When the Lord says go here or don't go there, they're all touched by the blood of Christ. The hearing, the working, the walking sums up. the servant's life Life of the Christian. What we know, what we do, and where we stand, all of that. can be attached very easily to what is going on in this paragraph.
even for the non-priest. Life is ministry. And we being a royal priesthood just wraps that right up. Hmm. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston.
Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Leviticus. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick in the book of Leviticus chapter 14 with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. He entered humanity.
He took on humanity. It's to symbolize the two birds. One slain, the other? set free, but not without being touched by the blood. In the context of religious ritual, blood made whatever it touched Ritually pure.
was compliant. to God's instructions. to tell sinners don't lose sight of what happened in Eden. Don't forget that innocent animals died to cover the nudity which is evidence of the consciousness of sin. And we'll get to some of that.
fall out of sin we get to the next chapter in chapter fifteen we talk about Unlawful intimate relationships And then we get tea. Atonement chapter John the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 10, 16, the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of Christ? I see in this sixth verse Evidences of the communion. with Christ because of his sacrifice.
John was careful to note That when Christ died The soldiers pierced his side. To confirm that he was dead and blood and water came forth, John chapter 19. Then, when he gets to write his first letter, 1 John, in the fifth chapter, he repeats the fact that Jesus Christ came by water and blood. which ties in again to this chapter, which points Jesus or rather points Leviticus 14, 6 to Jesus, John wrote This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not only by water, but by water and blood. Verse 6 is the communion of the blood.
And the Jews didn't see all this. We get to see all of this. The Jews didn't get to reach the world. We do the church. Christ the Christians, Christianity.
Verse 7. And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy, and pronounce him clean. and shall let the living bird loose in an open field. symbolically carrying away the impurity of judgment. The blood was on that bird, and he is set free.
Christ died for sinners. It rose again. This Freed Byrd and First Corinthians chapter fifteen, I think, go together. For even as Christ did not please himself, First Corinthians fifteen, verse three But as it is written, The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, And we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope.
And this verse here, again, speaks to us. Corinthians, not for you, just for my own self. Leviticus four verse seven. Christ died for the sinners, and He rose again. And that 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians gets deep into The Resurrection Story I mentioned that the bird set free was not domesticated because he might have come back and symbolically brought the impurity back.
This is similar to the scapegoat that we'll get. On the Day of Atonement in chapter 16.
Now, again, they did not have the cross of Christ or the life of Christ. Or much of the prophecies. Isaiah's not. In existence. None of the writing prophets have shown up yet.
Joshua, from Joshua forward, is not in existence. A couple of Psalms, not many.
So they did not have the cross of Christ to complete the meanings of these things, but they had enough to make some of the connections of Scarlet with the blood. The animals are sacrificed. They had enough of that. The scarlet thread was lost, the clay pot was lost, the two birds were lost. one to death and the other to flight.
A lot of loss concerned. With Restoration In verse 8, and he.
Now, we're going to, of course, we get deeper into this 14th chapter, we'll bypass a lot of the verses. Because Comment that they are as they are, but these earlier ones, I think there's a lot here. Verse 8. He who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, shave off his hair, And wash himself in water that he may be clean. After that, he shall come into the camp.
and shall stay outside his tent seven days, but on the seventh day he shall shave all the hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows. and his hair shall be shaved off. he shall wash his clothes, and wash his body in water, And he shall be clean. On the eighth day he shall take two male lambs without blemish, one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish. three tenths of an ephoth of fine flour, mixed with oil as a grain offering And One pint almost, or log of oil.
Then the priest Who is to be made clean? and those things before Yahweh at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Did you get that, Moses? Write it down. I don't want you to forget any of it.
This is the faultless presentation of the one that's now. Cleansed.
Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. Remember that when you're down. And you feel God is just not blessing you, He's withholding blessings. Why is it this way? Why is that?
Remember that He's going to present you. to a better life. With exceeding joy. He's gonna be ecstatic. He shall see the travail of his soul, Isaiah wrote concerning the sacrifice of Christ.
and be satisfied. He will see all that went into it, and say that is just what I was aiming for. You and I in heaven with him. Verse fourteen And the priest shall take one male lamb, and operate a trespass offering. and a log of oil.
There's a wave. And wave them as a wave offering before the Lord.
So he's getting back now. He's coming back. He's just just normalcy returning to his life. He's at the temple again. He's making offerings to the Lord just like he was doing before he was Pronounced unclean.
First their team. Then he shall kill the lamb in the place where he kills the sin offering and the burnt offering in a holy place. He's still got to deal with his sins and the offerings. This is public restoration. Nothing about the leprosy.
Nothing about his restoration. was trivial. The eyebrows grow back slowly, Word on the street is, three or four months it could take. For your eyebrows to grow back. That means the leper that was cleansed, his face would testify.
To the glory of God. But just looking at 'em. for three months. You're down at the marketplace he said What d'ye do, get too close to the camp fire? You wouldn't have to say you'd know.
This is a leper that's been cleansed. This is a witness. If you just shaved your eyebrows off to say, no, I just want to draw attention so I can share the gospel. You'll draw attention, but they won't want to hear the gospel from you. And it's the eighth day.
The day of new beginnings If any man is in Christ, He's a new creation. Old things pass away. All things become new. You can't make this stuff up. When the New Testament writers were writing these scriptures, they weren't thinking of Leviticus.
Fourteen. They were focussed on what was happening in the New Testament.
Now, of course, I can't swear that under oath. But It's not likely. Scripture doesn't tie in that way in many places. It just flows right in effortlessly. And that's where you get these verses.
Paul, when he says, any man in Christ, he's a new creation. If you said to him, Paul, are you talking about the leper from Leviticus fourteen? He would have said, you know, it applies to him. That's not what I had in mind, but thank you for telling me.
Well, that's my take on it. And you should have that take too, because it's mine. And that's what makes for a happy congregation. We all just hold hands and rock back and forth and sing agreement with the pastor. Anyway.
Yeah. Verses fourteen through twenty The leper's sacrificial offering. We'll take some of it. It mirrors the consecration of the priest, and you'll see why that we had back in chapter 8. Verse 14: The priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering, and the priest shall put it on the tip of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed.
Notice it's still to be cleansed. He's got to go through all of these steps first. He's gonna be let back into the camp. But he can't go home. He says in verse 14, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot.
Ephesians chapter 2 Now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near By the blood of Christ, Paul's talking about the Gentiles coming into the church now. There's no more wall of separation between the Jew and the Gentiles. The blood of Christ has made a way for you to come in. We see it show up in Leviticus. and other places in the Old Testament.
Remember, they made the statement that the New Testament writers were just writing about what Jesus had done, and yet. The Holy Spirit has left it for us to connect it all together. He expounded to them all the things. in the Scriptures that pertain to himself. And that's what we're doing.
We're looking at the things in Scripture that really have to do with Christ. Verse 15: And the priest shall take some of the log of oil and pour it into the palm of his own left hand. Then the priest shall dip his right finger in the oil, that is in his left hand, and shall sprinkle some of the oil with his finger seven times before Yahweh. Blood and oil are given to us in this Section versus fourteen through sixteen similar to the consecration of the priest back in chapter eight. The hearing, the ear, the touching, the hand, the traveling, the foot.
they shall all be touched by blood. That's the Christian life, is it not? Whatever we hear, we filter through Christ. Whatever we touch, hopefully it's going to honor the Lord. That's our goal.
And when it's not happening that way, we're very conscious of it. Travelling, wherever we go, the goals and the stops of the Lord. When the Lord says go here or don't go there, they're all touched by the blood of Christ. The hearing, the working, the walking sums up. the servant's life, A Life of the Christian.
What we know, what we do, and where we stand, all of that. can be attached very easily to what is going on in this paragraph. even for the non priest. Life is ministry. And and we being a royal priesthood just wraps that right up.
for us very easily. Verse seventeen And the rest of the oil in his hand, the priest shall put some on the tip of The right ear of him who is to be cleansed? on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of the right foot, And On the b Blood of the trespass offering. Am I going to be impatient with this process? It's like, come on, I want to get home.
It's been months. Or am I just gonna be so happy? I'd be so happy.
So Inspired by the Lord. This would be better than any other ceremony you could think of. To be You know, sort of thrown to the trash heap and then brought out of it. Had to have made acquaintances and leaving them behind. Verse 18: The rest of the oil that is in the priest's hand, he shall put on the head of him.
who is to be cleansed.
so the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord. The head is the seat of our identity. It's where the brains are, the countenance, our face, our expressions. It's a big deal. And of course, this is the oil and the blood.
The Holy Spirit is the oil, of course. The blood is They go together. It's sort of like uh I thought of Pentecost you know, you wouldn't have a Pentecost. of the Holy Spirit Without the blood of Christ. without the resurrection of Christ.
First Corinthians eleven three But I want you to know The head of every man. And then it goes on to talk about other things, but it singles out the head. That's all. The head. is a big deal.
And you know if you hear a loud noise too close to you, you cover your head instinctively. Because that's a vital part of you. Verse 19. Then the priest shall offer the sin offering and make atonement for him who is to be cleansed from his Uncleanness. Afterward he shall kill the burnt offering.
This is the kind of stuff you tell unbeliever. I'm telling you, if you get a chance to witness and you don't know what to say, the Lord will stir things up. And for me he would often stir up what was preached on Sunday. and the priest shall offer the burnt offering, the grain offering, on the altar.
So the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be clean. But Christ is our offering and And the cross of Christ is our altar. Hebrews ten. ten By That Will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. Christ our offering.
Hebrews 13:10, We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. You can't go making sacrifices at the temple after the resurrection of Christ and then claim to be a Christian. That is forbidden in Scripture.
So to summarize, This Restoration these offerings for purification included three lambs. Two males, female. and a grain offering. Verse 10. In verse 14, the ritual In involving the sin offering.
applying the blood to the person to be cleansed. In verses twelve through eighteen, one male lamb was offered as a guilt offering. The female lamb was for the purification. The other male lamb was offered as a burnt offering, dedication to the Lord. That's what the burnt offering says.
Spoke of.
So the grain offering was then offered alongside the burnt offering. As in the earlier chapters, And that is an offering of gratitude.
So now we come to verses twenty one through thirty two, and these are alternate offerings for the poor.
So God said you can't afford the three lambs and you know all the other things.
Well, I have something for you, too.
So it starts in verse 21. But if he is poor, and cannot afford it. And then all the stuff that we have in between there is, again, straightforward enough. But we come down to verse thirty-one. such as he is able to afford.
And so the Lord says the Lord does know what you can afford. But he puts it in the scriptures for the priests and for the people. Let's make it relative. to what you can afford.
So nobody is left out. He can't say, I am cleansed and I can't make the offering. I'm still outside the camp. That's not true. This dramatic process that the person would go through.
On the eighth day, The person that was cleansed would go back into the camp. But had to stay Outside of their dwelling place And they just added to the drama of the whole experience, everybody would know what was going on in the neighborhood. People would talk. It would be big news. I would like to think, like when you give your life to Christ, word begins to travel around.
So and so is now a Christian.
So and so is now going to church. And it should be a big deal. And we should say, yeah, because Christ cleansed me. And you need cleansing too, and you'll make enemies with that, but you also may make converts. I don't remember commenting on it the way I wanted to.
But that happens from time to time. Anyway, we come down to verse thirty three. And now we're dealing with 33 through 57 contaminated dwellings. That alone had just the contaminated dwellings. Should Stir up thoughts of, you know what, your house can the place where you dwell.
Can Have these these Sinful conditions that have to be dealt with. And again, this is more area for preaching to The lost souls that the Lord dealt with, dwelling places that were contaminated, garments and fabrics and people. Verse 33. And Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, Verse 34, when you have come into the land of Canaan, which I will give you as a possession. an' I put a leprous plague in a house, in the land of your possession, Verse 35, and he who owns the house comes and tells the priests, saying, It seems to me that there is some plague in the house.
They lived in tents at the time they were given this law. and that was covered with the fabric and Chapter thirteen, the leather and the cloth materials, if they were contaminated. But once they enter the promised land, they're going to take over those dwelling places of the Canaanites that they cast out. And some of those houses may be contaminated. Or coming back to this, where it says, I put a lepros plague in a house in the land of your possession.
The reason why the Jews said that God did what he permitted Are such verses as that? God didn't necessarily desire something to happen, but He let it happen. And in some places the thinking is well. That's God doing it. And you should line up.
And I'll give you an example. 1 Corinthians 10. King Saul and his sons were killed on Mount Gilboa in battle against the Philistines. as was prophesied, King Saul Really Was the Antagonists of the story had brought the disaster about. And in the end at the end of 1 Chronicles chapter 10.
We have commentary. They were in war, they lost, King Saul was judged by God. And God makes sure that gets into his words. word, First Chronicles chapter ten Beginning in verse 13, so Saul died for his unfaithfulness. which he had committed against Yahweh, because he did not keep the word of Yahweh, and also because he consulted A medium for guidance.
In verse fourteen, But he did not inquire of Yahweh, therefore He killed him. and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse. What God permits? It is said that sometimes he's the one that did it. If you remember that and you get to some difficult verses, that knowledge can pay off.
You you answer questions. Without incriminating God, without trying to say, well, he's evil. But it will let us understand the sovereignty of God in situations that. we otherwise would not like to have seen associated with his name. Verse 43.
Now if a plague comes back and breaks out in the house, After he has taken away the stones after he has scraped the house And after it is plastered, verse 44, then the priest shall come and look, and indeed, if the plague has spread in the house. It is an active leprosy, zara at, or scourge, is probably would have been a better word. It is unclean. Verse forty five He shall break down the house, its stones, its timber, and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry them outside the city to an unclean place.
So that's quite dramatic. It's like, wasn't there a house there yesterday? mildew or mould or fungus, whatever it is, That is not going away. Tear down the house. That would interrupt the rhythm of life for those people.
if the condition persisted In other words, there was no solution. known to them and they had to get rid of that place. Verse 54 we come to, this is the law of any leprous sore. And scale. Which incidentally the Greek for Leprosy in our New Testament has to do with scaly skin.
and that's where we get our English word. for leprosy. But the Hansen's disease, you know, it used to be thought it was a sickness that rotted the flesh. They've since discovered that's not the case. Verse 55.
For the leprosy of a garment and a house There are some things out there that will rot the flesh. It's just not called. Let proceed. Verse 56: For a swelling, a scab, and a bright spot. Verse 57, to teach when it is unclean.
And when it is clean, this is the law of leprosy. The lepers had to cover their moustache they had to veil themselves. But that was more because they needed to let everybody know not to come near them.
So spiritual discernment That is the essential lesson of all of Leviticus. It's just that word leprosy sticks out for us. It's a word that you don't. Dismiss. You hear it and you pay attention to it.
The lesson of Leviticus. And for the one who would be holy in the New Testament is a lesson of discernment. An opportunity because the cleansed leper has an opportunity. to preach Yahweh.
Well, the cleansed sinner has an opportunity to preach Christ. And every Christian should want an opportunity to preach Christ and take that conversation to the Lord. Let's look at you. Thanks for tuning in to today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. Pastor Rick Gaston is currently going through the book of Leviticus.
We're glad you joined us. We trust that you're gaining some valuable insights into God's Word as we go through this Old Testament book. Cross-Reference Radio comes to you from Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Virginia. If you'd like to subscribe to our podcast, you can do so by going to your favorite app store and downloading from there. For any additional information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreference radio.com.
Make sure to come back again for the upcoming edition in the book of Leviticus, as Pastor Rick has much more to share. We thank you for being with us right here on Cross Reference Radio. Uh
