THROUGH THE BIBLE - Leviticu..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Leviticus chapter 21. And the Lord said to Moses, speak to the priests and the sons of Aaron and say to them, no one shall make himself unclean for the dead among his people except for his close relatives, his mother and his father, his son, his daughter, his brother, or his virgin sister who is near to him because she has no husband.

For her, he may make himself unclean. He shall not make himself unclean as a husband among his people and so profane himself. They shall not make bald patches on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts on their bodies or body. They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God. For they offer the Lord's food offerings, the bread of their God.

Therefore, they shall be holy. They shall not marry a prostitute or a woman who has been defiled, neither shall they marry a woman divorced from her husband, for the priest is holy to his God. You shall sanctify him, for he offers the bread of your God. He shall be holy to you, for I, the Lord who sanctify you, am holy. And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by whoring, profanes her father, she shall be burnt with fire.

The priest who is chief among his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil is poured, and who has been consecrated to wear the garments, shall not let the hair of his head hang loose, nor tear his clothes. He shall not go into any dead bodies, nor make himself unclean, even for his father or for his mother. He shall not go out of the sanctuary, lest he profane the sanctuary of his God. For the consecration of the anointing oil of his God is on him. I am the Lord."

And he shall take a wife in her virginity, a widow, or a divorced woman, or a woman who has been defiled, or a prostitute. These he shall not marry, but he shall take as his wife a virgin of his own people, that he may not profane his offspring among his people. For I am the Lord who sanctifies him." And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to Aaron, saying, None of your offspring throughout the generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near a man blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or a man who has an injured foot or an injured hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a defect in his sight, or an itching disease, or scabs, or crushed testicles, no man of the offspring of Aaron, the priest who has a blemish, shall come near to offer the Lord's foods of offerings."

Since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God. He may eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy things, but he shall not go through the veil or approach the altar because he has a blemish that he may not profane my sanctuaries. For I am the Lord who sanctifies them. So Moses spoke to Aaron and to his sons and to all the people of Israel. Amen.

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Well, church, in our study so far, thus far in the book of Leviticus, we've already made our way through the first 20 chapters. And I'm sure that we all would know at this point what we've said over and over again. This book is about holiness. The thread and the theme that runs throughout the whole book of Leviticus is holiness.

holiness. That God is a thrice holy God. He is set apart. He is distinct from everything else in His creation. He is a holy God and the people He has covenanted with are to be holy as He is holy.

They are to reflect and mirror the holiness of God. Now last week I made a point that sinful people are incapable in and of themselves to be holy. Why? Because sinners are tainted with blood. Their hands are tainted with corruption and blood.

And everything they touch, they will defile and make unclean. In order for them to be holy, they would need a holy God, who is the essence of all goodness and holiness, to make them holy. And that's exactly what we see. God has rescued these people from the clutches of Egypt. And he's brought them out from being slaves in that nation.

And he's brought them unto himself. And he has set them apart. He's made them holy. A peculiar people. He's made them holy.

And he declares of these people that you are mine. He says, you are mine to these people as I am holy. I make you holy. Now live as holy people. And so we've been working our way through the through this holiness code in the book of Leviticus, and these are the rules and the precepts that God has given to his covenant people so that they would live as people who've been set apart to the only God of the universe.

So holiness is the theme of the book. We see this picture so clearly among the Israelites. They're now gathered in the wilderness. They're about maybe two million strong. And we probably would remember how they're structured in the wilderness.

There's three tribes to the north and three to the south, and there's three in the west and three in the east. And then what you have in the middle is you have the courtyard of the tabernacle and the tabernacle structure itself. So as one would look and as these people in Israel would look, they're all facing the tabernacle, they would know that even though God has made them positionally holy, that is, he's brought them out of Egypt and said that you are mine, you belong to me. I'm setting you apart from the nations of the world. You're going to look different.

You're going to speak different. You're going to worship a God unlike the pagans. As they look, they can see the tabernacle which stands for holiness. And as we go deeper and deeper towards the tabernacle, we go from people who are positionally holy, and then we go deeper and deeper, and things get holier and holier. You go into the courtyard, where you have the bronze ladder and the altar, and then you go deeper into the tabernacle, the outer room of the tabernacle, called the holy place, and then you get into the most holy place, the very place where the manifest presence and glory of God is.

And so the people are being taught that God, Yahweh, is thrice holy. That's what they're being taught. That's what they're seeing. And so what we have before us is we have in chapter 21, we have instructions to those who are able or who are unable to access the holy places of God. Because as we said, as we get closer to the most holy place, the standards of holiness grow higher and stricter and stricter.

And so what we have before us is we have the rules and the precepts for the priests. In particular, the general, not only distinctions made between the people of Israel and the priests, but also distinctions made between the priests who serve God in the tabernacle and the high priest, or as we read here in verse 10, the chief priest among his brothers. And we know that's Aaron. because he's the one who one day a year will enter into the most holy place as a mediator on behalf of the people of God into the very manifest presence of God. So what we have before us, we have from verse 1 through 9, we have rules and the precepts for all the priests to follow, with the emphasis, of course, being holiness and ritual cleanliness to avoid any contamination into the holy place.

of God. And then from verses 10 through 15, that sets out the regulations which are stricter again for the high priest or the chief priest. Now this chapter sets rules. Rules in relation to their involvement among the people of Israel. And the first is that it pertains to burials or funerals or being in the presence of dead people, dead corpses.

What we're told is we're told that the priests are able or are allowed to engage in the burial rituals of the people, but only for close relatives. Only for close relatives because of the nature of the uncleanliness of a dead person. You see, death is a result of sin and unrighteousness. And in mediating on behalf of God's people, the priest has a duty unto life, not death. Now, you might back off and say, wait a minute, there's thousands and thousands of dead animals.

I mean, that's what they do. They offer these dead animals on an altar. So how could that be? And that's true, but you have to realize what these dead animals represent. You see, every animal that dies, that is slain and sacrificed and placed on the altar, every one of those animals is pointing towards something.

It's a picture of something. It is a substitute, an animal dying in the place of a sinner. So an animal dying in order for a sinner to have life, because that animal provides the atonement. Atonement for what? Atonement for sin.

What is the wages of sin? Death. So the priestly duty, the mediating role of the priest is one that emphasises life, not death. After all, the source and the substance of all of life is in their midst, is he not? But the high priest is subject to a higher standard again.

Because of his atoning, his anointing, my apologies, and the solemn nature of his duty, which includes entering into the most holy place in the sanctuary before the Lord, the Holy of Holies, it mandates a stricter level of holiness. He must not be defiled at all, we're told, with dead corpses. Not even his close relatives. is for this reason, unlike the priestly colleagues that he may have, he's not even able to partake in the burial of his father or his mother. Even when a burial is taken place outside the court of the tabernacle, when the people of Israel, maybe some of his colleagues are out there, he's not even allowed to be among them.

He needs to remain in the sanctuary. He needs to remain there just in case that he is to be contaminated by death, and then brings that contamination back into the sanctuary and defiles that which is holy. Remember, everything that God has set apart is consecrated by Him and consecrated to be holy unto Him, set apart for God and God alone. The level of holiness that is required by Yahweh is very, very high for the high priest because Yahweh is very concerned with holiness. The chapter goes on and we see some more stipulations for the priests with, again, higher standards for the high priest.

We see that the high priest needs to adhere to a higher level of purity and holiness, a higher level of separateness than his colleagues. This is what God wants him to do. So we see instruction for the priests to set apart from pagan nations or the pagan world and the way the pagans around them would do things. They had to be different in the way they mourned, for example. When they're mourning a death of a loved one, the high priest is not allowed even to be involved in that practice by loosening his hair or tearing his clothes.

That is a ritual. That's what they did when they were mourning for their loved ones. We know this already because when we look back at chapter 10 where Nadab and Abihu were struck by God, you remember Moses instructed Aaron, don't let your hair down. And don't tear your clothes. You're not to mourn.

You're not to mourn. The chapter goes on with stipulations on who the priests are to marry in order to remain pure before the Lord. and not to marry a prostitute, not to marry a divorced woman. That's not permitted. You see, the emphasis is even greater for the high priest, where he's told on two occasions in this text that she must be a virgin from his own people.

Why? So that his offspring, that is the high priestly line, would not be defiled. Of course, we know that God is concerned with holiness. And of course, the priest's children come into play here, in particular, the priest's daughter. We're told that there should be no prostitution among them.

If the daughter of a priest is to engage in this evil act of prostitution, then she is to be burned. You see, again, they are to be set apart from the people around them. They are to act in a way that is different to the nations around them, because we know, and God knows, that when they go out of this wilderness area and are given a land, that all the nations around them will be practicing in these illicit acts. The priests will give, pagan priests will give their daughters over to shrine prostitution. That will take place.

But Yahweh says, none of that amongst me. None of that wickedness is to be seen among my people. You are to be holy. And then from verse 16 through 23, the Lord makes it clear that no priest with any obvious defects will be permitted to serve Him in the tabernacle. The text before us lists 12 of these physical defects.

Beloved, none of these, many of these, they're not due because of any inherent sin in the priest. Many are a result of something happening outside the control of the priest. The physically inferior priest was told you can't serve God in this way in the tabernacle. Now, he wasn't cut off from the other priests because he was still allowed to engage in the eating of the bread, the holy and the most holy bread. So God wasn't cutting him off.

He was still being provided for as being a Levitical priest. He was still being provided for. But the point that God was making is this. Perfection in all areas of life is required of the mediating priests who approach Him. Nothing incomplete, nothing unwhole, nothing short from perfect is worthy to minister in the tabernacle before the God of the universe.

You see, God is teaching His people something. This is a lesson. Everything that's going on here is actually a lesson for the people of Israel, and it's a lesson for us also. Because I want you to realize something. When the chapter began, God told Moses, you instruct Aaron and the sons of Aaron, right?

That's what he was saying. Because we know this chapter is pertaining to the priests. But at the end of the chapter, Moses is told to proclaim the stipulations in this chapter, not only to Aaron and his sons, but to all of Israel. Why is that? Why did Aaron, why did Moses proclaim what's been instructed to the priests to all of Israel when it only pertains to the priests, right?

Well, no. This was way beyond the priests. Yahweh was teaching all of Israel a profound redemptive lesson. He was teaching them that the only persons that can come before Him are those who are spiritually clean, those who are physically complete and whole and perfect. They're the only ones who are worthy to come into His presence.

You see, the lesson has already been taught to the whole of Israel, and the priests knew this already in the way of their sacrifices. You remember, what animals are allowed to be sacrifices? What animals were permitted to be sacrifices? Are they not the ones without spot or blemish? Are they only those perfect animals that were to be sacrificed before the Lord God?

Now that we're being taught something profound, just like only perfect animals without spot or blemish or any defect were worthy to be sacrificed to God, God is saying that he expects the mediating priest who comes before him with that sacrifice to also be perfect without spot and without blemish. But here's the thing. Everyone knew, particularly the priests, that despite the rigorous inspection of the animals, not a single one was perfect. Everyone knew that despite the rigorous rules and stipulations for the priesthood to be holy and undefiled, and the meticulous scrutiny that they would have been engaging to ensure that no priest with any defects physically would serve the Lord, they knew they were all flawed. There was no perfection among them.

None of them were perfect. And beloved, if they knew that, no doubt they knew that Yahweh knew also. The one who knows all things knows this. He allowed his people to sacrifice animals that he knew were short from perfect. And he also allowed priests who were short from perfect to come before him and serve him in the tabernacle.

Beloved, every sincere Israelite would have been convinced that this was mercy. And it's for good reason. The most holy item in the tabernacle is called taporeth, the mercy seat. But God being God, he will one day require that perfection. God being God, He will one day require the perfection that is necessary.

He may allow imperfect priests to come before Him, or imperfect sacrifices. As far as the people were concerned, they were doing their very best, but they could not provide the perfection and the standard that God would require. And God would accept those, but one day He would have to. have to require that which is perfect and only that which the priests and the sacrifices were all pointing to. He would require perfection in morality.

He would require perfection in obedience, in purity, in cleanliness, in holiness. He would require perfection and undefilement from sin of a high priest and of a sacrifice that was never seen beforehand. never seen beforehand in the tabernacles precinct. Beloved, we know that perfect sacrifice comes in the way of Jesus Christ, both the great high priest and the sacrificial lamb, the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Let me end with this.

Let me end with Hebrews chapter 7 from verse 26 through 28. Because in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, and his son was sent as the once and for all sacrifice. Hebrews 7, 26 through 28 reads like this. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separate from sinners, exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like the other high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.

For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests. That's what we see before us in this chapter. But the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints the Son who has made perfect, who was made, my apologies, who has made perfect forever. Beloved, the perfect, holy, righteous High Priest and Lamb of God is Jesus Christ. and those who trust in Him will be cleansed from their sins and will enjoy the life that He has given.

Let's pray.