This post is published as a companion to Unit 5, Session 5 of The Gospel Project for Adults Vol. 2 (Winter 2021-22): From Captivity to the Wilderness.
If you’ve ever tried to read through the Bible in one year, you start off strong with Genesis, learning about creation and the early covenants God made with His people. You get into Exodus and see the Israelites in Egypt multiplying, and the storyline of Prince of Egypt gets played out as exciting as it does on screen. Exodus ends with God giving instructions for the tabernacle so God could meet with His people. But then you get to Leviticus and the topic of offerings and sacrificial ritual laws seem so irrelevant and mundane that it would be easy to give up reading or to skip the book entirely.
However, read carefully, Leviticus is an insightful book into the character of God and how He desires to be worshipped. It is about a holy God in covenant relationship with His people, and how sin and impurities put a chasm between the two parties, and how sacrifices and atonement, thus, need to be made.
God’s Holiness Revealed Through the Law
God’s holiness is a major theme throughout the book, as well as the theme of atonement or reparation (the manner of repairing the relationship we have with God because of our sin). The sacrificial system prescribed by God continually spoke of God’s holiness and how things and people were to be clean and holy. The system was His way of showing love and grace to His people, helping them understand that He still desired a relationship with them, even though they strayed, even though they were undeserving, even though they broke covenant, even though they were unholy. Despite their faithlessness, God remained faithful. As the Israelites understood this, they delighted in His law (Psalm 1:2), even the sacrificial ritual laws, because they saw a loving, good, and faithful God pursuing them.
Christ’s Fulfillment of the Law
Now, we, too, can delight in the law because we know that Jesus Christ fulfilled the law (Matt. 5:17) in a one-and-done act of self-sacrifice on the cross to be the atonement for our sins––“He did this once for all time when he offered himself” (Heb. 7:27). Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, taking our sin to restore our standing before God the Father, who can now call us His children. Through Christ’s sacrifice and His fulfillment of the law, we enjoy entrance into His Kingdom and His household. We are no longer foreigners; we are no longer outsiders, separated by the chasm of sin. We are “free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).
Leviticus as Gospel Theology
Leviticus, then, is a book rich in gospel theology. Although Christ had not come yet in human form, this idea of a loving, supreme God, loyal to His people, longing to be with them, making a way for that to happen despite their sin, is the beginning of good news for us. This gospel theology, then, should fuel our worship as it did the Israelites’ worship. The Israelites came together to the tent of meeting to be in the presence of God as a holy people set apart for a holy God. When gathered, the Israelites could see, hear, smell, and feel the presence of a holy God as they watched people with their animal sacrifices and smelled the burning of meat and incense and felt God’s presence in the cloud above the tabernacle. At one point during worship, “Fire came from the Lord… And when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell facedown” (Lev. 9:24). Worship, then, is not meant for us to feel better about ourselves. It’s meant to show God our reverence and allegiance. Worship is not about us. It’s about God.
Worshipping with Leviticus in Mind
What we can learn about worship from the sacrificial system is that we first need to be in awe of who God is, understanding His holiness and righteousness, His grace and mercy, His faithfulness and steadfast love. God laid out a plan for worship that pleases Him in Leviticus. The various rules and laws and specificity of how to perform the different rites reveal how a holy God deserves our holy worship. Believers today are not bound by these laws, but what we learn is that we can’t take worship lightly. We can’t approach worshipping the God Almighty with casualness or complacency. Whether worshipping corporately on a Sunday or individually in our everyday lives, presenting our bodies as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1), true worship starts with seeing the majesty of God and acknowledging that He is King, in the world and in our lives. Seeing such, our actions in worship should respond in faithful obedience, awestruck thanksgiving, and humble confession of sin, as seen through the response of the priests and the Israelites themselves. This is worship that is “as a pleasing aroma to the Lord” (Lev. 1:9, 13, 17; 2:2; 3:5, 16; 4:31; 6:15; 8:21; 23:13). Let’ s not confuse worship as being first for us. It should always be for God, for He is holy and deserving of it.
Y Bonesteele is the content and production editor of The Gospel Project for Adults. She earned her MDiv from Talbot School of Theology with an emphasis in Evangelism and Discipleship and has lived on mission around the world.
