Seeing Christ in the Old Testament

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Preacher: Dr. Brian Labosier Scripture: Leviticus 1:1-9

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Thank you for having me here again today. My name is Brian Lavisher. I'm a retired pastor, retired seminary professor, and I've mentioned to some of you that I've visited a whole bunch of churches in my life, and some churches
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I've visited, I look around, I think half the people are older than I am. I don't think that's true here today.
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I'm in my mid -70s, 75, going on 76. By hunches, that's older than the average age of most of you here today.
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I'm going to lead us in a word of prayer as well. I'll just ask the Lord's blessing on our time. Father, we do pray that you would guide and direct our thoughts today, that you'd be honored and glorified.
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We give you this day, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Now, our actual passage of scripture
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I'm going to preach on today is from the book of Leviticus. I want to ask for a show of hands.
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Who's ever heard of the book of Leviticus? Some of you have, at least. So that's where we are.
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I want to say something about a totally different topic before I actually begin the message.
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And the thought is, today happens to be on our calendar, my calendar at least, it's Mother's Day.
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So I wanted to just say just a little bit about that. I don't know what your church policy is, whether you acknowledge
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Mother's Day or these different holidays that show up on our calendars or not. A little background.
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There's a woman named Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia whose mother had organized women's groups to create friendship and health and so on, originated
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Mother's Day. On May 12, 1907, she held a memorial service for a mother who had died in a church.
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And within five years, virtually every state was observing that day. I think this reminds us just incidentally that sometimes, you know, when the moment is right, something happens and lo and behold, history is changed.
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So here's a woman who did that. In 1914, observing
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Mother's Day as we know it today was passed as an act of Congress. So that's what Congress was doing in 1914.
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And the U .S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed
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Mother's Day as a national holiday. So that's what a different president was doing. So that we see that.
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As we think about Mother's Day, the thought that I want to just share just incidentally before we actually look at our passage for today is that family is one area that's special to God.
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It's one area where we see the sovereignty of God. I'm going to assume for argument's sake that many of you do believe in the sovereignty of God.
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Do you also believe that in terms of the family where he's placed you? You know, each of us can think about whatever we might know about our own mothers.
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And to think that here God in his sovereign plan chose this particular woman to be our mother.
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Whether she's good, bad, who knows what, but sovereignty of God. And those of us who are parents also have this idea that whatever children
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God has given us, this is God's gift to us. Out of all the parents and children,
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God's kind of connected us up the way he has. So that, you know, just seeing that God's purpose is that we would learn and be a blessing to those around us.
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So anyway, there's that. Just to remind ourselves of this special place that mothers have in our lives.
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Obviously, my text for today is from Leviticus 1. And some of you may know enough about the book of Leviticus.
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It's not the natural topic for a Mother's Day message, and this is not going to be a Mother's Day message.
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But it is going to be a message from God's word. So, I used to be a teacher most of my life.
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And I have a handout. And what I need is somebody willing to pass it out.
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Anybody? Here's somebody over here. So I have 30 copies. Pass them out as best you can.
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30. It's not enough for everybody to make airplanes with, but you can at least look at that and see some of the thoughts.
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My fear in passing it out was maybe you'd think it's too long and you will be spooked by how long it is.
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But just hang in there. What I'm going to do first of all is read
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Leviticus 1, 1 to 9. I have a quick question first.
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Do you hear feedback in this room? Am I talking too loud or am
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I getting both microphones? Okay, we'll assume it's good to go. Leviticus 1, 1 to 9,
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New King James. I'll read it out loud to us. Now the
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Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tabernacle of meeting, saying,
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Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, When any of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of the livestock, of the herd, and of the flock.
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If his offering is a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish and offer it of his own free will at the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the
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Lord. Then he shall put his hand on the head of the burnt offering and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.
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He shall kill the bull before the Lord, and the priest and Aaron's son shall bring the blood and sprinkle the blood all around the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of meeting.
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And he shall skin the burnt offering and cut it into pieces. The sons of Aaron, the priest, shall put fire in the altar and lay the wood in order on the fire.
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Then the priest, Aaron's son, shall lay the parts, the head and the fat, in order on the wood that is on the fire upon the altar.
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And he shall wash its entrails and its legs with water. And the priest shall burn all on the altar as a burnt sacrifice and offering made by fire as sweet aroma to the
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Lord. This is the word of the Lord. The obvious question in many of our minds today is how in the world does this reading from Leviticus have any relevance to how we live our daily lives.
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I can remember when I was a young boy sitting in church and listening to the preacher preach, it seemed to me, this is my own word of confession here, it seemed to me that a lot of the messages were several thousand years removed from where I was in my regular daily lives.
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So that, you know, I'm persuaded all of God's word is relevant. But sometimes the relevance needs to be unpacked a little bit.
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It's not as obvious as we might think at times. So that we need to work at some passages a little more than others.
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I think this is a potentially more challenging passage to preach on.
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I've never preached on the book of Leviticus before. I did text your pastor and ask him whether he had preached on it recently.
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He hadn't preached on it either. So that key question in today's passage is how does the
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Bible fit together? Is there an organization, a theme to scripture?
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How does this passage fit into what I'm going to call the flow of redemptive history?
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I'm not an expert on the Koran. My impression of the Koran is that there is really no unity or no organization or no obvious structure.
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But when we turn to the Bible, there is. There is what I just referred to as the flow of redemptive history.
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That there's a basic theme to scripture and there's a historical flow and progression to scripture.
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And the question is how are we going to understand this passage of scripture before us today?
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My impression is that when we're reading scripture in our own personal lives, we need to have two approaches to reading.
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One is we need to do rapid reading, big chunks of scripture, read through the Bible in a year, some plan like that, where we're exposed to the big truths of scripture.
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And the second is we need to slow down and look at each little piece one at a time and see the truths that are there.
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And somehow each of us need to have some balance between them in order to see how does scripture fit together and what is
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God telling us in any individual passage of scripture. So anyway, that's kind of a little introduction here to this passage.
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I'm going to mention this topic of Old Testament typology.
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That's kind of a scary thought to some of us and so on. As many of you know, the suffix ology refers to study of.
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So biology is the study of life. The Greek word bios means life and ology means study.
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Theology is the study of God. Greek word is theos and theology part means study of.
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And typology is the study of types. And it comes from the
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Greek word tupos, meaning type, and logos, meaning study of. So that's what we see here.
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Problem is that not all of us are equally familiar with what does the word type mean when it's used in scripture.
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Typology and types are actually originally biblical words. It's clearer in the original
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Greek than in many of our English translations. So we can see occasional glimpses of this, even at least in some of our
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English translations. I'm going to read Romans 5, verse 14,
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New King James translation. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type.
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There's a word type, t -y -p -e, type of him who was to come. As various other translations of Romans 5, 14, use figure, example, or symbol.
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There's something about Adam's life that's a picture or illustration of Christ's life, who lived many thousands of years after Adam's lifetime.
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This is partly why Christ is called the last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15, 45.
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There's at least something about Adam's life and Christ's life that are parallel to each other.
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And again, we get a glimpse of the sovereignty of God, that God planned
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Adam's life, planned the different events that would take place. And in God's perfect plan, whatever
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Adam experienced, whatever he was doing with his life, foreshadows or anticipates certain things in Christ's life.
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So again, this is a sovereignty of God working in history. So that, again,
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Paul explains this relationship of Adam and Christ also in Romans 5, verses 17 and 18.
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For if by one man's offense death reigns through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one,
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Jesus Christ. Therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one man's righteous act, the free gift of God came to all men, resulting in justification of life.
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Therefore, as one transgression led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men.
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So what we see here in this comparison is that whatever
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Adam had an impact on all of humanity, and Christ has an impact on all of his people, so that there's that point of similarity where some theologians have said humanity may be divided into two groups.
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This is one way of dividing them. We're either in Adam, especially as he was after the fall, or we're in Christ, so that each of us are connected spiritually either to Adam as a natural person after the fall, a fallen
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Adam, or we're connected to Christ and are part of a new creation. Typology may refer to a pair of human beings,
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Adam and Christ, or may refer to a pair of events or a pair of institutions.
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For to give an example of how Adam and how he foreshadows something about Christ and how Christ is greater than Adam and accomplished what
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Adam was unable to do, or consider the event of entering Noah's ark and how only those who were in the ark were saved from the flood.
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Or the parallel here is we need to be in Christ today in the
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New Testament in order to be saved. So just as people in Noah's day needed to be in the ark in order to be saved, we need to be in Christ in order to be saved.
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So entering the ark in one sense pictures how God's plan of salvation works.
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We need to be where God is at work, and God was at work in Noah's day through the ark and delivering people for himself.
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Just as God is at work today in Christ. Or consider the provision in the
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Old Testament priesthood and how this lays the groundwork for understanding of at least one aspect of the work of Christ in the
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New Testament. If Jesus Christ simply came to this earth unannounced, no plan, no preparation or anything plopped down in this earth, we wouldn't have any grid to understand who he is or what he came to do.
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But it's because Jesus Christ was anticipated by thousands of years of Old Testament history, there was a group of people who already knew sin is serious.
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Sin requires a sacrifice. There needs to be a priesthood. There was people who had that understanding because of God's work in the
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Old Testament. So that Christ is the great high priest, or as Leviticus 1 talks about, one aspect of Christ's work is his death on the cross is a perfect sacrifice for our sins.
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He's not the same as a burnt offering that was described here in the Leviticus 1 passage
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I read a moment ago, but there is some truths there that help us understand more of Christ and look ahead to Christ.
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Typology is different from prophecy. Prophecy is simply words. There's no historical person or action or anything like that.
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Typology involves historical people, institutions, events, that kind of thing.
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So that both of them, both typology and prophecy, look ahead and can tell us more about Christ, but they do it in different ways.
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Now if you were to ask Adam, if we could somehow get back to Adam and talk to him, were you a type of Christ?
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Adam was, I don't know what you mean. Adam was just living out his life. But in the sovereign plan of God, God so arranged that Adam's life would have certain characteristics, and the impact of Adam's sin impacts everyone else in the same way that Christ's death impacts all of God's people.
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So there is that point of similarity. One last thought about typology. Some typology is clearly taught in Scripture.
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Other typology is not taught in Scripture, but we could kind of assume maybe Old Testament Joseph is a type of Christ.
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You know, he went and was in prison and all that, and he was somebody who was raised up, he was exalted at the right time.
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And maybe we could say, well, maybe he's kind of a type of Christ. The problem with that is the New Testament never tells us that.
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Or the New Testament does tell us that Adam was a type of Christ. So we can kind of make some guesses and think, you know, here's some other parallels
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I see between the Old Testament and the New, and between what God was doing in the Old Testament and what he's doing in Christ.
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Where Scripture clearly makes those connections, we can be dogmatic and say, yes, this is typology.
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Yes, there is this kind of historical connection in the sovereign plan of God. But other things don't have that same obvious thing.
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We could wonder maybe some other connections you see between Old Testament and New Testament, but we can't be sure unless Scripture clearly identifies that.
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Typology helps remind us that Christ is the theme of the Old Testament, just as he's the theme of the
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New Testament. There's a pair of verses in Luke 24. We read one of these in our
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Scripture reading here a few minutes ago. This was Jesus was addressing his disciples, first in the road to Emmaus.
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And this is what he said. This is a verse we read a moment or two ago. And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the
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Scriptures the things concerning himself. Does this mean every verse in the Old Testament looks at and points us to Christ?
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I don't know that it quite guarantees that every individual verse, but it does mean the broad sweep of Scripture that Christ has found,
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I'm going to say in any significant passage or any significant event or something, there's something there somewhere that points us head to Christ.
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Jesus said this similar thing later in Luke 24. This is verse 44, where Jesus said, these are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you.
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Here Jesus is with all of his disciples at this point. That all things must be fulfilled that were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the
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Psalms concerning me. Here he adds the Psalms. If you're reading through the book of Psalms, do you see
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Jesus' name mentioned real often? I don't think so. There is an occasional reference to the anointed or there is some more direct connection.
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But by and large, even the book of Psalms points us to Christ. And this also includes the
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Old Testament law. Many strange passages in Scripture and Leviticus 1 is by no means the strangest of them.
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But it's still something that points us to Christ. And that's what I want us to see today.
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Our challenge for today is to see Christ as the great high priest who offered up his own body as a perfect sacrifice for our sins.
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So there's no more need for sacrifices like this burnt offering we read about here in Leviticus 1.
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So in one sense, this passage of Scripture, Leviticus 1, is several thousand years out of date in terms of actual direct application to us today.
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Reading passages like this can sometimes feel we're reading somebody else's nail. This is a passage that's intended for someone else.
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I don't know what plans any of you have for this afternoon. Maybe you'll do some with Mother's Day, I don't know. Probably what you will not do is go out and offer up a burnt offering as Leviticus 1 tells us.
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That's just something that doesn't mesh with where we are in terms of redemptive history. Yet at the same time,
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Leviticus and all the rest of the Old Testament are part of the Bible God's given us. Here we need to remind ourselves of verses like Paul's instructions to us about the importance of Scripture in 2
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Timothy 3, 16, and 17. Paul says, All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine.
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For reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
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Most of us, when we read verses like 2 Timothy 3, 16, and 17, immediately think of the whole
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Bible or perhaps especially the New Testament. Yet when Paul was writing these words, what did he have in his mind?
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Most of the New Testament books were not written by the time Paul was writing 2 Timothy. And certainly the
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New Testament had not been collected together as a distinct unit of Scripture as it is today.
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The previous verse, verse 15, 2 Timothy 3, 15, gives us a little more context to what
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Paul's speaking out in verses 16 and 17. So he says, verse 15, he's talking to Timothy.
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From childhood you, against Timothy, have known the holy Scriptures which were able to make you wise for salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus.
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Here we can ask ourselves, what Scriptures did Timothy have access to from his childhood?
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I believe Timothy was still fairly young when Paul was writing, but we're talking about Timothy's childhood. The answer is obviously the
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Old Testament. So 2 Timothy 3, 16, and 17 initially addressed the inspiration and profitableness of the
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Old Testament. I think we can take 2 Timothy 3, 16, and 17 and apply it as a logical application to the entire
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Bible as the early church soon did. And there are even clues within the New Testament that this was already taking place even in New Testament times.
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I'm going to read a verse from 2 Peter where Peter describes some of the Apostle Paul's writings as Scripture.
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Verses 3, 15, and 16 of 2 Timothy. Consider that the longsuffering of our
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Lord is salvation, and also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, is written to you.
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So also in all his epistles, speaking in them of those things in which some things are hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction as they do the rest of the
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Scriptures. The point I want to make here is that Peter is saying, well, Paul's writings are using this same word of Scripture that they would have used to refer to the
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Old Testament. And we also see that some things are hard to understand, and some people are twisting
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Scriptures even in the mid -60s of the 1st century. We can also think of the
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Old Testament and remind ourselves how we can benefit from meditating on passages of Scripture including
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God's law, including even strange passages like Leviticus 1 that I read a few minutes ago.
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Psalm 1, 1, and 2, familiar verses to many of us. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the
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Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. What does he meditate on?
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The answer is God's law. We can also look in Psalm 119, verse 97, reminds us of how
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I love your law. It's my meditation all the day. Is this true of us today? Do we meditate on God's law?
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Hopefully we meditate on something in Scripture. Probably most of us are more apt to meditate on New Testament or an interesting question would be, out of all the messages you hear in a year's time, what proportion of them are from the
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New Testament? What proportion from the Old Testament? And my challenge to you is we need to pay attention to the
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Old Testament as well as the New Testament as well. Make no mistake about it,
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God's law is a gift of his grace. God's law shows us that God exists, shows us he wants to reveal himself to us, shows how we can come into a right relationship with himself.
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Now we could pause and reflect on what is the purpose of God's law? And one purpose is, especially if we are
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New Testament Christians, one purpose of the law is to point us to our need of salvation.
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If you are under the illusion that you can be saved by trying hard to keep the Ten Commandments, I think from what
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I saw online, maybe pastors preaching on the Old Testament Ten Commandments, if you're thinking,
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I can be saved by trying real hard not to murder somebody or commit adultery or do this, that, the other thing, that's not how it works.
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The Old Testament, including the law and the sacrificial system, point to our spiritual need.
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It reminds us that the remedy is not within us. That's one of the lessons from this
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Leviticus 1 passage, that there's nothing this worshiper could do other than find somebody outside of himself, in this case it was an animal, and to offer up that animal as a sacrifice as a part of his relationship with God.
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So I think there's profit in meditating on any part of God's Word, but most of us would have to use a text other than the one
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I'm preaching on today in Leviticus 1, but still the importance of looking at the
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Old Testament. I want to begin with a quick three -point outline of where I want to go today.
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Those of you who have the handout can see that. Three points. We need to be told how to worship
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God. Second, we are to worship God by faith. Third, we need to be properly connected up with God's means of grace in order to worship him in the right way.
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Or to summarize these three points as hearing, faith, and connections. That's where I'm hopefully going here in the rest of the message.
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So as we look at our text for today, our first point is that we need to be told how to worship
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God. In other words, we need to hear from God in order to come into a right relationship with him.
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This is a principle that applies in the Old Testament. Guess what it applies in the
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New Testament just as much? We need to hear from God. I want to reread verses 1 and 2.
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These two verses serve somewhat as an introduction to the entire book and specifically to our passage for today.
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That's what it says, verses 1 and 2. Now the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tabernacle of meetings, saying,
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Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, When any one of you brings an offering to the
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Lord, you shall bring your offering of the livestock of the herd and the flock. One initial question we need to ask ourselves is where do these instructions come from?
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Answer, this passage tells us there's specific instructions from the Lord himself. When the word
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LORD is typeset in all caps, as it is in verse 2 of some of our Bible translations, it's telling us that the
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Hebrew word that's used here is the personal covenant name of God that's been variously translated sometimes into English as Jehovah and the
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King James or Yahweh is another way of taking it. A lot of times it simply comes into our
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English translations as capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. It is the covenant name of God.
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It reminds us of Exodus 3 .14 where God said to Moses, I am who
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I am. This Hebrew word Jehovah and the King James, Yahweh in other translations or just Lord capital
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L, capital R, capital O, capital R, capital D is the covenant name of God.
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It's related to the Hebrew verb I am or the verb to be.
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And it's translated here as simply God said to Moses, I am who I am.
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And say to this people, I am has sent you. So that's what we see.
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This is why Jesus picks up on that in the Gospels, especially the
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Gospel of John. I'm the bread of life. I'm the living water. I am the good shepherd. I'm the resurrection of life.
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So that Jesus is claiming to be God. The Jews in Jesus, they recognize that.
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That's why different times they picked up stones, they were going to kill him for claiming to be God himself. They knew what these words meant.
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So here in Exodus 3, God is introducing himself to Moses and the people in a more formal way.
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I am who I am. Say to this people of Israel, I am has sent me to you. These are the words to Moses.
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Where did God's Old Testament people get this idea of offering animal sacrifices? Is this part of some innate human practice?
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Certainly the time of Moses is not the first time that animals were sacrificed.
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We could even say that God sacrificed animals in order to clothe Adam and Eve in the garden with animal skins.
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And we can read about Noah who's long before Moses, long before Abraham doing animal sacrifices and so on.
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Where does this idea come from? Certainly it comes from God.
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And it comes in particular here in this passage. It is a specific instruction of Moses to the people here in Leviticus 1.
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So as we keep reading through the book of Leviticus, we could even say that Leviticus is a set of instructions on how to do sacrifices.
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It talks about burnt offerings. That's the example that I read here for verses 1 to 9 of chapter 1, but all kinds of other animal sacrifices and so on.
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This is what theologians and church leaders have sometimes called the regulative principle of worship.
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You ever heard that term, regulative principle? It's saying that God gives specific instructions for how he wants us to worship him.
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We need to be regulated by God's word in how we worship him. The opposite of the regulative principle of worship is what we see in Leviticus 10, verse 1, where two of Aaron's sons,
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Nabad and Abihu, did when they offered what is described as profane fire before the
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Lord, which he had not commanded them. Other translations say unauthorized fire, strange fire, the wrong kind of fire, unholy fire.
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But here's the point. God is the one who has commanded his people both to worship him and even specifically how to worship him.
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Here in this time of Leviticus, God required a number of different kinds of animal sacrifices, including the burnt offerings that are part of our
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Scripture reading for today. My understanding is you've been looking at the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20.
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I'm just going to review some of this. Exodus 20 begins, verse 1, word of introduction.
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God spoke all these words, saying the true God of the Bible is the only one word of worship.
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So that's the first commandment. The true God spoke all these words, saying that he's the one to worship.
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Introduction there in verse 2, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
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First of the Ten Commandments found in verse 3, you shall have no other gods before me. Moses is telling the people, or God's telling
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Moses, Moses is telling the people that the true God, the God of the Bible, is the one word to worship.
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Second commandment tells us how to worship him. You should not make for yourself a graven image or likeness of anything.
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You know that passage. So first commandment, who to worship. Second commandment, how to worship.
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And this is true throughout Scripture. It tells us who God is. It tells us how he wants us to worship him.
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So that God always begins with the word of grace, reminding us what he's done for us, but then also telling us how he wants us to worship him.
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Jesus gives this same principle in John 14, 21, where he says, he who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me, he who loves me will be loved by my
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Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Notice there's two parts to this commandment,
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John 14, 21. Hearing Jesus' commandments and keeping them.
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And we can't keep them unless we hear them. But if we hear them, then we should keep them.
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So we need to listen to God before we're ever to know how to worship him. So that's the first part of my message today, the importance of hearing.
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We need to hear God's law, his instructions, and there's more instructions than is found in Leviticus 1, 1 -9.
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There's the whole Bible that we need to listen to. That's why we need to regularly spend time in God's word and hear
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God's word preached and expounded. Second part of our lesson today, in addition to hearing
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God's word, we need to have faith in what God tells us to do if we're going to obey him.
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We are to obey him, but obeying him requires faith. Put simply, the principle is we're to worship
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God by faith. Look with me again at the second set of two verses in our scripture reading for today in Leviticus 1.
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We're going to look at verses 3 and 4. If his offering is a burnt sacrifice to the herd, let him offer a male without blemish, and he shall offer it of his own free will at the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the
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Lord. Then he shall put his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.
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And then verses 5 -9 we read a few minutes ago, describe how there's animals to be killed as part of their worship of God.
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If you've ever seen an animal like a bull put to death, you know it's something of a gruesome sight.
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There's a considerable amount of blood involved. This isn't anything that naturally appeals to me. Blood makes me a little squeamish to begin with.
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But if we were living in Old Testament times, as Leviticus 1 describes it here, it would have been part of how we would have worshipped
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God. Let's assume for argument's sake the individual hearing Leviticus 1 doesn't have faith in them.
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Burnt offerings that you've described specifically here in Leviticus 1 are gifts given to God symbolizing one's total commitment of surrender to him and are used to express worship of God.
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But let's pretend we don't have faith, we don't believe it, we don't want to do it.
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A person living in Old Testament times was to offer up a burnt offering from the herd in order to be accepted before the
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Lord. In other words, there had to be a specific sacrifice done in a specific way that would be a part of his worship.
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We could also ask the question, was everyone automatically saved and brought into a right relationship with God or the universe simply if they offered up an animal sacrifice like we're told in Leviticus 1?
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I don't think so. Many of us are familiar with Hebrews 11 and how this chapter focuses on a whole host of Old Testament heroes and heroines.
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There in that chapter we find a key principle for how God's principle of faith works found in Hebrews 11 6.
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But without faith it's impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
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There are two requirements for effective faith. First, we need to believe that God exists.
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Or in other words, there is someone there listening and watching whatever we do. And second, that he rewards those who seek him.
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Or in other words, that whatever we do in this area of seeking to please God makes a difference, an eternal difference in our lives that's worth our effort and that he truly rewards those who seek him.
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In Old Testament times people would offer up a variety of different sacrifices, burnt offerings were one of these.
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But they needed to do so in an attitude of faith where they believed two things.
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First, that God exists. And second, that he rewards those who seek him.
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See, for those of us who are living this side of Jesus' earthly life and Good Friday and Easter, we too need to believe by faith that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
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The only difference is that we need to believe in Jesus Christ as the one who has died and paid the penalty for sin, making it possible for us to come into a proper relationship with God.
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Here's another question to consider. Do you think anyone ever pleased God who didn't believe that offering up a sacrifice would make a difference in their relationship with God?
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I think the answer is no, that if people didn't believe in what they were doing, that's not faith,
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God's not going to reward that. Faith is a key requirement in the Old Testament, just like it's a key requirement in the
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New Testament. In one sense we're saved in the same way, whether we're living in Old Testament times or New Testament times.
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We're saved by faith in God and what he has told us. Still there's a difference between the
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Old Testament times and New Testament times. The difference between Old Testament faith and New Testament faith lies in the content of that faith.
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Old Testament saints were saved by faith in God and obedience to what he had told them to do in the
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Old Testament. In the case of this book of Leviticus, it was to offer up a whole series of different kinds of sacrifices, including burnt offerings, such as we read about in our scripture reading for today.
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If we pause for a moment and ask, what is the purpose of these Old Testament sacrifices? Verse 4 answers that question for us and tells us,
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He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him, that this burnt offering would make atonement for him.
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This is what God tells us clearly here in this verse. He will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.
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This leads me to still another question. How many ways of salvation are there in scripture?
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If these Old Testament burnt offerings made atonement for one's sins, why did
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Jesus Christ come to this earth to live and die on the cross? We need to be careful how we answer this question of how many ways of salvation are there in scripture.
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We begin with the wrong answer first. Wrong answer is there's two ways. Old Testament sacrificial system and the
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New Testament answer is Jesus' death on the cross. And again, this is the wrong answer.
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Stop and think what you're implying if you were to think in terms of two different ways of salvation. One implication is that Jesus never really needed to come to this earth and die on the cross, that the
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Old Testament sacrificial system really provided for the remedy of atoning or covering over our sins and thus bringing us into a right relationship with God.
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It's because the Old Testament sacrificial system really didn't work and never did that John 3 .16
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becomes true. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
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But we're still left with another question that we've already asked ourselves in different ways. Why then did
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God give us this whole Old Testament sacrificial system to begin with? We can even go so far as to say book of Leviticus is essentially a book about instructions of when, where, and how do you do these
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Old Testament sacrifices. The question is why? Why did God give the
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Old Testament people instructions about offering up animal sacrifices in the first place?
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How in the world could killing an animal and offering it up as a sacrifice to God provide a remedy for the sinfulness of his people?
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Now in one sense it really doesn't work. Book of Hebrews 10 .4 tells us,
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For it's not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. The same thought is repeated in different words a few verses later in Hebrews 10 .11.
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And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.
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Does the Old Testament sacrificial system work or not? Is it right to do or is it wrong?
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The Old Testament sacrificial system works for two reasons. First, it's based by faith and requires faith.
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And second, it doesn't stand by itself but rather it looks ahead typologically to Christ.
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So in one sense both the Old Testament saints and New Testament saints are saved the same way, namely by faith in Christ.
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The difference is that Christ is the object of our faith is considerably clearer and more obvious after his first coming to this earth than it was before Jesus came that first Christmas.
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Jesus told the Jews in his day in John 8 .56, Your father
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Abraham rejoiced to see my day and sought and was glad. So Abraham, how long did
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Abraham live before Christ? About 2 ,000 years. So how did Abraham see Jesus Christ from 2 ,000 years before Christ ever came to this earth?
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Answer, he saw glimpses of Christ in God's plan of salvation. Think with me of this time that Abraham offered up his own son
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Isaac. And what did he see in the bush just before he was ready to kill his own son?
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He saw a ram caught in a thicket. And just as God provided for a means of sparing
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Isaac's life, God does that exact same thing in sparing our lives through Jesus Christ.
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God saw a glimpse of God's provision, God's grace, God's benefit, how
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God meets our needs even before we hardly know what question to ask. God is already providing for our needs.
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And the sum total of all of those needs focuses on Christ. So that Abraham saw
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Jesus' day and was glad. But he saw it in only a hazy and incomplete picture of Christ.
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Peter explains it all this way in 1 Peter 1, verses 10 through 12. Of this little complicated passage, but you get the general thrust of it,
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I think. Of this salvation that prophets, and here he's speaking especially of the Old Testament prophets, have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what and what manner of time the
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Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.
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To them it was revealed that not to themselves but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the
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Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Things that the angels desire to look into. So as we think about the
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Old Testament, the Old Testament, the theme of it is Christ. But Christ is presented in a hazy, incomplete way that a lot of times we don't understand what
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God's doing in our lives. Sometimes in hindsight we get a little glimpse of what he might be doing. And that's true of the connection between Old Testament and New Testament.
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Old Testament saints knew what God told them to do. Animal sacrifices, obey the law, this, that, and the other thing.
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They really didn't see how it all fit together. They had glimpses God was going to do something more.
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We see it ultimately fulfilled in Christ as the perfect high priest, the perfect sacrifice for sins.
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But by and large the Old Testament saints didn't understand what God was doing in the world.
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But then we can look at ourselves. Even the best taught among us today often don't understand what
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God's doing in our world either. So we shouldn't be surprised the gospel of Jesus Christ, especially as found in the
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New Testament, is clearer and more powerful message than the message of God's grace in the
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Old Testament. Pretend with me for a moment that you're living in Old Testament times and you're going to share the gospel with somebody else.
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What are you going to share? You don't quite use the four spiritual laws the same way that we might today or some other means of sharing the gospel.
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But instead you'd have to point to existence of God, reality of God.
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God has given us instructions. We need to obey those. If we obey those, we'll experience new life through him so that we can do something.
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But how do we know that God loves us? The answer, when we turn to the New Testament, we see
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God so loving this world that he sent his son. We see Jesus dying on our behalf.
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We have a more vivid, a more powerful message of God's love for us, of how
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God is at work in this world. It's the same message in the Old Testament, but it's hazy and incomplete.
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It's a more powerful message in the New Testament of God's love for us in Jesus. It's a message that has to be received by faith in God and what he has done for us ultimately in Christ.
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The Old Testament sacrificial system can be helpful for us to study because it helps us understand more of Christ and the costliness of his sacrifice for us on the cross of Calvary.
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Before us here today is this setup here for communion. Does this bread that's here, does this cup that's here, does that perfectly picture
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Jesus' death and his broken body, his shed blood? In one sense, it does.
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In another sense, maybe it's a little hazy. What about the Old Testament, the Old Testament sacrificial system?
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If we were to see an animal slaughtered here before us, some of the more squeamish among us might not be too excited about seeing that.
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But it still pictures for us in a different way than the communion does. It pictures for us the costliness of Jesus' death.
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Jesus' death, you know, every one of us is going to die unless Jesus returns first.
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So that we're all going to experience death. And there may even be some who experience gruesome deaths.
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But a gruesome death is not necessarily a means of bringing any of us into a right relationship with God.
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The only way to come into a right relationship with God is through Jesus' death and our being connected up with that.
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So that just for us to see the gruesomeness of an animal's sacrifice helps repair us to understand the sacrificial death of Christ.
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The Old Testament looks ahead, explains more about Jesus' death, more about Jesus' ministry.
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Doesn't do it as perfectly as the New Testament. We need the New Testament to kind of fill in the gaps, help us process what the
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Old Testament is telling us. But it does look ahead. Why don't we move on to a third point?
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Third point and we'll be done. We need to be connected up with God's means of grace in order to respond to him in the right way.
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Or to put it simply, there needs to be a connection between us and the object of our faith if we're to worship
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God in a way that pleases him. Notice again verse 4 of our scripture reading for today and what it tells us about the worship the
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Old Testament worshiper was to do. Put his hand on the head of the burnt offering.
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Then he'll be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. What would happen if the worshiper never laid his hand on the head of the animal sacrifice?
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Nothing would happen. There needed to be a physical connection between the animal and the Old Testament worshiper.
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This was God's specific instruction. The worshiper needed to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering if that offering were to be accepted on his behalf.
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It's the same way in the New Testament. It's not enough to believe generally that Jesus lived and died and even that he rose again from the dead.
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Salvation is more than believing some objective truths about Jesus. Theologians have sometimes defined true biblical faith as involving three different realities.
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And here I'm going to use some Latin terms. These are on the handout there if you want to refer to that. Three different components of faith.
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Notitia, assensus, and fiducia. Notitia involves hearing the facts of the gospel message.
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Here we can think of someone taking notes. There's a connection between notes and notitia. There's something written.
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There's some content, some objective reality there. Certain truths that we need to communicate when we share the gospel with someone else before they can receive
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Christ. Gospel has specific content. One popular outline of the gospel is
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God, man, Christ, and response. That's on the handout there as well. In other words, whenever we share the gospel with someone else, sooner or later we need to share something about four things.
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God, and specifically about the person of God and his glory and greatness.
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I think these four things would work even in different ways if we were back in Old Testament time.
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Share something about God. Share something about man, how God created humanity, and how humanity as it exists today has fallen into sin and is under God's wrath.
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Christ is the New Testament answer, or at least something, the need for a sacrifice. There's nothing
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I can do to save myself. That's the message of the Old Testament, message of the New Testament.
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Nothing I can do to save myself. I need somebody, something, some outside of me to bring me into a right relationship with God.
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And from our New Testament perspective, we know that that focus is on Christ, and Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of the
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Old Testament. So we need to share something about the person and work of Christ, including his death for us on the cross.
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Fourth thing in this outline, response, how we need to respond to God's invitation through faith and trust in him.
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It doesn't take place without a response. Historically, the objective content has sometimes been labeled as notitia, but there's more.
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Also needs to be understanding or comprehension or assent to these facts of God, man,
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Christ, and response. Assensus simply means that we assent to what we have heard, we agree that it was true.
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We need to connect up intellectually with the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, understand something of God's love and grace.
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Yet simple intellectual agreement is not enough. It's not enough that I believe Jesus lived historically, or that Jesus was put to death on a cross, or that any of the other stories about Jesus in the gospels are true.
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That's not enough. Simple intellectual agreement is not enough. James reminds us in James 2 .19,
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you believe there is one God, you do well, even the demons believe and tremble. But it's this third part that tips the scales and ultimately makes someone a believer.
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Latin term that's used here is fiducia. Some of us may have heard the term fiduciary, which is a word that we rarely use today, but possibly could use.
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Legally, someone who manages money or property for someone else. The focus is you need to be able to trust that person if you're going to have them manage your money or property.
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And this word fiducia means trust. We come to a place where we trust the message of the gospel and want to buy into it.
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We need to believe in Jesus and have faith in him as a payment for our sins. We can think of fiducia as the component of faith that makes it real.
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It's our New Testament way of placing our hands on the head of the burnt offering. We can't place our hands literally on Jesus' head.
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That's not how it works. We do it by faith. We do it by fiducia. All three of these components of faith are needed.
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Notitia, a census, and fiducia. They're all necessary. We need them all.
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We need to hear the content of the gospel message. We need to agree that it's true.
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We need to buy into it. The Old Testament saints needed to have faith that these sacrifices they were offering up to God made a difference in their standing before God.
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Just as New Testament saints need to have faith that Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross of Calvary makes an eternal difference whether we're a child of God or not.
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Old Testament believer was saved by faith. By physically laying his hands on the head of the sacrifice he was offering up to God.
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New Testament believer is saved by faith, not through physical contact with an animal, but through spiritual contact with Christ.
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Theologians have sometimes described this as our union with Christ. It's a spiritual relationship.
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It's a connection that is just as real as that Old Testament worshiper placing his hand on the animal's head, only it's not a physical thing.
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It's a spiritual thing. It's something that we become spiritually connected up with Christ through the working of God's spirit deep down inside of us as we exercise faith and trust in God.
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If these three areas are important in Old Testament times, these three areas, hearing God's instructions, exercising biblical faith, being properly connected up in this
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Old Testament sacrifices, if this is true in Old Testament times, it's true in New Testament times.
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It's the same three lessons. We need to hear God's instructions in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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We need to exercise biblical faith in God and what he has done for us in Christ. And third, we need to be properly connected up with Christ that's just as true today as it was in the
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Old Testament saints. A lot of similarity between Old Testament saints and New Testament saints.
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The difference is that we have a clearer and more powerful message to share that God has so loved this world.
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Not only did he create some animals that could be sacrificed, but he sent his own son.
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Not only did some animals die, but Jesus' own son died that we might have life.
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It's a more powerful message, but we can understand more about it as we look at the
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Old Testament and see Christ even pictured there in the Old Testament for us.
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Close with a word of prayer. Father, we do thank you for Jesus. Ultimately, this message is about him, that he's the one who came to this earth and died and paid the penalty for sins.
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And the entire Old Testament sacrificial system simply looked ahead and foreshadowed and prepared your people for understanding the significance of Jesus' death when he did come and did die and offer up his life for us.
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Lord, give us fresh hope in you. Help us to see the big picture of your word. Help us to grow in our love for you, a love that led you to provide a means of salvation for your people.