Holiness
is a Practical Thing
Lev.
17-20
May 23,
2010
Let’s talk about holiness again. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a famous Russian
novelist and social critic once said, “I have spent all my life under the
Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal
scale is a terrible one indeed. But a
society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man
either.” While we are not a Communist
country, we are quickly headed toward being a Socialist nation. With that in mind, I would have to agree with
Solzhenitsyn; it takes more than good laws to make a good people and a good
society. In our world today, not
everything that is legal is moral or biblical.
Some human activities that courts sanction and society defends, God will
one day judge as detestable sin.
Chapters 17 through 20 constitute a legal code for the
people of Israel, touching every area of their
personal and public life. The emphasis
is NOT simply on justice or civic righteousness, as important as they are, but
on HOLINESS. Going back for a moment to
last weeks lessons, remember that Israel was God’s people and the law
was God’s law. The Lord said to them,
“Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God. And you shall keep My statutes, and perform them: I am the Lord who sanctifies
you” (20:7-8).
The motivation for Israel’s
obedience had to be more than fear of punishment. The people also needed “in their hearts” a
desire to please God and a determination to be a holy people who would bring
glory to His name (19:3-6). Obeying the
law and having a holy character are NOT necessarily the
same thing. I well remember when the
reason for my obedience to my father changed from one of fear of punishment to
one of love and respect.
Twenty-four times in these four chapters you will find
the declaration, “I am the Lord!” God
was giving His people divine laws that expressed His holy will, laws that He
expected them to respect and obey. While
obedience to the law is not God’s way of salvation, a love for holiness and a
desire to obey and please God are certainly evidences that we are the children
of God (1 John
3:1ff).
These chapters deal with four special areas of life that
must be respected and kept holy: the sanctity of blood, or life (chapter 17);
the sanctity of sex (chapter 18); the sanctity of the law (chapter 19); and the
sanctity of judgment (chapter 20).
1. THE SANCTITY OF BLOOD (Lev.
17:1-16)
I did a little research on the word “blood” and found
that it is used around 460 times in the Bible, 362 of them in the OT. In Leviticus chapter 17, you will find it 13
times. In verse 11, you will find a key
verse on the importance of the blood in salvation: “For the life of the flesh is
in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for
your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul”. Atonement means payment.
Long before medical science discovered the significance
of the circulation of the blood in the human body and its importance for life,
Scripture told us that the blood was the life.
When a sacrifice was offered and its blood was shed, it meant the giving
of a life for the life of another. The
innocent victim died in the place of the guilty sinner. Throughout Scripture, it is the blood that
makes the atonement. Any theology that
ignores or minimizes the blood is NOT founded on the Word of God. And would you believe that there are even some Baptist who want to take songs about the
precious blood of Jesus out of our singing?
The
offering of food (vv. 1-7)
This section goes a lot deeper than what you see on the
surface. The Jews did not eat a great
deal of meat because it was too costly to slaughter their animals. The law stated here prohibited them from
killing their animals for food anywhere inside or outside the camp. Any animal used for food had to be brought to
the altar and presented as a fellowship (peace) offering to the Lord. Think on this for a moment in conjunction
with your meals and the blessing you do or do not say before you eat. Our blessing should go a little deeper than
“God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food”, if you know what I
mean. God’s law required that the blood
of an animal must be offered only to the Lord and only at His
altar.
What God is doing here that we have probably missed is
that His law dignified ordinary meals and made them a scared experience. The slain animal was NOT just a piece of
meat; it was a sacrifice presented to the Lord.
According to verse 4, slaying an animal away from the altar was the same
as murdering the animal, and God wants us to treat His creation with greater
respect. When we thank God at the table
for our food, we are not acknowledging only His goodness; we are also
sanctifying the meal and making eating it a spiritual experience. How long has it been since you thought of
that hamburger as a spiritual experience?
Well, that’s too long!
Also, by bringing the animal to the altar, the offerer was seeing to it that the Lord and the priest each
received their rightful portion. There
is a NT principle found here but you have to look real close to see it. Matthew
6:33 says to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these
things shall be added unto you”. Can you
see that here? If we give to God what is
God’s, there will be plenty left for us.
The fellowship meal at the house of God would glorify God and satisfy the
needs of the one offering and those who ate with him.
The
offering of sacrifices (vv. 8-9)
Even if the offering you were bringing was a lawful
sacrifice to God, it had to be brought to the altar and the blood shed
there. There was one tabernacle, one
altar, and one ordained priesthood, and the people had to respect God’s
order. I wish we had time to go into God’s order
and maybe we will someday.
These laws were later modified when the nation went into
the land of
Canaan (Deut.
12:1-16). In the Camp of Israel, no one
was far from the tabernacle. Thus
bringing an animal for a fellowship offering would not pose a problem. But in the land of Canaan, distance would create a
problem. Therefore, the Lord allowed the
people to kill animals for food at home without having to bring them to the
altar. However, all sacrifices had to be
at the altar, and nobody was permitted to eat the blood.
The
eating of blood (vv. 10-14)
The blood is the life of the creature and the blood is
God’s ordained means of atonement, and it must not be treated or taken
lightly. This goes all the way back to
Noah in Genesis 9 and was
repeated often in the law (Lev. 3:17; 7:26-27; Deut. 12:16, 23-25; 15:23). The early church included this regulation in
its instructions to Gentile converts (Acts 15:23-29). In many heathen religions, it was a common
practice to use blood for food, which explains why God warned even the non-Jews
in the camp not to violate this law.
Before preparing his meal, a Jew out hunting had to be
careful to drain out the blood of the animal or bird he had caught. The blood then had to be covered with earth,
giving it a decent burial, as it were.
Kosher meat has had the blood drained in the prescribed
manner.
The
eating of animals found dead (vv. 15-16)
Since meat was scarce and expensive, the chance finding
of a dead animal in the field might appear to be a favorable event. Personally, I don’t see it that way. I don’t need a law to tell me not to eat
“road kill”. A carcass was considered
unclean and if you touched it, then you too were unclean. No good Jew ever wanted that to
happen.
Believers today need to appreciate the importance of the
“Precious” blood of Jesus. Read
1 Peter 1:18-19. And what else does the “blood” of Jesus do
for us?
1.
We are justified (Romans 5:9)
2.
We are redeemed (Eph. 1:7)
3.
We are washed (Rev. 1:5)
4.
We are sanctified (Heb. 13:12)
5.
We are brought near (Eph. 2:13)
6.
We are cleansed (1 John 1:7)
And to top it off, the church was purchased by the blood
of Jesus and therefore is very precious to God (Acts 20:28).