the Naab and Ananas and Saf were the last professing believers and I'm going to say they were
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believers no reason otherwise to lie to the Holy the Holy Spirit in 2,000 years. Has no one else lied to the Holy Spirit? Has no one else
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sold a piece of property and pretended that the half of the amount they gave to the church was the entire amount? No one's done that. No one's tried to defraud God in the church for 2,000
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years. That's not believable. And so God does not do immediately what he has promised to do. And so here's another similarity only that's on a negative
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Um yeah, this is where Psalm 10 and uh second Peter come in. So I did have them just in the wrong place. All right.
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10 talking about the scoffer. That's in Psalm one as well. He sits in the lurking places of the villages in the secret places. He murders the innocent. His eyes are secretly fixed on the
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helpless. He lies and wait secretly as a lion in his den. He lies and wait to catch the poor. He catches the poor when he draws them into his net. And so he c
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crouches. He lies low that the helpless may fall by his strength. He has said in his heart, "God has forgotten. He has
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hid his face. He will never see me." Okay, that that attitude is I can get away with this. And then that's in Israel. And then um Peter says in his
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second letter, "Behold," he said, "beloved, I now write to you the second epistle." In both of which I stir you up to pure minds by way of reminder that
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you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and of the commandments of the apostles of the Lord and Savior, knowing this
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first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts and saying, "Where is the promise of his coming? For since the
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fathers fell asleep, all things continued as they were from the beginning of beginning of creation. For this they willfully forget that by the word of God the heavens were
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of old and the earth standing out of water and in the water by which the world that then existed perished being flooded with water. But the heavens and
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the earth which are which are now preserved by the same word are reserved to fire for fire until the day of judgment and the predition of ungodly men. You see the the idea creeps in that
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because God doesn't do anything about it. He doesn't see. And and we we lose the lesson of Leviticus 10 and so did the Israelites.
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But we also lose the lesson of Acts five. and so has the church. And yet, it's in Hebrews 10 that
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we read that it is it is a is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of God and that our God is a consuming fire. So, the nature of God is revealed in these
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verses, but because it doesn't always manifest itself immediately. In fact, it rarely does, we tend to forget about it and we think like like the psalmist is writing about the wicked man. God
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doesn't see. He doesn't know what I'm doing. He has forgotten. So, Leviticus 10 is is one of the key verses of what we've studied so far. And then the next one is Leviticus
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16, the day of atonement. That that is the the second one because what it teaches us is that
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no matter no manner, excuse me, no manner nor quantity
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suffice. And this is really reading Hebrews 9 and 10 back into Leviticus 16. But then when you go back to Leviticus 16 through the lens of Hebrews 9 and10, it works. It's it's quite clear that the
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day of atonement having to happen at all meant that all of the blood that was shed every day throughout the year was insufficient to cleanse the tabernacle. But it also teaches that that this is
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something that they might not have seen in Leviticus. But what the writer of Hebrews sees is that this is all a parable. That's in Hebrews 9, by the way, verse 9. This is all a parable.