The Beauty of Holiness Israel’s Sacrificial System & the Christian Faith David Gooding A Myrtlefield House Transcript www.myrtlefieldhouse.com Contents 1 Introduction:The Beauty of Holiness 3 2 Obedience unto Death 14 3 Celebration of New Life 26 4 Making Man Whole 38 5 The Stain of Sin 49 6 The Damage Sin Does 61 7 Maintaining Zeal 72 8 A Sense of the Holy 81 9 Practising Peace 86 About the Author 98 David Gooding has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Copyright © The Myrtlefield Trust, 2018 Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the English Revised Version (1885), the King James Version, or are Dr Gooding’s own translations or paraphrases. This text has been edited from a transcript of four talks given by David Gooding at Holborn Hall, Bangor, County Down (N. Ireland) in January 1986. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce this document in its entirety, or in unaltered excerpts, for personal and church use only as long as you do not charge a fee. You must not reproduce it on any Internet site. Permission must be obtained if you wish to reproduce it in any other context, translate it, or publish it in any format. Published by The Myrtlefield Trust PO Box 2216 Belfast BT1 9YR w: www.myrtlefieldhouse.com e: [email protected] Myrtlefield catalogue no: lev.003/dw 1 Introduction The Beauty of Holiness In these sessions we are to think together about the sacrifices described in the early chapters of the book of Leviticus. We shall spend tonight on a very elementary introduction to that theme. In coming evenings, we shall consider the five sacrifices detailed in those chapters. That done, we shall spend our final evenings dealing with three of the laws of those offerings. The offerings, as we know, were addressed to the people and told the people what they had to bring to God. The laws of the offerings were addressed to the priests and taught those priests the demands and responsibilities of their duties. Let us begin our introduction by reading four passages from Scripture. The first of them is from Leviticus, and I read from the English Revised Version. And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tent of meeting, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When any man of you offereth an oblation unto the LORD, ye shall offer your oblation of the cattle, even of the herd and of the flock. (1:1–2) And Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people, and blessed them; and he came down from offering the sin offering, and the burnt offering, and the peace offerings. And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, and came out, and blessed the people: and the glory of the LORD appeared unto all the people. And there came forth fire from before the LORD, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: and when all the people saw it, they shouted, and fell on their faces. (9:22–24) And then, so that we may gauge a little of the emotional experience it was for people of that time to worship the Lord at this ancient shrine, let us read some verses from Psalm 27. The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evil-doers came upon me to eat up my flesh, even mine adversaries and my foes, they stumbled and fell. Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, even then will I be confident. One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple. For in the day of trouble he shall keep me secretly in his pavilion: in the covert of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall lift me up upon a rock. And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me; and I will offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the LORD. (vv. 1–6) The Beauty of Holiness Page | 4 And finally a few well known verses from the New Testament that will help us to keep on the right lines as we try to expound and understand these ancient sacrifices. And every priest indeed standeth day by day ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, the which can never take away sins: but he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made the footstool of his feet. For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. And the Holy Ghost also beareth witness to us: for after he hath said, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws on their heart, and upon their mind also will I write them; then saith he, And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. (Heb 10:11–18) And may God give us good understanding of his Word. Why study Leviticus? So then, we are to embark upon a study of the ancient sacrifices of the nation of Israel from the early chapters of Leviticus. I suppose it is a not-very-well-kept secret that the book of Leviticus is not every Christian’s favourite book in the Bible! Were those who are to inhabit a desert island forced to choose one book out of all the books in the Bible to accompany them, I fancy that those who voted for Leviticus would be few indeed. The book is full of curious and ancient things. The early chapters are full of offerings and, worse than that, full of the insides of animals—livers and hearts and entrails and dirty feet and other such things, which are not everybody’s most engaging reading. Then when you read a little bit further you come across food laws. What ugly beasties you are not to eat and what animals you may eat. All obviously very necessary, but not altogether attractive at first sight. If you have persevered that far, as doubtless many of you have, then presently you come across other laws about all sorts of unmentionable diseases and fluxes and fluids and emissions and horrible things that can happen to the human body—until some people feel that Leviticus is a book that has to be taken, if at all, in small doses. It could possibly be in your mind therefore to wonder why we should study Leviticus. What are we to make of all these things that to us, in these distant times, might perhaps feel a little grotesque? The first answer is because they are in the inspired word of God. And when we talk of the inspiration of holy Scripture, we’re not talking of some purple passages that, when we read them, move our hearts to their very foundations with tremendous surges of emotion and of praise. There are such passages in holy writ, no doubt. They are not any more inspired than the book of Leviticus is inspired, for both are God-breathed and every Scripture, says the New Testament, is God-breathed and is profitable. And if it should be that we find the study of Leviticus a trifle more difficult than we find the study of Psalm 23, then let us come at it as a tribute to our faith in the inspiration of God—persuaded in our hearts that God would never have caused it to be written were it not for our good and our profit. The Beauty of Holiness Page | 5 But there is another reason why we should study these ancient sacrifices. The New Testament tells us that they were prefigurements—pictures in advance—to help us understand the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Lord. The New Testament tells us that Christ died for our sins. That is glorious, but that isn’t the end of the story. The gospel is not only that Christ died for our sins, but that he died for our sins according to the Scriptures. Those last few words are exceedingly important. They tell us that the death of Jesus Christ was no horrific accident. He died according to the Scriptures—according to ‘the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God’ (Acts 2:23). Thank God that Jesus Christ died according to the Scriptures. When Christ died for you, my brother, my sister, it was no accident. It was not a case of God making the best of a bad job, trying to salvage something out of the wreck of Calvary. Our blessed Lord, though crucified by the hands of lawless men, died according to the Scriptures, as Scripture said he would; and when the hour was come—precisely upon the hour as Scripture had said—he came and he died, and he died for you. But those words tell us something more. Not merely that Jesus Christ’s death was prepared of old and prophesised in Old Testament Scripture, it is telling us the significance of that death.