Unlocking the Bible. David Pawson

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СКАЧАТЬ what it is preparing for others. This is fulfilled in the New Covenant. Paul quotes that law and gives it a completely different fulfilment, explaining that in the same way those who live for the gospel have a right to expect financial support from others. It is necessary to look at each law and see how it is fulfilled in the New Testament and given a deeper meaning.

      There are, however, four crucial things that we learn from the book of Leviticus which are unchanged in the New Testament.

      1. THE HOLINESS OF GOD

      There is no book in the Bible which is stronger on the holiness of God than Leviticus and it is something we forget at our peril, especially in an age when people ask the question: ‘How can a God of love send anyone to hell?’ We know through Jesus that God is a God of love, and Jesus also spoke openly about hell. We cannot pick and choose: if Jesus told the truth about God being a God of love, we must also accept that he spoke the truth about hell.

      Actually, God’s understanding of love is a little different from ours. Ours is sentimental love, his is holy love. His love is so great that he hates evil. Very few of us love enough to hate evil. We learn about the holiness of God from the book of Leviticus. We learn to love God with reverence, with holy fear. Hebrews says, ‘Let us worship God with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.’ This is a sentiment the writer got straight out of Leviticus. It is vital for Christians today to read Leviticus, in order to keep hold of this sense of God’s holiness.

      2. THE SINFULNESS OF MAN

      Leviticus strongly underlines the sinfulness of man as well as the holiness of God. It is so realistic and down to earth. Here is human nature, capable of bestiality, incest, superstitions, and many other things which are an abomination to God. ‘Abomination’ means something that makes you want to be physically sick because you are so disgusted. The Hebrew word for it is a very, very strong expression; the English translations – abomination, loathsome, vile, revolting – are all just poor substitutes.

      The Bible is about God’s emotions. God’s emotional reaction to sin comes because he is holy. The sinfulness of man is not just in polluting clean things, but also in profaning holy things. Common swearing is the profaning of holy words. There are only two sacred relationships in our lives – that between us and God, and that between man and woman. Ninety per cent of swearwords come from one of these two relationships. Mankind profanes holy things and pollutes clean things. We live in a world that is doing both, and the sinfulness of man is not only in making clean things dirty, but in making holy things common and in treating things as common when they are not.

      3. THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST

      Leviticus points towards the fullness of Christ and his sacrifice, once for all. God has provided a way of cleansing the sin from mankind. His problem is how to reconcile justice and mercy. Should he deal with this sin in justice and punish us, or should he deal with it in mercy and forgive us? Since God is both just and merciful, he must find a way of being just and merciful at the same time. It is impossible for us to find a way, but it has been possible for him – by the substitution of an innocent life for a guilty life. Only when that happens are both justice and mercy satisfied. The sacrificial laws of Leviticus begin to show us how that can happen.

      There are particular words associated with this process which occur many times. ‘Atonement’ and ‘blood’ are frequently mentioned, because in the blood is the life. If a person’s blood is taken away, their life is taken away. ‘Offerings’ are also frequently mentioned. The burnt offering speaks of the total surrender that is needed. The meal offering speaks of our service. The peace offering tells us of the serenity we can have with God. These are the three things that should characterize a grateful life, a life that has been saved.

      Yet we note too God’s side of the equation, his sacrifice. The only sacrifices we now have to bring to the Lord are the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, and these should be properly prepared and brought before him. But the sacrifices in Leviticus also speak of the sacrifice that Jesus made. The sin offering tells us about the substitution of an innocent life for the guilty, and the trespass offering brings home to us that this sacrifice satisfies divine justice, that there is some law that is being met by it. It all looks straight forward to the New Testament.

      4. GODLINESS OF LIFE

      Leviticus tells us to be holy in every part of our lives, even down to our toilet arrangements! Holiness is wholeness, which is why we can read of the incredible detail God goes into as he applies his holiness to every part of his people’s lives. It tells you that a godly life is godly through and through or it is not godly at all.

      It is important to note, however, that there are two major shifts between the holiness of the Old Covenant and the holiness of the New. In Leviticus there is the triple division between holy, clean and unclean. This still applies in the New Testament, but there are two major alterations to it.

      First, holiness is moved from material things to moral things. The children of Israel were children and they had to be taught as children. They had to learn the difference between clean and unclean in matters of food, for example. Christians have no such rules, however. It took a vision to teach this to the apostle Peter. Jesus said that it is not what goes into your mouth that makes you unclean now, but what comes out of your mouth. Being clean or unclean is no longer a matter of clothes and food, but of clean and unclean morality. It has shifted from the material to the moral. Now we do not have all those regulations about clothes and food, but we do have a lot of teaching about how to be holy in moral questions.

      Second, the rewards and punishments are shifted from this life to the next. In this world holy people may well suffer and not be rewarded, but the shift has happened because in the New Testament we have a longer-term view. This life is not the only one there is – it is only the preparation for a much longer existence elsewhere. So in the New Testament we read ‘great is your reward in heaven’, not on earth.

      Given these two major shifts, Leviticus is a most profitable book for Christians to read. Above all, it gives us insight into those four vital things: the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the fullness of Christ, and godliness of life.

       5.

      NUMBERS

      Introduction

      Numbers is not a well-known book, neither is it widely quoted. Perhaps only two verses are well known. Samuel Morse quoted one of these after he sent the first telegraph message in Morse code to Washington DC on 24 May 1844. He expressed his amazement at what had happened with the verse, ‘What hath God wrought?’ (translated in the NIV as ‘See what God has done.’) The discovery of electronic communication was attributed to the God who had given the power.

      The second verse is known by most people: ‘Be sure your sin will find you out’. This was originally said by Moses as a warning to the people when he was telling them that they must cross the Jordan and fight their enemies.

      Neither verse is generally known to come from Numbers. Very few people are able to quote verses from the book and I have found that few know what any one chapter contains. We need to remedy this situation, as Numbers is another very important part of the Bible.

      ‘Numbers’ is a strange title for a book. In the Hebrew the title is taken from the first words of the scroll, ‘The LORD said’. When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, the translators gave it a new title, Arithmoi (from which we get the word ‘arithmetic’). The Latin (Vulgate) version translated this as СКАЧАТЬ