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I'm going to read from Leviticus 1, and I think the bulletin says 1 through 9 or something, but I've only made it through verse 4, or we're going to make it through verse 4 today. Now the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tabernacle, meeting and said, Speak to the children of Israel, say to them, When any one of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of the livestock of the herd and of the flock. If this offering is a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish. He shall offer it of his own free will at the door of the tabernacle meeting before the Lord. Then he shall put his hand on the head of the burnt offering and be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. Heavenly Father, I pray your blessing on this time together as we consider your scripture and as we make application to our own life. Guide me, I pray, as I attempt to speak those things you've placed in my heart, and I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Beginning today, we will be making use of the fourth week, as I've mentioned before, in each month to conduct a chapter-by-chapter survey of the book of Leviticus, and during the remaining three weeks, we'll be back at the life of Jesus Christ as presented to us in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This introduction is actually a very small portion of what I intended to discuss today, and so the conclusion will be, or the point of conclusion will be somewhat arbitrary, and we'll have to pick it up next month, and hopefully we'll keep in mind, and that would be one instance, I suppose, where the internet, the sermon on the internet would be of value if you wanted to go back and listen to it, the previous two are coming together on Leviticus one month from now. But the Bible tells us, concerning Leviticus, when we look at this, we need to remember that the Bible tells us that Israel was called to be a kingdom of priests unto God. And in the new Israel, we are likewise a royal priesthood, a kingly priesthood actually is what it would say in the Greek, or what it does say in the Greek. We are likewise called to that place of a royal priesthood. When we consider how to best demonstrate the messianic reign of Christ, the book of Leviticus is of special significance. You see, the primary way that we manifest the messianic reign to the world and minister to the world is in our priestly capacity. The prophetic aspect of the messianic reign is primarily a duty of the institutional church, the corporate body. And the kingly aspect is exercised in individual self-government. Self-government under God. And it has a bearing on the individual sphere of influence and it plays out especially in the ministry of the state. And the state is a minister, as we know from Romans 13, a minister of God. And so those Christians who participate in the state are expressing the messianic reign as king as they bring their individual lives under the authority of Christ and then begin to express that in their sphere of influence. Now this doesn't mean that the priestly ministry is somehow bottled up in the family unit indeed, but excuse me, it is though that the family unit, it is the family unit, excuse me, where the priestly aspect is best expressed. And in fact, as we do that, as this priestly aspect of the kingdom is expressed, it's then that we begin to minister to others as a church made up of families. Now I do need to mention, and I think you can already see that, that there is an overlap in each category. I don't want you to think that I'm saying that the church has no business expressing the priestly function of the kingdom, it does. Looking at 1 Timothy 3, 5, excuse me, 1 Timothy 5, 3 to 10, for instance we read this, Honor widows who are really widows, but if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents. For this is good and acceptable before God. Now she who is really a widow and left alone trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. But she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives, and these things command that they may be blameless. But if anyone does not provide for his own, especially for those of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Do not let a widow under 60 years old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been a wife of one man, well-reported for good works, if she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the saint's feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has diligently followed every good work. The idea here, of course, is that the family is the primary locus of the priestly ministry of the kingdom of God, but the church is supposed to step in where there is no family. And in this day and age, I would suggest to you that there are plenty of folk out there who have no family, either literally or practically speaking. And by the way, it's not just the widows we're concerned with. As we saw last week, that whole segment of society that is classified under the heading of the orphan, the widow, and the stranger, that segment of society with no advocate, that is who we're supposed to be concerned with. And it's a class, as I say, that's not limited to just those three. Anyone who is in need and has no family to look to for help, those are the people the church must minister to. But even then, it will be the family that ministers from within the church who performs the actually priestly duty, I suppose we could say. The Hebrew title of the book of Leviticus actually is, And He Called. It's a single word, which I won't try to pronounce because I'm sure I would flub it up. But the Hebrew title of the book is the first word, And He Called, the Lord called Moses. The title Leviticus that we are used to is somewhat misleading because it would indicate to our mind anyway that this book is about the priestly duties or the duties of the tribe or the clan, excuse me, the clans of Levi, which have duty in scripture for the temple and the tabernacle. But this is actually given to the priestly people, directed to the whole community of God. We ascribe this book to Moses, to the authorship of Moses, as we do with the remaining four books of the Pentateuch. There is a point of view within the church today that says Moses didn't really write this. I have no problem with the idea that Moses used a scribe, Jeremiah used a scribe, Paul himself used a scribe. He could have had a secretary who he dictated these things to. I kind of doubt it because he was a well-educated man. Nonetheless, there is no problem with suggesting that. The problem is when you say, as some commentators do, that the book of Leviticus was cobbled together in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah as a means of giving some continuity or stability to the reformed nation of Israel as it came back to the land and built the city, rebuilt the wall and the temple. And again, I don't have a problem with thinking the rabbinic tradition, for instance, is that Ezra brought together the canon of the Old Testament in its current form and edited it and brought it together. He was an inspired writer. We have some of his writings in the book of Ezra. So I don't have a problem with even that idea. But if we reject Moses as the author, at the very least the one who dictated the book, then we throw doubt upon the entirety of scripture because it throws doubt upon the insight and understanding of Jesus Christ himself. Jesus referred frequently to the book of Leviticus. He endorsed the authority of the book, you might say. He endorsed the inspiration of the book. There was an instance when a leper who was healed and Jesus said to him, don't say anyone to anyone else, just go to the priest, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifice that is required for those who are cleansed of leprosy. Now he was referring to Leviticus, what we have is Leviticus 14, verse 3 and following. Of course, it wasn't in chapter and verse when they had it. And I've always wondered, well you had to know the Bible really well. That's why Paul says sometimes, it says in one place this or it says in another place that because they didn't have the advantage we have of the chapter and verse. Anyhow, Jesus confirms the authority and the inspiration of Leviticus in that particular instance. He tells the leper who's cleansed, go and show yourself to the priest as is commanded. We also know that Jesus, when he was defending his disciples as they walked through the fields on the Sabbath and plucked that grain, the heads of grain and the Pharisees and the Jewish leadership said they're doing something they shouldn't do on the Sabbath. Now he refers to a portion of Leviticus chapter 24 and places that portion of the book on par with the commandment concerning the Sabbath. Both of them he considers inspired and authoritative in his argument defending his disciples. When he looks to the issues of circumcision and respect for parents and how they should be treated, he again looks to the book of Leviticus. Throughout the ministry of Jesus Christ, we see scattered these bits and pieces, if you will, that remind us that Leviticus is an inspired portion of God's word. We know that already. But it is something that we often forget. I asked this morning in devotion if anybody had ever heard a series on the book of Leviticus and we're a small group and the answer was no, but I don't recall, well I've never preached a series on Leviticus before, I've studied the book, but I've never preached a series and I'm not aware of a lot of folks who do that kind of thing, just in meeting with other pastors and fellowship with other pastors. It's a book that we tend to stay away from. That's to our own detriment. It is a book that is necessary to our understanding of the work of Jesus Christ, necessary to our understanding of what we are supposed to do as Christians as we portray Christ to this world. Leviticus is part of the five books of Moses. I've mentioned before that these five books are an expression of the covenant, the five points of the covenant. Genesis tells us about the sovereignty of God. He's the creator of all things and he creates a new house. Remember we've seen that, how this universal house is created in Abraham. So God is the one who does that. He's the sovereign ruler who creates and brings into being. Exodus is the second book, the second part of the covenant sequence, representation. And Israel is created as a nation at that point. And there is the law that is given to establish them as the representative of God on earth. It is in Exodus 19, verse 6 I believe it is, he says that you will be a royal priesthood to me, to all nations. So he establishes this representation, this hierarchy of order. Now Leviticus is the third book in the sequence and it is a book of law. But not just for the priestly caste or for the Levites, but for the entire royal priesthood. And because it finds its place in the covenant sequence in position 3, it should alert us to that fact. It is more than just a set of rituals for the priestly caste, it is for the entire royal priesthood. And of course the Numbers and Deuteronomy, Numbers being the book of sanctions. We see the judgment against Israel, they're not allowed into the land because of what they've done. They'll wander in the wilderness for 40 years until they all die, those over 20. Deuteronomy, the second giving of the law, the continuity, that second generation is now told, now you will carry forward what your fathers had rejected. And so there's a continuity. So we see those five aspects of the covenant sequence. Interestingly enough, and I suppose we should expect this, the book of Leviticus is likewise broken down into this kind of a covenant sequence, the presentation of the covenant. First seven chapters have to do with the sacrifices and it talks about, well we see from the very beginning as we're going to look at, it's about the sovereignty of God. God is the one who deserves sacrifice, nobody else. And so he, by instituting or regulating the sacrificial system, is saying I'm the one in charge. The second portion of the book, 8 through 10, concerns the priesthood very specifically and it is about representation. Verses 11 through 25, the bulk of the book is concerning law. Here's how you live as the royal priesthood. This is what you do and this is what you don't do. Chapter 26 has to do with sanctions, a very grim and graphic presentation of the expected blessings and cursings, that would be the grim and graphic aspect, if they reject the law of God. Finally, verse 27, it seems to be an addendum, an appendix, but it's not. It's about vows and evaluation and consecration and you can't make a vow, or I should say you wouldn't make a vow if you didn't expect there to be anything in the future with which to carry out this vow. So it's all about the valuation of a consecrated person or sacrifice or individual or sacrifice. It's about the future, it's what it's about, it's continuity. So there we see the outline of the book of Leviticus. The question that we might ask ourselves though, is there any value to us in this 21st century modern church? Is there any value in the book of Leviticus? We read this morning from 2 Timothy, all scripture given by inspiration of God. Remember when Paul wrote that 2 Timothy, they had just the Old Testament, the New Testament was in the process of being written, but in the mind of Paul and the apostles, any reference to the scripture, to the word of God was the Old Testament, it was good enough for them, they knew it well. They understood when they looked at the book of Leviticus, especially if you want to understand Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, you need to know Leviticus to a large degree. So of course this book has tremendous value to us just as all of scripture has tremendous value. All of this of course was the Old Testament when Paul wrote those words and today we have the Old and New. It is good for doctrine, teaching and ordering the church. All of scripture is good for the settled position of the church, that's what doctrine is about, it's the teaching and the dogma, if I can use a term that is often misunderstood, but the doctrine or teaching of the church, it's useful for that, Leviticus is. For reproof, for showing folks that that's wrong, this is a deviation from the proper approach. Correction, once you have shown someone that they have deviated from the norm, from the scriptural norm, here's the right way, reproof says don't do that, correction says do it this way. Doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness, you might say this has to do with the ecclesiastical or the spiritual aspects, our right relationship to God. So Leviticus isn't something that we can just dip into occasionally and glean off a little bit here and a little bit there as we look at the sacrificial system or the discussion concerning the day of atonement or the Passover ritual and so forth and say aha, there's something we can find in Leviticus that's of value. It's all of the book of Leviticus, all of scripture. Generally we read it through the lens of the accomplished work of Jesus Christ, no question about that. We cannot look at it and have some sort of a wooden literalism that we then try to apply to our situation because it doesn't work that way. It has to be done in the light of Jesus Christ and the light of what he's done. But Leviticus, like the rest of scripture, reveals the mind of God and it continues to play a role in confirming. our salvation. I think one of the reasons that the church, and I'm speaking in broad generalizations here, but the church at large is weak. I know that there's there's much strength still in our church, I mean in the church at large, but the church in America is weak because most Christians, and this I know for a fact, most Christians, and if you look at the statistical information, and I know you can lie with statistics, but most Christians don't really know the Bible very well at all. They will listen to a sermon on Sunday morning, or go to Sunday school, or maybe even a midweek meeting, but it requires more than the attendance at meetings to know the Word of God. It requires a desire to get into it and say all of it is important. And if it's hard to understand, that means I need to meditate upon it all the more, because this is the mind of God. We have it written down here. This is a fantastic thing if you consider it, because we as mere human beings have access to the very mind of God. It is something of a riddle, something of an enigma, a dark saying, and so it isn't something that is easily grasped and applied, especially when you look at a book like Leviticus. You think, good heavens, how in the world, as we're going to see though, how in the world can this discussion concerning the burnt offering have anything to do with me other than the fact that we know that Jesus Christ is the ultimate sacrifice? Well, it continues to play a role in confirming our salvation. It is part of the instruction booklet for the assembly of this gift of salvation. It's just that simple. And if you take your instruction booklet and you put some of it aside, and you think, well, I'm going to make my model airplane, but I don't like this part of the instruction booklet. It looks too complicated. And when you're all done, what have you got? You don't have a plane. You've got something with one wing, cockeyed, and maybe the landing gear is misplaced, so it probably won't even fly. So Leviticus is important, as is all of scripture. We must be willing to get into this book and understand it. It's also, obviously, typical of Christ in the sense that it's a collection of types. If we want to know and understand the significance of Christ's work, we need to know this book in a way more than any other part of the Old Testament, because it is here that we see the priestly people directed in the right relationship to God and, therefore, their relationship to the world. And that's what Jesus Christ is all about. He is about a right relationship with God that allows us to have a right relationship with Almighty God. It also reminds us concerning man and his needs, his condition before God. As we go through this, and today we'll just barely begin, and as I say, it was something of an arbitrary conclusion to today's teaching because I realized I was going to run out of time, but as we look at this scripture, as we look at the Leviticus, the book of Leviticus, I want you to think about God and His Majesty who condescend to have relationship with us and with His people in that era of the Old Testament, the Old Covenant administration, but based upon these particular rituals, these particular activities that would remind them. There is a great gulf that separates man from God. Can we then expect to impose the law that we find in Leviticus across the board with no change from its, the way that it's presented to us, I should say, here in the book? Well, we know that isn't the case. Hebrews 7.12 reminds us that with the change of the priesthood, there's likewise a change in the law. There is a completion in the law, a completion in this book that allows the proper use. It is now internalized rather than externalized. We're going to see as we go through this, and I don't need to belabor the point, but as we go through the book of Leviticus, getting harder to say that word, you're going to find out that it tells us a lot about Jesus Christ. You're going to find out that it will help us to understand the humanity of Jesus Christ. You think, well, I should understand that because I'm a human being as well, but we tend to place the humanity of Jesus Christ in a different category. Do you know what I'm talking about? We do that. You think, well, He's God, so His humanity is not like our humanity. It says it is, but really it can't be. It has to be something, a different special category, and that's not true. One of the things that will help us in our Christian walk is to understand that the humanity of Jesus Christ, in His humanity, He is just like us. He didn't have any advantage in His humanity over us. Do you understand that? There was no advantage. God didn't create a special circumstance for Jesus. When He was conceived in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit, and when He was born, and when He grew up, there wasn't some kind of a special bubble around Him, and it said on the outside, no admittance to Satan, temptation, or anything else that might, in kind of a long sense, go all the way around. You can't come in here. There is no special advantage to the humanity of Jesus Christ. Leviticus will help us understand that. And it is very important for us to grasp that, because it places us in a relationship to our Lord Jesus Christ that we probably don't enjoy. Well, we don't enjoy unless we understand that He is just like us. And the work of Christ allows for the proper use of this book. The ritual law of sacrifice, that's all fulfilled in Jesus Christ. There is, of course, a continuing application of His fulfillment. He's not sacrificed again and again, but He stands there in the heavenlies, in the Holy of Holies, on our behalf, and we'll be talking about those issues as well. But He is the final sacrifice, the final presentation of blood. We don't need to worry about those aspects of Leviticus as far as our conduct, but as far as our understanding of Jesus, they're very important. The ritual of purification, and there's a whole section on that. What if you have a skin disease, or a discharge, or this or that, or the other thing? If you're going bald in a funny way, what do you do? Well, you go to the priest. Well, we don't have to worry about that. The ritual of purification is finished because Christ fulfills all the ideals enshrined in the Old Testament law. I think it was Gordon Wenham that said that. Christ's priesthood is superior to Aaron's, and it renders obsolete all of those things that would somehow be considered an impediment to our relationship with God. Jesus sweeps that away. I'd like to know if there was something in the book of Leviticus that would help me regain my hair, but I'll go bald in the Lord and bless him for it. The civil law that's contained here, is that applicable? The answer is yes, but it is applied according to our understanding of Jesus Christ and his work. Remember when Del Tackett, I think it was, I don't remember which one it was, in the Truth Project, but you remember the situation? He talked about a fellow who had a cabinet shop, or wood shop, and wanted to obey the commandment in Leviticus about allowing folks to glean his field. We can't, or we could, but we're not supposed to, or called to, jab holes in the side of a combine so that some grain can spill out, and then the poor folk can come from Lewiston, or Spokane, or whatever, and pick up the grain in the field. That's not what we're supposed to do, but remember what Del Tackett talked about, and the fellow had the cabinet shop, and he collected all the fiber, all the dust off the floor, and sold that as well. Now when I worked in the lumber mill, both of them that I worked in, that's the way it was. Every scrap or shred of fiber was gathered up, and collected, and sold, because there was money in that. And so this fellow with the cabinet shop said, aha, I will leave that sawdust, that fiber, for the poor, and this was his cabinet shop, was in the city, you remember this, I'm sure, and allow them to come in after hours, gather it up, and sell it. That's how I can obey this law. Leviticus 19 is where you'll find that, 9 and 10, that law of gleaning. So the civil law that we find here, if you want to call it the civil law, the Bible doesn't really make those kind of designations. That's something we impose upon the scripture when we talk about civil law and so forth. These direct the way we're supposed to live, but that kind of thing is applicable. It is illustrated by the culture in which it was written, in which it was given, and it can be applied in any culture if we have just a modicum of understanding. Not a wooden, literal application, but a Christ- illuminated application. Finally, Leviticus I would call something of a book of common prayer. We've been using the book of common prayer in our worship service as we read, or as I read the collect, and as we acknowledge the church year. Leviticus is something like a book of common prayer. It guides the worship of the people of God, the community of God. It is something that is given to bring everyone together on the same page, I guess you'd say. In worship, we find, as we look at Leviticus, it involves the whole man, or the whole woman, the whole child, all of us, all of us, all of who we are, is put into this worship. So we study this to understand God, to understand Christ, to understand ourselves, to understand our ministry before Him. Now, I want to briefly look at, really, verses 1 through 3 here, concerning the burnt offering. The first thing we see, though, is that Moses is called by God from the tent of meeting. This is the tabernacle that was built. The initial call to Moses, remember how that was? They're in Sinai. Fire, smoke, trumpet sound. The people were terrified. Moses wasn't too happy about the circumstance himself. He goes up there for 40 days and 40 nights, gets the law. He goes back down. They're worshiping the golden calf. He breaks the tablets. He grinds the calf, puts it in the water. They're forced to drink it. He cuts the second tablet and takes it up there himself, the second set. And again, 40 days and 40 nights, where the smoke ascends like the smoke of a fiery furnace, where the sound of the trumpets is too loud to stand. The lightning and thundering is flashing. And this is God in His majesty. Well, now we see, dare I say it, a domesticated God. He's in the house now. And that's the term, actually, for the temple, not the tabernacle. But it's the house. He's at home with us here, with the people. The first portion of this tells us that God called Moses from the tabernacle, a Median. And He told them something about how they're supposed to worship Him. When any one of you brings an offering to the Lord, this is the kind of offering you bring. There are several different offerings. As we go through these, we're going to focus on each one of them individually. And so it's going to be something of a laser-like focus. I'm not going to discuss Christ as the one who fulfills the Passover or the one who fulfills the Day of Atonement or something. We want to focus on just the burnt offering here. And He says this burnt offering must be a particular kind of offering. It is a... In fact, what He says about the offering applies to all the offerings, but then He begins to detail the burnt offering. When you bring a particular sacrifice, do this. The first thing that we need to see here is the presupposition that He is worthy of our honor and to whom we must submit. We overlooked that. We should live that way though. That was what was expected here. There's a presupposition. I am worthy of honor. You should submit to me. It is right to submit to me. And I have the might to make you submit to me. It's not might making right, but those both are included here. That's how we need to live. We see that much right off the bat. They were expected to submit. It was just a given, if you will. There was no question. There was no argument saying, now listen guys, I deserve the sacrifice because look at what I did for you. And look at who I am. There was none of that in there. It was just simply, when you bring a sacrifice, do this. Okay, we accept that. We submit to you. We honor you. That is how we're supposed to live our life. And as I mentioned before, and I had some clarification on that this morning, but we should boldly proclaim, I'm submitted to Almighty God and I presuppose that that is the right thing to do. Those of you, when we're in the world, who disagree with us, we say, well you have your own set of presuppositions and I find them to be inadequate because God is the one who demands this submission and it rests upon the presupposition that it is right to do so and that he has the might to demand it. He says, bring the best you have. Offering of the flock, a domestic animal by the way, not something that you find in the field, but bring the best you have. The very best, without blemish. It would be like, and in this case, as we go through, we don't have time, we won't do this today, but it's either from the herd, the flock, or the birds. Now here's why. A rich man would have a herd. It would be assumed that he would have cattle and God says, if you're rich you bring me cattle. Not just any cow, but your prized bull. That's what he's saying here. The one without blemish, but the one most typical of the breed, if you will, your purebred prized bull. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine if we were to do that today? Here's the irony of this. We would say, good heavens, that would be very expensive. That would be, I mean, decimate my herd to bring my prized bull. That's what God says. If you're going to bring the sacrifice, you bring your prized bull. The very best, the foundation of your herd, you bring it to me and sacrifice it. Now we would think, good heavens, that seems uncalled for, and yet we forget that we're asked to give our entire life. We'll touch on that a little bit later, but I want you to understand this is what God is saying. Don't just bring any old thing. Oh, how about that one? He's never been much of a bull, I'll bring him. No, bring the very best you have. The one without blemish, the one who is the paragon of the type, of the breed, the prized bull from your herd. If you don't have the money for that, because you don't have a herd, then you bring your prized ram. The very best, the paragon, the type, the ultimate, the ultimate sheep. And if you don't have money for that, then you bring me a bird. A turtle dove or a parakeet. Well, no, not a parakeet, but a turtle dove or a pigeon, young pigeon. A parakeet wouldn't have been acceptable. The very best you have, from the herd, from the flock, and it is a holocaust, is the term. It actually, what it means in the Hebrew, the holocaust comes from the Greek, but in the Hebrew it means that which ascends. It's completely consumed. The very best you have to be burnt, you don't even get any so-called benefit out of it, because some of the sacrifices, as we'll see, the worshipper would partake of the sacrifice and meal, the priest would, some of it would be burned, some of it would be saved to be eaten up, and some of it would be burned outside the camp. In this case, no, everything. Your prized bull, and you bring that thing up there, and it is to be a holocaust, completely burned up before me. We don't have time to get into the issue. Originally, today's sermon was going to be submission, substitution, and slaying, and we don't have time to get in all that day. We'll have to cover it next time, but just as a looking ahead, it was the worshipper who had to kill the bull, his own prized bull, and it was his hand that would kill it. Can you imagine that? You would have to, we'll see in just a moment, this is a free will offering, you couldn't come there with any regret, thinking, oh man, I don't want to do this, my very best bull, and it's over. No, it is given over to God completely, a holocaust, a Ascending before God. The smoke of the sacrifice ascends before Him in a complete complete sacrifice. And it is a means of atonement. Verse 4, burnt offering will be accepted on His behalf to make atonement before Him. It covers over, it reconciles, it restores the favor. That's what atonement is all about. And as we said, it's of free will. God didn't say you had to bring a burnt offering. Nobody had to do this. There's some that they had to do. But this one nobody had to do. God didn't say you gotta bring me this bowl. But if you're gonna do it, He did say this. If you're gonna do it, it has to be the very best. You decide. You decide if you want to do it. Free will. Spontaneous offering. Something that arises from a desire to worship. A decision that is made as you gaze upon the herd and you see your prized bowl in whom there is no blemish. The one who is typical of the breed and you think to yourself, I want to worship God. I will freely offer that sacrifice. It had to be. Now, there is a true burnt offering of course that is Jesus Christ. Again, we'll look just at this particular offering. Jesus was submissive. The interesting thing is that He was both the offering and I'm the one who made the offering. But He was submissive. Not my will, He said. But thine. Even in the garden when Peter was trying to defend Him and he chopped off the ear of the high priest's servant Jesus said, I could call 12 legions of angels. I'm submitted to the Lord. Submitted to the Father. This also plays into the whole idea of His free will. But it is a show of His submission. Jesus Christ was wholly submitted to the Father. Now, again, we're talking about His humanity. In His deity, He is God. And I don't want to draw such a sharp division between the two that it is confusing. But when we teach and we consider things, sometimes we do need to separate out different aspects. Intellectual assent, heartfelt conviction and action. And you can't really separate them or you destroy it. There's no longer faith. But in order to understand them, we look at them separately. Likewise, you cannot separate the humanity and deity of Jesus Christ and still have the eternal Son of God, the Christ. But in order to understand this, we do need to step back and look at His humanity. In His humanity, Jesus Christ was wholly submitted. Here's the point that I'm trying to make here. Again, He is not somehow a different human than we. If He could be wholly submitted to God, so can we. Do you understand that? There was nothing going on there where He had a little special circuit that was plugged into His brain that all of a sudden, hey, hey, guess what? I can be wholly submitted. I don't even feel like not being submitted anymore. That's not the case. He was tempted to not submit. He was wholly and completely submitted in His humanity just as we could be if, in fact, we were in the position to say, Lord, I will be wholly submitted to You. The true burnt offering. Completely submissive and perfect without blemish. There was no doubt. If you look at Hebrews 2.10, 5.8-9, you'll see that God brought the circumstance about to make it clear that Jesus was He suffered many things. His obedience was perfected in the means that it was proven. The intensity of temptation was at its maximum and Jesus Christ never gave in. He knows the utmost extent of temptation's power and yet never gave in. God intended that to be the case. That there would be no question. You could never say, well, He only went so far and then God, remember, we're talking about true humanity. Well, it's different for Jesus because, after all, God, He reigned Satan in and that is not true. He was perfected and that means that He was tested to the utmost and so He was without blemish. There's more to it than that, though. He is the ultimate man, the perfect example of humanity. He is what mankind is supposed to be. Just like that prize bull is the apex, the paragon of that species, of that breed, Jesus is the paragon, the apex, the ultimate example of humanity. In His humanity. Not because He had some sort of a special sequence in His DNA that allowed Him to stand apart because He was a further step in the evolutionary chain. That is not the case at all. To think that is to embrace Darwinism. No, He's just like us, but He is exactly what man was supposed to be. We're not talking about His physical features. We're talking about who He is, what He was. His physical features, according to Scripture, were nothing important. The perfect sacrifice and absolute holocaust, the one who is given over to Almighty God completely. Of course, His death, we consider that, we consider also the fact that He is completely given over to Almighty God, again, in His humanity. It would be foolish for us to say that in His deity He is given over to God. That would be like saying I'm given over to myself completely. That doesn't make sense. Yes, there is a hierarchy of order in the Trinity. We won't get into that today because it is a very deep and ematic and difficult subject. But in His humanity, He was wholly given over to God, just as we can be. He is in atonement. We won't look there, but you can glance at Romans 5, 8-11. If you read the King James Version, you will find the word atonement there. It is translated as reconciliation. It means the same thing. This restoring of relationship, this covering over, this payment of a needful price. There is only one way to reconciliation. Paul talks about it in 2 Corinthians 5, 18-19, about Christ, the reconciler, and then Paul has a ministry of reconciliation. Jesus does that. Jesus, the true bird offering, brings about atonement, brings about reconciliation, and of course, the idea of His free will. John 10, 17-18. We are not looking at these today because of the time situation. But it is an example, and again, we mentioned from Matthew 26, as well, where Jesus said, I could call twelve legions of angels. It was holy and completely voluntary in His humanity. I am emphasizing that because I want you to see something. There was nothing about Jesus' human nature that was fundamentally different than ours. He wasn't a more highly evolved man. He was just like me, just like you. He was tempted with the same things, but never gave in, and that's hard for us to understand. We equate temptation with sin. You know why? Because most of us give in like that. And so temptation to us is almost exactly the same as sin. Jesus didn't do that. That's why it's so hard for us to understand because we are tempted and we dwell on a thought or we do something and we ought not. We'll step away from that if we're quacky as we ought to and say, wait a minute, wait a minute, I shouldn't do that. Maybe just for a moment. Okay, now move on. And so we've given in to temptation, haven't we? Yes, we move on from that and we need to ask for forgiveness, but we give in. And so it is difficult for us to understand that to be tempted and to reject temptation is not sin. Jesus Christ is completely like us in every way, and it was by His own desire, His own choice in His humanity. He said, I know who I am, I know what I'm going to do and I choose to do this. I freely choose to do this. Sacrifice myself on behalf of the people of God. Very quickly now, we are as a royal priesthood must be submitted as well. We are supposed to be in complete submission. We have an example in Jesus Christ. Indeed, we have the same advantage as Jesus Christ. We have the Holy Spirit. There is a difference, of course. We are not wholly consumed, if you will, by the Spirit of God. We aren't Christ. We are not in the same position, but we are in Him. And so we have the same advantage. And that is why we are held accountable for our behavior. If it was not possible, and I should perhaps add the term theoretically, if it was not possible for us to walk in righteousness completely, then we would not be held accountable for our behavior, would we? You don't discipline a young child for wetting the bed. It's an accident. Unless you've got something screw loose in your own head. Because you know that they didn't try to do that. They are not held accountable for that kind of behavior. We, on the other hand, are held accountable for our lack of submission because we have the capability to be wholly submitted to God. Granted this side of glory, we will not be. We cannot be. Likewise, as the royal priesthood, we must give our best. We must be the best. We must be the paragon of humanity. People should be able to look at us and say, there is what a human being should be like. I don't care what you look like. It's who you are and what you act like. I've seen Jesus Christ. Jesus was the very best. He was without blemish. He was the ultimate man. The ultimate human being. We should emulate that to the best of our ability. I won't go into it right now. We don't have the time, but that touches on everything we do. Everything we put our hand to should be an expression of this is to the best of our ability, what the ultimate human would do in Christ, unto the glory of Jesus and unto the glory of the Father. We are a holocaust. We are given over completely. Absolute surrender to Almighty God. We don't provide atonement, but like Paul, as we mentioned from 2 Corinthians 5, we have the ministry of atonement or reconciliation. The ministry of bringing others into this relationship in Jesus Christ. We, as the royal priesthood, have a hand, if you will, in this ministry of reconciliation. Of course, this is according to our free will. God does not compel anyone to do these things. God gives us the gift of salvation and we have the responsibility of assembling that. He gives us this duty of a royal priesthood, which we exercise within the confines or the context, I should say, of the family primarily, but we don't have to do it. If we don't, we miss out. If we don't, we need to wonder to ourselves, am I born again? If I don't want to do this, then am I born again? All of this is the expression of something that we freely offer, freely offered allegiance to Almighty God. It begins with a new creation which allows us the freedom to embrace the gracious offer of salvation. And as we live this life of grace, we continue to operate on the basis of free will. It's always that way. There's never a time in the Christian life where God compels us. We aren't forced to obey. The point is simply this. The life of the kingly priest is voluntary. And again, if we look at the example of the assembling of that gift, when we open that box, there are a variety of duties found therein. And our job is to put them together, display that priestly aspect of the kingdom. We can leave it in the box and ignore it, but we're going to miss out if we do so. I mentioned at the beginning of our time here that the priestly expression of the reign of Christ is best exercised within the context of the family. We touched on what Paul said to Timothy about the care of widows and discovered that the church does not have the primary responsibility to care for that segment of society. As we saw last week, there's an entire class of society that suffers because of the lack of connection to family. They have no advocate. They have no one to defend them or care for them. So, the priestly aspect of the kingdom finds its fullest expression in the family. There's a misunderstanding in the church today that the pastoral and priestly aspects of Christ's rule should come from the church or the pastor. To a certain portion of society, that's true. But generally speaking, that responsibility finds its fulfillment or is located in the church. The greatest expression of this is in the marriage covenant as detailed in Ephesians 5. This is the highest expression of the priestly function in the kingdom of God. There's nothing like that within the church within the church structure as polity or practice. Nothing like that. In that section of Ephesians, we see all of the priestly, all of the pastoral duties detailed. Indeed, the failure of the church to recognize the familial responsibility to display the priestly or the pastoral function of the kingdom has done tremendous damage to the church. It's contributed, I believe, to the breakdown of the family as well. Thus, an understanding of the book of Leviticus, as we've just begun to look at today, is necessary to, I think, necessary to the restoration of both the family and the church. Within the church itself, within the community of believers and in the world at large, I think simple logic, frankly, would cause us to see that the priestly demonstration of Christ's rule is best expressed in the context of the family. It is in the family that the duties of headship and nurture are supposed to take place. As each family matures in the kingdom and is able to express the priestly or pastoral functions to others, they can then move beyond that and express that to those who are without a familial connection or any kind of relationship. And again, it's not just those who are literally without family. It can be those who are in a family, but as Jesus Christ said, he came to cause a division and will turn one portion of the family against the other. And those who are in that position need the pastoral and priestly ministry that the church has to offer. But again, that is from within the church as individual families do so under the prophetic oversight of the local church. And again, I need to insist that the priestly facet of the Messianic reign is best demonstrated in and by the family. If we hope to begin to present all of God's ways to this world, then it is imperative that we understand all of God's word to the best of our ability. There is no part of scripture that we can afford to overlook. We may think or we may not think, I should say, that every detail is important, but every detail of the character of Jesus Christ is, as displayed in the New Testament, is explained in the Old Testament. We are supposed to imitate that character of Christ and unless we understand the Old Testament we won't understand the details of that character. I hope that we realize that we cannot properly understand the New Testament unless we have an understanding of the Old Testament. My hope and prayer as we conclude this morning, that in the year ahead we will come to recognize the priestly aspects of Christ's character and how we are supposed to imitate him in that particular function. Our effort to do so will fall short without an understanding of the book of Leviticus and I encourage you to initiate your own study of Leviticus so that you and your family might be able to better manifest the kingdom of God as priest. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are we are we are we are You