What Is Good?

Introduction

Well, thanks for coming back this afternoon. If you’ll open your Bible to the book of Leviticus, we’ll study from this passage of scripture this evening. This afternoon. I hope you had the chance to read this ahead of time. I was kidding last night when I said if you didn’t, that I would read it. Because I guarantee you by the time we got to chapter 10, we would all be asleep, myself included. It is one of the more difficult sections in the Bible to read. But there’s some wonderful stuff here, and I hope by the time we’re finished that uh maybe you’ll have an appreciation for some things uh that you didn’t think about before. So uh put your bookmark there, probably in the first uh two or three or four chapters.

We are not going to do an exposition of this, and so if that’s what you were expecting, uh you can breathe easier uh this afternoon. Uh it’s it’s been enjoyable to be with you. I’ve appreciated your kindness. Uh uh y’all are feeding me like a king, and uh that’s uh very kind of you. I don’t I don’t eat like this at home, so uh I’m I’m gonna go home and be mad at Tracy if she doesn’t pick up her game uh somewhat. Uh but I do thank you uh for your hospitality. And it’s been enjoyable to visit with you. Several of you have asked about my folks, about my mom. Mom’s doing well. Uh and many of you knew dad. He’s preached here. I don’t know how many times dad preached here through the years.

And so if you knew my dad, then you you knew that what kind of person he was. You didn’t have to be around him very long uh before you figured out he’s uh encouraging and kind and uh uh happy and optimistic and uh positive and uh you know, one of those personalities just kind of make you sick uh if you’re around them very much. And and and I say that on purpose because in our family, the running joke, and it’s been this way ever since I was a teenager, is that I was placed on the earth to balance out my dad’s optimism. Uh because I am the family cynic. Uh, and if you want to know how can you can be a Christian and a cynic and you want to have that philosophical discussion, we can later.

Believe me, it happens. I deal with it. But I am the pessimist and the curmudgeon in the family, and uh it is a source of humor all the time. My sister uh gave me a t-shirt this year for Christmas that said uh scientists tell us that the world’s made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. They forgot morons. And so those are the kind of gifts that I get from my family, and I think they’re wonderful. I I mean, I agree with the sentiment completely. And I tell you that because one year mom and dad uh uh for Christmas gave me a Murphy’s Law calendar. You are you familiar with Murphy’s Law? If you’re not, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, which is true. I mean, that’s a truism.

Pretty sure God intended to put that in the Bible somewhere. Uh and so every every calendar day, when you tore off the date, the next day had some negative, pessimistic view on life, uh little proverbs. And I’ve still got a bunch of these things stuck around in my office uh from the years, and this has been years and years ago. Uh my favorite one has nothing to do with the lesson, but I gotta tell you, it’s called Hanlon’s Razor, and you’ll appreciate this. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, uh, which uh has a lot of truth. But there is one that’s pertinent to our study. One day on the calendar, I flipped it over and it was uh a proverb, if you want to call it that, called Chris’s Comment.

I don’t know who Chris was, but here’s what Chris had to say. You always have to give up something that you want for something that you want more. And if you think about that for very long, that that is basically true in every aspect of life, but it is a wonderful description of the concept of sacrifice. That you give up something that you want for something that you want more. And as we study our Bibles, what we come to appreciate is this principle has long been an important part of a relationship between man and God.

And man started dealing with life in separation from God. God started making, offering requirements if man wanted to have fellowship with him. They had to make sacrifices. And the point of this is you give up something that you want or that you have, you make a sacrifice for something that you want more, and that’s the relationship with God. And you see it reflected from the beginning of the story of Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel because Abel is accepted by God because his sacrifice was acceptable. I don’t know exactly what God told them. We make a pretty good argument, I think, about a blood sacrifice. But God told them something because Hebrews chapter 11 says that Abel made his sacrifice in faith. In other words, he’s trusting what God has told him, and so he’s doing what God has told him.

We just don’t know what the instructions are. But it’s clear that those two men wanted to maintain some relationship with God, so they’re making sacrifices. You see it in the patriarchal age in the lives of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. They are seen very often in the incidents that God tells us about. They’re seen making some kind of sacrifice. And we don’t always understand those sacrifices. Genesis 15, when God underscores to Abraham that he’s going to give him the land.

And you’ll remember Abraham is driving away the vultures from this, and night falls, and Abraham falls into kind of a dream or a trance and sees a smoking torch burning and passing between the pieces of sacrifice. And we read that and go, I don’t get this. I have no idea what’s going on there. Well, uh, I’ll tell you what’s going on there. God told Abraham to do something if Abraham wanted a relationship with God. And what all that entailed, I’m not fully appreciative of. There’s a couple things that make sense. But the reality is he’s making sacrifices, even to the point that God tested his faith. You remember when he told him that he had to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, and then stopped him from such.

And maybe we can draw a conclusion or two, but we don’t have a clear picture. And then you get to Exodus, and the children of Israel come out of Babylonian captivity, I mean Egyptian captivity. God brings them to Mount Sinai and makes a covenant with them. And basically the covenant says, I’ll be your God, you’ll be my people, and here are the conditions. I expect you to obey. And if you obey, here’s what I’m going to do for you. And I’m going to give you a law, and I want you to keep the law. And the law offered a very detailed, uniform system of sacrifices. For the first time, we really can get a glimpse of what it is God wanted them to do. And so that’s what you find in the first ten chapters, basically, of Leviticus.

And you read through it, and it’s hard to make heads or tails of it, isn’t it? How many of you read this section before today? Oh, shame on you who didn’t read. When you read it, did you read all the details? Yeah, this is this is, I’m getting this. What you do is you read the first chapter, and you might make it through the second chapter. When you get to the third chapter, you start going, wait a minute, didn’t you start flipping back? Didn’t we just didn’t we just read this? This sounds a whole lot like that. And there might be a little difference here or there, but it becomes so tedious. Such detail, and a lot of the details bleed together, and they’re hard to read, and they’re hard to understand, and they’re just kind of nasty, ugly pictures.

That we start skimming. How many of you, when you read the first 10 chapters, skimmed the last eight chapters? You know, you go down to looking for a paragraph mark, and we’re going to go down and skip to the next part. And then we ask the question why in the world did God put all this in here? You don’t understand why the Jews needed it. Because this was their system of maintaining their relationship with God. They’re giving up something they want for something that they want more. And so you have uh sin offerings and you have burnt offerings, you have thank offerings, you have peace offerings, you have wave offerings, you have heave offerings. Uh, and and in all honesty, I have a hard time keeping them all straight.

Uh, and I’ve taught through Leviticus, I don’t have any time. Some of it’s just hard to understand. And I think they understood some things we probably don’t. But it still begs this question. Why do God put it in here for us? Romans 15 in verse 4 tells us the things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience that come to the scriptures might have hope. And I’m of the opinion that everything in the scriptures, in the scriptures for a reason. That we don’t get to pick and choose what’s important and what’s not important. And that means some of these kind of little obscure stories that you read every now and then or something God tells us about this person.

God wants us to understand something from these passages of scripture that sometimes we find very tedious and difficult. And that’s what I want to do for the remainder of our time this afternoon. I want to talk about some things that I see in the sacrifices in the Old Testament that we can learn that I think help us to not only appreciate why they are there, but help us to appreciate more about our own faith and our own service to God. And I would remind you of this. In the book of Hebrews, in chapters 8 and 9 and 10, the Hebrew writer makes the observation that the old law and the system surrounding the old law, the tabernacle and temple worship and the various and sundry aspects of the priesthood and those kinds of things are all intended to be what he calls shadows or images of the true.

1. When Someone Sins, Something Has to Die

In other words, they were representing on earth things that are real in heaven. I don’t know what heaven’s going to be like, but I do believe that the temple or the dwelling place or the throne of God will in some ways be familiar to us, that it will be somewhat like the tabernacle in the temple was. God says that’s exactly what it’s intended to do. To help us understand heavenly things. And I believe the same is true in regards to the sacrifices. So here are four things that I get from the Mosaic system that I want to share with you. There are many other things, but these are the ones I want to talk with you about. When you read this section, and especially if you lived through that time, one of the things that this whole system of all these sacrifices would have taught these people is that when someone sins, something has to die.

That’s point one. And I think that is the fundamental truth that needs to be underscored. That when someone sinned, something had to die.

It’s funny the passages you take for granted. When I first started preaching, had a Bible study with a guy in the area, and he had no religious background. He didn’t know anything about the Bible. And so we’re just doing basic fundamentals, helping him to understand what the Bible’s all about. And we read this passage the wages of sin is death. And he was not in any way uh adversarial, but he said, I’m I’m I need to ask you something that occurs to me. He said, why are the wages of sin death? Uh could could you answer that question? I thought it was a pretty good question. And he kind of caught me off guard because I I I wanted to say, well, because God says it does.

Uh but but clearly we we have to be able to understand that God’s got a reason for some of the things that he tells us. So I got to try and to work on that a little bit. And here’s what I get from that concept. Why is the wages of sin death? You remember when Jesus goes in John 11 to raise Lazarus from the dead? You remember the story? And Martha comes to him first, meets him before he ever gets there and says, If you’d have been here, our brother wouldn’t have died. Mary’s going to say the same thing to him later. But to Martha, Jesus says, Your brother’s going to live again, and she says, No, I know he’s going to live at the at the last day and at the resurrection.

And Jesus’ response to her is, I am the resurrection and the life. Which is kind of a theme that John follows throughout his gospel. He makes, he introduces Jesus in John 1. In him was life, and the life was the light of man. And I understand Jesus when he says that, not to simply say, I control life. I I think what Jesus is saying is, I am the source of life. Everything exists. Everything that that is animated is animated because I animate it. For those of you who are older, you might remember back in uh, I don’t know, if it was late 60s, early 70s, when uh there was uh a magazine article, uh a front and a cover, uh, and I think it was Time magazine that that said, Is God dead?

And there was a kind of a debate that went on uh about whether or not God really existed and whether God was alive. And and it occurred to me then, if God was dead, my understanding of God is we wouldn’t be sitting around arguing. If God was dead, we would have no life. Everything would exist, would cease to exist that is animated. Now think at what Jesus is saying.

Life exists because I exist. Okay? So that’s principle one. Why is the wages of sin death? God is the source of life. Well, what does sin do? Isaiah chapter 59, verses 1 and 2. Behold, the Lord’s hand’s not shortened that it can’t say. Your ears not his ears not heavy that he cannot hear, but your sins have done what? Separated between you and your God. So if God is life, and sin separates me from God, then what’s the wages of sin? I’m separated from life. That’s death. Now, that makes sense to me as I understand the Bible. And the problem with that is, if sin separates me from God and I am separated from life, and therefore I am dead, what can I do about that?

And the reality is I can’t fix that problem. There’s nothing in my power where I can, somehow or the other, remove the obstacle between me and God, which is the death that is a result of my sin. Because once I’m guilty, I’m guilty. And so what God did in the Old Testament is he allowed the children of Israel to make a substitute to kill an animal. And you see that in really in the first four chapters, especially chapter 1, which describes the burnt offering, and then chapter four, which describes the sin offering, and as you go through, you’ll notice they’re very often offered together. So if you look at Leviticus 1 and verse 4, in describing the burnt offering, what God says through Moses is he’ll put his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.

If you go over to chapter 4, and you look down at verse 20. And by the way, the way chapter 4 works is same offering for different people.

So you have the same offering for four different people, but it accomplished the same thing. Look at verse 20. He shall do with the bull as he did with the bull as a sin offering, thus he shall do with it. So the priest will make atonement for them, and it will be forgiven them. So people sometimes say there wasn’t any forgiveness under the old law. Yes, there was forgiveness. God forgave these people when they made these sacrifices. Now, we understand it’s because there’s a suitable sacrifice coming, but rest assured, these people understood that if I do this, God’s going to forgive me for my sins. And that’s what they, that’s why they killed these animals.

Does any of them. If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, let him offer to the Lord for his sin which he has sent a young bull without blemish as a sin offering. He shall bring the bull to the door of the tabernacle of the meeting before the Lord. So other words, if the priest sins, he has to get a bull, he has to take it to the to the tent or later to the temple. And you’ll notice in the end of verse 4, he’ll lay his hand on the bull’s head and kill the bull before the Lord. The person making the sacrifice is the person who killed the animal. They would put their hands on the head of the animal, take a knife, and cut the animal’s throat, and stand there with their hands on the head of the animal while the animal died by bleeding to death and essentially suffocate.

What do you think that did to them? Several of you have asked me about hunting. I’ve hunted my whole life. I enjoy hunting. And I eat, I eat what I shoot. But I’ll tell you the most uncomfortable thing about hunting. If you shoot a bird and you get up to pick up the bird and the bird’s not dead. Or if you shoot a big animal, a deer, and you get it to the deer and the deer’s not dead.

You have to pick up the bird and wring its neck, or however you’re going to kill it. The deer, you you generally, if you can get close enough and it’s safe, you could you cut his throat. And you stand there. And when you come up to that animal, the look in the animal’s eyes, I know nothing else to describe it but fear. They’re still trying to get away from you. They’re still trying to live. And what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to put them out of their misery. You’re trying to kill them. And it is hard. I have hunted for years and years, and it is still hard to pick up an animal and take his life away with my hands. It’s a lot easier to do from a distance with a gun or a bow.

And I have every intention of eating the animal, and God tells me that’s fine.

But these people weren’t eating the burnt offering and the sin offering. The only reason that animal was dying is because those people had sinned. And if they’re conscientious, don’t you know that they’re standing there with the hands on the head of this animal? Very often, maybe an animal that they’ve raised. And they take the knife and they hold the head of the animal and they cut the animal’s throat and they stand there while the animal’s gasping for breath and writhing around. And the whole time they have to be thinking, this is terribly unfair. I mean, I would think this. The animal didn’t do anything. He’s just out in the pasture. I went got him. I’m the one who sinned. And yet this animal’s dying, and he’s dying a gruesome death.

And I want you to appreciate that when the apostles would have gone after the death of Christ and preached that the Son of God was a sacrifice. That’s the picture they had in their head. We don’t think of it that way when we think about the sacrifice sacrifice of Christ, do we? We don’t think about standing over the cross with our hands on his head. Sometimes we’ll say, oh, I drove the nails, you know. But the fact that we’ve the ones that have put him to death, not because of anything that he did, but because of what we did. And that’s reflected in certain passages of scripture. Isaiah chapter 53 is probably the one that is the most readily comes to mind most readily. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Yet we esteemed him stricken and smitten by God and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was buried for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was on him. By his stripes we are healed. Oh, we, like sheep, have gone astray. We’ve turned everyone to his own way. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. And it’s easy to read that with our clinical kind of antiseptic view of the death of Jesus and not see it the way they saw it. Because they had all killed animals as sacrifices, Gentiles and Jews alike. And they knew what it was like to take an animal’s life, and you had no intention of using the animal. It’s just a waste because of your sin. And we need to learn to see it that way.

I think that’s part of the reason this is here. So that we will understand this is what God taught them for 1,400 years, so that when Jesus came along, they would understand the gravity and the horrendous nature and the substitutionary concept behind Jesus giving his life for us. It’s almost academic to us, but I don’t think it was academic to them. And take it one step further while we’ve got that image in our head. If you’re still there in Leviticus 4, I want you to notice what happens after the killing of the animal. I don’t know if this has changed your views. Sometimes people think, well, the priest was the one who killed the animal. No, the priest didn’t kill the animal. What the priest’s job was, beginning in verse 5, is to butcher the animal.

Then the anointed priest shall take some of the bull’s blood and bring it to the tabernacle of meeting and dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle some of the blood seven times before the Lord in front of the veil of the sanctuary. And the priest shall put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of sweet incense before the Lord, which is in the tabernacle of meeting. And he’ll pour the remaining blood of the bull at the base of the altar of burnt offering, which is at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. And he’ll take from it all the fat of the bull as the sin offering. The fat that covers the entrails, all the fat that’s on the entrails, the two kidneys, and the fat’s on them by the flank, and the fatty lobe attached to the liver above the kidneys, he will remove as it was taken from the bull of the sacrifice of peace offering, and the priest shall burn them on the altar of burnt offering.

But the bull’s hide and all of its flesh and its head and its legs and its entrails and awful, the whole bull he’ll carry outside the camp to a clean place where the ashes are poured out, and burn it on wood with fire where the ashes are poured out, it shall be burnt. That’s the priest’s job. You cut it up, you burn part of it, you put some of the blood here, you put some of the blood there, and then when you’re finished with this sin offering, you gather it all up. A bull, folks, we’re not talking about, you know, uh a little bitty animal. We’re talking about a big animal. And you carry it all outside the camp and you burn it. In the book of Exodus, in chapter, I think 28, if I remember right, yes.

Uh, we have a description of what the priests wore. Not the high priest. The high priest had these beautiful blue and purple and scarlet and gold robes, uh, and an ephod and a breastplate and a crown. But the average priest, the ones that would be actually doing this work in the temple or the tabernacle, they wore linen garments. And linen is essentially a light colored fabric, tan or white. Then I don’t want you to think this through for a second. You’re the first person in the temple that day to make a sacrifice because of your sin. You’re gonna have to kill an animal. If you’re a priest, it’s a bull. And you bring it in, the priest that’s on duty that day comes out, and he’s he’s wearing white garments.

He represents to you God. To God, he represents you. So he is the me, the mediator. And he comes out and you tell him, I have sinned and I need to make this sacrifice to God. And so he says, okay, well, let’s proceed. Kill the animal. So he kills the animal, and then the priest takes the animal. And he starts first with the blood. And he’s putting blood here and he’s putting blood there, and he’s pouring blood there, and he’s sprinkling blood on the veil. And then he starts taking the insides, the fat. And he’s pulling it out, and he’s cutting it all off, and he’s putting it on the altar, carrying it over there, and he starts burning it. And then he takes everything else, has to cut it up so he can carry it outside the camp and burn it.

What do you think those white clothes look like by the time he’s finished the first sacrifice? They’re not pretty and white anymore, are they?

I mean, your sin. Here’s what sin does. It takes something that’s pure and clean and good. The priest representing God. And by the time he’s finished dealing with your sin, he is nasty. He’s covered with blood, he’s covered with all of the stuff inside, probably covered with fecal matter, and he’s carrying this out, and he finally burns it. And when he walks back in, you have made him look horrendous. And this is what sin does. Sin takes the holy beings that we are created to be, and he makes us horrendous. And then you can take that idea and start running with it. If you’re a cattleman or a shepherd, if you sin a lot, you’re taking your very best animal. It’s costing you in regards to your business.

And it’s costing you in the time to get it up to the tabernacle. And it’s costing you emotionally. It’s costing you in so many ways. And that’s what sin does for us. Look at the death and the divorce and the heartbreak and the family destruction and the cultural abuses. And you look at what sin does in this world, and I want you to appreciate that these people understood if they were serious about it. That when I sin, something dies, and that is an ugly, horrendous picture.

2. The Power and Sufficiency of the Blood of Jesus

It’s the part we don’t think through, and I think it would have been the part that was the most obvious to them. Now, here’s a second observation. When you start thinking about these things and what this system did, I want you to also appreciate that as the apostles start talking about Jesus’ atoning sacrifice and the blood he shed, I want you to appreciate the power, the sufficiency of the blood of Jesus. The Mosaic system had a lot of sacrifices attached to it. For 1,400 years, they offered sacrifices every morning and every evening, except for the three years that Antiochus and Epiphanes halted temple worship under the Greek Empire. 1,400 years every morning, every evening. And then the priests coming on duty, they had to offer sacrifices for themselves.

And then there was a Sabbath day sacrifice every week. And then there are new moons or various and sundry monthly sacrifices. And then there were the great feast day sacrifices three times a year. And one of which was the Passover, which meant a sacrifice for every 10 people, and then you got the thank offerings, if you’re just grateful to God and you want to offer him a sacrifice in that regard, the peace offerings that maintain relationship with God, the burn offerings and the sin offerings that were intended to deal both nationally and individually with the priest, and you start adding that up, and can you imagine how much blood was shed during the Mosaic era? I’m not a mathematician, but if one animal was killed every day for 1,400 years, that by itself is 511,000 animals.

When Solomon dedicated the temple in Jerusalem in 2 Chronicles chapter 7, he offered 22,000 oxen. Typical bowl. 10 to 15 gallons of blood in one. 120,000 sheep on the same day. Hezekiah reinstitutes the Passover during his reign. And everybody is joyous and they bring their sacrifices. There’s not enough priests, and the temple courtyard is absolutely full of Levites who are now killing the Passover sacrifices. And you start thinking about the temple and what the temple really looked like. Or the tabernacle before it. And, you know, Solomon’s temple was gilded. It was gold plated. It must have been something with these huge brass columns and the labor out in front that sat on the backs of these bronze oxen and the labors made of bronze and all these carts and silverware that’s that’s all made out of pure gold.

And you think, man, that must have been a fantastic place. But folks, it was all covered in blood. The great altar, what did they do with all the blood that they poured out at the base of the altar? The altar of incense inside the tabernacle, where every time they made a burnt offering, a sin offering, they had to put blood on the four corners of that. What did that look like after a while? What did the veil look like that they that they seven times every time a sin offering is made? They had to sprinkle blood on that on that curtain. And what to us would have been pristine and glorious and beautiful to them would have been stained and ugly. And I don’t know. I don’t know how they dealt with the volume of blood.

I don’t know if they cut uh trenches. Uh someone said, somebody told me the other day that they had read that maybe Josephus’ references that the great altar was built over the top of a runway where they had channeled the water that ran into the Kidron Valley, and that the blood, as it was poured out at the base of the altar, would drip down and eventually be carried off that way. It doesn’t really matter. I want you to think about all of those animals for all of those years. And the fact that Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 4 says, it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats can take away sin. Not one sin was ever accomplished by the sacrifice of all of those animals.

And you say, well, wait a minute. I thought you said a minute ago they were forgiven. They were forgiven. But they were forgiven because Jesus was coming. And Jesus offered his blood. And it was poured out. And you see this in Hebrews 8 and Hebrews 9 and Hebrews 10. He’s taking his blood before not the high priest taking it inside the veil of the temple, which represented heaven, but Jesus, the real high priest, offering his blood before our fathers in heaven truly as a sacrifice. And that blood is powerful enough to forgive. Listen, every sin, potentially, every sin that’s ever been committed or ever will be committed by every human being that’s ever lived or ever will live on the face of the earth. Do we appreciate the sacrifice of Christ?

When we observe the Lord’s Supper, do we really appreciate the power? We sing about it. There’s power in the blood. Do we really understand? After decades and millennia of animals being killed, one man, because he was God and He was perfect. Can forgive sins. And then here’s the more graphic part of that to me. Turn over to Hebrews 10 for a moment. It’s not simply about appreciating the sacrifice and the power that’s in the blood, but also about making sure that we are careful and use this as an incentive to our own righteousness. Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 26. This is what the Hebrew writer says. If we sin willfully after we’ve received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.

Now we need to think about that. You know, hey, I know I shouldn’t do this, but I’m just, you know, it’s a moment of weakness, and I did it. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did it. That’s not good enough, folks. If we sin willfully, after we’ve received the knowledge of the truth, there is no sacrifice. Don’t think that God’s just going to give you a pass. A certain fearful, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation that’ll devour the adversaries. Anyone who rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses of how much worse punishment do you suppose will he be thought worthy? Who’s trampled under the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?

We know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall in the hands of the living God. We don’t appreciate that when we sin willfully, what we’re doing in the eyes of God is we are grounding the blood of Christ underfoot. That’s the way God pictures it. I hear people from time to time say, Oh, I just don’t believe in a God that would ever send anybody to hell. How would you feel if you gave one of your children as a sin sacrifice for somebody? Only to them have them come and spit on the grave of your child. I’m going to tell you what, I love my kids.

And you disrespect them, and especially something like that. If one of them died for you, and by the way, let me let me make this very clear. Some of you are really good folks. I wouldn’t kill one of my children for you. Period. It’s not going to happen. You’re expecting my child to be a sacrifice for your life. Just prepare yourself to die. Because I’m not going to give them for you. But let’s just say for argument’s sake that I did, and then you went and spit on their grave. You better find another sacrifice because you’re about to need it. And then we look at God and think that God just looks at us and says, Oh, it doesn’t really matter how you act. I’m going to save you anyway, because I can’t bear the thought of sending any of you to hell.

3. God Pays Attention to Details

When people disregard the sacrifice of God the way that people disregard him. And young people, this needs to be an incentive to all of us, especially young people. You get in a situation where you know you’re about to do something you shouldn’t do, you better stop and think about whether or not you are insulting the Spirit of grace and trouncing on the sack on the blood of Jesus Christ. Because that’s what he says here. That’s a side of God you don’t want to have to deal with. And so I want you to appreciate the power and the sufficiency and the importance of the blood of Jesus. Third observation. This is the thing that jumps out. When you read it, did you notice any detail? Okay, this sacrifice, you have to put some of the blood here and some of the blood there, and some of the blood here, and you have to put certain part of the animal, you have to kill it sometimes, you have to eat it other times.

Uh you do this, you do this, you do this. I’m glad I wasn’t a Levite or a priest under that sacrifice. I guarantee you I’d had cheat notes, you know, under my robe. Let’s see, okay, what sacrifice are we doing today? Uh it the details are overwhelming. And I want you to appreciate that God pays attention to details. These atonements, Leviticus 4 and verse 20, he shall do with the bull as he did with the bull as a sin offering, thus he shall do and make atonement. What if you don’t do with this bull as you did with the sin offering? Well, then there is no atonement. That’s a condition that God placed upon it. And that’s the way that God’s law works. For these people, they had to follow a certain process for a certain sacrifice, and it had to be done appropriately.

And the condition of the sacrifice, if we went on reading all the way into Leviticus chapter 22, you’d find that you couldn’t just bring any old animal. You had to bring the very best one that you had. You couldn’t call your herd by making sacrifices to God. You mess up. You bring the very best thing you have. No blind, no lame, uh, no skin conditions, no problem with the animal. It has to be perfect. And what’s more is your attitude had to be right. We talked this morning about Micah chapter 6. And what does God want? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly. And that Micah makes the proposition. Do you just want me to offer more sacrifices? Well, part of the problem the children of Israel had was they eventually came to the point where sacrifices is what they did, but it didn’t change their character at all.

And throughout the minor prophets, Amos, Micah, Joel, Hosea, God keeps saying, Look, I’m sick of your sacrifices. What I want from you, I want righteousness to pour down like a mighty string. So it wasn’t just enough of make a sacrifice. You had to have the right attitude, and your life had to be changing. And if you didn’t do what God said, what happened to Nadab and Abihu. Do you appreciate that the story of Nadab and Abihu has an element that we sometimes miss? Maybe you haven’t missed it, but if you’ve never thought about it, the story of Nadab and Abihu is what happens the very first time the children of Israel start making sacrifices in the tabernacle. This is the first time. And so they’re going through the process.

And Moses is helping to guide them through it. And what Nadab and Abihu did is when God said, I’m going to show you my glory when you start this system, God did manifest his glory. And it says that that’s when Nadab and Abaihu went and took censors and put strange fire and offered strange fire to God. And God struck them dead and says, I will be held in honor by those who come before me. And that Nadab and Abihu did what God had not commanded. I don’t think they were personally, I don’t think they were trying to be rebellious. I think they were just overwhelmed by what was going on and wanted to offer more sacrifice to God. And so they did what God had not told them to do.

And what was their punishment? God struck them David. Why? Because they didn’t sanctify him. They didn’t do what he told them to do. They didn’t keep the details. What does that say to us? Well, Jesus makes it very clear. Not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord, Lord of the Kingdom of Heaven, He who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, do not the things that I say? Luke chapter 6 and verse 46. If you love me, keep my commandments, John 14 and verse 15. And I recognize the religious world around us says it doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you’re honest and sincere, but that’s not what the Lord said. What you read in the Bible is there’s details that God expects us to pay attention to.

And we need to be careful. We need to make sure that we do what God tells us. Even if sometimes say, man, that’s just kind of picky, isn’t it? Uh I’ve always been curious in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, Paul tells the Thessalonian Christians, withdraw from people who are walking disorderly. And when you look at the context, what are they doing? They’re not working. Can you imagine trying that in a church in this day and age? Hey, brother so and so over here is lazy and he’s not supporting his family. We’ve talked to him and talked to him and talked to him, and he won’t work. So we’re withdrawing fellowship from him. We’re going to ask you not to have anything to do with him anymore. Can you imagine?

I mean, we have a hard time obeying God’s commandments about a disciplinary action within a congregation in the most extreme immoral circumstances, much less something like that. You think that’s picky and unimportant to God? No. He told us to do it. And so it doesn’t really matter what it is. We need to make sure we have biblical authority for what we’re doing. People say, yeah, but you know, you’re doing this. What’s the difference in this and this? Do you have authority for it? Well, but you got a church building. Why can’t you have a fellowship hall? Well, we’re told to worship, gotta have a place to worship. We’re not told we’re supposed to provide for the social well-being and the fun and games that we all have.

We have authority for making sure we can build a building and have a place to worship. We don’t have authority for this other stuff. And we better learn how to use our Bible and to establish such, because God is picky about the details. That’s one of the principles you see here. You threw out Scripture. And like them, the condition of our sacrifice. You know, don’t give God half-hearted service. Don’t give him a little bit of your time. Romans chapter 12 and verse 1, I beg you by the mercies of God, you present your bodies a living sacrifice. A sacrifice was killed. It was used up. It was burned up completely. And what Paul says, okay, you don’t die, but you do die. It’s a living sacrifice.

Every day, what this is what life is. You give yourself to God. And I’m going to tell you, folks, this is why I think people aren’t more faithful than they should be. Because God wants everything. God wants priority. And when he says, many are called in few are chosen, the reason few are chosen is because there’s just not very many people who really honestly give themselves every day of their life to the service of God. We’ll throw him a bone here and there. We’ll do stuff as long as it’s convenient. We’ll be a part of a local congregation in the areas that we like. We’ll tolerate some preaching and not tolerate others. But a living sacrifice. And our attitude has to be right. The details of the Sermon on the Mount about being peacemakers and being pure in heart and being meek and hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

4. Religious Actors Going Through the Motions

What are all those things? All those things are attitudes. In Matthew 23, he condemns the Pharisees because the Pharisees tithe Mint and Addison coming and omit the weight of your matters of the law, justice and truth and mercy. We’ve got to have the right disposition. We can’t just act like we love the Lord. And then if Nate Daven to buy you, we’re killed because they perverted the word of God. What do you think? What do you think God has in store for us? You read this section and you can’t help but be influenced and impressed by the details. And then here’s my last observation. Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, God is frustrated with the children of Israel because they became religious actors. Anytime you have to do the same thing over and over, what happens is there’s the danger that familiarity breeds contempt.

That worship and sacrifice just become formalities. And that there’s no real heart service. It’s not making an impact upon you. Think of it this way.

Here’s some guy that lives under the old law, and he sins, and he’s conscientious enough that he knows that he needs to make a sacrifice, but he lives a half day walk from the tabernacle or from the temple. And so he gets up in the morning and he’s a farmer or a shepherd or a rancher, and he’s got work to do. There’s always, there’s always water to change and weeds to hoe and uh a back 40 to plow. If you’ve ever worked on a farm, there’s always work to be done. So he gets up and he knows I’m gonna lose a whole day, maybe a day and a half of work today to go make this sacrifice because this is what God wants me to do.

And so I’m gonna go get my best animal. My best animal happens to be a stubborn animal. I mean, have you ever tried to get an animal to go someplace that they don’t want to go? And so he’s gonna get this animal down to the temple or the tabernacle, and so this is work. We’re dragging, we’re pushing, we’re prodding to get this animal. And every step that gets harder, he becomes more frustrated because he’s already hacked off about losing a day’s work. So his attitude really stinks to start with. And he finally gets to the tabernacle or to the temple, and he looks up there, and there is a line that stretches a mile long of people waiting to make sacrifices. And you know it had to be this way.

And he’s looking at that going, I’m never gonna get done. And it’s just moving slow. Finally gets up to where he can see the priest. And the priest on duty that day is the slowest priest in the entire tribe of Levi. It takes him 45 minutes every time he butchers an animal. We’ll never get done. We’re certainly not going to make it to lunch and beat the Gentiles. And so he stands there in line and is more and more frustrated at what this service, how this service is inconveniencing him. And he finally makes it up to the front of the line, and he takes the knife and he cuts the animal’s throat. And at this point, there is no guilt. There is no concern. There’s no thinking about what’s happening here.

Let’s just get it done and get it over with. Butcher the animal, sprinkle your blood, get the carcass out of here, and let me go home. You know it happened that way sometimes. In fact, listen to what God says in the very first chapter of Isaiah. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, and give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. He’s talking to his people. Sodom and Gomorrah have been destroyed a long time ago. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, says the Lord? I’ve had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or lambs or goats. When you come to appear before me, who’s required this from your hand to trample my courts?

Bring no more feudal sacrifices. Incense is an abomination to me, the new moons, the Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies. I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They’re trouble to me. I’m tired of burying them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers I will not hear, your hands are full of blood. Were they making the sacrifices? Yes. What does God say? I’m sick and tired of your sacrifices. Why? Because it didn’t make any impact upon them. And I’m going to tell you something. Every time we show up at this building, and we sing our songs and we drink our little bit of grape juice and we eat our little bit of cracker, and we get frustrated because this song leader’s too fast, or this song leader’s too low, slow, or this guy’s too high, or this guy’s too low.

And then the guy that’s offering the prayer is the one guy that he’s going to thank the Lord for everything from the day of creation until the day of judgment. And it’s gonna, he’s gonna pray for 15 or 20 minutes, and you know it. You know it’s coming. And you dread every minute of it. You’re not listening to the prayer so you can amen him. You’re just trying to get through it. And then Ken gets up. Sorry, Ken. I mean, that’s easy for me to say at 226 when we start at 1.30. The preacher gets up. And we’re not gonna get 30 minutes today so we can get out. Oh, maybe he’s got something that’s really weighing on his mind. Maybe it’s something the elders have talked to him about something that really needs to be said.

And he says, folks, I I’m sorry, but we’re gonna be here probably. It’s gonna probably take me 45, 50 minutes to get through this material. And you and you look at your watch and think, good hawk. We’re gonna be here all day. And you only listen, waiting for it to get done. All you’re looking for is those words that say it’s invitation time.

And you go through the closing prayer and you say your amens and you walk out the door, and nothing that happened that morning makes any difference to you spiritually. You’re not better for it. And you didn’t help anybody else be better for it. Now you tell me that doesn’t happen sometimes in your life. It happens to all of us. It happens when you have a meeting and you have a Saturday afternoon service at 1.30, right after lunch, and you struggle to make it through without falling asleep. Because anytime you do the same thing over and over and over, there is the danger of losing a sense of what you’re trying to accomplish and just going through the motions. Jesus didn’t die on a cross with our hands on his head so that we can go through the motions, folks.

We have to be careful. The only way that worship is effective is not by a more dynamic song leader, more dynamic preacher, or let’s turn the lights down, let’s do a little kumbaya stuff here and there. Let’s get the feeling all going. I’m going to tell you what, worship’s only effective if you make it effective and if I make it effective for myself. And thinking of others, when it’s collective activity like singing and praying, if I’m making sure that I am teaching and monishing other people. When I participate, that’s the only time that worship becomes profitable. Just like the only time these sacrifices were profitable for these people is when they remembered what they were doing.

Conclusion

You always have to give up something that you want for something that you want more. That’s always been a part of God’s relationship with us, and it remains so. And God wanted us so bad that He gave up the very best of heaven. And it’s imperative we remember God’s sacrifice. And so the question is, why why is this stuff here? I think it’s here for the reasons we talked about today. So that we’ll understand what the sacrifice of sacrifice of Christ is really supposed to do, how we’re supposed to think of it, how it’s supposed to impact us, and how valuable that blood is, and how serious God is about all these things that He tells us to do. And now we need to be careful that we just don’t go through the motions in our service to God, but that our service is passionate and real and meaningful and intentional.

Things that were written forehand were written for our learning. The patience of the cover of the scriptures might have hope. And I hope this will give you something to think about. Because uh passages like this, the genealogies in uh in numbers or chronicles, oh the the tabernacle, uh the description of the tabernacle construction and Exodus. Oh, those those passages kill me. But God put them there for a reason, and hopefully we’ll be better for having studied them. So thank you for your attention. We’ll finish the same way we did this morning. Questions, comments? All right. Yes, sir.

So I I’m going to buy it attention.

He’s got to make the same DC day. I don’t think we do bad. We’ll all smoke. Like you see, we come to service. All parts of mine soldiers can be pulled. Oh God. All right. Again, I’m usually understanding why we come in here to learn about the improvement. You’re right. You’re exactly right. So we have a tool.

We gotta make it.

I have to go a long way. It could be hour or two or whatever.

Yeah, we have to make sure we we come with the right attitude and with the discipline. This requires discipline, folks. There’s a reason God tells us to practice temperance. So yes, sir. Thank you. Anybody else? All right. Well, I pretty here’s the good thing about the after lunch session. Nobody has any questions that I have to answer. So uh I appreciate you being here. Uh 10, 9.30 in the morning, 10th. We’ll have some closing announcement.