November 21, 2025 Show with Dr. Joseph C. Morecraft, III on “Leviticus: The Life of Holiness”

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On this 21st day of November 2025, there are many folks, even Christians, who would prefer not to go into the Old Testament and wade through the book of Leviticus, viewing it as a cruel and harsh book, but today's guest has a very different perspective on this God-breathed volume of writings from the very lips of God.

This is Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III I'm referring to, and Dr. Moorcraft, I'm sure most of you know who he is since he's on this program frequently, and his church is one of our largest financial supporters, but I'll introduce him nonetheless because we do have new listeners that occasionally make themselves known on this program, quite frequently, actually.

And Dr. Moorcraft is the founding pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and he's the author of the groundbreaking eight-volume commentary on the Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity, and today we are going to be addressing his book, Leviticus, the Life of Holiness, and we've got some wonderful news for our listeners.

You can actually download this book for free off of Dr. Moorcraft's website, which we will let you know what that is momentarily, but it's my honor and privilege and joy to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III.

It's always a joy for me too, Chris.

Well, tell our listeners, especially for those who have not yet been introduced to you and your ministry, tell our listeners about Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia.

We have a small congregation in Bedroom County, north of Atlanta, in Fort Syracuse County, and we are a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Hanover Presbytery. We believe in the inerrancy of the scripture, and the insufficiency of the scripture, and our doctrinal statement is the original Westminster Confession of Faith, and larger and shorter catechism.

Our people come from various places around Atlanta, some of them drive all the way from Knoxville, Tennessee, which is about three hours from here, but I told them that I wouldn't drive three hours to come and hear me, but nevertheless, they do.

And we are committed to the Reformed faith, we're committed to evangelism, we're committed to Christian education, we're committed to world missions. In fact, we sponsor a man in Brazil who does a lot of translating of American, of English Reformed literature into Portuguese, and now he's doing something that is amazing to me.

He's taking my audio tapes and translating them in Portuguese by way of AI, and it's me preaching in Portuguese.

Meaning the AI is losing your voice.

Yeah, that's right. And he has a seminary of 150 people, and we also send teams south of the Texas border into Mexico to ten cities to preach to the various migrants that are there. And we also send teams to Cuba to preach to conferences of preachers.

And so, we are grateful for every member of our church. They know why they're there, they want to hear the truth, they're hungry and thirst for it, and I don't know of any greater privilege than to be their pastor.

Well, that brother you mentioned, who is a missionary in Brazil, I'm sure you must be referring to Frank Brito.

Yes, sir.

And I have been actually trying to get a hold of him recently to get him back on the program. It's been four years since I've interviewed him. So I'm trying to get a hold of him, but his phone has been busy, the number that I have.

And it's very rare to hear a busy signal in 2025. So I'm wondering if I have an old number that's not functioning anymore.

Well, Becky will get the right number to you.

Great. And folks, if anybody wants to hear Frank Brito's interview that we conducted on how eschatology affects missions and church planting, the challenges of both in Brazil, that was from September 2nd, 2021.

Just type in the name Brito, B as in boy, R-I-T-O, in the search engine at irontreppanzionradio .com, and that audio link will pop up. But for those of you who want to find out about more about Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, where my guest today, Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, serves as the pastor, go to heritagepresbyterianchurch .com, heritagepresbyterianchurch .com.

And not only is today's book that we are addressing available for free in digital form via download, there are many other works by my guest available in that same manner. You want to speak a little bit about that, Dr. Moorcraft?

Yes, sir. We have a lady in our church who is gracious enough, Kelly Ling, to get scores of my papers and manuscripts and putting it in a PDF file so that you can go there and get scores of free PDF file things on every subject you can imagine.

Not all of them are adequately proofed and edited, but nevertheless, they're readable. And so the main thing is they're all free. So we would encourage you to get them. We have more politics on exposition books, the Bible, on missions, on ethics, on everything that I've been preaching on for the past 50 years.

Praise God. And I believe that all they need to do is go to heritagepresbyterianchurch .com and click free resources, correct?

Yes, sir.

All righty. And by the way, I believe I told you this already, but my guest yesterday, an Orthodox Presbyterian pastor named Christian McShaffery informed me that he plans on downloading your book on Leviticus because he is planning on doing, preaching a series on the book of Leviticus.

So he intends to download that. And the book is titled, for those of you who want to do the same, Leviticus, the Life of Holiness. And we are going to be discussing or addressing that book today.

And I don't know that, but tell the Orthodox pastor that the greatest commentary on Leviticus, bar none, was written in the middle 1800s by a man Presbyterian by the name of Samuel Kellogg. It's not written like a commentary.

It's written like a book, and it is by far the best thing on Leviticus anybody can get.

Praise God.

It's called The Book of Leviticus by Samuel Kellogg.

Praise God for that. And I'm assuming it's not the same Kellogg of the Corn Flakes fame, who I believe was an excommunicated Seventh-day Adventist.

No, I doubt it to be it.

Well, I'm certain it's not the same. Well, out of all the books in the Scripture, what compelled you to spend many, many, many, many countless hours delving into the Book of Leviticus to produce what eventually became your book, Leviticus, the Life of Holiness?

Why Leviticus Matters for Understanding the Whole Bible

Well, I enjoy preaching through divinity. It's such a foundational and basic set of books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, that they're basic to everything else in the Bible. And my view is you can't understand anything else in the Bible unless you understand the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible written by Moses.

A lot of people don't even know there is such a book as Leviticus. And those who do know, many of those believe it's the most boring book in the Bible. And because the first half is simply a bunch of details about various sacrifices that were required in the tabernacle in the Old Testament, and the last half are a bunch of detailed, minutiae laws that God gave Israel.

So we have today people who believe that the Book of Leviticus was only for the Israelites of the Old Testament. You have others who believe that it's only for the Israelites, I mean, the Israelis today.

And then you have others who believe it's not for anybody anymore, because the Old Testament has been put out of gear. We are to unhitch ourselves, to quote Andy Stanley, we're to unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament so that it does not apply to anybody, because it was another dispensation written to another people.

And so, as a result, the church today is in a very emasculated position with a shallow gospel and with a very shallow theology, because people do not understand that you can't understand the New Testament unless you understand the Old Testament and vice versa.

And the Book of Leviticus is a wonderful work. Not everybody thinks it's boring. Meggie told me yesterday about a lady that she knows who thought the Book of Leviticus was her favorite book in the Bible.

I think that's a sign of a worldwide revival when people start thinking Leviticus is their favorite book. And it is important to see when it was written, first of all, to understand it. And it was—so we've got to see the history behind it, which is always important in understanding the Bible is understanding the historical context.

We have Abraham in the 12th chapter of Genesis and thereafter. God makes a great covenant with Abraham, an eternal bond of friendship with his people in Christ. And in that covenant, God promised Abraham union and communion with God.

He promised him a seed, which the Book of Relations chapter 3 says is Christ and all those who belong to him by faith, regardless of ethnic origin. And that seed will come to number more people to defend on the seashore.

He promises Abraham that through that seed, every family of the world will be blessed and that God will give them a land to live on. Which land? Is the earth blessed or the meek? For they shall inherit the earth.

Romans 4 says that Abraham is heir of the world. And then after the covenant with Abraham, you have Exodus. And God redeemed his people out of slavery in Egypt. We know the story of the Red Sea and how God got them through the Red Sea on dry land.

And then after they crossed the Red Sea, God made a covenant with Moses. And Moses went up on Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments and received the law of God for God's redeemed people to live by.

And while he was there on Mount Sinai, God gave him the Book of Leviticus, the law of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and all the rest. And the thing to bear in mind is that the Red Sea came before Mount Sinai.

That is, God did not give his people a law so they might be redeemed. He redeemed them in Exodus and then gave them a law on Mount Sinai. So the law of God contained in Scripture is for the people of God.

And there's various ways that you can know the importance of Leviticus. For instance, in the 24th chapter of Luke, Jesus is talking to his disciples. And he says that, Now he said to them, these are my words, which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

So here Jesus is saying flat out the law of Moses, which includes Leviticus. The law of Moses is about Christ. That's the focus. There's other things that it teaches us, but the focus of the first five books of the Bible is Christ himself.

So that's how we come to these books. And we cherish them because they teach us about our Savior. Then there's another way that we can say that Leviticus is for Christians, and not for a way to be saved, but for the way Christians are to live.

The theme of the book of Leviticus is this. God is holy. And he demands a holy people, which holiness pervades the entirety of their lives. Let me say it again. God is holy. And he demands a holy people, which holiness pervades the entirety of their lives.

The book of Leviticus is quoted about 50 times in the New Testament. That tells you something about the importance of the book. In fact, some of the most important things in the New Testament are from the book of Leviticus.

When Jesus told his disciples that the greatest commandments will love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, and mind, the second was like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbors thyself. And that is a quote from the book of Leviticus.

And in Peter, first Peter, the first chapter, he quotes Leviticus 19 too. He says, like the holy one who called you, in addressing Christians, like the holy one who called you, be holy yourselves in all your behavior, because it is written, quote, you shall be holy for I am holy.

Now, let me give you a little Greek lesson. There are several past tenses in Greek. One is the past tense that denotes continuous action in past time. Another is one that denotes a particular point in the past.

And another is a tense called the perfect tense that denotes something beginning in the past and continuing into the present. And when you read Paul say in the New Testament, before he quotes an Old Testament chapter, it is written.

Here's what he's saying. It stands firmly written. And that is the impact of the perfect tense, something that was started in the past, continues in the present and on to the future. So he says, it stands permanently written.

And then he quotes the book of Leviticus. So anybody that does not like the book of Leviticus, in my opinion, doesn't like the gospel because the gospel is taught throughout the book of Leviticus. The book of Leviticus is primarily about Christ.

And I want to lay some of these words. Holiness means God's moral and majestic separation from his creation. He is impeccably pure. He is holy in a way that he is infinitely perfect. And the word holy, to make it simple, simply means God's self-consecration.

God is consecrated to himself. He does all things for his own glory. He does all things according to the good pleasure of his will. He loves himself and he demands the same total consecration of his people to him.

They are to reflect God's moral holiness in their own lives. And that holiness must pervade the entirety of their lives. That's why in the last half of the book of Leviticus, you have all these detailed laws on everything.

It is a comprehensive law. It applies to every area of life because God is Lord of every area of life. And so you can see how important the book of Leviticus is. It is divided into two parts. The first part is chapters 1 through 16, which tells us what God has done to make his people holy.

Verses 1 through 16, what God has done to make his people holy. And there you have in detail the whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament and the priesthood of the Old Testament. And the whole point of those early verses is that there has to be satisfaction of God's justice that demands punishment because people are unholy.

And the only way we can be accepted with God is for God to provide a substitute that will satisfy his offended justice and propitiated that will turn away God's wrath from those who deserve that wrath and in the place of those who deserve that wrath.

That is the basis of the whole ceremonial system of the Old Testament, sacrificial system of the Old Testament. The basic presupposition of all the sacrifices is without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin, which by the way is a quote from the book of Hebrews chapter 9 in the New Testament.

And so we are, because of Christ, we have his holiness imputed to us in justification. We have his holiness imparted to us in the process of sanctification, and it's all through Christ. And then in chapter 17 through 27, 17 through 27, you had the kind of holy life that God wants his redeemed people to live.

He says in chapters 17 through 27, I've redeemed you, I've made you holy, I've accepted you as my people, we're in covenant together, and now here's how I want you to live. And so he lays down in those last chapters, he lays down God's revealed will for individual families, churches, and nations.

And so, I mean, the more I talk about it, the more I think I want to preach through Leviticus again in the future. And what's the purpose of Leviticus for today? Purpose of Leviticus is I would say fourfold at least.

Number one, it's a revelation of the only God there is. And that only God is unchangeable and eternal. And because there is only one God, there can only be one gospel and there can only be one law. Secondly, Leviticus sets forth vividly the basis of our eternal acceptance with God.

Thirdly, satisfaction and propitiation. We don't use, unfortunately, we don't use the word satisfaction much anymore. You can buy a good book on the subject by Arthur Pate called The Atonement of Christ, but that's not the original title of the book.

If they had given it the original title, most people would not have understood what the book was about. Because the original title was The Satisfaction of Christ. And I think that's a far better word to use.

That God in Christ, God's justice has been satisfied. It demanded death of us and Christ took that penalty himself.

Hallelujah.

Third, yeah, amen. Third, it contains a body of law for individual Christians, the family and the church of the state. Now, that's where modern Christians walk away from Leviticus. And they say, well, Leviticus is Old Testament.

And the Old Testament law is not for us. I'll tell you about a debate. That a friend of mine several years ago was in with the professor from Dallas Seminary. It was a public formal debate. And the professor from Dallas Seminary said, I am going to defend the view that the Christian is not accountable to obey the laws of the Old Testament.

And then my friend said, I'm going to defend today that the professor is mistaken. That because there are some laws of the Old Testament quoted in the New Testament. So he said, Professor, do you not believe that laws contained in the Old Testament and repeated in the New Testament should be obeyed?

And the professor, at face, said, well, let me change my premise. My premise that I'm wanting to defend is that Christians are not obligated to obey Old Testament law unless it's repeated in the New Testament.

And then my friend said, well, I believe, Mr. Professor, that you don't believe your new premise because there are some laws in the Old Testament that are not repeated in the New Testament. Now, are you saying that those laws that are not repeated in the New Testament don't have to be obeyed by Christians?

He said, I am. And so my friend said, well, the Book of Leviticus forbids bestiality. But nowhere in the New Testament are we forbidden bestiality. I said, yeah. In other words, you believe that your pastor, if he committed bestiality, sex with animals, he should not be defiled?

And the professor said, and the professor said, correct. What? The professor said, you're correct. So that tells you the day of the end. He said, a bumper sticker in my car that said God's law or chaos.

And so you can see when you reject God's law, that's all there is.

It's hard to believe that that man really believed that.

Well, he got, I think he just got, of course, I don't believe it.

He got backed into a corner. By the way, there is a man, I'm not going to mention his name, because he was shunned by people in his own theological circles after writing this, and I think it caused him great mental and emotional harm.

But there is a man, a Christian man, who wrote a book where he actually said the same thing that you were saying about if something is not repeated in the New Testament, we are not required to obey it.

And therefore, he came to the conclusion that a Christian man could marry his own sister. And he said, the only reason why we don't typically do that is because it's against the law of the land in most places in the world, if not all places in the world.

And that's the only reason he said it would be prohibited for a Christian to do that.

How terrible. That one time I was on PBS, so-called God Politics, and it was on trying to influence politics with the Word of God. And we made the point that the basis of American judicial law is the law of God contained in the Bible.

And one of the ways that I showed that was the case was Thomas Jefferson, who at the time was not a professing Christian. But nevertheless, when they were trying to decide what would be the official seal or symbol of the United States, Benjamin Franklin wanted a wild turkey.

Thomas Jefferson wanted a two-sided medallion. On one side was two famous Anglo-Saxons, because that law comes through them. And secondly, on the other side of this medallion was Moses leading the children of Israel through the Red Sea.

This is Thomas Jefferson, not a professing Christian, but understood where our law originated. And so we were making the point on this TV show, about 34 million people saw it, that America's law is based upon the law of God contained in the Scriptures.

And so there was this reporter, journalist, that was interviewing us, and she wanted to interview somebody that took the opposite opinion. So she asked this famous, famous dispensational professor, do you agree with these people that believe that biblical law is the basis of American law?

And he said, no, I do not. Well, she was just an innocent young journalist trying to do her job. She didn't realize how devastating the next question was she asked him. But she said, well, sir, if you're a Christian and it's not biblical law that's the basis of American law, then what is the basis?

Here's what the man said. I heard him say it.

The Code of Hammurabi. Yeah, I remember you mentioning that before in another interview.

Yeah, Hammurabi was a Babylonian thing. Thousands of years before Christ. I mean, it's either God's law or chaos. There is no way that we can evaluate the difference between right and wrong without God's law.

It's the only standard. I had a young woman come into my study one time. She'd been in prison. She lived a rough life. And she was now from North Georgia. And she professed to be a Buddhist. And of course, Buddhists do not believe there's any, there are any moral absolute.

So I prayed, Lord, show me how to get to her and how to drive her to Christ. So although this didn't have anything to do with her, I said to her, what's your view of child molestation? And she said, well, I think it's evil.

And I said, well, that's interesting. I think it's evil, too. And I think it's evil because of the moral absolute found in the Bible. But you don't believe there's such a thing as moral absolute in a book.

So I can understand why you would not prefer it, why you wish people didn't do it. But I don't understand why you can call evil something that somebody is doing, even though you don't like it. Why can you call it evil without moral absolute?

She started crying. And she said, well, if I can't call a child molester evil, I don't want to live in a world without moral absolute.

Praise God.

I said, ma 'am, you do not live in a world without moral absolute. And the same moral absolute that condemned the child molester condemned you for not believing in Jesus Christ, that you became a Christian right there in my office.

Hallelujah. In fact, we have to go ahead and finish your thought, finish your thought, because we have to go to our break.

I'll tell you again, it's God's law or chaos.

Amen. Well, we'll be right back after these messages. If you want to join us with a question, send us your email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

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Morning Meditations wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. We have a listener for you, Dr. Moorcraft. He is Morty in Levittown, Long Island, New York. And Morty says, can you please distinguish between the Melchizedek priesthood, which was the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and the Levitical priesthood?

The Priesthood of Melchizedek and the Superiority of Christ

Great question. I also love preaching through the.

Book of Hebrews, and I've done it two or three times. That's one of the main themes of the book of Hebrews. The point of the book of Hebrews is that Jesus is superior to everybody and everything in every way, including the Levitical priesthood, and that he is of the priesthood of Melchizedek.

Melchizedek was a man in the book of Genesis that after Abraham won a war, he went to Melchizedek and paid tithes to him and thanked God through him as God's representative. We don't know much about Melchizedek.

He doesn't have any genealogy. We don't know anything about him except that he was king or prince of Jerusalem. He was a prophet, priest, and king. He was a distinct person, and he had no successors. He had no priests before him in his priesthood, and he had no priests after him.

The book of Hebrews takes that illustration of that priest in the Old Testament, of which there was only one priest in that whole priesthood, and applies it to Christ. In the Old Testament, there was priest after priest.

After priest, one would die, and there would be another. But Christ has no predecessor. He has no successor. He is superior to all priests. There is only one priest and mediator, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, that's a very good question.

Great. Thanks, Morty. And if you could—oh, by the way, Morty, I don't know where you worship, but I highly recommend Levittown Baptist Church, Sovereign Grace Believing Church, there in that town. And if you need contact information, just send me an email, and I'll let you know all the information you need.

And if you could, pick up where you left off.

Before, where—go ahead. There are—people like to say that the Old Testament law is not for Christians today, because we're not under the ceremonial system, for instance. We don't offer bloody sacrifices.

We don't have a priesthood. There's not a tabernacle, which is correct. The ceremonial rituals of the Old Testament ended when Christ himself came. So, I believe everything in the Bible. And although we don't have sacrifices at a tabernacle and priests anymore, the underlying gospel message of the priest and the sacrifices and the tabernacle are still true.

We have to offer a sacrifice to get to God, and that sacrifice is Christ. We have to have a mediator and a priest, a great high priest, the book of Hebrews, again, and that is Christ. So, although the ceremonial rituals of the Old Testament was God's way of teaching the Old Testament—the gospel to Christ, we have the real substance.

We have the real thing. Those ceremonies were rituals. They were shadows. And now in Christ, we have the real thing. So, we don't do Passover. We don't have priests with clerical garments, etc. And then there is another small number of laws in the Old Testament that separated Israel geographically and culturally from the Canaanites so that there would always be an Israelite nation since salvation would be of the Jews.

That is, there were laws of the Old Testament that were in place for one reason, and that was to keep the land in the hands of the Israelites and keep the Israelites as a distinct geographical ethnic people until Christ came.

And when Christ came, those laws were put out of gear, etc. But God's moral law for God's people never changes, and it never changes for one reason, because God never changes. And God's law is the transcript of his holiness.