Leviticus 23-27 Recap | OT Ep 16

In this episode, Austin and Ashley finish up the Book of Leviticus, discussing the distinctions between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, the significance of the Israelite calendar and festivals, the importance of Sabbath rest, and the implications of blasphemy and justice in the law versus the Gospel. 

Reading Plan - Old Testament in One Year
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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.

Welcome back friends, it's been a little while. So sorry for the delay, we have been moving this week. So today we are gonna be recapping Leviticus chapters 23 through 27, which will finish Leviticus. The fact that we will finish this book completely today and get to start the next episode with a brand new book is just so satisfying. I just love it when that happens, get a clean slate, *duh dun chhhhh*

Something you guys don't know is that when she does these little jokes, she doesn't put them on our notes, so I never know they're coming. And she usually has to edit out me making fun of her for how terrible the jokes are.

So like Ashley said, obviously we're a little behind with this episode as far as the reading plan goes.

The next episode will be a little longer than normal. It's going to get us all the way caught up with the reading plan. We'll be recapping Numbers chapters one through 11 in that episode.

Before we start this recap for today, there's a really important distinction we need to make clear for finishing this episode well as for setting up the other places in the remaining two books of the Torah.

The distinction is between the covenant of works the Israelites were under in the Old Testament and the covenant of grace that we are in when we put our faith in Christ.

A way that Ashley and I have often described the covenant the Israelites were in is as an “if this, then that” type of covenant. You'll see a little bit of that in chapter 26 in today's episode, but you'll really get that unpacked in the episode we'll have in Deuteronomy. What we mean by this is that in this covenant, God tells the Israelites that if they obey His laws and commandments, He'll bless them abundantly. And if they do not obey His commandments and laws, there will be sanctions on them for breaking their covenant with him.

You may remember that in episode 2 of our podcast, we pointed out how Abraham's covenant with God was much the same as our own covenant with Christ, in that God put all the pressure on Himself, and it was going to be up to God to see the covenant through. As I said, we are in the same covenant with God as believers in Christ. As Paul says in Ephesians, our blessings are in Christ. So why am I bringing this up? I'm bringing this up because a lot of good Bible-believing Christians think that God relates to us as He did to the ancient Israelites. Be glad that He does not. We do not work for our blessings. 

Now I am not saying that our actions don't have consequences for the good and for the bad. When you pattern yourself after God's laws, things usually go better for you. When you break from those norms, they tend to go more poorly. The really important distinction here is that we do not need to “be good” in order that God may bless us. You guys couldn't see this, but there's air quotes going on.

This passage in Leviticus 26 is not about America or any nation other than the Israelites of the Old Testament.

So we need to heed God’s Word and Laws that still apply to us morally, but the blessings God pours out on us are not contingent upon our obedience in the same way that it was to the Israelites in the Old Testament.

So as we get into this last section of the Book of Leviticus, we see a few different calendars presented to the Israelites. Remember that in biblical times, calendars were used to track the changing seasons of the year to manage their farms. Each nation's worship calendar and festivals would reveal what they believed about the relationship between their work in the field and the heavens. So in Israel, the agricultural calendar was attached to festivals commemorating the events of the Exodus from Egypt.

Because Israel understood their work to be in service of the one true God from whom all blessings flow, including their sustenance, just like during their Exodus.

In chapter 23, we see the weekly and annual calendar presented. Weekly being work for six days, and then on the seventh day, you are to Sabbath or rest in a holy convocation. We are gonna see this language a good bit today. So what does that mean, a holy convocation? Convocation is to call people together for a specific purpose. Holy means set apart and carries with it divine connotation.

So a holy convocation is a collective purposeful assembly of individuals within a spiritual community.

And something else we're going to see a good bit in this section is the number seven. Biblically, the number seven symbolizes completion or perfection. So God says, on the seventh day, set it aside for me. The Sabbath is the Lord's day.

This is not the first time God has told Moses for the Israelites to take a Sabbath. He's just reminding them.

From verse 4 through the end of chapter 23, we see the annual calendar. There were four spring festivals and three autumn festivals. So there were seven festivals. I'm gonna step on some toes for a second. We look at these festivals and go, “oh, it's so much they're having to do. If we had to do that now, I wouldn't have time for all that.” Right, they also worked to eat.

They didn't work to make their car payment and go to softball practice and piano and karate and that work function and, and… I promise you had more events on your calendar this month. Some of you this week than the Israelites did all year. And it's me. I'm some of you. Okay.

Believe me when I tell you, setting aside Sabbath time is so, so important. It will not just magically fall onto your calendar. You have to make it a priority or you will work yourself right through Sabbath time. And we are speaking from experience here.

Okay, back to the passage.

So the first celebration we see is Passover. It was to be a holy convocation commemorating the Passover in Exodus chapter 12. Passover was to be the first month on the 14th day. Then it led into the feast of unleavened bread, which began on the 15th day with a holy convocation and lasted for seven days, referencing Exodus chapter 13.

Then we see the feast of first fruits this was to happen the day after the first Sabbath of barley harvest season.

Next we see the feast of weeks. So seven weeks after the feast of first fruits, we have a new grain, which is wheat, to harvest and offer to the Lord. This was in reference to their arrival at Mount Sinai in Exodus chapter 19. And the Lord reminds them about not harvesting their entire field so the poor and the sojourner can come and glean. We talked about that in our last episode. So those are the spring festivals. Moving into the fall festivals, we have the feast of trumpets,

This was to happen on the first day of the seventh month and it was to be a holy convocation proclaimed with a blast of trumpets and was to be a solemn day of rest.

Next we see the Day of Atonement. This was to happen on the 10th day of the 7th month and again a holy convocation and again a day of solemn rest. Austin spoke a little bit about the Day of Atonement in our last episode. He brought up the goats, one shedding blood for the sins, one confessing to the wilderness that those sins had been atoned for as far as the east is from the west.

But while this festival was a real time celebration, it also hearkens forward to our eternal rest through the atonement of our Lord Jesus.

Lastly in the annual calendar we have the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tents. We are still in the seventh month and it lasts for seven days starting on the fifteenth day of the month. On the first day and the eighth day they were to have a holy convocation and a day of rest remembering the journey through the wilderness.

That moves us into chapter 24. 24 is kind of a shorter chapter, but it carries with it so much weight in a lot of areas. As we just discussed, God has just given the Israelites the reminders of their weekly and annual calendars.

Now God reminds them that a light should be kept burning regularly in the lamp, and that the bread of presence should be arranged before the Lord every Sabbath day.

Then we get to a portion of the narrative addressing blasphemy and the infamous eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth passage.

This passage is one of the most misused passages of scripture. I've heard people say it like this, well, an eye for an eye, it's only fair. Like in reference to getting even with someone or justify taking something that belongs to someone else just because they took something from them. But y'all, that is not what we're talking about here. This is actually a very limiting statement by God.

It’s very likely that he's talking figuratively here when he says an eye for an eye, meaning the punishment should fit the crime. For example, you can't sue someone for $30 million when they only did $300 worth of damage. Or in Israelite's terms, you can't have someone killed as a punishment just because they stole one of your goats. Okay, so track with me here, friends. The punishment should befit the crime.

So let's see how that plays out here in the sin of blasphemy.

So the commandment against blasphemy, or taking God's name in vain, has already been given. So that is nothing new.

And we see that there is a man who blasphemed the name of God and cursed. This guy has launched a verbal assault on God. He's essentially wishing God dead. God says the punishment should befit the crime and anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord should be put to death. We know that in the moral law, the law that would still be a sin to disobey today, there is no exception. Whether it's blasphemy, adultery, idolatry,

The wages of any sin is ultimately death as we read in Romans 6:23. God doesn't just say, “do your best” or “I don't want you to do this, but if you do, I'll let you off a few times, but then we'll need to talk.” The law demands what it demands for every sin. There are no exceptions for Jews, foreigners or sojourners in the land. Now, hear me, hear me. We want to make sure to draw a clear distinction between the law and the gospel. Chad Bird says it like this, what happens when you mix the law and the gospel together is if you have a

“What happens when you mix the law and the gospel together is you have a toothless law and a legalized gospel.”

If the law didn't bite, what would we need saving from, right? As we've mentioned before, we tend to think law bad, gospel good. But that's not the case. It's actually law good, we are bad, and the gospel is good news for us. The rigidity of this God-given standard of perfection is what makes the gospel of Jesus Christ such good news. Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, verses 38 and 39,

“You have heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

If God would have been saying back in Leviticus, “an eye for an eye, it's only fair.” Then Jesus would have contradicted that here.

But no, just as Jesus elevated every commandment to the heart level, this one is no different. He says about murder, you've heard it said, do not murder. But I say, if you've looked with anger in your heart towards your neighbor, you've committed murder in your heart. He says the same thing about adultery. If you've looked upon someone who's not your spouse with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart.

same thing here. God said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, meaning the punishment should befit the crime and go no further. But Jesus said to the heart level, do not seek repayment for evil done to you from someone. Do not resist an evil person, but if they slap you on the cheek, turn them the other one also. The law demands what it demands for every single sin. And God didn't love us so much that he made an exception for us.

He loved us so much that he paid what the law demanded from us. How? He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life and rest from all our toils, which really flows right into what we're gonna talk about in chapter 25, the various years of rest or Sabbath years.

So as we move into chapter 25, there are two main years on this calendar we cover. The Sabbath year and the year of Jubilee. The Sabbath year came about once every seven years in the same way that the Sabbath day comes about on the seventh day of the week.

In this year, there was to be no sowing or harvesting crops of any kind.

God promised that as long as the Israelites upheld the Sabbath year, the land would produce for the people of Israel and they would not go without food.

I think an important thing to catch here is that the principle of Sabbath, God shows us in the seven days of creation is really important.

So much so that God is saying that even the land itself needs a rest in order to continue producing.

Now maybe this seems odd or mythical to you. And as with most things in the Bible, there is usually more than one thing happening at a time.

But I want to give you a practical reason God says to do this. Practically speaking, it makes sense to give the land time to rest so that the nutrients of the soil can replenish. Farmers have long known that there are benefits to rotating crops year over year. The

more time goes on and the more our technology catches up to God's wisdom, the more we see just one of the reasons God tells Israel to do this.

From a spiritual standpoint, God is calling Israel to trust Him and Him alone.

If God weren't who He says He is, it would be a massive risk not planting or harvesting for an entire year. But as we see in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 6 verses 25 through 34, God shows us that He knows what His creation needs and He shows His compassion towards His creation even down to the lilies of the field. Christian, you can rest assured that He sees you and knows your need. He is our Good Father.

The year of Jubilee happened once every 50 years. To talk about this, I need to remind you of the past episode where we discussed slavery in the biblical

During the time these books were being written, the most common form of slavery was not one of being taken captive, but it was one of indentured servitude. A person who had gotten themselves into trouble financially could either sell themselves into slavery for a period of years and the owner would pay off their debt, or they could sell off their land in the same way in order to pay off a debt.

point of the year of Jubilee was so that every 50th year all of those arrangements were considered null and void

So on that year, people who had sold their land into a land slavery type of arrangement would have the land restored to them. And any person who had sold themselves into slavery would be restored back to their tribe and live as free men and women. This leads us to our gospel glimpse of this section.

The word that has over time been rendered Jubilee comes from the word Yovel in ancient Hebrew.

This word meant ram or ram's horn.

During the Day of Atonement on the 50th year, for anyone who's curious, we covered that, the Day of Atonement, mean, in episode 15.

The ram's horn would sound and everyone would know that they had entered into the year of Jubilee and the slaves were going to be set free. The captives would be set free.

If we fast forward deeper into the Old Testament, in the book of Isaiah, which was written 700 years before Christ, in chapter 61,

Isaiah prophesied, the Messiah would say, 

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
     because the Lord has anointed me
 to bring good news to the poor;[a]
     he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
     and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;[b]
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
     and the day of vengeance of our God.”

The passage goes on to say lots of beautiful and prophetic things, but I want to ask you, can you not hear the language that sounds like year of Jubilee? Proclaim liberty to the captives, proclaim the year of the Lord's favor? That sounds just like the year of Jubilee.

In the Gospel of Luke chapter 4, starting in verse 14, Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah. When we get to verse 21, it's Jesus letting the people that's listening to him know that HE is the fulfillment of these things, that he is the one who proclaimed the year of the Lord's favor. He, Jesus, would give sight to the blind and set the captive free.

Friend, made no mistake about it, Jesus did physically heal the blind and cleanse the leper, but he did so much more than that. He died so that we could go free for eternity.

Remember, at this point in our reading plan, we are up to our eyeballs in law. Law that we can't keep, no less.

And James, the brother of Jesus, teaches us in the book of James, chapter 2, that to break one law is to be guilty of transgressing the whole thing. Jesus came and died as the sacrificial lamb during the day of atonement for my sin and for your sin. He bids us come to Him, repent of our sins, and put our faith and trust in the work that He did for us. When we do that, the chains of our old life are broken, and we are then made able to follow Him for the rest of our days.

When we come to chapter 26, we're going to see that “if this, then that” covenant I mentioned at the beginning of the episode fleshed out a bit. As I said, I don't want to spend too much time delving into this here because we're going to get deeper into it in Deuteronomy. But I do want to show how serious God is about the covenant He made with Israel. God spells out blessings for obedience and punishment for disobedience.

The way God has set this covenant up with Israel, is that His intention is to bless them. And if they will do what they agreed to in Exodus, which is to obey all the words of God's law, then that's exactly what they'll get is a blessing. But if they break their covenant with God, then there will be sanctions against the covenant breakers.

Even with the forthrightness of this proclamation, God's desire is that Israel not break his laws, not go against his commands. And when they did, to return to Him in repentance.

Again, I am thankful for Christ and the new covenant. Sin still has consequences in the new covenant but not because He seeks to punish us for them. It's because sin causes damage. I'm grateful that in Christ we have a Father who loves us and an older brother who is also our great high priest.

We end the book of Leviticus with laws about vows.

An Israelite could dedicate himself or a family member to the Lord, which looked like service to the sanctuary. However, only Levites could physically be of service on the temple grounds. So for anyone else wanting to serve the Lord, they could give money, give animals, their home, or their land. This chapter is the Lord giving a pay scale on each of these vows and laying out what that was to look like.

In verse 27, God reminds them that the firstborn of every animal was the Lord's anyway, so that did not qualify for dedication because it was already the Lord's. Then in verse 28, we see a language shift from dedication, which has a servitude connotation that you have spent a lot of time and energy into something, to devotion, which has a deeper long-term connotation, like to be set apart for something or someone for life.

And we see that you can devote something to the Lord for good things like the tithe or you could devote something to the Lord for destruction

Either way, in the case of devoting things, they belong irreversibly to the Lord and could not be redeemed or sold or bought back.

The chapter ends with God saying, these are the commandments, a very general term for laws and sacraments and rites, implying he means the entire book of Leviticus, not just this last section, but the entire book. All of these are the commandments given to Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai. What we know, they wouldn't know, but what we know is that it would be decades before they would actually be able to recognize and adhere to any of the Sabbath years like

Austin was talking about because they wouldn't occupy the promised land for another 40 years.

and we'll see more of the Israelites' journey as we move on through the Old Testament.

Guys, that's going do it for today's recap and the book of Leviticus. See y'all, it wasn't that bad!

May His grace abound to you and to me as we study to find Jesus in the Old Testament.