Day 44: Leviticus 1-4

Welcome to five -minute Bible your daily guide for your daily reading today's February the 13th and we'll be looking at Leviticus 1 through 4.

Now today's reading brings us into the book of Leviticus which often feels unfamiliar technical or distant from the modern reader but it's anything from disconnected.

Leviticus opens immediately after God's presence fills the tabernacle and the Holy God is now living in the midst of his sinful people and the pressing question is clear.

How is God going to do this without Israel being destroyed? Leviticus 1 through 4 begins answering that question.

Now Leviticus 1 introduces the concept of the burnt offering. This is a sacrifice that is wholly consumed on the altar by fire completely burned from the top to the bottom symbolizing total devotion and complete surrender to God.

Nothing is held back. Everything will be destroyed which is a picture of what our sin nature deserves.

Leviticus 2 describes the grain offering emphasizing gratitude and provision and daily dependence upon God.

Worship is not only about atonement but it's also about offering our thanksgiving and our fellowship to God.

Leviticus 3 presents the peace offering which celebrates our restored communion between God and his people and this is a shared meal symbolizing harmony and reconciliation between God and man.

And then Leviticus turns to the sin offering addressing unintentional sin and unintentional impurity.

It's an offering that is offered for those sins that we can't even remember that we've committed and it's a sacrifice where blood is applied carefully and guilt is purposefully transferred from us to the animal.

It's a sacrifice where God provides a way for the sin of his people to be dealt with without destroying the sinner himself.

And together these four sacrifices show us that access to God requires the shedding of blood and it requires obedience and grace.

Now as you read today I want you to ask the following question. What does God require in order for us to dwell with him?

In order for us to be near him? In order for us to see him and experience him? What does God require?

Well Leviticus 1 through 4 begins to answer that question. That nearness to God always involves sacrifice.

You see the central pattern in Leviticus 1 through 4 is that life is given so life can continue.

You see sin disrupts communion with God and sin brings death and consequences that need to be dealt with.

And God doesn't lower his standard of holiness in order to accommodate sin or in order to to keep us in his presence unrighteously.

Instead he provides a sacrificial system for his Old Testament saints that provides a way to absorb their guilt and restore fellowship between God and man.

And this comes into play or sorry and this intersects with our life today in so many astonishing ways because we often minimize our sin because it just feels ordinary or it feels accidental or we just forget that we've done things.

And Leviticus insists that even the unnoticed sins matter because God is holy.

But it also insists that God has made a way for us through the forgiveness of sins because grace does not ignore sin it deals with our sin intentionally thoroughly and even in bloody ways.

Leviticus 1 through 4 points us to the unmistakable fact that Jesus Christ is our

Savior. Every offering anticipates his work. The burnt offering points to the fact that Christ is going to be the one taken outside of the gate and totally consumed for the good of his people.

The grain offering represents that he is the perfect life that's offered in gratitude to the

Father. He is the bread of life that's given for the sins of the world. He is the peace offering that foreshadows reconciliation between us and God and he is the sin offering that finds its perfect fulfillment at the cross where he bears guilt not his own but that what but the guilt that is transferred from us to him.

And where these sacrifices must be repeated endlessly Christ offers a better sacrifice a once -and -for -all sacrifice which means that Leviticus teaches us that forgiveness is costly but it's fully paid for in Jesus.

Now as you read Leviticus 1 through 4 today I do want you to resist the urge to rush through it.

These chapters are not easy there but they are foundational to the gospel. Today you're gonna be looking at a very different array of Bible passages than what you're probably used to but pay attention to them look at them stare at them and see through them how it all points to the cross.

Now tomorrow we're gonna see how God addresses guilt and restitution and accountability showing that forgiveness restores their relationship and their responsibility but with that I want you to read your

Bible carefully devotionally and joyfully today and may the Lord use his word to sanctify you completely and we will continue our journey tomorrow.