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The LORD Called to Moses from the Tent of Meeting: An Introduction to Leviticus
Opening — A Road That Runs On
We spent about a year working through Exodus. Having come this far, we may as well keep walking the same road. This season we begin Leviticus.
One thing first, brothers and sisters: you can relax. If something comes up along the way, just ask. What I can answer, I will; what I cannot, I write down and take back to my teacher. That is the honest way to do it. I learned in seminary that no teacher can answer every question. Ask a New Testament professor something from the Old Testament and you often hear, “That is not my field, go ask the Old Testament man.” It covers his embarrassment. And it is true enough, because each of us sees from a different angle, opinions differ, and how we read Scripture always has something to do with what has been given to each of us.
This Saturday study has one advantage: we work straight through, one book after another, one chapter after another. That keeps your Bible reading from turning into a series of jumps — a passage heard here, a thought taken up there, and in the end the whole thread has come apart. That would be a pity.
Anyone here for the first time need not worry at all. There has to be a first time for a mad venture like this. Before we began, a brother told me that Leviticus is hard, like a sheet of iron. I know. It is precisely because I know that I prepared a chart and handed it out. I will not necessarily follow it; that sheet is a summary of the material I have in hand. Whatever we run out of time for, you can study on your own afterwards. What matters most is that we come back to the Scripture itself and ask from there how we should go.
How the Congregation Sees Leviticus
Before we started I took a simple survey and asked what impression Leviticus had left on people.
One said that it is about offerings, that there are five kinds of sacrifice, and that holiness gets particular emphasis — so an important theme emerges from it. I pressed further: do you understand it? The answer was, the words, yes. And then what am I supposed to do? I feel exactly as you do: we understand the words, but we cannot say what it is we have actually understood.
Another said the book is about how to bring an offering and what kind of holy life the priests were to lead. This brother went a step further: Leviticus lets us understand what standard holds in God's household, and what a holy life looks like in God's eyes. Many of its regulations no longer apply to us directly, and we hold no priestly office; but in its spiritual sense, the holiness God requires is not negotiable. He said: that is probably what the “sheet of iron” means — what this book asks of us is iron.
I pressed again: is this book written for us, or for the Levites? The answer was: originally for the Levites, so that they might learn; but for God's people as well, because sacrifice is not the priests' business alone — it concerns the people too.
A sister said that Leviticus follows straight on from Exodus: God wants his people to stop living as they once did in Egypt and to live a life of holy worship instead — and he himself tells them how they are to worship him.
Every one of these answers touches the heart of it. The first thing that comes to mind is usually the priesthood; but taken as the only measure, that is too narrow. Leviticus is what Moses passed on to the whole people after he received God's word. I will come back to this.
The Torah Is More Than Law
The Pentateuch is the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. We call them the Torah, also the books of the Law.
The word “law” comes easily to our lips, but a better rendering would be “rule for living,” or “rule of faith.” Torah does not only mean restriction; it has the character of guidance, it is a handbook. From Genesis, which sets out where humanity came from and how sin entered, to the end of Deuteronomy, where the people are charged, before entering the promised land of Canaan, with how the second generation is to live — the function of the whole set is guidance.
The law gives us a great deal of trouble, because we are shaped by Romans and remember that the letter kills while the Spirit gives life. I lived in Spain for a time and found that the brothers and sisters there had got this muddled: I only have to believe in Jesus; and once you hold the ticket to salvation, you may apparently do as you please. I mean it, that is how it was said. But that is not how it works.
How do we live a full life in God's household, and over the course of a life? Even asked in worldly terms: what does prosperity mean? In God's eyes, fullness and prosperity have to be defined afresh, and it certainly has nothing to do with what money shows on the outside. This kind of guidance for living is what people in God's household need particularly in a time like ours.
Torah does not only mean restriction. It has the character of guidance — it is a handbook.
What the Hebrew Book Titles Reveal
Whenever I teach the Pentateuch I like to raise one idea: what these five books mean when you look at them with Hebrew eyes.
The Hebrew way of naming a book is simple: open to the first sentence, and the name is hidden in the opening words.
Genesis in Hebrew is called “In the beginning” (בְּרֵאשִׁית, Bereshit). Open to the first word of the Bible and there it is.
Exodus is called “These names” (שְׁמוֹת, Shemot), after its opening verse: “These are the names of the sons of Israel.” So the weight of Exodus does not fall on a Hollywood Prince Moses leading the people out with wonders. All through our study of Exodus I kept saying it: the weight falls after chapter 19 — how God remembers their names, and how their names travel in his presence toward the promised land. Their names matter.
And Leviticus? Some guess “tent of meeting,” some “priests,” some “offerings” — none of them. Its Hebrew name is “And he called” (וַיִּקְרָא, Vayikra). That word carries great weight, because God calls to Moses out of the tent of meeting. The idea behind this whole book is not something people thought up: God calls Moses so that he may draw near.
The idea behind this whole book is not something people thought up. God calls Moses so that he may draw near.
Numbers is called “In the wilderness” (בְּמִדְבַּר, Bemidbar). It tells of the people's whole life in the wilderness, everything great and small that met them there. The wilderness is no comfortable place. There is no shop downstairs; if you are hungry you cannot simply go and buy something. The wilderness holds heavy temptations — the heat, the wild animals, all of it at once; it is a place where people cannot live. Brothers and sisters, our lives always grow in hardship, never in comfort. Scripture knows no other idea.
Many people think: once I have this settled, once that is finished, once this difficulty is resolved, then I can give myself properly to God's word. That is entirely our own invention; Scripture sees it differently. It says rather that in every danger and every hardship of the wilderness we throw ourselves in on God's word, as one leaps into his arms, because with him alone is there real strength and real presence.
So if there is a wilderness in your life, thank God for it. Whatever you do, do not thank him that your life has no wilderness — that would be prosperity theology. Prosperity theology says: I get what I want, and I prove with the wealth God gives me that I am a successful man, successful in faith as well. Scripture knows no such idea. Jesus himself was tested forty days in the wilderness; he stayed hidden for thirty years and entered his ministry only when he met the requirements of the law. Paul had his wilderness too: after he was blinded he went into Arabia and then returned to Damascus, and only three years later did he go up to Jerusalem (Galatians 1:17-18). All of this tells us that when there is a wilderness in your life, you should thank God for that as well.
But, brothers and sisters, the wilderness is not our final stop. In the end we will come through this training ground of life.
Deuteronomy is called “Words” (דְּבָרִים, Devarim) — the words the LORD had spoken, said once more. It is the urgent charge given to the people before they enter the promised land, because the moment they are there, the customs of that land will assimilate them completely.
One Thread Through the Five Books
Line the five books up: in the beginning God created; he remembers their names; therefore he calls his people to come near to him; and all of it so that in the wilderness they may know his word afresh. One thread runs through the Pentateuch.
I like reading the Pentateuch with Hebrew thinking, because it helps us out of our habitual frames. By today's way of seeing it, what is Numbers about? Counting the people. That is certainly one theme, but it misses a more basic axis — the tent of meeting at the centre.
Strictly speaking, Exodus and Leviticus are one book. Worship stands at the centre, and only then comes the question of how to fight and how to live in the world. Brothers and sisters, to put it more plainly: living in the world is like waging war. Some in my family are teachers, others work in insurance. My parents worked in insurance and in the civil service; my mother says her back is ruined, her spine, from all those years sitting on a hard bench. You sit in your chair, and inside there is a war going on. The daily grind, other people's mockery, the barbed remarks, and every other side of life — all of it is like war. That is exactly why a rule for living, a guide for living, is so precious.
I often ask myself: Do I come to church to hear this and say that, or to find out what God actually wants to tell me? I read Exodus for a year; if I cannot join it to Leviticus, that year's work breaks off halfway.
The Cloud and the Glory at the End of Exodus
The Hebrew of Leviticus 1:1 opens with a connective, tying it directly to what came before. The NIV drops it, and so does the Chinese Union Version; you may want to pencil the word “And” into the margin of your Bible. And the LORD called to Moses from the tent of meeting.
That one word tells us that Leviticus does not stand on its own; it is meant to be read together with Exodus.
The closing paragraph of Exodus reads like this:
Exodus 40:34-38 Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the LORD was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels.※ Like the Chinese original, the NIV keeps two distinct words here — “tent of meeting” and “tabernacle.” The speaker builds a whole section below on that distinction.
At the end of Exodus God gives us a picture: the people are about to enter the wilderness, and the LORD's protection goes with them the whole way — a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night. For people living by faith this matters. In the daytime we may have our troubles; at night the noise inside grows louder. On the road of life it feels as though we can do nothing by ourselves — and yet there is always a cloud standing in front of us for shade, always a warmth to hold us up when we grow cold. For the whole house of Israel at that time this was protection they could see with their eyes, twenty-four hours a day, right in front of them.
Moses Could Not Enter the Tent of Meeting
But here is something you may not have noticed: could Moses enter the tent of meeting?
Scripture says it plainly: Moses could not go in. For where the glory of the LORD settles, no one can come near it. Not even Moses, Israel's greatest prophet, who had worked so many wonders.
That is the decisive premise. For in the very next verse the LORD calls Moses to come near, out of the tent of meeting. Had the LORD not called him and opened a road of his own making, no one could meet this holy Lord, this Lord of glory, in the tent of meeting.
Had the LORD not opened a road, no one could meet this holy Lord of glory in the tent of meeting.
Tent of Meeting and Tabernacle — A Place to Meet, a House That Comes Apart
For those here for the first time, let me explain what the tent of meeting is.
The Hebrew has two words, which the NIV renders “tent of meeting” and “tabernacle.” The first (אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד, ohel mo'ed) means literally “tent of appointed meeting” — the place where one party meets the other, the place of encounter. And “tent” means a real tent. Have you ever seen a circus? I did as a child; it is like the tent a circus puts up. We spent a good deal of time on this in Exodus: the curtains enclosing it outside, and inside the tent divided again into chambers.
The second word (מִשְׁכָּן, mishkan) comes from the root “to dwell” and means God's dwelling place — the place where he lives, his house. Its distinctive feature is that it can be taken apart at any moment, like a Lego model. The previous chapter said it: the moment the cloud lifts, the people set out; and the moment they set out, this house moves with them.
God is constantly moving house. But not the way we do: we move in order to live somewhere bigger and more comfortable. He moves in order to lead his people through every hardship of the wilderness and to train them there to know who he is — so that they can enter Canaan, the land he has truly promised. So the moment the cloud lifted, the Levites knew their service had begun: the golden lampstand, the golden altar of incense, the bronze altar, the basin — all of it came down and could be moved at any time. Why? Because they are going on to the promised land.
I often think: If God's dwelling is always ready to move, while my faith only wants to settle somewhere that need never change again — am I following him, or asking him to fit in with me?
Holy, Common, Clean, Unclean
God calls Moses and tells him, on his own initiative, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them …” Leviticus 1:2 There is an important idea in that: God speaks to the Israelites through Moses. So this book concerns every one of us. That is how Scripture is written: it does not speak only to those who want to serve, not only to small-group leaders, not only to those holding significant office in the church. It speaks to every one of us.
Only this: if God does not call Moses, no one can draw near to him — and that is the idea of the mediator. We covered it in Exodus: the Israelites were afraid to hear the LORD speak, because when he speaks it is like thunder and lightning. They said, “Do not speak to us; let Moses speak to us, that is enough.” From that comes the idea of the priest, and from it, down to our own day, the intercessor and the watchman — that is, small-group leaders, shepherds of a few, district leaders, pastors, co-workers.
The key to the whole book lies in chapter 10, verse 10. It belongs to a sad story: it happened to the second generation in the priest's household, who did not keep God's statutes and were struck down for it. If you remember only one verse, remember this one:
Leviticus 10:10 so that you can distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean,※ The NIV's “the common” renders the Hebrew ḥol exactly as the speaker takes it — the ordinary and everyday, not the wicked. English readers get the point of the next section for free.
These words are addressed to Aaron; the next verse continues:
Leviticus 10:11 and so you can teach the Israelites all the decrees the LORD has given them through Moses.
The meaning is clear: Aaron's sons are precisely the ones who did not listen to this word. So when we study Leviticus, strictly speaking we are after one thing — the work of distinguishing. It is a distinguishing that leads to holiness.
“Common” Means “Everyday”
Write a second word next to “common” in your Bible: everyday. The Hebrew ḥol simply means “ordinary.”
In English as in Chinese, a word like this carries a sneer — “common” sounds like coarse, “profane” like cheap. Scripture is not sneering here; it simply says: the everyday. You are to distinguish what is holy from what is everyday; you are to distinguish what is clean from what is unclean. This distinguishing is the distinguishing that leads to holiness, and out of it come all the themes of the book: the theme of the offerings, the theme of the priests, the theme of fire, the theme of glory — and the theme nobody likes to hear, the theme of blood.
In today's church this distinguishing has become hard. When I came back to Taiwan I found that there are not many old-fashioned people like us left. To the young we seem too regulated, too full of rules. On the single question of what form musical worship should take, I have my own view. In this world you get on best by not distinguishing at all and stirring everything together. The larger the grey zone, the more successful a person is held to be: the higher the tolerance, the wider the indulgence, the more love it is supposed to be. That is the world's view.
So when you see brothers and sisters in church doing this or that, sometimes you can neither speak nor stay silent. What we have to learn is to tell the truth in love — and that is exactly an exercise in distinguishing. Nor is it only for those who have been in church a long time: every one of us has this work of distinguishing to do in the world.
Take the most ordinary example: is time something ordinary? Very ordinary. You watch the clock tick and live in mechanical time. But if a span of time is given to God alone, that clock-time becomes the time of your fellowship with him — and then it is no longer ordinary. So within the ordinary there is also the extraordinary. That is exactly what we are to learn.
Within the ordinary there is also the extraordinary. That is exactly what we are to learn.
The Unclean Spreads More Easily Than the Holy
Another question: in the Old Testament, which spreads faster — the clean or the unclean?
The answer is that the unclean spreads faster. There is a striking passage in the second chapter of Haggai; let me read it to you:
Haggai 2:10-13 On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Haggai: “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Ask the priests what the law says: If someone carries consecrated meat in the fold of their garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, olive oil or other food, does it become consecrated?'” The priests answered, “No.” Then Haggai said, “If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?” “Yes,” the priests replied, “it becomes defiled.”
Do you see it? The holy does not transfer to the everyday, but the unclean does. In Old Testament thinking the power of defilement is very great. Even where holy things are present, you may not touch them with what is unclean — and the price for it is that God strikes you down.
So God draws a boundary of holiness, sharp as a battle line, to keep anything unclean from breaking through. What then? Is a person left with nothing but to live in his unholy state? Scripture does not say so. Leviticus tells us that God opened a road — in his own way, through the sacrificial rites he himself appointed. That is where ritual comes from in the first place. Ritual helps us, according to God's mind, to cleanse our uncleanness. That is the Old Testament way of thinking.
The holy does not transfer to the everyday. The unclean does.
The Reversal in the New Testament
But in the New Testament Jesus breaks this rule completely.
The man with leprosy in the Gospels was unclean. Did Jesus touch him? He did. The woman with the flow of blood was unclean under Leviticus; she touched the edge of his cloak — and what happened? Did Jesus become unclean, or was the source of her bleeding healed by God's holiness? She was healed. The direction is completely reversed.
Someone in the group said this was a real eye-opener: which spreads faster, the holy or the unholy — here everything turns around between the Old Testament and the New, and they had never noticed it. Yes, it is a very great turn. I owe you a correction here: in the study I said “the greater power”; that was a slip of the tongue. What I meant was that it spreads faster. Because destroying an order goes quickly, while restoring it takes a long time.
One thing must be clear, though: Jesus did nothing contrary to the LORD's law; he himself became that road. That is why we may come before God with confidence. The law of the Old Testament draws the boundary of holiness; Jesus Christ in the New opens the road through it. Through his blood on the cross and through his redemption, the unclean person who goes into him becomes, on the contrary, clean. That is the great reversal from the Old Testament — and the most important road that Leviticus opens.
I often ask myself: In my daily life, am I holding that boundary of holiness — or have I long since blurred it and given the blurring the name of tolerance?
Leviticus as the Instruction Manual for Life
Back to the book itself: it really is not easy to read, because the whole of it consists of purity regulations and ritual procedure. There is a reason I have taken so long to get here: does a life need a handbook? Leviticus is that handbook. In it God means to teach us to set the wheel of life turning according to his mind.
We used to buy a lot of self-assembly furniture; in student days it was our best friend. I wonder whether you have ever assembled anything. I have to admit I gave up in the end, because I always drive the screws in crooked. I asked a brother: when you assemble something, do you read the instructions? He said, at the start you have to. I asked again: and once it is finished, do you keep staring at the instructions? He said no.
With Leviticus it is different. You may take it as the assembly instructions for a life — except that God wants us to keep looking into these instructions again and again. That is exactly why the book is hard to read: its ritual regulations keep sending you back, and it contains almost no story.
We Christians like to say, “I read the Bible as a storybook.” At Leviticus everyone falls over, because it is not a story. That shows whether our reading habits need correcting: do we read Scripture for the excitement of the stories, or to see God's rule?
Nobody keeps reading the instructions once the furniture is standing; that is not how people are. So reading Leviticus goes against our habits from the outset, and that points to something: you have to get past a good many habits you take for granted before you can see into this book. It is full of ritual language and appointed seasons; it does not want to be read as a story but to be obeyed in the doing. Under conditions as dry as these, Scripture teaches, and lets you understand by obeying.
A sister asked me: why are those animals so pitiable, why must they always be killed? Let me answer that here as well. Because sin is so terrible that only life can take its place. God expresses the horror of sin through a loss of life one can hardly bear to watch. When a person kills the ox and the sheep in the ritual and wrings the bird's head off, it is precisely in those actions that he is to see how terrible sin is.
Is there an argument for it? No. God does not explain it to you. When he tells you to act, he lets you learn in the acting how terrible sin is. Because by your own reason you would certainly never do it. So under the conditions of ritual a person keeps asking: why does it have to be this way? Brothers and sisters, that question cannot be pushed any further, because God has left no room for it. His answer is brief: you are to distinguish what is holy from what is everyday, what is clean from what is unclean.
We Protestants least like talking about ritual. What I am about to say is not meant to take us back to the Catholic Church or to Judaism; it is meant to make us think: at which points in a life does ritual show its weight?
I asked the group and was told: the wedding, and baptism, because they are so solemn. Yes: in church we have baptism, infant dedication, commissioning, ordination — and a funeral. Of all the rites, none is more solemn than a funeral. Because the more solemn it is, the more exactly you follow the order, the more different is the reverence and the glory that come out of it. Nobody takes a funeral lightly. The more dignified your bearing, the greater your respect for the one who has died.
A wedding is the same. How a wedding is prepared, and then the moment the ring goes on — you in me, I in you, the two made one — a holy covenant is concluded there. Ordination likewise. You cannot go off to a retreat somewhere and come back a pastor. The setting apart of a shepherd needs more blessing; it needs the asking that God be with us in the process.
One worldly example is enough. The one I remember best is the wedding of Princess Diana in 1981, broadcast around the world. In St Paul's Cathedral in London it was the train that caught my eye, seven and a half metres long. And the music — the Bach Choir sang, the soprano Kiri Te Kanawa sang “Let the Bright Seraphim” from Handel's Samson, and everyone was in full dress. In that moment marriage looked holy and beautiful. But we also know how that story ended. The unfaithfulness in that marriage led at last to a sorrowful close.
A solemn rite will not hold: if it lacks the love and the conviction that are bound up with holiness.
Leviticus tells us the same thing: you have the outward rite, but what matters most is that through the rite the people of Israel are trained — whether they can truly obey God's word. These are two sides of one thing.
Consecrated Even in the Smallest Things
Does it strike you at this point that God is interfering too much? Leviticus regulates every side of life: how we deal with one another, the body, the days, even where you relieve yourself. To be honest: if God seems overbearing and unreasonable to you here, that is a normal reaction, because it runs against our nature.
That is exactly what the book wants to tell us: God wants us consecrated in life not only in the large details but down to the smallest. Not set apart only in great matters, but in the least of them too.
This year's Chinese Congress on World Evangelization has just closed in Malaysia; Rev. Edmund Chan spoke there very well. I have translated his message into Chinese and put it on my website. One sentence of his is worth keeping: what God wants of us is not the outward thing, not the size of our ministry; he cares more about whether we can obey his word in our daily life. Brothers and sisters, many of us manage obedience in church but not at home.
From the negative side I ask: why should I be told what to do? From the positive side: whoever is not consecrated in the smallest things shows no faith in God, and neither can he come before God with confidence — the partition stays where it is.
I often ask myself: Is the man who obeys God in church the same man who lives at home, at the office, and in the details nobody sees?
Sacrifice Means Drawing Near
Earlier I asked you to note the word “And”; now here is a second word: offering.
The Hebrew noun for an offering is קָרְבָּן (qorban), formed from the verb קָרַב (qarab), which means “to come near, to draw close.” Be sure to note that, because once this word is unlocked you will understand Romans.
To offer means: how do I come near? It is not merely a ceremony; the inward motive is how I come near to God. We said it at the beginning: if God does not call, no one can be in the presence of holiness. So through his statutes God makes the coming near possible.
And what then is the offering? It is the gift by which I am allowed to come near to God. Put into today's language, the sacrificial regulations are the regulations for how to come near to God; and the offering is the gift with which I am allowed to come — a gift that God himself has provided.
To offer means: how do I come near? It is not merely a ceremony; the inward motive is how I come near to God.
Reading Leviticus 1:1-2 Again
Now let us read it once more:
Leviticus 1:1-2 The LORD called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. He said, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When anyone among you brings an offering to the LORD, bring as your offering an animal from either the herd or the flock.'”※ The Hebrew opens with a connective “And,” which the NIV drops — as does the Chinese Union Version the speaker uses. The link back to Exodus that he builds on is in the Hebrew, not on the English page.
In today's language: the LORD himself calls Moses from the place where he meets people — the tent of meeting — and says to him: tell the people of Israel in my name, whoever among you wants to come near to God is to bring the gift with which one comes near. It is a conditional sentence. If someone does not want to come near, there is nothing to be done; but whoever does want to come near is to choose that gift from the herd and the flock and bring it before the LORD.
With that, the sentence becomes clear.
From Dead Offering to Living Sacrifice
Now let us look at Romans 12:1:
Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
Do you feel the difference now? “I urge you, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies” — Paul stands here, as it were, in Moses' place and speaks to us. Moses spoke then to the people of Israel; today Paul speaks to us.
To offer our bodies: this body is the gift with which we may come near to God — as a living sacrifice. Paul deliberately chooses the word “living,” because in Leviticus every sacrifice is dead. If the dead offering already had such effect, how much more the living one. Such service, such drawing near to the Lord, such worship before God is true and proper. With that, the sentence stops being a slogan.
If the dead offering already had such effect, how much more the living one.
While preparing this lesson I read a great deal of material and commentary. I have a particular liking for Leviticus; I cannot say why. Then a thought struck me: could one read it together with Romans? Because as I read Romans I noticed — justification by faith, offering the body as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God: Romans 12 is full of priestly language, and it was language Paul knew well. So as we read Leviticus, I shall keep referring back to Romans.
What does justification by faith mean? It does not only remove the partition between us and God so that we can come before him with confidence. The further purpose in Romans is that God's promised glory should be worked out in us, so that we may share in his holiness. We often understand justification as no more than the removal of sin; I call that “remission by faith.” Removal is the modest purpose; the further one is that God's promised glory should be with us. In this Romans and Leviticus are very much alike.
A sister said at this point that her Bible study group is about to read Romans next term; Leviticus first, then Romans — the order fits exactly, and God has his good purpose in everything. When we speak only of justification it sometimes gets too narrow; being reminded of the remission of sin as well, and of the further purpose, is good.
So I ask myself: Do I come before God merely to have my sin taken away, or am I truly willing for his glory to be worked out in me?
Closing — A Dance with Fire
The whole of Leviticus is about ritual, and in ritual one element stands first: fire. The fire of Sinai has now become the fire of the tabernacle; the fire people feared has become a holy fire, wrapped in layers of tent cloth. How this fire works on the Levites and in the service of the people we will take up next time.
So one may call the book a dance with fire. Is fire terrible? It is. When we dance with this God we do it trembling. The fire at Sinai frightened the people; yet through the tent Moses built it became the glory of God dwelling with his people. To put it another way: God has limited his anger in order to live among people. But within this dwelling his holy statutes hold, and so he tells the people how to live in a way that pleases him. He has drawn back the consuming fire for now and says it differently: through this fire you are to come before my face.
Looking back over this lesson, the warning side is clear. Leviticus tells us that holiness has a boundary, that defilement has power, and that no one can come near to God on his own terms. God regulates even the smallest things in our lives, because whoever is not consecrated in the smallest things shows no faith. The greatest problem of the church today is not persecution but assimilation to the world — I mentioned that sentence in the prayer letter I wrote to Professor Wu Hsien-chang. Perhaps you will say: what has so large a problem of the church to do with me? That is exactly the point: the church is made up of us. Step by step we fail to understand God's word and take our failure for God's word. In Spain I heard brothers and sisters say, “I only have to believe in Jesus; Christ's grace is there anyway.” It grieved me. The church is not a place of feeling. There is of course the feeling of love in it, but that love comes out of the truth — God's holy love, his redeeming love, his all-governing love. It is this love that draws us.
But the gospel side is clearer still. Before the Ten Commandments stands one sentence:
Exodus 20:2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
That sentence carries the greatest weight. Had God not first brought us out of the house of slavery, the Ten Commandments would be nothing but law; with this grace standing in front of them, they become a sign of love. They tell the people of God's household how to live according to his mind, and precisely so they do not become a chain. There are no parents who fail to tell their children the best they know; no friend who stays silent when he sees you going wrong. That is because love stands behind it — a parent's love, a companion's love, a friend's love. God's statutes show his character and rest entirely on the grace of love. Take that away and only legalism is left.
In Christ, then, we have to learn to consider God's word in love. Even when something is hard for us and runs against our nature: if Scripture says so, we should ask, Lord, what is it you want to change in me out of your love? — rather than turning contrary and saying, there you go, telling me what to do again. Those are two entirely different readings. Without the grace of Exodus underneath, all you will read out of Leviticus is a heap of cumbersome regulations. Much of it is ritual and is no longer practised today; but the spirit behind it remains, and it stands in that one sentence: you are to distinguish between the holy and the everyday, between the clean and the unclean.
A brother said that God's calling us from the tent of meeting is a fine reminder. In the world we often drift further and further from him; in the wilderness we even forget him; but at any time God calls us to draw near. A sister said that only by joining Leviticus to the New Testament did she understand that “love your neighbour as yourself” comes from Leviticus 19:18 —
Leviticus 19:18 Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD.
The Old Testament is the shadow of the New, and in the New it is worked out in Jesus. Another brother said frankly that in his own mind the Old and New Testaments still will not join. That is all right; we will keep at it together, since not everyone has walked this road before.
I too wondered while preparing whether to skip Leviticus. Then it was that little “And” that reminded me: you may not cut it off. Working through all of this has been no small sorting-out for my own faith as well.
God sometimes tells us to obey in a way that is all but unintelligible. Why read the Bible? Why keep a quiet time? Why pray? These questions test our attitude to service and to giving at a deeper level, because what is at stake is hard currency, our precious time and our possessions. Far too often we go by our own assumptions and think that my way will bring me near to God. It will not. For a long time I wondered what might awaken in the congregation a hunger for God; and then it was precisely this, that in Leviticus God calls, which helped me. May God keep calling in your lives too. And how do you know it is God's call? Only by reading Scripture. Without Scripture you cannot tell whether it is your own feeling, your imagination, a literary impression — or merely a suggestion about ministry. So you are to distinguish between the holy and the everyday, between the clean and the unclean.
May we in these lessons: take hold of the book's most important lines — the principle of holiness, the boundary of holiness, the presence of glory — and see how God opened such a road.
In the Old Testament stands a dead offering, and that dead offering points to the gospel: the blood of Christ on the cross and his completing of it, which brought about death and resurrection. What the burning of the fire brings forth is the pleasing aroma in which God delights — so that we too may offer our lives as a sign.
And may the church neither give way under persecution nor fade through assimilation, but be consecrated even in the smallest things and together bear witness to his glory.