FBC Daily Devotional – April 12, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:06

Well, a good Monday to you. I trust your week is going to get off to a good start today.

00:11

If it hasn't already, you may be watching this late at the day and near the end of the day, actually, and looking back over your

00:19

Monday. I hope your day goes well today. Well, in our scripture reading, we read this

00:25

Old Testament book of Leviticus. Not one of the most popular books for casual reading in the

00:31

Old Testament, but nevertheless an important one. And there's a couple of things

00:36

I just wanted to point out in today's reading that point out the importance of this

00:42

Old Testament book of Leviticus. You're probably well aware that Leviticus lays out all of the requirements for the offerings, the sacrificial system in the

00:54

Old Covenant, all the different requirements for the sacrifices, and so on and so forth.

01:00

And in today's reading, we're reminded that those sacrifices needed to be offered through the priests, and there was this one sacrifice once a year on the

01:12

Day of Atonement, the high priest was responsible for that, and so forth. But in today's reading, we see a very important distinction between the type and the antitype.

01:27

Now, what I mean by that is, the high priest in the Old Testament was a type of the

01:34

Lord Jesus Christ, who is our high priest, and we know that from the book of Hebrews, and we'll get to that in just a minute.

01:43

The antitype in the Old, in the, so the type is the high priest, the antitype is the

01:50

Lord Jesus Christ, as he came and fulfilled that role. Now, in Leviticus chapter 9, we see a very important responsibility on the part of the high priest, and we read of it in verses 7 and 8, and then it's obeyed in verse 15.

02:08

In verse 7, it says, And Aaron therefore went to the altar and killed the calf of the sin offering, which was for himself.

02:35

And then, in verse 15, it says, So the point is that Aaron was, before he could offer a sacrifice for sin for the people, he had to first offer a sacrifice of sin for himself.

02:59

Now, in the book of Hebrews, we discover that that is one of the big differences between the type, which was the high priest, and the antitype, which was the

03:09

Lord Jesus Christ, our high priest. So we read in Hebrews chapter 7, verses 25 and following, we read this, it says,

03:59

So Jesus did not have to offer a sacrifice first for himself to deal with his own sins, and then for the sins of the people, no, he was able to offer himself as a sacrifice one time for the sins of the people, and not for his sins.

04:17

And then in chapter 9, verses 11 to 14, we read this,

05:03

So the Lord Jesus Christ, the antitype of the

05:08

Old Testament high priest, which was a type, he did not need to first offer a sacrifice for himself.

05:18

He is a sinless son of God, the sinless sacrifice. And consequently, because his was a sinless sacrifice, he was also, by his own blood, able to sacrifice once for all time, for all who would come to him and receive that cleansing.

05:37

So we can rejoice in this distinction in the book of Leviticus, and discover that role of the high priest then, and then the

05:47

New Testament extrapolation on that, or application of that to Christ, who did not have to offer a sacrifice for himself.

05:56

The other thing I wanted to point out in our reading, is found in Leviticus chapter 10. And that is the point that we do not get the privilege, quote -unquote, to worship

06:09

God as we please, as we see fit. God describes or prescribes how he wants to be worshipped.

06:16

And we see that illustrated very poignantly in chapter 10, with the sons of Aaron, who are given the responsibility of of bringing the offerings, the different offerings to the tabernacle, and offering those sacrifices and so forth.

06:35

And one of the kinds of offering was the incense offering. They were to bring incense to the incense into the tabernacle, but it had to be a specific kind.

06:46

God actually prescribed the kind of incense to be burned in the tabernacle.

06:52

And these two sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, they just said, you know, it doesn't matter. We can mix up our own incense, and you know,

07:00

God will accept it. It'll be all right. Well, that's certainly not the case. And we read of that in the first few verses of chapter 10.

07:08

Listen, verses 1 to 3. Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it, put incense on it, and offered profane fire before the

07:18

Lord, which he had not commanded them. So fire went out from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the

07:25

Lord. And then this is what Moses said to Aaron. This is what the Lord spoke, saying,

07:31

By those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy. And before all the people,

07:37

I must be glorified. Nadab and Abihu had a responsibility of, in the worship of the

07:44

Lord, worshiping in the way that he prescribed. He, the Lord, needed to be set aside, set apart as holy, and he needed to be glorified.

07:54

And what these two men were doing by their their own self -defined way of worship and inspired way of worship, they were setting themselves apart and glorifying themselves and saying, you know, we can choose how we want to worship

08:13

God. God made it very clear, no, we can't. And that brings up an important principle in our worship.

08:20

We worship in the way that the Lord has prescribed. And that means there's certain things that we don't participate, we don't do, we don't use in worship, because he hasn't prescribed them.

08:33

So we sing, we pray, we read the scriptures, we preach the scriptures, we partake of the elements, and there's not much more than that, because that's not what has been prescribed.

08:45

So, here's the basis for that, one of the bases for that principle of only incorporating certain things in our worship.

08:56

Other things may sound cool, neat, fun, exciting, whatever, but if God hasn't prescribed them, we don't do them.

09:05

Simple as that. All right. So I hope you're finding this book of Leviticus challenging, but also insightful, giving you some insight into the sacrifice of Christ and into worship.

09:19

So let's pray and ask the Lord to give us that kind of insight. So our

09:24

Father, we do thank you for this new week upon us, and we thank you also for your word, which gives us direction in how you want to be worshiped.

09:34

May we worship you in spirit and in truth and the way that pleases you. And this we pray in Jesus name and for his sake.

09:42

Amen. All right. Well, I hope you have a good rest of your Monday and get your week off to a good start.