Exodus 36 - Leviticus 1 Recap | OT Ep 12

In this episode, Austin and Ashley explore the themes of obedience, grace, and holiness as they discuss the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus and the subsequent sacrificial laws in Leviticus. They emphasize the importance of understanding God's desire for a relationship with His people and the significance of grace in motivating obedience. The discussion also highlights the transition from the Old Testament laws to the New Testament understanding of sacrifice through Christ.

Reading Plan - Old Testament in One Year
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tSmSv3JOd-gCJS6VSFMtu-iv14NZ45_M/view?usp=sharing

Chapters

• 0:00 Wrapping up Exodus
• 5:02 Erecting the Tabernacle
• 7:39 Looking Back, What is God Communicating?
• 12:02 Intro into Leviticus: A Call to Holiness
• 16:44 Leviticus Ch 1: Burnt Offerings

Transcript

Hey everyone,

My name is Austin. And my name is Ashley. Welcome to the Clean Slate Podcast. Where we're finding Jesus in the Old Testament.

Good morning or evening to you, depending on when you listen to this. Thank you so much for joining us for episode 12. In this episode, we're going to be recapping Exodus 36 through 40 and starting Leviticus and just going through chapter one.

That's right, we do get into Leviticus today. So remember, at the end of chapter 35, Moses gathers everyone up and says, remember, this is what God has told us to do. And these are the materials we need to do that and the Bible says that everyone whose heart stirred them brought the materials. And basically, here's what we need and here's who brought what, and here's who's in charge, like Bezalel and Oholiab. Now you can go completely Southern, like me, and say Oholiab, or you can get more precise and say Oholiab. Either way, say it with confidence, right?

chapter 36 continues with this narrative and it says that Moses gave Bezalel and Oholiab the contributions that the people had brought for doing the work. So all of the metals, the stones, the linens, all the materials needed to make the various parts of the tabernacle,

Moses gave to them to get started. And they said, Moses, the people bring more than enough for doing the work that the Lord has commanded. And Moses actually had to tell the people to stop bringing contribution because they had all the materials they needed. The interesting part here is that this is just days after the golden calf incident. God had forgiven them for their idolatry and the people of Israel responded by not only bringing what was needed,

They brought more than what was needed.

So we see the mandate of the law was not what brought on their obedience. In fact, the law was what showed their sin, their idolatry, to be so apparent. Like we've said several times, the law is a mirror. It was a litmus test for their hearts, which they failed. But it was the Lord's kindness and mercy that churned the desire in their hearts to be obedient. And not just be obedient out of mandate, but out of joy.

because of the grace of God and to worship Him by obeying His Word.

The Bible often gives an analogy of us being trees and producing fruit.

I heard it said this way,

“The rain of grace is much better at producing fruits of the spirit, than the axe of the Law”

There was never life in the law, friends. There's always only been life in the grace of Jesus Christ.

So starting in verse eight, we see a recounting of the actual building process of what people are told to build, starting way back in chapter 25. It can get kind of confusing if you're not paying close attention. Like, wait, didn't we already build this? Are there two tents? Like, what's going on here? So up to this point, we've read what God has told Moses for them to do,

but now is the account of them actually doing the work. So we're gonna skim the next few chapters since we already discussed much of their gospel glimpses in the last few episodes.

We end chapter 36 with them making the curtains and the structure. Chapter 37, they make things to go inside the tent, like the Ark of the Covenant, the table, the lampstand, the Altar of Incense. In chapter 38, they make the things to go outside the tent, like the Altar for burnt offerings, the bronze wash basin, the court itself.

And at the end of chapter 38, you have a detailed summation of the medals and the money that was given by the people.

In chapter 39 we see they make the garments for the priests.

Then in verse 32, it says, work of making the things was finished, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. We hear that as a refrain through this next section. They weren't interjecting their own thoughts on how it should be. They were doing things as prescribed by the Lord regarding his house.

Think about it, if you build a house, you expect the architect to build it according to how you wanted your house, right? If you wanted a three bedroom, two bath house to be built with tile floors, but the architect built a one bedroom, four bath with carpet, you'd say that's not up to you. It's up to me, the person who's going to dwell in the house. This is important because in one way or another, every aspect of God's house tells us how he interacts with his people.

So this isn't that God needed somewhere to live, but somewhere for his family to enjoy being with him. And I hope you guys are seeing that God has always desired a relationship with his people.

So we have everything built, now it's time to put it all together and set up the tent. So in chapter 40, God tells Moses when and how to set it up. We see in verse one, God tells Moses on the first day of the first month, you shall erect the tabernacle of the tent of meeting. In verse nine, God tells them to anoint essentially everything in the tabernacle. Verse 12, he says to anoint Aaron and his sons.

And then verses 16 through 33 is Moses doing all that the Lord has just commanded.

Now we get to the end of chapter Verse 34, the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it. And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.

I want to call attention to the fact that this was not a permanent structure. It was in fact a tent, a glorious tent, but a tent nonetheless. So it was a mobile structure. They had a set up and tear down team, I'm sure. So just as an encouragement to those of you who are a mobile church that don't have a building right now, you set up and tear down week in and week out, be encouraged by this passage. What you do matters.

You are literally setting up a place where God's people can meet with Him. So take heart and be encouraged.

Something else interesting in this passage is the language and sentence structure of the building of the tabernacle. It mimics the Genesis creation account. In Genesis, we see God do something and look upon what He's done and say, it was good, or sometimes very good, seven times. We see the Israelites do things, then look upon those things and say they were done as the Lord had commanded Moses, seven times.

Even in the midst of a fallen world where sin has polluted creation, the Tabernacle was meant to be a new Eden, a place where God dwells with His people. And at the same time, it becomes a preview to what God will do to redeem His people through Jesus and ultimately redeem His entire creation.

out Exodus, as with any book of the Bible, it's helpful to look back and ask, what do you think God was trying to communicate through this book? Now here is where those lenses we've talked so often about are important. Resist asking yourself, what is God saying to me, until you have asked yourself, what truths did God mean to communicate to anyone who reads this?

In order to do that here at end of Exodus, we have to first dip back into Genesis. Remember, the Bible tells one unified story, the story of the coming Messiah.

In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve sinned and the world was thrown into turmoil.

But in the midst of that judgment, God tells Eve that through her, one would come to make things right and restore creation back to a garden-like state. In Genesis 12 and 15, God tells Abraham that this blessing

would come through him and his future family. to Abraham that his children, which would be the people of Israel, would become slaves in a foreign land

and that God would free them from the slavery and bring them back to the land of Canaan. In the last few chapters of Genesis, the people of Israel come down to Egypt.

In the first couple chapters in Exodus, we see that a good deal of time, almost 400 years, had passed since we left off in Genesis.

But by this time, the Israelites had indeed become slaves of the Egyptians.

sets us up to know that God is about to do something because God is truth, because God never fails. Unlike us, when He speaks, what He says comes to pass.

God sends Moses back to rescue a people that would ultimately complain and gripe about the way he chose to save them.

Those same people, the Israelites, would go on to break the first two commandments of the law before Moses even had time to read them aloud.

Now right here is where we should all stop and really examine what is going on.

God is holy, as evidenced by the fact that after those grievous sins we mentioned, God could not be in the camp with His people until the tabernacle was built and sacrifice offered to atone for that sin.

The question we should really ask ourselves is why does God tolerate these people? Do we really believe that God needed them?

And listen to me carefully. I'm not talking about God desiring them. I'm talking about needing them. Later in the Bible, Jesus makes it plain that God could raise up worshippers out of stones if He so desired.

What's happening here is God has set His love on a people who could and would never be able to earn it. God makes that plain a little bit later in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy chapter 7.

God did not love the Israelites because of how mighty they were. God did not love the Israelites because of how faithful they were. God did not love them for what they could bring to Him.

The Bible testifies in Isaiah that even our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment, meaning that even the good things we do are tainted because of our sin, and we don't actually have anything of value to offer Him.

But God loved the Israelites because He set His love on them. Another way of saying that is what we see in 1 John 4.16, that God is love. How freeing is that kind of love? It is so radical and different than any other love the world has to offer. Think about it.

If you were a bride and your husband only loved you for something you had to offer, say your beauty, and that beauty faded over time, you'd have no confidence in knowing if your husband would love you tomorrow.

If you were a husband who was a great provider and that's the only reason your wife loved you, you could lose that job and your confidence in her love would fade.

God's love is better because it does not rest upon what you have or have not done for Him, but because of what Christ did for us on the cross. We can repent of our sins and trust in Christ to save us and have confidence that God will love us and adopt us into His family for eternity.

Amen. We're not perfect. We're just forgiven.

And I think as we get into Leviticus, that's the rub. People think list of do's and don'ts and really it's a call to holiness.

It's a call to live a life of holiness and reverence to the Lord rather than a list of dos and don'ts. So Leviticus should be considered a continuation of Exodus. We have erected the tent of meeting and now God gives within the first month all of these regulations and rituals and moral and ethical codes. So chapters one through 16,

are the ritual regulations. Chapters 17-27 are the moral and ethical commands. Both are equally concerned with Israel's holiness to the Lord.

Now, Leviticus often uses language like unclean, clean, and holy, but it doesn't mean the same thing we think today. Normally, we use the words unclean and clean to describe non-hygienic or hygienic, but that's not the case here. These words are used as a ritual state. These ritual states guide the community with the types of actions a person may or may not engage in.

The ESV Study Bible gives the example of a person registering to vote. So a person who is registered may vote, whereas a person who is unregistered may not.

A person who is in the ritual state of holiness is not necessarily more personally righteous than a person who is simply clean or unclean. Just as a person who is registered to vote is not necessarily more righteous than a person who is unregistered.

So it's important to make that distinction that these are not necessarily talking about the morality of that particular person, but just as a ritual state. Is this person clean, unclean, or holy? To carry out those rites.

Generally speaking, rituals may function in several ways.

One, to address aspects of the human condition, such as impurity or sinfulness. Two, is to serve as a way for the offerer to express emotions or desires to the Lord.

Three is to underscore various truths about the Lord or the human condition. In many instances, one ritual may accomplish all three of these things.

And studying these laws and rites is important because they enable us as the reader to understand how the work of Christ saves people, since the sacrifices point to different aspects of the meaning of Christ's sacrifice of Himself.

important to note that the sacrificial system in Leviticus has ceased for the people of God. It has been fulfilled in the coming of Christ as the all-sufficient sacrifice, once for all, for all who would believe in Him. As a reference verse, read the entire book of Hebrews.

Right? Hebrews is the Old Testament of the New Testament. If y'all have never read Hebrews, please do that. It is fascinating.

This idea of holiness affects how one lives in the covenant community.

In the New Testament, Peter actually quotes Leviticus 11 44 and applies to Christians the same principle of life, be holy for I am holy.

In fact, many of the moral requirements reflected in the holiness code reveals the kinds of moral conduct that are still either pleasing or displeasing to God.

You know, I truly believe that we have such a hard time with this book, not because of all the blood, but because it's not our body or person that suffers the sacrifice.

It's easy for us as mothers to sacrifice our bodies for our children, and money and effort as parents in raising them. We sacrifice for raising up our children. But that's not the case here. Another animal had to sacrifice its life for my holiness to be restored.

while that concept is hard to come to grips with, then how much more of a sacrifice is the Son of God?

And that's pretty much what the book of Hebrews is, showing that Jesus is there greater than of all of these things.

But we're not talking about the book of Hebrews today. We're getting into Leviticus chapter one. So chapter one starts with the Lord calling to Moses from the tent of meeting. So this is the first time we see recorded that the Lord actually calls to Moses from the tent.

We say the Lord give specific instructions for laws for burnt offerings

He gives instructions on what animals could qualify as this type of sacrifice and that they should be without blemish.

Now, the burnt offering is the most costly offering there is since it's completely burned up with nothing left except for the skin, which the priest kept.

The offerer is to lay their hand on the animal's head, and it probably serves to establish some sort of relationship between the offerer and the animal so that the animal is accepted on his or her behalf as evidenced by a pleasing aroma to the Lord.

That's gonna do it for today.

We'll get further into Leviticus in the next episode. May His grace abound to you and to me as we study to find Jesus in the Old Testament.