At the end of our last study, you'll recall that I announced my decision to fast forward to verse 21 of Exodus 38. Now, why would I do that? Well, it's simply because in the previous two and a half chapters, Moses relates in great detail how the tabernacle was constructed The Tabernacle of the Testimony, as they were numbered according to the command of Moses for the service of the Levites, by the hand of Ithamar, the son of Aaron the priest. Now Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made all that the Lord had commanded Moses. With him was Aholiab, the son of Hissanach, of the tribe of Dan, an engraver and a skillful workman. and a weaver in blue and in purple and in scarlet material and in fine linen." So this is Moses' way of simply recapping everything that was said about the building of the tabernacle. And beginning at verse 24, he now turns his attention to the cost for all the items used in the building of the tabernacle. He begins with the costliest of the construction materials, which would have been gold. He writes, all the gold that was used for the work and all the work of the sanctuary, even the gold of the wave offering was 29 talents and 730 shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. Now, Moses' mention of this wave offering indicates that the gold in question was collected from the freewill offerings of the people. These are people who have had kind of a renaissance in their way of thinking with regard to the allegiance that they owe God. Remember, God has just re-established his bilateral covenant with them. He's given them, once again, the conditions for his blessing. And God's blessing was contingent on their obedience to everything that he had said. So with this fresh on their minds, now the money's coming together, the offerings are being made for the construction of the tabernacle according to the blueprints that had been drawn out. And so all the people began to donate the various things, including the gold. Now, where did they get so much gold? Well, you'll recall that when they left Egypt, the Egyptians actually gave them a great deal of gold before they left. And so that again was God's providential way, not necessarily of demonstrating the goodness of the Egyptians' hearts, this was God's way of actually circumventing their otherwise hardened hearts and causing them to give even in spite of themselves. And so they have all this gold Every person took a bit for themselves, and now they're giving it back for the construction of the tabernacle. Now, how much gold are we talking about? Well, if we do the math, we find that 3,000 shekels are in a talent. There are 3,000 shekels in a single talent. 29 talents, then, comes to 87,000 shekels of gold. If we add in the other 730 odd shekels, that brings us to 87,730 shekels of gold. Now given the weight of the sanctuary shekel, which was simply just another unit of measurement that they used back then, this comes to slightly over 35,000 ounces. 35,000 ounces which equates to right at 2,200 pounds of gold, slightly over a ton of gold. As of this past Wednesday, gold was at $2,668.50 an ounce. That's a lot of money. Remember, not too long ago, we were all talking about gold might go over $1,000 an ounce. Then it was $1,500. to our $2,600 an ounce. This comes to $42,696 per pound. So if we do the math, the gold alone used in the construction of the tabernacle was valued at $93,397,500. So you're talking about $97 million worth of gold just to build this portable, temporary tabernacle in the wilderness. But that's not all. Moses goes on to write that there were also 100 talents and 1,775 shekels of silver. Now, if we do the math on that, this comes to a total of 120,888 ounces at $31.92 an ounce. This comes to $3,858,744.96. I mean, that's just the gold and the silver alone. What about the bronze? Well, the bronze is not so expensive, but it's equally important to the construction of the tabernacle. There were 70 talents of bronze and 2,400 shekels. This comes to about 5,325 pounds of bronze. At the current price of $2.55 per pound, the bronze comes to $13,578.75. So if we add all this up, we get a grand total of 97,269,823 uh... dollars and seventy cents and i did that and i forgot to add the so we had another probably thirteen thousand that you're looking at nearly a hundred million dollars can you imagine in today's money that's impressive in today's money that get you much more than uh... tabernacle in the wilderness right in today's money you can buy several homes in the dominion for that amount of money. So what does this tell us? Well it indicates this along with, we're not even counting the cost of labor, we're not counting the cost of the fine fabrics that were included in the construction of the curtains for the tabernacle. The individual components that went into the building of the tabernacle would furnish the tabernacle. We're just talking about the tabernacle itself cost nearly a hundred million dollars. Now You might think that's really kind of over the top. That's a lot of money, even by today's standards. Well, I appreciate Bush's commentary here. He said, the grand reason for employing so great an amount of riches in the construction of the tabernacle and its furniture was undoubtedly twofold. One, to impress the mind of the chosen people with the glory and dignity of the divine majesty. and the importance of his service, and two, to convey through the gorgeousness and splendor of the external ritual an intimation of the essential and transcendent beauty, excellence, and glory of the spiritual things that were shadowed by it." Long story short, God wanted the Israelites to have a visual aid. that would help them understand, at least in some small measure, just how great their God is. Just how worthy he is. Just how entitled he is to receive the very best that they could muster in terms of the materials that went into the building of the tabernacle. In fact, this same rationale was used with the building of so many of our great churches and cathedrals. One of our favorite things to do when we were in Germany, every little city we would go in, I liked to tour the cathedrals. Dana not so much. She's scared of big things. It's like, you know, you walk into some of these cathedrals and it's like the cathedral at Cologne, for example, will just boggle your mind. It's just enormous. It's imposing and its opulence is staggering. Now, there are a lot of people who take exception to that. I've heard people say, for example, think about how many missionaries could use that money that was spent in the construction of that cathedral. Think about how much better spent that money would be with other endeavors in the church. You know, I take small exception to that. Because if the motive in building these opulent, grand structures was really to convey to the people, largely the people who were illiterate, by the way, if the intent was to convey to them how grand and how glorious their God truly is, I don't have much of a problem with that, right? I think we would all do well not to build cathedrals and and large churches and things like that that are meant to impress but I think these things should remind us of that very thing just how great God is how worthy he is to receive our best and when a community gathers together and says we're going to build something with the aim of reminding people just how grand and glorious our God is. If that's their motive, then it's a pure motive indeed. And we dare not begrudge that. These cathedrals in Europe, although largely empty today, devoid of worship of any real kind, they still stand as sentinels. You know, even if it's of a bygone era where faith was preeminent, they stand as reminders, even to us, of how grand and glorious our God truly is and how worthy He is to receive our praise, our adoration. Now we can equate this, you know, now we don't necessarily place such an emphasis on those things because We have the fully inscripturated word of God. We're all literate enough to read that word and to benefit from that word. So really, we need to make an equation here, not with brick and mortar and all the fine things, but we need to make a direct correlation between those physical things and the spiritual reality that is Christ in us. We are the temple of the living God. Which kind of begs the question, How does your temple, in a spiritual way, how does it measure up with the opulence and the grandeur and the gloriousness of these physical structures? These things should make us think, is God worth that to me? If I were to build an edifice for God in my backyard, what would it look like? Would it look like a typical little storage shed? Maybe you'll just cobble it together with plywood and two-by-fours. I would hope that if such things were still being done, that your desire would be to build for him the same kind of thing that Solomon saw fit to build for God, which was one of the most opulent, grandest buildings in the annals of human history. As long as that heart is connected and the purpose is there, and that purpose is to show forth the glory of God. We should think about things like that in terms of the spiritual importance of those things. How important is God to you? How worthy is He to receive, not your leftovers, but your very best? Well, in chapter 39, through verse 33 of chapter 40 we read about how at God's direction Moses erected the tabernacle he set everything in its proper place he finished the work that was to be done and once again we conducted a fairly in-depth study of everything mentioned here in previous studies so just jump ahead again I'm not doing any harm to the scriptures this is just I don't want us to get bogged down unnecessarily with all the details that we've already covered in the planning process of the tabernacle, but this brings us to verse 34 of chapter 40. And here we read, then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled. the tabernacle. This cloud is the same cloud that the Israelites had seen atop Mount Sinai when they first arrived. This was the same cloud that indicated the presence of Yahweh at the entrance of the temporary tent of meeting. Remember Moses had this tent of meeting and he would go out there and he would worship God with Unveiled face and then of course when he came out he would bail his face because he didn't want to scare everybody Whatever that looked like we're not sure But he had this temporary meeting place set up set up outside the camp We read about that back in Exodus 33, but once the tabernacle was completed God was pleased to place himself there this tent of meeting was a temporary arrangement until the tabernacle itself could be built at which time God was pleased to revealed his presence there in the tabernacle itself. As you'll recall from your reading of 1 Samuel, once the Jerusalem temple was constructed, which was a replacement, permanent replacement for the tabernacle, it was there that God was pleased to reveal himself, not in a pillar of cloud, that was temporary as well, but in the Ark of the Covenant. Remember, the Ark of the Covenant was placed inside the Holy of Holies, and it was there that the Lord is said to have resided or manifested himself in a physical way. And again, we don't know what kind of Shekinah glory existed in the Holy of Holies, what was actually going on. In fact, nobody really knows unless you served as a high priest, because the high priest was the only one allowed to go in there, and he was only allowed to go in there how many times a year? once, right? At least for the sacrificial part of that. I don't know what kind of maintenance was going on or if there was any at all during the rest of the year, but God's presence still remains a mystery, how that manifested itself. And what adds to that mystery is also that God is omnipresent, so it's impossible to limit God to one sphere of physical storage, if you will, and so You know, we have all these questions, but very few answers when it comes to things like that. It's best to say that God manifested himself or made his presence known in the Holy of Holies, in the Ark of the Covenant, to be exact. Now, what happened when, as a result of Israel's disobedience, what happened when the Ark was taken from the Temple by the Philistines? Most of you know. There was a man named Eli. He had two sons, Hophni and Phineas. And you'll recall Phineas died in the battle with the Philistines, the same battle that resulted in the taking of the Ark. And when Eli heard about this, he fell backward in his chair, broke his neck, and died. Meanwhile, Phineas' pregnant wife gave birth to a son. And what did she name her son? Ichabod. Ichabod, which means what? It means the glory of God has departed. And so, again, with the taking of the Ark of the Covenant, this meant that God was no longer pleased to dwell among His people. See, we've got to understand, once again, not to see a series of cause and effects here that man is in control of. Oh, that's Obama. The Philippines came in. killed and plundered and they took the ark away and that's why God's presence was no longer there. No, no. God had ordained that because of Israel's disobedience, the Philistines would come in and they would take away the very symbol of his presence among the people. He would deny them his presence because of their disobedience and he would use the Philistines to do just that. The name that was given to this child, Ichabod, was a form of lamentation over the fact that the ark had been taken, because with the ark being taken, the Lord's glory had also been taken from them. Centuries later, Jesus uses the same word in Matthew chapter 23. Go ahead and turn there, Matthew 23. Remember in Matthew 23, Jesus is lamenting the unbelief the Jewish people 23 verse 37 Jesus says Oh Jerusalem Jerusalem You who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you, Ichabod. The word that Jesus would have spoken there would be the word Ichabod, meaning that their rejection of him as Messiah was yet another forfeiture of the glory of God in himself. What a tragic thing. Here we are so many centuries removed from God's reestablishment of his bilateral covenant with the people of Israel. Here we are, after all of Israel's sordid history, marked by a continuous pattern of disobedience, being obstinate, being stiff-necked, refusing to bow the knee even to the Messiah, God's Messiah. He has come and Jerusalem is still in a state of disobedience and unbelief. And don't miss the not-so-subtle jab at the end of verse 38. Notice that Jesus refers to the temple not as my house, not as God's house, as it was designated by God himself. He refers to it as your house. Your house is left to you desolate. Your house is the house from which God's glory has departed. Continuing on at verse 36 of Exodus 40, we read that throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the sons of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day when it was taken up. Throughout all their journeys the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day and there was a fire in it by night and the sight of all the house of Israel so you can see that their Their cue to move from one place to the other was when the cloud was no longer there They would look and where'd the cloud go? Wherever the cloud went they went and this is how the Lord led them around in the wilderness And oh, by the way, he still guarded them at night with the pillar of fire. Same pillar, just different configuration at night. Well, it brings us to the end of the book of Exodus. I feel like I've been on an exodus. How about you? I mean, we've been abiding with these people. We've been studying their ways. We've been following them around, as it were, in the wilderness. And really, they're no more improved than they were when they left Egypt. Now, they have these fits and starts where they're like, OK, finally, we're going to obey God. You know, we're going to rededicate our lives to God, and we're going to straighten up and fly right. It's almost like New Year's resolutions that we make, right? I'm going to start going to the gym Monday. Monday, I'm going to be in the gym. Man, we're going to tear it up. I'm going to be the most fit person you'll ever see. And then Monday comes along, what happens? I mean, we can't even make it to Monday usually in our own resolution. Oh, I meant next Monday. This Monday is not good. So next Monday. And then what happens the next Monday? Something rolls around. Finally, you just give up and you say, oh, how silly it is to make New Year's resolutions in the first place. When you're old enough, you'll get it. You'll stop doing such silly things, right? The Israelites were in the same sort of mental space their desire at least a lot of them their desire was to serve the Lord and be obedient but they found that their sin so often supplanted that desire they found that they were incapable really of obeying God to the standard that he had set forth for them to obey and so in their history we have these these recurrences of great excitement for the Lord and then nothing. And then great excitement for the Lord and then nothing. And then the Lord reinstitutes His covenant and He does all these wonderful things in their sight. They get on this spiritual high for a moment and then nothing. And what we really would love to see in the Israelites, as we would love to see it in ourselves, is a consistency. Is a contentment. Is a certain knowledge that what there my god ordains is right? Is this settled understanding? That allows me to not get in the way To not insist that my finger be in the pot stirring the broth when the master chef is god himself How many of you are guilty of tripping and falling and and how many of you have ever decided that it might be time to rededicate your life to Christ. Yeah, don't be shy. In the next hour, I'm going to get into just how absurd that really is. You know, you can do a lot of things as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, but one of the things you should never have to do is rededicate your life to Him. Why? Because to rededicate your life to Christ is a tacit admission that I've not been obedient. Beyond that, it's an admission I've not believed Him. I've been guilty of a brand of unbelief myself that can only be fixed by my doing something about it. Folks, you're on the wrong path. I'm not saying that we rest on our laurels. We've talked about that before. Paul says, you know, be careful, make your calling and election sure. Peter says, be sure to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. We're taught that before the Lord's table, every time we observe the Lord's table, examine yourselves to see if you're in the faith, if you're the real deal, so on and so forth. There is a prodding that the Holy Spirit will do that will keep us on track if we'll only continue to listen. If we'll only go to the word of God and take it for what it says to us and rest in that. Problem is people are much more intent on resting in their own works. I'm only going to stay safe to the extent that I'm able to maintain it. You can't if you can't get it for yourself, you can't maintain it. Which. again, leads to the teaching primarily through the New Testament that your salvation is all of God and all of grace and none of you, and that if you would remain saved... I mean, let me just ask you, if there's nothing in the entire creative realm that's able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, Romans 8, 35-39, and if Romans 8, 1 is true, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, then what makes you think that you can undo that? I can tell you what does happen. You may wake up one day and realize that you don't have it to begin with. That's an entirely different thing. And my prayer for you is that if you're in that situation, God will make himself real to you and you will once and forever commit your life to him. By the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, by the virtue of the fact that you've been made a new creation in Christ, But again, it's all of grace, and it's all of God. The Israelites didn't understand that concept. The Israelites thought that it was all, and really, this is that part of the curse of the law. The law was there to constantly remind them, you can't do this. You can't do this. You can't do this. And guess what? That's what makes the perpetuity of the law, the ongoing effectiveness of the law today, so important. The law still says to you, you can't do this. You can't do this. But God says, but he did. And he did it for you. Rest in that. I'm not promoting this caricatured, once saved, always saved doctrine. But I am saying that if you are genuinely saved, you will be saved for all eternity by God's grace and for his glory. Again, the Israelites didn't understand that. And we're going to see this even more because here in the next book in Leviticus, we're going to see Just layer after layer after layer of the impossible being hoisted on the Israelites as God's standard for righteousness. Anybody ever read the book of Leviticus and thought to yourself, there's no way. There's no way I can come close to doing all that's written in this book. Well, that's the whole point. Because Christ did. And he did it perfectly. for you and for me. Well, before we actually begin our study of Leviticus, I don't want to just dive in, I want to do an introduction of sorts. It really is just a continuation of the account of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness and God's working among them. But as I was preparing earlier in the week, I came across some really helpful information from Chuck Swindoll, Hey, I've said that before about J. Vernon McGee and Harry Ironsides, and don't automatically toss some of these men in the waste bin because they don't agree with your soteriology, right? Chuck Swindoll was an Arminian, also a really good preacher. I think he's still alive, isn't he? Yeah, he just retired. I think he just retired from the ministry. He's, what, 90 years old? But as far as teaching, on most things, Chuck Swindoll is wonderful. He really is. Again, you can eat the meat, spit out the bones, as it were, but I'm not ashamed in the least to recommend him, even though it's with a little word of caution. But listen to what he said. In answer to the question, why study Leviticus? That's a good question, isn't it? I mean, How many times have you thought to yourself, why study Leviticus? I'll never forget when I was a preacher boy back in the earliest days of our stay in Germany. When I was first being brought up into the ministry, the pastor there gave me an assignment. And he said, I need you to write me 10 pages on why the study of numbers is important. And like many Christians, I'm kind of ashamed to admit it now, but when I got to Leviticus and Numbers, I was like, no, I'm not reading that. Right? There's no benefit in that for me. I don't need, I'm the byproduct of God's grace and salvation. I'm no longer under the law as a strict taskmaster. Why do I need to go back and read Leviticus? Because all it's about is just the law and God's administration of it among the Israelites. And so I don't need to be really brought back into that trap. And then when you look at Deuteronomy, why do I need to look at Deuteronomy? Deuteronomy, I mean, by its own title, it's a second giving of the law. Well, the first one, I got it. I understood it. And so we can get in this mindset that there are certain portions of the word of God that are not as important or as beneficial as others, and that's just not true. The whole counsel of the Word of God is critical to us, especially if we would understand God himself, much less us in relation to him. But listen to what Swindoll says in answer to this question, why study Leviticus? I think he's spot on here. He says, in Genesis, we see humanity ruined by the fall. In Exodus, God's people are redeemed from bondage. In Leviticus, those people are revived through worship. Being the least popular of the first five Bible books, Leviticus is frequently passed off as an unimportant document of out-of-date detail. Because the book is directly related to Israelites under the Mosaic Law, many Christians today choose to ignore its contents. But God has preserved Leviticus for a particular purpose. As is the case with other Old Testament books, It is filled with pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ. Without exception, every offering and every feast provides a vivid portrait of Christ, God's sacrificial Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. To study Leviticus apart from these portraits painted by the Spirit is to be bored with an ancient series of regulations, but when we see all of this in light of Christ's provision at Calvary, it becomes both interesting and enlightening. And so if I were to give a single word description of the book of Leviticus, it would be worship. God was instructing the Israelites, having demonstrated his worth to them in the building of the tabernacle, in his presence among them, in his giving them the law, and even reinstating that bilateral covenant with them. God has done all of that as a precursor to the instruction that follows on how he demands to be worshipped. And again, it's not, we've got to look beyond the letter of the law and see the spirit and intent. We need to look beyond the foreshadowings and the types that are given throughout this book and look to Christ, who's the fulfillment of those things. As we'll see as we progress through the book, now that God has been pleased to dwell among the people of Israel in the tabernacle, He wants them to know without a doubt that he does have parameters with which he is to be worshipped, or in which he is to be worshipped. The most profitable study, MacArthur says, the most profitable study in Leviticus is that which yields truth in the understanding of sin, guilt, substitutionary death, and atonement by focusing on features which are not explained or illustrated elsewhere in Old Testament scripture. Later Old Testament authors, especially and especially New Testament writers, build on the basic understanding of these matters provided in Leviticus. The sacrificial features of Leviticus point to their ultimate one-time fulfillment in the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. In fact, in the New Testament we find 24 direct citations or allusions to what's written in Leviticus. Fourteen of those are in the Gospels. So it was important even to the writers of the New Testament. It should be important to us as well. If you're taking notes, if you want to get a good outline of the book, let me just give you a quick rundown of what an outline might look like. In chapters one through seven, We learn about the Lord's laws relative to the sacrificial system. These laws include burnt offerings, grain offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, trespass offerings, all of which, again, are bound up in Christ himself. Christ's one sacrifice fulfilled the requirements of all of these, and we're going to see in great detail what these included. In chapters 8 through 10, we learn about the beginning of the Aaronic priesthood, beginning with the ordination of Aaron and his son, followed by an explanation of the first sacrifices offered by them, and that followed by the account of God's execution of Nadab and Abihu. Remember what happened there. There is a price to be paid for not worshiping God in the way that he is prescribed. This is why we as reformed believers emphasize so strongly what's known as the regulative principle of worship. Now, there are things that are normative. We're not told in scripture, for example, how we're to collect an offering, how we're to do the Lord's table, how we're to do this, that, and the other thing. There are things that can be classified as normative, but when it comes to worship proper, God demands that he be worshipped in certain ways. And we try our best to maintain those parameters. Now, in the case of Israel, it really is about following each and every step of his law. But remember, we're not bound to that now because we have the fulfillment of the law residing in us. That is Christ himself. God's law has been written on our hearts. So that now, by way of the Holy Spirit, we instinctively, as new creatures in Christ, we instinctively obey His law in a way that pleases Him. The Holy Spirit ensures that. In chapters 11 through 16, we learn about God's prescription for uncleanness, how they were to deal with unclean animals, the uncleanness of childbirth, unclean diseases, how to cleanse those things, purification of the tabernacle, and so on and so forth. Now what's that all about? Again, God is a God who demands cleanliness. Not only just physical cleanliness, but remember what these lessons on physical cleanliness point to. They point to the necessity of being clean within. You know, they used to do the ceremonial washings before they would go into the temple. There were these big pots full of water and they would take the water and they would wash their hands, their face, in order to be symbolically clean before they would dare go in and worship the Lord. The Lord demands the same thing from us, but in a spiritual way. Let me just ask you this morning, how many of you are here this morning having asked God to give you a clean heart? Or how many of you are here this morning thinking of all the things wrong with this place? all the disappointments that you face in this place, all the things that have been done to you in this place, all the things that you are dissatisfied with in this place. Folks, if you come with those attitudes, you're not in possession of a clean heart. A clean heart, when we ask the Lord throughout the week, which we should, especially on Saturday, as we prepare our hearts to come and worship Him in spirit and in truth, We need to ask God, God, tomorrow morning when I get up, let me wake up with a clean slate. But does that happen really? No, no, not really. We come into the church and all it takes is to see somebody or something that reminds us of our dissatisfaction, our discontentment with this place. And our whole day is tainted by that. Ask the Lord, Lord, create in me a clean heart. Help me to be in possession of that love that believes all things, that hopes all things, that endures all things. A love that is quick to forgive. A love that does not harbor any wrong suffered. Emily, if you admit it, you need a little work to do. You've got about 30 minutes before we enter into the pinnacle of our worship time together, the 11 o'clock preaching hour. I would encourage all of you Either right now or before then, ask the Lord, Lord, create in me a clean heart, remove every obstacle that might be in the way of my worshiping you, you in spirit and in truth. Folks, if you're here for one another, that's a wonderful thing in its own right. But let me just say, if you're here primarily for one another or if you're here primarily for you, you've missed the whole point. We gather together for him. and his glory should so outshine anything in this temporal realm that we should be able to worship him in spirit and in truth and with great joy. Think about that as we go into our time together. This is what is portrayed in this cleanliness pursuit that the Lord reveals to the Israelites. Well finally in chapter 17 through 27 We learn about God's guidelines for practical holiness. This includes the relationship between sacrifices and food, proper sexual behavior, neighborliness, capital crimes, instructions for priests, instructions regarding all the religious festivals, the Feast of Passover, unleavened bread, first fruits, the Feast of Loaves or Pentecost, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles, all of which are significant pointers to Christ again. All of these things contain elements of Christ himself. And we do well to look beyond that. You can take the dietary laws, for example. I know for a fact that there are some, even professing Christians today, who don't eat various things because, oh, because in Leviticus we're told not to eat those things. Don't miss the forest for the trees. Because I can just as easily take you to Acts 10, where the sheet is lowered down from heaven, Peter's up on the rooftop, and he's like, what's all this? And the Lord says, this is all the things you can eat. No, I can't eat all that. Your word prohibits that. What's the answer? Don't consider unclean what God has declared clean. Eat. And again, those dietary laws served a foreshadowing function. And there might be a reason to not eat certain foods. Not all foods are good for you, right? But to couch it in the Bible, allegedly prohibiting me from eating certain things, it's just naive. It's really misinformed when it comes to understanding the full meaning. of these passages. We'll also be looking at, once again, at the tabernacle, at blasphemy, the sabbatical and jubilee years, the blessings and curses relative to obedience and disobedience to the law, the redemption of what are known as votive gifts. We'll be talking about that. And so see, once you make an outline, it's not so daunting, right? I'm going to try to follow that outline because I'm going to periodically remind you where we're at. so we don't get lost in the weeds. And this is gonna be a little quicker study, I think, than the others, because we're able to kind of lump a lot of these provisions under a single category. And so we're not gonna spend a lot of time talking about how they did it with exact precision, everything that they did. We're gonna talk more about the meaning behind all of those things. So hopefully it'll be a little quicker. Well, just so you can have your appetite whetted a little bit, let me just read beginning at verse 1 of Leviticus. Just read a little bit. And then, Lord willing, next time we'll begin to unpack it all. Here we read, Then the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, when any of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of animals from the herd or the flock. If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer it a male without defect. He shall offer it at the doorway of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before the Lord. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering. that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf. He shall slay the young bull before the Lord, and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall offer up the blood and sprinkle the blood around on the altar that is at the doorway of the temple meeting. He shall then skin the burnt offering and cut it into pieces. The sons of Aaron, the priests, shall put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. Then Aaron's sons and the priests shall arrange the pieces. the head and the suet over the wood which is on the fire which is on the altar. Its entrails, however, and its legs he shall wash with water, and the priest shall offer up in smoke all of it on the altar for a burnt offering, an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the Lord." Now that's a lot to unpack just right there in that passage, but again, Lord willing, we will at least begin to do this. next Lord's Day. So, let's go ahead and close in a word of prayer, and then you can enjoy some fellowship together. Let's pray. Father, once again, we thank you so much for all that you do provide us in your word. Father, we ask that as we read your word, both Old and New Testaments, Father, we pray that we would never lose sight over the central figure, which is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Father, help us to value you above all the other things in our lives. Help us even now to be desirous of a clean heart, a pure heart that desires nothing more than to worship you in spirit and in truth. We know to the extent that we are able to be fully engaged in worship, Father, we know that's where the sanctification really happens. Draw us near to You. Knit our hearts to Your heart. Reveal Your Word to us in this next hour in a way that will transform us, fundamentally change us into who we once were, lost in trespasses and sins, to who we are as new creations in Christ. Father, bless our brief intermission here. And again, Lord, we pray above all that You would be glorified that you would be lifted up, magnified in our midst. We pray these things in Christ's name, amen.