Sacrifices

[0:00] Let's pray. Lord, we thank You for this opportunity to gather. We thank You for the Holy Bible that You've given us, and we thank You for the heart of the Pentateuch, Leviticus. And so we ask that You would use this Holy Word, this Levitical system to teach us more about who we are and what the gospel is.

[0:17] And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so we are thinking about Leviticus together, and this is our second opportunity to do that. And the biggest thing to just review from last time, if you weren't here, if you weren't here, the audio for that will be up on the podcast.

[0:36] It may be up, I haven't checked. No, it will be up soon, and so you can go back. But the biggest thing we saw last time is Leviticus is the heart of the Pentateuch, the Torah.

[0:47] It's the third of five books, which is right in the middle. And at the very center of Leviticus, the question, the question of the Torah, the first five books, is the question of the whole Bible, which is how can a sinner, how can a person who is sinful like us, enter the presence of God?

[1:06] So that's the question that Leviticus starts with and offers to us. How can the dust of the earth, sometimes the Old Testament says, enter the holy presence of the living Creator? Right, so we are unclean people and we are dusty people, made from the dust.

[1:18] How can we enter the presence of God? The temporary answer of the Old Testament is Leviticus. And the temporary answer in Leviticus is sacrifice.

[1:30] And so that's what we're thinking about tonight, is the sacrifices that take place in Leviticus. But before we do that, and just let's take 90 seconds or so, if you have a Bible turned back to Exodus chapter 40, you don't have to turn actually, because it's on the same page, same if you're in one of these Bibles.

[1:52] Exodus 40, look down at verses 34 and 35. Just to remember what we said last week, though I didn't pull this verse out last week. The cloud covered the 10 of meeting, that's the Tabernacle, that's what we're talking about here in Leviticus.

[2:06] So it's already been built. The Tabernacle has already been built by the time we get to Leviticus one. And the glory of the Lord, the presence of God fills the Tabernacle. And Moses, and here's the big thing, was not able to enter the Tabernacle.

[2:19] All right, and then you flip over to Leviticus one one, and this is what we did look at last week. The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from inside the tent of meeting. So God's presence has come down, and Moses, the mediator, cannot enter, we're told, at the end of Exodus.

[2:36] And then the voice of the Lord comes from inside the tent to Moses who's outside the tent. And then if you have a Bible very quickly, just to remember, if you were here, you will remember, over to Numbers one one.

[2:48] And it says, that's on page 108. This is what it says in Numbers one one. The Lord spoke to Moses and the wilderness of Sinai inside the tent of meeting.

[3:01] So from the beginning of Leviticus, Moses cannot enter God's presence. And in the book of Numbers, verse one, Moses is in God's presence.

[3:12] So that tells you that Leviticus worked. Whatever the temporary sacrificial system that is on offer here, it worked. Moses is now able to go in. And that's exactly what we have here in Leviticus.

[3:25] The answer is sacrifice. That's what worked. And so today, we looked last time at the fact that Leviticus is structured in seven parts. It's a, if you remember this phrase, a chiasm.

[3:36] It goes A, B, C, D, C, B, A. I had to get that right in my head. A, B, C, D, the day of atonement, C, B, A.

[3:48] That's a chiasm like the Gruffalo. So if you know, you know. And the tabernacle before we dive in to the sacrifices.

[4:00] The last thing I'll say is in Exodus, the back half, this tabernacle, this temporary temple that we have here in Leviticus, it's given two names.

[4:12] One is tabernacle and a tabernacle is simply a word that means dwelling. So it's called the tabernacle because it's the place where God dwells.

[4:22] It's his house. So sometimes Leviticus calls it the house of the Lord. And the other name is the tent of meeting. Sometimes that name's used.

[4:33] And that's because you hope to go meet God in that tent. And so the question of Leviticus is how could the tabernacle also be a tent of meeting?

[4:45] How can sinners actually go inside the tabernacle? How could the tabernacle be a tent of meeting? Same question, right? How can sinners enter the presence of the Lord?

[4:55] All right, so the answer is sacrifices. Let's think about that tonight for just a few minutes. So if you look down in Leviticus chapter one, verse two, right after the Lord calls to Moses from in the tent of meeting, that's not a tent of meeting yet for Moses.

[5:10] Verse two, speak to the people of Israel, the Lord says, and say to them, when any of you brings an offering to the Lord, so there's the word. It's a word that's gonna show up hundreds of times in this book, an offering.

[5:22] When you bring an offering to the Lord. It's the Hebrew word. I'm gonna, we're gonna just list a number of Hebrew words tonight. This one's actually listed explicitly in the English translation in the New Testament.

[5:34] It's the word Corbonne. And it's the word Jesus uses in Mark chapter seven, verse 11. He says Corbonne, and that's how it's translated in the ESV exactly as that Corbonne.

[5:45] That's the word. It's an offering. What's an offering? If any of you brings an offering, a Corbonne, an offering is something we give to God that costs us in order to enter his presence.

[6:01] Right, so that's an offering. We often call it a sacrifice because of its association with animal death, but it doesn't have to be a sacrifice in the sense of death.

[6:13] Sometimes it's grain. So the better word is offering. Anything that you lose to give to God so that you can enter into God's presence. That's the concept of the offering.

[6:24] And one of the really important things to know is that there are five Corbonne offering types listed in Leviticus in chapter one to seven, the first section. And one of the things that is absolutely key for unlocking Leviticus, I think when you read it, is that you learn in Exodus that these five types of offerings are sometimes all enacted at once.

[6:52] And what I mean by that is when we read about the burnt offering and the grain offering and the peace offering and the guilt offering and the sin offering that one sacrifice can be all of five.

[7:07] So you can bring one animal and it be simultaneously peace, grain, burnt, etc. All five. And that actually helps unlock the meaning of Leviticus for you to see that that process is sometimes happening in one event.

[7:24] All five sacrifices, not always, but it can be done that way. And so there's so much in Leviticus that we don't know, so much that's between the lines of how exactly did all of this happen every single day, how many times did every worshiper come, things like that.

[7:41] We don't have exact details on, but we can put together a pretty good picture of it. And one of the most important things, this will make, give you, I think, be more meaningful in just a minute, but that you can enact all the sacrifices.

[7:55] Everything's going on in this one event when you come to the Tabernacle to offer a sacrifice. Okay, so let's quickly say, what are the five sacrifices? All right, and I'm not going to take them in order of Leviticus, I'm going to go backwards with them, because in some sense, the backwards order from Leviticus seven back to one, or five back to one, is actually the logic of the sacrificial system.

[8:19] And so if you flip over to chapter four, Leviticus four, it says, chapter four, verse one, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel saying, if anyone sins unintentionally in any of the Lord's commandments about things not to be done, and does any one of them, if it is the anointed priest who sins bringing guilt on the people, then he shall, there's the word Corban, offer for the sin that he has committed a bull.

[8:52] All right, so you can see on your outline, I think there, the first offering is called the Hattah, offering, and that is this word here, that's translated sin.

[9:04] Hattah is the word sin in Hebrew, but Hattah actually has a slightly different connotation, and it's the purification from sin offering.

[9:14] So the first offering we read about in chapter four is this notion of purification, and we're told it's for an unintentional sin, which is a little confusing in English. It actually means sins done that are not particularly defiant and obstinate against God.

[9:33] So intentional sins are sins that, there is no forgiveness and the Levitical code for them at all, not in this life at least. And those are sins that are done with very particular defiance against God.

[9:44] But these are unintentional, they're done in softer ways, lesser ways. And one of the ways the scholars talks about this is he says that the Hattah offering is for issues of theft from God, that's one of the ways Leviticus puts it.

[10:00] And so you've actually, in this offering, you are purifying yourself from stealing God's glory from him. So like if you use God's name in vain, you have stolen his glory, it's an act of theft, is how the book puts it.

[10:15] And so you need a Hattah offering. All right, so that's the first one. And the issue, if it's a purification for sin, the issue is that sin makes you impure, not pure, and a lack of purity keeps you out of the presence of God.

[10:29] Second one, if you look at Leviticus chapter five, these are the final two here, down at verse 14. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, if anyone commits a breach of faith and sins unintentionally in any of the holy things of the Lord, he shall bring to the Lord as his compensation, a ram without blemish out of the flock, valued in silver shepherds, according to the shuckle of the sanctuary for a, and here's a different word, guilt offering.

[10:57] All right, now this sounds almost identical, but it's not. And the word here is an Assam offering translated guilt, but actually it means reparation.

[11:07] And so you can hear in this language, the difference is that this offering is for compensation. So you are paying back something in this offering.

[11:17] You can do these simultaneously in the the sacrifice or can, the worship or can, but what are you paying back? You've stolen from God or later on we learned you could have stolen from somebody else.

[11:29] And so what you have to do is you have to make justice. You have to bring the amount that you stole. Let's say you stole a heifer from somebody, then you owe a heifer, you owe a bull, and you have to add 20%.

[11:45] We learned just a little while after that. So there's an act of compensation to achieve justice. Now these are the two negative sacrifices, meaning these are the two sacrifices, the only two commanded for sin, where you come in and you have to satisfy your sin by purification and then by justice through, through reparation, through paying back.

[12:10] Those are the two. Those are the negative sacrifices offerings, as we call them. Now the final three are what people have often called the positive and they're the first three that show up.

[12:22] So flip over to Leviticus three, verse one. If the worshippers offering is a sacrifice of peace, if he offers an animal from the herd male or female, he shall offer it without blemish.

[12:36] So there's the peace offering and the peace offering is not an offering for sin. It's an offering that you proclaim to God and he then proclaims to you when he receives it, that friendship has been had between you.

[12:53] So this is the offering of reconciliation. So these offerings are not in logical order, they actually move backwards. And so when you offer for your sin purification and then you offer for justice, repayment, then you can offer in that same moment peace and say reconciliation and friendship has actually taken place.

[13:14] And then number four, chapter two, verse one, just back up one chapter, you see how they're going backwards. When anyone brings a grain offering as an offering to the Lord, his offering shall be a fine flower.

[13:27] Now this one's a little tricky because it doesn't actually say grain here at the beginning. Instead, it uses the word Mina. You can see on point four, what are the offerings?

[13:38] Mina and the word Mina in Hebrew is the word tribute or thanksgiving. All right, so think about it. When you come and you bring your bull for a sacrifice, you first are saying, I have sinned against the Lord and I'm impure and I need purification.

[13:57] Then you are offering a repayment that establishes justice. Then in the same moment, you are offering peace and God says when he receives it, now we are friends again, there's reconciliation.

[14:11] And then after that, you can offer alongside the animal grain, baked grain, like a little cake. And that is a thanksgiving offering that we would call a tithe.

[14:25] So the Mina is your gift from your labors. It's the gift you give God from out of your labors after you've received forgiveness, after you've received reconciliation. And then lastly, and this is the most important, number five, which is the first in Leviticus is in chapter one, verse three, if his offering is a burnt offering.

[14:47] Okay, the word here, burnt offering is not the word burnt. It's Ola, it's ascension. And this language of burnt has been carried over from past translations, but it actually says, it says, if this offering is an ascension offering from the herd.

[15:08] Okay, now the ascension offering, and this is a key here, a couple of keys. One, all of this can happen in the same instance. Number two key, the ascension offering is the core offering that describes all that's going on in the offering.

[15:25] And so here at the very beginning, we're simply being told when you come to the temple, the tabernacle to give an offering, it is an ascension offering. Whatever it is, it's an act of ascension.

[15:37] It's an act of going up. That's what it's called here. It's the core offering. All right, so let's put it all together. That's enough of all the offering talk. Let's put it all together. And the idea here is when you go and you give an animal as an offering, it's an act of purification and substitutionary justice taking place through the animal.

[15:58] And then there's a pronouncement of shalom, shalom peace, the peace offering. Now you are reconciled, God says to me.

[16:09] And then there in response is the Mina, the thanksgiving, where you say, now I'm bringing something of my work labors to you, God. Do you do that? Do we do that?

[16:20] We bring a gift from our labor to the Lord after we've heard from the Lord, you're purified and you've been pronounced just in worship. We gift our offering, right?

[16:31] And then the whole thing is an act of ascension. And where do you ascend? You ascend into the presence of the Lord. So how can Moses go into the Ten of Meeting?

[16:42] He has to go by way of ascension going up into the presence of the Lord, all right? So let's take one step back from those details that can be a little, you know, you gotta go for it when you do these details.

[16:57] Take one step back and think about the big picture and what's going on here theologically. The big picture is this, we brought this up last week and we said, who can ascend the mountain of the Lord, Psalm 15?

[17:09] Who can go up into his presence? What is the tabernacle? What is the temple in the Old Testament? In Genesis chapter one, God made the heavens and the earth and out of the land we're told the mountain of the Lord was created.

[17:25] And we know that from places like Ezekiel 28 where Eden is called the top of the mountain of the Lord. And so in the beginning, God raised up this holy mountain in creation.

[17:38] And at the very tip top of that mountain was the Garden of Eden. And so in the Old Testament, the later references to Eden help us understand that there's the Garden of Eden at the top of the mountain of God.

[17:49] And then there's Eden, which is a broader part of the mountain of God. And then there are the lower parts of the mountain of God. All right, so the mountain of the Lord in the Old Testament has three tiers.

[18:01] The Garden, Eden and the bottom of the mountain, the court. And the Garden of Eden we learn is like the Holy of Holies. Adam was a priest, he was the first priest.

[18:13] And he was inside the Holy of Holies. And you remember that when he sinned, he was kicked out of the Garden of God. And which gate did he go out of? We're told that he exited out of the East gate.

[18:27] And at the East gate, cherubim were put there to guard the way. And then in the very next chapter, we learn, and this is something maybe that you might not have called before, but that Cain, Abel and Adam's family are still in Eden.

[18:43] They're not in the Garden of Eden, they've been kicked out of the Garden, but they're in Eden. And how do we know that? Because Cain and Abel offer the first offering to God on an altar in Eden, in the temple.

[18:55] They're still inside the temple, the first temple, the mountain of the Lord. And Cain fails in that. And where does he go? And this is where John Steinbeck got the famous phrase. He goes, east of Eden, Adam and Eve were kicked out of the East gate of the Garden, but they're still in Eden on the mountain of the Lord.

[19:13] But then when Cain fails to offer properly an offering, a whole burn offering, an ascension offering actually, is the language that we see here again, Genesis four and Leviticus one, then he's kicked out east of Eden, off the mountain, away from God's presence, into the erits, the land.

[19:32] And so the whole Bible is framed in this lens that we were made to be in the Holy of Holies with God in the Garden, or rather the whole world was meant to be the Holy of Holies eventually, if Adam and Eve would have obeyed, but we got kicked east of Eden and east of Eden and went into Exilic land.

[19:51] And the whole Torah, the whole Pentateuch, is this movement of can the people of God ever get back on top of the mountain again? And so you have condescension narratives and ascension narratives taking place all throughout.

[20:06] And the lowest you can get is into the chaos waters, the dark waters, like the flood. But then you come out of the flood, think about Egypt is often associated in the Torah with Sheol, the place of death.

[20:20] And the people of Israel are down in Sheol, and then God comes and rescues them. And what do they do? They go through the water. And then when they go out of the water, they get to the land, the place of exile, the wilderness.

[20:34] And then from the wilderness, the land, where do they arrive, the mountain of God, Sinai. And they go up the mountain, Moses does, but he can't quite get to the Garden of Eden.

[20:45] He can't quite enter into God's presence, right? And so the entire story is one of ups and downs. Can the people, can we ever enter into the presence of God again, into the mountain of the Lord?

[20:56] And lastly, on the big picture, we'll move to the final thing. Can we ever enter the mountain of the Lord? Well, what happens? Moses comes down the mountain and the tabernacle instructions are given.

[21:08] And it just so happens that the tabernacle has three parts. Right? The court, the holy place, and the holy of holies. And that means that the tabernacle is being constructed as an image of the mountain of God.

[21:23] Right? The Garden of Eden is the holy of holies, and Eden is the holy place, and the outer court is the lower parts of the mountain. So this whole image is meant to be that you now, as an Israelite worshiper, can step to the bottom of the mountain, just like Israel was at Mount Sinai, but what did God say?

[21:40] Don't touch the mountain. Don't get any closer to the mountain. You can come to the bottom of the mountain, and you can give a sacrifice of what? What's the word? Ascension. So that's why it's called an ascension sacrifice.

[21:52] Because if you do well here, if you're received, if you give a sacrifice, you can ascend, you can go up. Right? It's called here the mountain of ascension.

[22:04] All right, lastly. Lastly, and then I'll just give a few quick points of application. That brings us back to Leviticus, Leviticus one of the sacrifices, just to ask how does this work?

[22:15] And so this is listed for you really clearly in Leviticus one versus two to nine. So the ascension offering covers the whole act of sacrifice.

[22:26] It tells you everything that took place. What took place? All right, look down with me. We'll just run through this list. Chapter one, verse two, first, when the people bring an offering, when any of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd or from the flock.

[22:44] That's the first step. Now we learn later in Leviticus that when you bring your offering, the first thing that happens is the priest inspects it. So the priest looks around and lifts up all the hooves and all that, that's what would have happened.

[22:58] And what is he looking for? He's looking for blemishes. He's looking for disease. He's looking for that boil that's hidden on the back leg of the cow, of the bull that you were hoping he does not see.

[23:14] And you know that that bull is gonna die 30 days from now. So this is an easy giveaway for you. This is not hard. It's not gonna cost you anything. That is what you call stealing from God.

[23:26] That's the type of sacrifice that gets condemnation. And so later in the Bible and the prophets, God condemns the priest and says, are you not bringing diseased animals before me?

[23:38] And is that not evil in my sight? Because it doesn't cost you anything. They're gonna die anyway. So first step is the presentation. You have to actually have your sacrifice, what you're offering to the Lord inspected.

[23:50] And then when you pass that, the next step we see in verse three is the handling, verse four. So if his offering is an ascension offering from the herd, he'll offer a male without blemish.

[24:02] He'll bring it to the entrance of the Ten of Meeting. That's verse three. So that you could be accepted to go up the mountain of the Lord to ascend, right? And verse four, you, the worshiper will lay your hand on the head of the burn offering and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement.

[24:19] Now the word here for lay is not just the word lay the hand, but it's, there's an adjective there that's heavy handed laying. That's where we get the idea of heavy handedness.

[24:29] And it's, so it's actually says that you push here the head down of the bull with your hand. So it's a heavy hand. And he, it's an, it's, what is it?

[24:40] It's an, it's an act of transfer. It's an act of transferring your pollution symbolically, your impurity to the sacrifice. So there's this heavy handed hand laying and it's, it's substitution.

[24:53] It's exchange. Now think back to the first step, the presentation. It has to be unblemished, right? Why? Because in the heavy handed laying, there is an act of transfer taking place symbolically, ceremonially, that that unblemished animal, blameless, we would say, takes on your impurity and you are symbolically receiving its blamelessness, right?

[25:22] So there's a, there's a great exchange that's taking place in this act. That's the point. Third, right after that, then in verse five, then he shall kill the bull before the Lord.

[25:35] That's the next step. So who, who is it that actually does the act of killing? Did you catch who, who, who does the act of killing? The worshipper, we do. You do, if you were living in this time, you kill the bull.

[25:47] So that would be with a knife, you would kill the bull in that moment. And in that moment, Michael Morales, his wonderful book on Leviticus, he says that, it's an act of you saying, I'm confessing by my action, my sin deserves death.

[26:03] So it's this unspeakably difficult act of confession that this is what my sin deserves. It deserves death. God must be approached through a substitutionary death.

[26:17] That's the confession that's taking place here. And then finally, forth, sorry, not finally, but forth. And then you read right after that. And then Aaron's son, the priest will bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar.

[26:30] So that's a box altar just outside the tent of meeting in the courtyard, and he's throwing the blood, catching the blood and throwing it on all the sides of the altar. Now you'd think maybe that the blood would be thrown upon the worshipper as an act of cleansing that the blood we learn later in Leviticus 17, the life is in the blood symbolically.

[26:53] And so it's a symbol of life. And so you would think, and that does happen, Exodus 24, there is blood thrown on the people in Exodus 24. But here we learn that actually the furniture represents the people.

[27:07] Think about in the Holy of Holies, we talked about this last time, there's this table with 12 pieces of bread and those 12 pieces of bread represent the 12 tribes of Israel.

[27:18] So it's even the furniture that's representing the people. So instead of it being thrown upon you, it's being thrown upon the temple as a representation that God can dwell amongst His people who are encamped all around it.

[27:31] So this is an act of cleansing that the scholars call it the blood spreading or something like that. And then lastly, not lastly, I keep saying lastly, it's not lastly.

[27:46] That's because I'm not looking at the handout, I'm looking at moments. Fifthly, then the burning. So then they would actually, the priests would have to fillet the animal and put parts of it on the altar and it would be burned.

[28:03] So your hope of ascension and reconciliation is particularly in this act of burning. And what happens in this act of burning is that smoke, who is it that ascends?

[28:15] The worshipper does not go into the tabernacle. You do not get to go into the tabernacle. Only the priest does. And only the high priest wants a year into the Holy of Holies, right?

[28:27] What does go up? It's the offering of ascension. What goes up? The smoke goes up. That's what ascends. And we're told here that the Lord receives it as a pleasing aroma.

[28:40] In other words, he sees it and says, you have given, you have counted the cost, you have confessed that your sin deserves death. And it's an act of the Lord of receiving and symbolic reconciliation.

[28:51] So the ascension offering is about the ascension of the smoke, of what goes up in burning. And then sixthly, it says that the Lord receives it.

[29:03] I didn't mark the verse, but later on in chapter one, here it is down in verse 13. The priest shall offer all of it and burn it on the altar.

[29:13] It is a burn offering, a food offering to the Lord. So it's cast in terms, that word food, there is actually also the word bread.

[29:23] Sometimes it's translated bread, sometimes it's food. And a lachem bread. And it's saying there that this is God eats. God eats, he receives this as bread.

[29:36] And that means that in every single one of the sacrifices, there is always a meal at the end, a communion. And we learn in chapter three, that in the peace offering after God eats, we turn around and then the people eat.

[29:51] You the worshipper are given some of the food from the table of the altar, because reconciliation and peace has happened. And then you eat and the priest eats. And so the last step is a communion meal and then a benediction.

[30:04] And then a benediction, number six is the benediction. May the Lord bless you and keep you. The Aaronic benediction, the Levitical benediction is the one the priest pronounces over you at the communion meal after you eat.

[30:18] Now that should sound relatively familiar. That there's an act of purification and justice by way of substitutionary atonement, reconciliation.

[30:30] And then a pronouncement that now you have been accepted by God and there's peace, not war between you and God. And so now let us come and let us eat, the Lord says. He takes the bread from you and he gives you bread and wine.

[30:44] And then at the end of that, he pronounces over you, may the Lord as you go bless you and keep you. All right, so we still worship like this, but only because there has been a once for all sacrifice in Jesus Christ.

[31:00] And all of these things have been accomplished in him. And so now we come here and we come straight to the communion meal, straight to it. And we receive the feast and the benediction and the pronouncement that we've been purified and justice has been served.

[31:16] Let me just note these things in one to two minutes and we'll finish. So what, so many so what's first so what, why does every single religion contain elements of sacrifice?

[31:30] So every single religion in world history, it's almost impossible to find a religion that doesn't do sacrifice. A people group that doesn't have sacrifice and act of giving to a God at the core.

[31:44] And just really quickly I'll answer it like this, sacrifice, substitutionary sacrifice was instituted by God from Genesis three. We even see that in probably the clothing that Adam and Eve are given when the animals are sacrificed in Genesis three to clothe Adam and Eve.

[32:02] God did that. I think that's the moment he instituted sacrifice. Genesis four can't enable sacrifice. Genesis nine after the flood, the first thing Noah does, sacrifice.

[32:16] And so in this, in the noeik, this moment with Noah, when there's nothing but one family on the face of the earth, it begins with a substitutionary sacrifice and from Noah all the peoples of the earth spread, right?

[32:28] So Noah taught from God every nation of all the earth's sacrifice. That's where it comes from right after the flood. It started again with Noah right after the flood.

[32:40] I think it's also because we all, every single human being, we all know we're guilty. I think that I haven't been a pastor for that long, but the more time I've been able to be one, I think I have learned from talking to people from all sorts of backgrounds and traditions that every single person knows that they don't deserve what they have.

[33:01] And that is the core of the act of sacrifice, of counting the cost and saying, I know what I really deserve. I think everybody knows that deep down. I think that's the reason.

[33:12] Secondly, an existential question. What are we for? Who are we? Leviticus answers that question. And the answer is the, we are for Sabbath. So we are for, what is Sabbath?

[33:24] Sabbath is delightful resting in the holy presence of God. God's Sabbaths too, right? At the end of creation, it's his delightful entrance into the Garden of Eden.

[33:37] Or he enjoyed, that's his Sabbath. He enjoys entering into the presence of humanity. We are made for Sabbath. God wants to Sabbath with us. Leviticus tells you that this is how you Sabbath with God through atonement, through sacrifice.

[33:50] Last thing I'll say about that. I wish we had more time, but the first seven chapters of Leviticus, which covered the sacrifices, there are seven movements where it says, and the Lord spoke to Moses.

[34:04] And then in chapter eight and chapter nine, there are seven acts of concentration for the priest. It's trying to convey, it's a Sabbath story. How can you Sabbath with the Lord, right? What are we for?

[34:14] We're made for the presence of God. Lastly, what's the gospel? Here we learn the gospel. Hebrews chapter 10, the blood of bulls and goats could never really accomplish the act of purification and forgiveness.

[34:29] And so Hebrews chapter 10 says, we now have a better sacrifice, Jesus Christ, once for all. Never again will the worshiper have to give and count something like this for in the place of themselves.

[34:43] Jesus Christ is better, that's Hebrews 10. And I just wanna end with this. One maybe more personal bit of application for us. Hebrews 13, 15, the very end of the book of Hebrews says this, that we now offer, because of Jesus fulfilling this event, these sacrifices, we now offer the sacrifice of praise to the Lord.

[35:07] And that means that's picking up on this idea of the tribute offering, the grain offering. We now come with our tribute. We don't count the cost of a bull. We don't count the cost in any of those ways.

[35:17] Jesus did that for us fully and finally. But we come and we do offer what's called a sacrifice of praise. In other words, Hebrews is ending by saying, all of this has been paid for you, but worship actually should cost you something.

[35:35] It should cost you something. You should come and lose your time, lose your Sunday morning sleep, lose the little pleasures you would have in playing an Xbox on Sunday morning or whatever it is.

[35:47] It should cost. There's a sacrifice of praise. And when you do that, what you're saying is, I am happy for worship to cost me something because of all the Lord has done for me.

[35:59] And so in that sense, actually, it sort of flips worship on itself for us where the primary question is not, did I get something out of that today? Instead, it's, I came to give to the Lord my sacrifice of praise because Jesus gave everything for me.

[36:18] Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this great word, Leviticus. And we ask that you would use it to help us encourage us to offer a sacrifice of praise. Thank you, Jesus, for being our purification and expiation and propitiation.

[36:31] We didn't get to those words today, Lord, but we thank you for that. And for our peace, our shalom, our cleansing, our wine, our bread, we thank you, Lord.

[36:42] And so we come just offering our sacrifice of praise tonight, counting the cost in the middle of the week, coming to the city center, Lord, may you be glorified in Jesus' name, amen.