God is always...

00:00:24

Written at the base of Mount Sinai,

00:00:26

Leviticus is set in between

00:00:28

the Israelites rescue from slavery

00:00:30

and their deliverance into the Promised Land God set for them.

00:00:34

They were literally camping

00:00:35

between stops on their journey on the surface.

00:00:38

Leviticus might look like a collection of laws

00:00:41

that no longer apply, but it's really a story

00:00:43

of God pursuing His most beloved creation: Us.

00:00:47

Since the beginning, God has always wanted

00:00:50

a relationship with His people,

00:00:52

but they consistently turn their backs on Him,

00:00:54

just like us.

00:00:55

To make matters worse, their beliefs

00:00:57

about God's character were being hijacked

00:01:00

by the popular culture surrounding them,

00:01:02

just like us.

00:01:03

Today, like the Israelites, everyone is moving

00:01:06

from something and towards something else.

00:01:09

It's easy to look at the strictness

00:01:10

of the Old Testament, the rules, wars, and the brutality

00:01:14

and think that God is different than the one we worship.

00:01:17

Leviticus actually proves the opposite.

00:01:20

If God is anything,

00:01:22

He's consistent in His pursuit of His people.

00:01:25

Leviticus helps bring the Old Testament

00:01:27

and New Testament together as it holds some of

00:01:29

the deepest revelations about God's character

00:01:32

and His intense pursuit of us.

00:01:44

- I like tactile multisensory experiences.

00:01:50

Normally, your Crossroads or churches,

00:01:53

you've got your eyeballs you can use,

00:01:55

your eardrums you can use.

00:01:58

If you're having communion, you can have your taste buds.

00:02:03

But this is old school.

00:02:04

Some of us are saying, "Man, that reminds me

00:02:07

of my upbringing, my church experience,

00:02:09

brings me back to nice memories."

00:02:12

Others of us go, 'Man, I remember

00:02:14

back in my early church experience,

00:02:16

it brings us back to awful memories."

00:02:19

All of us are a bit different with this.

00:02:24

God's given us all the different senses that we have

00:02:28

and we get the opportunity to use all of them

00:02:31

in connecting with Him.

00:02:34

Today, we're going to try to get into a different gear,

00:02:36

a different sense, one that you may not have exercised before.

00:02:41

It's looking at the book of Leviticus,

00:02:45

maybe the most controversial, the most confusing,

00:02:48

the most maybe seemingly out of date book

00:02:54

in the whole Bible for a modern person in America to read.

00:02:58

And yet, it is very, very important.

00:03:03

So let's pray before I get into it today.

00:03:05

God, I am thankful for Your presence.

00:03:08

And just as this aroma is going throughout all of our rooms,

00:03:12

all of our sites have multiple people

00:03:15

going up and down aisles to give different smells.

00:03:18

I pray that You would smell us.

00:03:21

You would smell us as a people that wants

00:03:23

to know You more and wants to be more devoted to You,

00:03:26

or wants to come to You, come into relationship

00:03:28

with You for the very first time.

00:03:30

We give You our rest of our time

00:03:33

and we ask You to mold us.

00:03:35

And Lord, I'm asking You to use the words

00:03:37

that I think You gave me this week

00:03:39

to build into Your people.

00:03:40

And I pray these things according to the character

00:03:42

and identity of Jesus. Amen.

00:03:46

Man, it smells like mass in here. Hmm.

00:03:57

Book of Leviticus is not necessarily maybe

00:04:00

what you'd expect the week after the Super Bowl of Preaching.

00:04:04

Actually, I'll tell you about this a little bit later.

00:04:07

That's exactly what we chose to do

00:04:09

and is for a specific reason.

00:04:12

This book, Leviticus, it's the third book in the Bible,

00:04:17

Genesis, Exodus,

00:04:19

Leviticus is a very, very controversial book.

00:04:22

People don't like it.

00:04:23

It contains absolute instructions, absolute commands.

00:04:27

It contains a code, say, of sexuality,

00:04:30

a code of sexuality that is way, way, way, way outside

00:04:33

of America's code of sexuality.

00:04:35

And one of the ways that we

00:04:36

just dismiss anything that's in the book of Leviticus.

00:04:39

We'll find other rules in there that we think are ridiculous.

00:04:41

Like, you can't --

00:04:43

you've got to scrape the mildew off your wall.

00:04:45

So are you scrape the mildew,

00:04:46

scraping mildew off your walls?

00:04:48

If you're not doing that, then all these other things go out

00:04:50

and therefore we just dismiss the whole thing

00:04:52

because it seems very confusing to us.

00:04:54

And I think we do that at our peril.

00:04:55

Certainly there are things in the book of Leviticus

00:04:58

that were temporary for that time.

00:05:00

Certainly there were things in the book of Leviticus

00:05:02

that were for that people.

00:05:04

Certainly it's hard for us to find things

00:05:06

in the book of Leviticus that's applicable

00:05:09

to modern American life.

00:05:11

But what is applicable is understanding

00:05:13

an eye towards the character of God.

00:05:16

There's things in His character, in His identity

00:05:21

that only come through in the Book of Leviticus.

00:05:25

And so I'm looking for five weeks on this book

00:05:30

And here on this altar. Who's ready for me?

00:05:32

Who's ready for the book of Leviticus?

00:05:34

Who is it? Come on. Yeah.

00:05:36

Oh, you're going. Oh, I think. I don't know.

00:05:39

Let's take a look at the very first verse

00:05:42

in the Book of Leviticus.

00:05:44

Here's what the first two verses of Leviticus 1 says:

00:06:02

We're going to talk about bringing

00:06:04

an offering of sacrifice up to the altar here.

00:06:08

Now, part of why we don't look at

00:06:11

the book of Leviticus much is, you know,

00:06:14

we don't offer sacrifices anymore, thankfully.

00:06:17

And so we don't really relate to that at all.

00:06:20

But here's the thing, this whole portion of the Bible,

00:06:24

this is the Old Testament.

00:06:27

Most of us this is the New Testament here.

00:06:29

Most of us only know this much of God.

00:06:33

Even if you never actually read this,

00:06:36

this is the part of God that actually gets played up

00:06:39

really, really, really, really strong.

00:06:41

Which is good. Which is good. It's true.

00:06:43

And actually, on top of that, most of us

00:06:44

maybe only know this much of God.

00:06:48

That's the page on which the one verse is

00:06:52

that says God is love.

00:06:53

It's like, Oh, God is love, God is love.

00:06:55

I got that. God love.

00:06:57

Do you think we need all of this?

00:06:59

Do you think God's more than that?

00:07:00

He is that. He is that.

00:07:02

And here the Old Testament Jews,

00:07:05

the ancient believers only knew this aspect of God.

00:07:10

When you put all of this together,

00:07:12

all of this together, you get a full picture of God.

00:07:17

The Book of Hebrews in the New Testament is meant

00:07:21

to connect the dots of ancient Hebrew Christians

00:07:25

to help them understand how this Old Testament portion

00:07:28

of the Bible relates to the rest of the New Testament.

00:07:30

Look at the Book of Hebrews, the very first verse,

00:07:33

the first chapter.

00:07:34

It kind of reminds me of what I just read to you

00:07:36

in the Book of Leviticus.

00:07:38

By the way, by the way, by the way,

00:07:39

Super Bowl was great last week.

00:07:40

Super Bowl is over. Bummer.

00:07:44

Today, I'm going to ask you to put

00:07:47

your big boy pants and your big girl panties on.

00:07:49

Can you do this?

00:07:51

Even if you can't do this, I'm going to today.

00:07:54

So I hope you -- I hope you've got your jaw muscles

00:07:58

ready to be able to chew on some things

00:07:59

and maybe understand things about God

00:08:01

that might not have understood before.

00:08:03

That's what I want to help you with.

00:08:05

Hebrews 1:1:

00:08:23

So Moses is an ancient person of God,

00:08:25

and this is hearkening back to the prophets,

00:08:27

the people that told us about God in the Old Testament.

00:08:30

And it says here that Jesus, in the Hebrews,

00:08:33

Jesus is central to understanding

00:08:35

the whole old Testament.

00:08:36

In fact, Jesus is central to understanding Leviticus.

00:08:39

Now, they didn't know that when Leviticus was written,

00:08:42

and as they practice it for millennia,

00:08:44

they didn't know that.

00:08:45

But we know that now looking back.

00:08:47

And we also know it tells us something about who God is.

00:08:51

So here's a brief history of God and of all this book.

00:08:57

And if we don't understand these things

00:09:00

about how the Bible was put together and about God,

00:09:02

we're never going to actually understand God.

00:09:05

Leviticus, the book of Leviticus

00:09:07

unlocks the character of God.

00:09:10

Without what we see in Leviticus,

00:09:12

you're not going to understand God.

00:09:13

Let me explain for us.

00:09:17

All those little sects of the Bible,

00:09:18

if you only saw one of those aspects of God,

00:09:22

you wouldn't understand God.

00:09:23

Like, if I came to you and I looked at your day,

00:09:26

whether it was a good day and a bad day,

00:09:27

could I look at one of your days and say,

00:09:29

"Oh, well, that's Susan."

00:09:32

Oh, well, that's Jamal right there. Yeah."

00:09:34

One day. Would one day do it?

00:09:35

What about a week?

00:09:37

If I looked at a week of your life, would that do it?

00:09:39

Would I get an accurate depiction

00:09:41

and understanding of you?

00:09:42

How about a year? A year?

00:09:46

Probably not.

00:09:48

What if you were in depression for a year?

00:09:51

What if you were in a hospital for an entire year?

00:09:54

What if you -- Whatever.

00:09:56

You would say I have to look at my, like,

00:09:58

a long span of my life.

00:10:00

This is what it's like, when we only look at one story

00:10:03

we don't understand God.

00:10:04

When we only look at one book in the Bible,

00:10:06

we don't understand God.

00:10:07

In fact, here's everything, we even look at

00:10:09

the entire Bible we don't fully understand God.

00:10:14

You God is fully described right here?

00:10:18

You think a book can give us the underpinnings of His identity.

00:10:23

It certainly gets us started, but it isn't even complete.

00:10:28

You'll be learning about God

00:10:29

if and when you get to heaven forever.

00:10:32

You can't figure out God by reading a book,

00:10:35

only one book. Very deep.

00:10:38

So the book of Leviticus is critical because

00:10:41

it's a slice of God's character

00:10:44

that you have to see to know Him.

00:10:45

Here's how it comes in context.

00:10:47

God has children. They're named Adam and Eve.

00:10:52

And Adam and Eve have a bunch of people that come out of them.

00:10:54

And all this stuff is how that God's nursing,

00:10:56

nursing them, taking care of them.

00:10:58

And then they get into bondage, they get into slavery,

00:11:02

and God calls them out.

00:11:04

He rescues them out of slavery.

00:11:08

And when they get out of slavery, God says,

00:11:10

"Now, I don't just want to get you out of slavery.

00:11:12

I want to get you to the Promised Land.

00:11:14

The Promised Land's on the other side of the Jordan River."

00:11:17

And so they send out spies, 12 of them.

00:11:20

They go over the Jordan River. They look at it. It's amazing.

00:11:22

They come back, said, "Hey, man,

00:11:23

I got to tell everybody, it is amazing,

00:11:26

land of milk and honey.

00:11:27

Fresh Market is going to open up some day right here

00:11:30

because all the produce is right here and it's amazing."

00:11:33

But ten of the spies say, "The people are massive.

00:11:39

We can't do it. We can't handle it."

00:11:43

If you're going to know God,

00:11:46

understand you will always be the minority.

00:11:49

Let me say that again, if you're going to truly know God,

00:11:52

not not have ideas about God, not be spiritual.

00:11:55

I mean, if you're going to really, truly know God,

00:11:58

if you're really going to be becoming more like God,

00:12:01

you will always be in the minority.

00:12:04

Get used to it.

00:12:06

Jesus says, "Wide is the way to destruction."

00:12:09

Everyone's going one way, the masses are going that way.

00:12:12

He says, "My way is the narrow way."

00:12:15

Same also with these spies.

00:12:16

Ten of the 12 come back.

00:12:18

The majority says, we can't do it. We can't do it.

00:12:20

Two of the 12 say, "Yeah, we can."

00:12:22

They say, "Yeah, we can."

00:12:24

And God is actually hurt. He's offended.

00:12:26

He said, "Now, I parted the Red Sea.

00:12:27

I rescued you out of slavery.

00:12:29

I brought you to a new place."

00:12:31

By the way, Moses is a type or a pre figure of Jesus.

00:12:36

When we look at these sacrifices that are going to be

00:12:40

forecasting forward how Jesus is going to be a sacrifice.

00:12:43

Also, Moses, as he brings people out of slavery.

00:12:46

So Jesus brings us out of slavery.

00:12:50

In fact, if you don't realize you've never been in slavery,

00:12:52

then you don't know God right now.

00:12:55

What do you mean in slavery?

00:12:57

Maybe we haven't been in physical slavery,

00:12:58

but you ever had memories you can't get over?

00:13:03

You ever have feelings that your dad told you

00:13:06

that you'll never measure up to anything?

00:13:09

Do you have sexual encounters

00:13:11

that haunt you still to this day?

00:13:13

Do you feel like you still can't make ends meet

00:13:16

and you just can't get over that credit card debt

00:13:18

no matter what you do, you just can't get there?

00:13:20

Do you feel like you just don't measure up and you --

00:13:24

Is there a mental illness you just can't get over?

00:13:26

Is there is there something in your past

00:13:28

that you did that you just -- you just have to be

00:13:33

a good person to earn your way out of it?

00:13:35

These are all different forms of slavery.

00:13:37

Some of them we brought on ourselves.

00:13:38

Some of them are just the human condition.

00:13:41

And God tells ancient Israel,

00:13:43

"I brought you out of slavery."

00:13:45

Just like when you come to know God,

00:13:46

Jesus begins the process

00:13:48

of bringing you out of your slavery.

00:13:51

And when God brought them out of slavery, He said,

00:13:54

"I told you I was going to give you a new land,

00:13:56

a Promised Land, we're going to work for this.

00:13:58

And now, right away, you disagree, you have no faith?'

00:14:01

He said, "I don't know what I'm going to do to these people.

00:14:03

I've got to discipline you."

00:14:05

And He says, "All you people who don't believe,

00:14:07

you ten spies and all of your families,

00:14:09

all of you don't go in this Promised Land.

00:14:12

In fact, the whole nation of Israel is going to

00:14:14

wander around in the desert until all of you die,

00:14:17

except for Joshua and Caleb and their families."

00:14:20

So, that's what the wandering in the desert is,

00:14:22

wandering around until all the unfaithful masses died,

00:14:27

so that the faithful few would be able to go in.

00:14:31

Wow. Wow.

00:14:34

Now, the first five books of the Bible

00:14:37

are what's known as the Torah.

00:14:38

Torah in Hebrew means instruction, laws.

00:14:42

So while the nation of Israel

00:14:44

is wandering around in the wilderness,

00:14:47

God is giving them instructions, He's giving them laws.

00:14:52

He's helping them cultivate a culture

00:14:54

that will work long term and helping them

00:14:56

actually to to understand Him.

00:14:59

To know God, and to understand the book of Leviticus,

00:15:02

you've got to understand a couple of things

00:15:04

about God that are still true today.

00:15:05

Number one is this: God is systemic.

00:15:08

He's systemic. He's working a system.

00:15:13

To take a look at any individual Bible verse,

00:15:17

any individual Bible chapter, any individual Bible book

00:15:20

is good and healthy and is true and all that stuff.

00:15:23

But it's always incomplete because God is working

00:15:27

from the beginning of the Scriptures till now,

00:15:29

He's working a system.

00:15:31

He has a game plan in mind.

00:15:34

He's trying to parent His children, which is you and me.

00:15:39

He's trying to develop into us Christ-like character

00:15:42

that we wouldn't have had any other way.

00:15:44

Let's take a look at Leviticus 1:3:

00:16:07

God is systemic.

00:16:11

This word here "burnt" a burnt offering

00:16:14

is the word "Olah," Olah in the Hebrew,

00:16:17

which means whole, whole, entire, entirely.

00:16:21

That's also where they get the word Holocaust.

00:16:24

Hitler tried to wholly and entirely

00:16:27

burn out from the planet the Jewish people.

00:16:31

That word Holocaust, Olah is where we get this,

00:16:34

that there was people that would bring their goats,

00:16:38

their lamb, their pigeon, whatever it was,

00:16:41

and they would put it on the altar.

00:16:43

And it had to be one without blemish.

00:16:45

It wasn't the one that was going to die any day

00:16:47

or the ugly one, it had to be the best one.

00:16:49

That's why Jesus, by the way, is known as the Lamb of God,

00:16:53

the human being without any blemish.

00:16:56

The one human being who's never been enslaved to anything.

00:16:59

He is -- the system,

00:17:00

the system that God was starting to work out was,

00:17:02

"Hey, I'm going to start them off here on --

00:17:04

start them on on understanding lambs

00:17:06

and I'm going to work on this process.

00:17:08

And then eventually there's going to be

00:17:10

an ultimate lamb who's going to be sacrificed,

00:17:12

and we won't need all this physical stuff anymore.

00:17:14

But this is an important stuff in the process for us

00:17:18

because it was part of the system.

00:17:20

And my actual,

00:17:21

I went back and dusted off my seminary textbooks.

00:17:25

And this is the way my textbook put it, said this:

00:17:49

We don't like to think of the fact that

00:17:50

we have sin in our life, that we rebel,

00:17:54

that we're about ourselves and not about God,

00:17:56

that we have hard hearts that are about our ways

00:17:58

and we do what we want, not what God wants.

00:18:00

We don't like to think about these things.

00:18:02

We just prefer to think that

00:18:04

I'm just an understandably flawed person

00:18:06

who needs some good, helpful spiritual principles.

00:18:09

No, we are broken.

00:18:11

We are broken beyond repair without God.

00:18:14

We are sinful. We are separated from God.

00:18:17

That's the reason why we don't understand God

00:18:19

why we feel separated,

00:18:20

because we are separate from Him.

00:18:21

Because void of there being a sacrifice,

00:18:24

something to atone for our sin, for our slavery,

00:18:28

we don't come close to Him.

00:18:31

We can't get there.

00:18:32

And this is what would happen.

00:18:33

They would bring --

00:18:34

all these folks would bring their thing

00:18:36

and they would put their hands on this thing

00:18:39

that was dying and they would recognize themselves.

00:18:43

"I should be the one who's dying.

00:18:45

I actually deserve death."

00:18:47

That's why that verse says.

00:18:48

You put their hands on it.

00:18:49

And then the priest would kill it.

00:18:51

And as the life would drain away from this animal,

00:18:53

you would recognize, "Man, the life

00:18:55

needs to drain away from me, or at least it should.

00:18:58

That would actually be justice."

00:19:00

God is systemic. He's working a system.

00:19:03

And He is intense. He's intense.

00:19:09

We don't like to think of God as intense.

00:19:11

We want to think of God as He's my copilot.

00:19:13

He's my homeboy. He's a big guy in the sky.

00:19:18

He's, you know, He may be all those things.

00:19:21

And he's intense. Very, very intense.

00:19:25

Leviticus will not allow us to see God as any other way

00:19:30

without first seeing that He is intense.

00:19:33

He is vast. He is strong.

00:19:35

He is powerful. He is intense.

00:19:37

Verse 5 to 6:

00:19:54

God is intense.

00:19:55

I have these creative things that come through me

00:19:57

every once in a while and I just say,

00:19:59

"Oh, man, this will be a great idea."

00:20:00

So we had this creative meeting getting ready

00:20:02

for this series, and I had this thought come.

00:20:04

I said, "Oh, I got it, I got it.

00:20:05

How can we help people understand

00:20:07

the sacrificial system?

00:20:08

Here's what we do.

00:20:09

What if we go out and we buy a bunch of field mice

00:20:13

and we give everybody a field mouse

00:20:17

on their way into church

00:20:18

and then everybody kills the field mouse

00:20:22

representing I should die and not the field mouse."

00:20:25

Then was like, "Oh, no, no."

00:20:26

Oh, come on, I actually spent about like 5 seconds

00:20:29

trying to talk people into it.

00:20:30

Fortunately, they killed the idea.

00:20:31

They killed the idea. Not a good idea.

00:20:33

I was thinking through, like,

00:20:35

give everyone a hammer and stuff.

00:20:36

How would we do this whole thing?

00:20:39

I thought it really wasn't that big of a deal

00:20:41

because do you know many field mice

00:20:42

you and I participate in the killing of

00:20:44

because of all the products we wear.

00:20:47

Ooh, getting too close. Ooh.

00:20:50

No, seriously, I haven't seen statistics for it.

00:20:52

All of us are responsible for the killing of a lot,

00:20:54

a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of field mice

00:20:56

that have our shampoo on them and eat the food,

00:20:58

all that stuff. Right?

00:21:00

We don't like to think about that.

00:21:02

Don't like to think about that. Whoa, whoa.

00:21:04

And this is part of Leviticus, we're like,

00:21:06

"Oh ho ho, sacrifice the animals.

00:21:08

Don't wanna think about that. Whoa, whoa. Whoa."

00:21:14

We don't want to think about

00:21:16

that god could be genuinely angry with me.

00:21:19

Genuinely angry.

00:21:21

Too intense for me. Too intense for me.

00:21:23

No, no, no, just want to hold hands with God

00:21:25

and blow bubbles and stroke unicorns.

00:21:28

That's all I want to do with God.

00:21:33

If you want God, you've got to have His intensity.

00:21:37

It's part of who He is.

00:21:39

It's part of what we get.

00:21:40

And this was intense.

00:21:41

I'm bringing the best animal

00:21:43

and it's dying right before my eyes

00:21:45

and I'm recognizing that I should die as well.

00:21:53

See, there's so many things

00:21:54

in our modern cultural context we don't get.

00:21:56

One of the things that's really good about America,

00:21:58

I think, we're getting better and better understanding

00:22:01

that we can't look down on other cultures.

00:22:04

That I shouldn't assume that just my culture,

00:22:06

even it's a subculture inside of America,

00:22:08

I shouldn't assume that my culture is just the right way.

00:22:11

We all feel that way, whatever our culture is,

00:22:13

but at least we know like,

00:22:14

"Okay, I shouldn't look down on other cultures.

00:22:16

That's their culture."

00:22:18

And yet all of us collectively as modern Americans,

00:22:20

we actually do look down

00:22:22

on all previous older cultures than ours.

00:22:25

Like, "Oh, the barbarism and the Bible Oh, all the --

00:22:29

all the blood and sacrifice. Aha."

00:22:31

Can we get out of our spiritual high horse

00:22:35

that always exalts our culture

00:22:37

and just for a minute

00:22:38

consider that all ancient cultures were this way?

00:22:41

And can we just for a minute extend them some grace

00:22:44

and not look down them

00:22:45

just because they were different than us?

00:22:47

And might we also even be able to say

00:22:48

maybe they had some things in our culture

00:22:50

that we could learn from?

00:22:53

I happen to think that if you're a meat eater,

00:22:56

if you eat meat,

00:22:57

you should have killed something at some point.

00:23:00

Because if you haven't, you don't understand

00:23:02

the sacrifice that went in to give you protein.

00:23:05

I think it's great if you're a vegetarian and you,

00:23:08

and because you don't want animals to be killed.

00:23:10

I think that's very, very consistent.

00:23:12

And I think it's very, very inconsistent to eat meat

00:23:15

and think it's gross that someone should lose its life.

00:23:18

Then don't eat meat, or actually try it sometime.

00:23:22

See, we live in this completely separated world

00:23:25

where we want to believe things, but not do things.

00:23:29

I want to believe that I can have,

00:23:30

but I don't want to actually do it.

00:23:33

And we come to the Old Testament,

00:23:35

God would have none of it.

00:23:37

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:23:38

You're going to get engaged with God what God says.

00:23:41

No, you're going to get it.

00:23:42

You're going to make amends

00:23:44

and you're going to get engaged with all the stuff.

00:23:46

Bring the thing in, mke a sacrifice.

00:23:48

Put your hands on it, and you're going to sense it.

00:23:51

It's going to be intense.

00:23:54

Who was it, Marx that called --

00:23:57

Marx that called religion the opiate of the masses?

00:24:03

I heard Tim Keller, pastor, say,

00:24:06

"Christianity is the smelling salts of the masses."

00:24:10

Leviticus is like smelling salts, like, Ooh, ooh.

00:24:13

It's intense. Ooh, tough. Ooh, intense.

00:24:17

Can't quite handle it.

00:24:20

See you don't know me from sitting one day with me,

00:24:25

one week with me.

00:24:26

You don't know me for spending one year with me.

00:24:28

I don't know you fully either.

00:24:32

When it comes to parenting,

00:24:34

there's different systemic intense phases we go through

00:24:38

as parents with our kids.

00:24:40

Our kids need that.

00:24:42

All of us, if we ever had kids,

00:24:43

or if you are a kid right now, you would love to have

00:24:45

a great peer to peer friendship with your parents.

00:24:48

That's one of things that great parents want, eventually.

00:24:51

The problem is there has to be a system that you go through.

00:24:54

And this system, I believe, is also shown in the Bible.

00:24:58

The first era that you go through as a parent

00:25:00

is you nurse your kid.

00:25:02

This is where God is nursing all of us

00:25:04

as seen in Genesis.

00:25:06

He forms men and women.

00:25:07

He's the first person to give actual clothing to Adam.

00:25:10

He's taking care of them.

00:25:11

Just just giving, right? You're just serving.

00:25:14

That's what you do when you have a little infant.

00:25:16

You're just a nurse, you're just serving.

00:25:17

You get nothing back in return.

00:25:19

You're not giving them instructions.

00:25:20

It's just helping them, helping them out.

00:25:22

And then the next phase is you go in the phase

00:25:25

which is an authority phase,

00:25:26

which is where you recognize --

00:25:28

you want your kid to recognize that you are the authority,

00:25:31

that you are the king and you are queen.

00:25:33

And I know, I know I'm in the minority right now.

00:25:36

I know I'm in the minority.

00:25:38

And I know this sounds really, really awkward

00:25:40

to so, so many of us, but it shouldn't be.

00:25:43

God is a Father and He is a King. He is a Queen.

00:25:48

And if you don't see Him as a King,

00:25:51

then you're never going to fully see Him,

00:25:53

because that's who He is.

00:25:55

And your kids, though you never want them to be,

00:25:58

like, your underlings forever,

00:25:59

if you want them to be your friends,

00:26:01

there's a very key formation process they have to earn,

00:26:04

they have to have respect for you.

00:26:06

They have to see that you're capable.

00:26:08

And sometimes they have to do it just because you said so.

00:26:14

I love my kids.

00:26:15

We have a friendship, which those four phases,

00:26:17

by the way, are: Nurse, King, Coach, Friend.

00:26:22

There's four distinct phrases.

00:26:24

And friend, often times I see people

00:26:26

trying to be friends with their 12 year old,

00:26:27

with their 7 year old or 8 year olds.

00:26:29

It doesn't work that way.

00:26:30

If you're a friend with a kid too soon,

00:26:32

you will not be a friend with him or her

00:26:34

when she's in her 20s or 30s

00:26:35

because there's just no depth there.

00:26:37

They won't respect you.

00:26:39

That's what I found.

00:26:41

It's crazy that my kids actually like me.

00:26:44

I'm actually friends with my kids. It's wonderful.

00:26:46

In fact, too much of friends.

00:26:47

Last week all my -- they're all married now

00:26:49

and have their own homes and stuff.

00:26:51

They're in their twenties and they, like,

00:26:53

they were over my house three nights for dinner

00:26:56

in the last seven days.

00:26:58

That's too much. It's too much.

00:27:01

That's too much. That's too much food.

00:27:03

That's too much me doing dishes.

00:27:04

That's too much. It's too much.

00:27:06

But they actually want to be around Lib and I, they do.

00:27:10

And my son, when he and I do motorcycle trips together

00:27:13

and he was in college and even today,

00:27:16

his friends are still, like,

00:27:17

"I can't believe how much you spend time with your dad,

00:27:20

that you actually like him."

00:27:21

It's because we're friends.

00:27:24

And the crazy thing is, if you took a look at

00:27:26

the snip of the life where I was their king,

00:27:28

you would have thought I was the worst dad.

00:27:30

Because I did this thing called spanking.

00:27:33

See, I can tell you now.

00:27:35

I can tell you now because you can't cancel me now

00:27:37

or call Children's Services on me now because they're in 20s.

00:27:41

I spanked them. Not a lot.

00:27:44

I think my son I spanked the most

00:27:46

and it was five times, I believe, five times.

00:27:48

And spanking can be, remember,

00:27:51

can be with the right parent and the right child,

00:27:55

done the right way and the right time, it can be good.

00:28:00

If, there's a bunch of ifs there.

00:28:02

But that foundation of, "Hey, what Dad says goes.

00:28:07

What mom says goes,"

00:28:08

is critical to forming the future of the friend.

00:28:11

Jesus says in John 15:15, Jesus says,

00:28:14

"I no longer call you servants,

00:28:16

because a servant doesn't know his master business;

00:28:18

but I call you friend."

00:28:20

So God's getting us to friend.

00:28:22

This is Jesus language.

00:28:23

He's getting us to friend. He wants us to be friend.

00:28:26

But we have to go through the system.

00:28:29

We have to go back and understand He also is King

00:28:32

and He is Kinging His people during this wilderness time

00:28:37

in a way that will help them as they get coached.

00:28:39

That's what the prophets are doing.

00:28:40

Prophets are coaching them, giving them some freedom,

00:28:42

calling them back.

00:28:44

And then finally the goal to get to a friend.

00:28:45

But it is intense and you can't fully understand God

00:28:50

and come this intimate, beautiful friendship

00:28:52

relationship unless you also recognize He's not you and I.

00:28:56

He's different. He's distinct.

00:28:58

He's beyond. He is holy.

00:29:02

That's the other thing we see about God

00:29:04

in the Book of Leviticus: Holy.

00:29:07

Being Holy means that He is distinct,

00:29:10

He's other than, He's in his own category,

00:29:14

He's beyond us.

00:29:16

And all of us in our current modern culture,

00:29:18

we want to be spiritual.

00:29:19

And what spiritual means for many of us

00:29:21

is I'm spiritual, so there's me

00:29:23

and there's the spiritual realm and there's God.

00:29:25

We're kind of -- we're kind of all in the same thing,

00:29:27

the understanding stuff.

00:29:29

And that's fine to be to be spiritual,

00:29:32

but that's not the same as God being holy.

00:29:35

Because that means He's not you and He's not me

00:29:39

and He's above us and is beyond us, He's different.

00:29:43

And in Leviticus, He's doing this.

00:29:45

He's spelling this out for his people.

00:29:53

When we get to heaven, if you get to heaven,

00:29:56

it's going to be amazing.

00:29:58

And one of the things you'll do in heaven

00:30:00

is you'll learn about God for the rest of eternity.

00:30:03

Do you think that you could get to heaven

00:30:05

and automatically understand the depths of God? No.

00:30:07

Do you think you understand God? No.

00:30:10

God is so distinct, so other than, so deep,

00:30:14

so transcendent that this book is doing its best

00:30:17

to help us understand. Come on.

00:30:19

Do you think you could actually memorize

00:30:21

this whole book and know God? No.

00:30:24

No, because He's holy. He's different.

00:30:25

He can't be described only and purely in sheets of paper.

00:30:30

And if it was, how many books would that be?

00:30:33

Shoot, you'd have a biography of somebody

00:30:35

that takes this many pages.

00:30:36

You think you know God in this many pages?

00:30:38

If you know it,

00:30:39

you think we'll actually know it in heaven?

00:30:43

No, because He's beyond,

00:30:44

because angels actually flutter around Him in heaven.

00:30:46

The only purpose is just to affirm Him and say,

00:30:48

"You're holy, You're holy, You'reholy,

00:30:50

You'redistinct, You'redistinct, You'redistinct.

00:30:52

You're beyond, You're beyond, You'rebeyond.

00:30:54

You're above, above, above. Pure, pure, pure.

00:30:56

Your own category, your own category, Your own category."

00:30:58

That's all what the word holy means.

00:31:02

And the Book of Leviticus roots us in it.

00:31:05

That's not like me just actualizing myself

00:31:09

and having a spirituality

00:31:10

where I feel one with something else.

00:31:14

It's there is something, someone beyond me,

00:31:18

above me, maybe even in me

00:31:23

that I need to bend to and to allow to King me.

00:31:28

Because I am under Him and I choose to be under Him

00:31:33

because I too want to be holy.

00:31:36

I too want to be loved and I want to love

00:31:40

and I want to feel His presence.

00:31:43

And Leviticus gives us this, verse seven:

00:31:51

This is pretty interesting, the priests.

00:31:54

So there again, God is systemic.

00:31:57

Am I giving you too much today? Are we okay?

00:31:59

I can't tell if you're -- I can't tell if you're bored

00:32:01

or you have your thinking cap on.

00:32:03

Everyone's looking at me like this.

00:32:06

You're bored, or you're thinking,

00:32:07

I'm not sure which it is.

00:32:08

I'm having fun, so I'm going to keep going anyway.

00:32:11

God, again, God is systemic.

00:32:13

He's giving us a system.

00:32:15

In Exodus -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus --

00:32:17

Exodus, the book before Leviticus,

00:32:19

God gave a vision to the nation of Israel, all of them.

00:32:21

This is before all the sacrifices come out,

00:32:24

God tells them you will be a nation of priests.

00:32:27

All of us will be a nation of priests.

00:32:31

But then in Leviticus,

00:32:32

they actually establish these priests.

00:32:34

These priests are there to remind us that

00:32:36

God is here, God is holy, and I am here.

00:32:39

And the priests were the intermediaries,

00:32:41

the priests are the ones in between

00:32:43

that would bring up the prayers, bring up the offerings.

00:32:46

Because God is so intense and we're not.

00:32:49

So we instituted the priest just to help us

00:32:52

understand and learn that He's Holy and we're not.

00:32:54

But, but in Exodus 19, He says very clearly,

00:32:57

"You're a kingdom of priests."

00:32:59

So He has a long term vision

00:33:01

of everybody interceding with God.

00:33:04

That was His long term vision.

00:33:06

And this is where we are today.

00:33:07

We have no priests today.

00:33:08

There's people who are pastors

00:33:10

and they go by the priest title for one reason or another.

00:33:12

I don't -- I don't want to get into all that right now,

00:33:14

but I would just say this.

00:33:16

Just say this, I'm not your priest.

00:33:18

In fact, you don't need me to go before God for you.

00:33:21

Now I will.

00:33:22

If you come to me and say, "Hey, Brian,

00:33:24

could you really pray about it?"

00:33:25

Yes. I promise you I'll pray about it.

00:33:27

I'll probably do it right there so I don't forget about it.

00:33:29

Yes, it would be an honored to prayer for you.

00:33:31

I'll pray for anybody.

00:33:32

It'll be an honor for me to intercede.

00:33:33

But understand that there's nothing special about me

00:33:36

that you don't have.

00:33:38

God doesn't look at me and go, "Oh, yeah,

00:33:40

the guy's up on stage. Okay, good.

00:33:41

Well, I'll listen there.

00:33:42

But the other people who, you know, work wherever."

00:33:45

No, no, no, no, no.

00:33:47

That all gets washed and eliminated.

00:33:50

We all get to be priests.

00:33:52

We all get to go directly to God.

00:33:55

Isn't that good?

00:33:56

That's wonderful. It's awesome.

00:33:58

You can go directly to God.

00:34:01

The Holiness is very, very true, very, very true,

00:34:06

but we still go directly to God.

00:34:08

That's what Jesus has allowed and enabled us to do.

00:34:12

But in Leviticus, gosh, they had to really have

00:34:14

nailed down what it meant to be

00:34:19

into the kingship phase of God,

00:34:21

and to see Him as holy

00:34:23

and to see Him as a fire that was raging.

00:34:31

Hebrews 10:19 says this:

00:34:40

We have confidence, this is to everybody,

00:34:42

brothers, sisters, we have confidence

00:34:44

so all of us can go directly to God

00:34:47

without somebody else going to God for us.

00:34:50

That is amazing that God wants to dine with you.

00:34:53

He wants to talk with you. He wants to hear from you.

00:34:57

It doesn't matter what you did yesterday.

00:34:59

He wants to hear from you. You're not disqualified.

00:35:02

He wants to hear a sorry.

00:35:05

He wants to hear I'll do a better -- do better next time.

00:35:09

But He's not waiting for you to clean yourself up

00:35:12

until he loves you.

00:35:13

He loves you right now,

00:35:15

and you can be with Him right now.

00:35:16

In Leviticus, in that process was the system.

00:35:20

Do you think the priests were sinless back then?

00:35:23

Do you think the priests didn't have problems?

00:35:25

Of course they had problems.

00:35:26

Of course, they were human.

00:35:28

And yet they were interceding and raising it up to God,

00:35:34

the one who is worthy.

00:35:35

The last thing about God, I'll just mention that God is worthy.

00:35:39

Leviticus 1:9, it says this:

00:35:52

A pleasing aroma.

00:35:54

So all of this sacrifice and this blood is going up,

00:35:58

a pleasing aroma.

00:35:59

People, I remember hearing people say,

00:36:01

"Oh, disgusting. All the blood everywhere.

00:36:05

Oh, the smell of burning flesh."

00:36:10

You ever been around a barbecue?

00:36:13

I mean, I'm not saying they have Montgomery Inn ribs,

00:36:16

rib sauce, I don't know what the sauce was,

00:36:18

but no, this was an amazing smell.

00:36:21

It smelled amazing.

00:36:23

I mean, even vegetarians have to admit

00:36:25

it smells good, right?

00:36:26

You may not like it,

00:36:28

may not want to participate in the killing of it,

00:36:29

but you got to say it's a nice smell.

00:36:31

Come on, admit it. It's church. Be honest. Come on.

00:36:37

A pleasing aroma.

00:36:38

So when I live my life in a way

00:36:41

that I live in a sacrificial way,

00:36:42

I give my life to Christ.

00:36:44

If I give my life to God, I'm a pleasing --

00:36:47

I'm a pleasing aroma.

00:36:49

That's what this was supposed to signify.

00:36:51

A pleasing aroma is going up the Lord

00:36:55

whenever there is somebody who lays down their life.

00:36:58

It is a pleasing aroma whenever there's somebody

00:37:01

who sacrifices for the will of God,

00:37:03

it's a pleasing aroma.

00:37:06

I had so much fun last week in the Super Bowl.

00:37:08

And the Super Bowl, I'll just be the first to admit it.

00:37:10

I mean, it's stupid, right?

00:37:11

It's just -- it's just, in a good way.

00:37:14

It's a stupid, right? But it's wonderful.

00:37:16

And then there's Leviticus.

00:37:17

We intentionally plan Leviticus after Super Bowl,

00:37:21

we intensely wanted the whiplash

00:37:24

because there is a whiplash in the Bible.

00:37:26

Jesus came full of grace and truth.

00:37:28

There's a whiplash between grace and truth,

00:37:29

how they fit together. Whap, whap.

00:37:32

Super Bowl, Leviticus, whap, whap.

00:37:33

You know, it's a --because it's in the extremes

00:37:37

that we understand the character.

00:37:39

It's the extremes of this book

00:37:41

to understand the character of God.

00:37:43

I got some emails people asked, like,

00:37:44

Evan McPherson, Money Mac, Shooter McPherson,

00:37:47

and all the Super Bowl services?

00:37:49

That's a lot of time. How much did we pay him?

00:37:51

How much did we pay him?"

00:37:52

It's a fair question.

00:37:56

We probably would have paid him.

00:37:57

We paid him nothing. Nothing.

00:37:59

Why is that?

00:38:00

Because Crossroads is his church home

00:38:02

and because he wanted to volunteer,

00:38:05

just like people in the parking lot volunteer,

00:38:07

just like people in Kids' Club volunteer,

00:38:09

just like people who are licking and sticking enevlopes,

00:38:11

just like people who are volunteering

00:38:13

in your neighborhood, loving your neighbor as yourself.

00:38:15

In fact, loving your annoying neighbor as yourself.

00:38:19

He was bringing himself as a pleasing aroma.

00:38:23

And every time you honor God, every time you serve,

00:38:26

every time you sacrifice, honoring God in the process,

00:38:30

it's a pleasing aroma, and His nostrils are, like, (sniffs)

00:38:32

"Mmm, that smells good. Mmm."

00:38:35

Every time you tithe, (sniffs),

00:38:37

every time you love, (sniffs),

00:38:38

every time you serve, (sniffs),

00:38:40

every time you encourage, (sniffs),

00:38:42

every time you look out after the least of these, (sniffs),

00:38:46

it's a pleasing aroma

00:38:48

in the nostrils of the One who loves you.

00:38:51

We're going to help you and I give Him

00:38:54

some great smells over the next four weeks.

00:38:57

Lord, You're good to be patient with sinful people like me.

00:39:03

And You're good to be intense.

00:39:05

We are sorry for just putting You in a box,

00:39:08

putting You in a corner with only attributes

00:39:10

that we like or can fully understand.

00:39:12

We want to know You more,

00:39:13

and I think we do know You more today.

00:39:15

You're good.

00:39:16

And I pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Recent Series