This Book: What Is Law? - Leviticus 2:1-10

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This Book: What is Law? Leviticus 2:1-10 

Leviticus is unique among the books of the Pentateuch. 

There's very little story, just a little bit of narrative. Most of it is how to live, how to behave, how to worship.  

How do we read this book?  

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The family of Israel had been, just months before, freed after centuries of slavery. 

They had travelled to Mount Sinai. In their world, mountains were sacred places, where people encountered the power beyond—where gods met humans.  

They stood together; before them was a mountain. Behind them, Egypt where they had carried a pyramid on their backs. A pyramid of power.  

At the top, the Egyptian gods. A pantheon dominated by a family of nine.  

Below them, human ancestors, now spirits, and with godlike abilities.  

Below them, the one and only king. The only human who could officially stand face to face with the gods.  

Below the king, the caste of priests, delegated with most of the common religious activity. 

Below the priests, the regular people. Citizens, families, business people, farmers.  

Below them, the slaves, carrying the weight of all the others. 

The family of Israel had just come out from under, were just starting to straighten out the kinks in their backs, just starting to stand tall and to find their own identity. And here they were at this mountain, about to encounter God.  

What did God do? He gave them law.  

In order to approach Leviticus in any kind of helpful way, we need to define some words: holiness, and sin.  

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When we talk about God's holiness, we talk about the nature of his purity, of his power, who he is. God is holy.  

Holiness is ‘the distinctive mark and signature of the divine, being set apart for likeness to, or for the use of, God.’ 

In Leviticus we see references to holy ground, holy assembly, holy house, holy sabbath, holy people, holy places, holy garments, holy crown, holy bread, holy meat, holy fruit, holy altar, holy sacrifices, holy oil, holy utensils, holy tables, holy furniture, holy texts. Fields are made holy. Oxen and the sheep are made holy. 

These are all times and things and people that are set apart for use in relationship with the one holy God.  

Tell the priests to treat with respect the holy offerings that the Israelites have made holy to me so that they do not profane my holy name. I am the Lord. Leviticus 22:1  

This God is not one of the little gods of Egypt. They were just bigger enough than humanity to be powerful, scary, and dangerous. They were fickle, untrustworthy, selfish. They kept themselves at a distance from all of humanity except the king. They didn't love humans; they tolerated us, and used us for their own purpose and pleasure. Their make-up changed with the political landscape, and with who was in power. 

At Sinai, the family of Israel met a God who loved them. Who was true, and unchanging. Who loved humanity for humanity's sake. Who was not just tolerating us, or using us, but inviting us to come close. And not just inviting, but coming to find us.  

This was not the gods of Egypt. And this holy God placed on his people one condition:  

You will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples of the earth. All the earth belongs to me. You will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation, if you will obey me and keep my covenant. Exodus 19:5-6 

God says, the world is yours if you accept the stamp of my holiness. If you carry my image of holiness in the world, just you wait and see what I have for you. 

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The second word we need to define is ‘sin.’ 

Sin is, at its core, behaviour and attitudes that undermine God's design for human flourishing (from Tim Keller). 

We flourish when we are in healthy relationships: with God, with other people, with our world, and with ourselves.  

How do we undermine that flourishing?  

A couple of words in the Hebrew text get translated into the English word ‘sin.’  

The first is chata: to forfeit, to miss the way. Like if you've got a rewards card in your wallet from a store, but it has an expiry date. If you don't use it, you have forfeited that value. 

God wants us to want justice, but we settle for revenge.  

God wants us to want love, but we settle for lust.  

God wants us to want forgiveness, but we settle for being ‘right.’ 

God wants us to want faithfulness, but we wander off.  

We just stop paying attention to what really matters. We sin by allowing ourselves to wander off, and to forfeit our connection with what God wants us to want.  

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The second Hebrew word that we translate ‘sin’ is avon. This sin is more intentional: when we twist, distort, corrupt something into something it is not.  

Twisting the truth just enough to serve ourselves, to save our pride, to stay out of trouble, to get what we want, to satisfy our appetites. Living as though the end justifies the means. Treating people like objects or scapegoats for profit or politics. Looking at other human beings in an unholy way. Seeing them as less than ourselves. 

The family of Israel had been sinned against by Egypt. Their human flourishing had been undermined by that system. God understood them well enough (their motivations, their secrets, and their traumas) to know that they had the same capacity to commit the same sins against other people. He knew the areas where they would become lazy and selfish. He knew that they would need reminding over and over and over again. Guardrails to keep them from missing the way, from forfeiting what he had for them. To keep them from twisting the truth, just a little bit, until it wasn't truth anymore. 

The holy God understood the tendency to sin in the human heart, so God gave the family of Israel law.  

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As they stood at Sinai, their backs to Egypt, their faces to an unknown future with a largely unknown God, he gave them law.  

For example: 

Anyone who injures another person must be dealt with according to the injury inflicted. A fracture for a fracture, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Leviticus 24:19-20 

To my modern ears, that sounds brutal. Like really, really rough justice. But God’s law serves to identify the offense, and to measure of the consequence. 

Deal with the guilty party—no one else. An eye for an eye—no more.  

God understands our human tendency to escalate, and to twist justice into revenge—anger into hatred. He makes it absolutely clear that in God's economy, there is no place for statements like “one of ours, all of yours.” That value arises from somewhere else entirely.  

He limits our reactions to actual justice.  

Another example: 

When you harvest the crops of your land, don't harvest the grain along the edges of your field. Don't pick up what the harvesters drop. Don’t strip every last bunch of grapes from the vines. Don’t pick up the grapes that fall to the ground. Leave them for the poor and the foreigners living among you. I am the Lord your God... Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 19:9ff, 19:34  

In our capitalist society, that doesn’t sound fair. They're my grapes. It's my field. They're my workers. It's my investment. It's my land. Why can't I have all of my grapes?  

God makes it clear that in his economy, wealth and power do not equal privilege. Wealth and power equal responsibility, accountability.  

If you have more than you need, God says, give it away. Don't keep it. Don't stockpile it. Don't say, ‘It's mine. I get to keep it.’ Because, God says it's not yours. It's his. 

As well, in God's economy, there is no room for prejudice against the foreigners and the poor among us. We don't just look after our own, and people like us. We look after everyone.  

In Leviticus, God lays out principles for a whole life: interpersonal relationships, illness and contamination, criminal justice, warfare, inheritance, raising children, birds' nests, vineyards, donkeys, clothing, adultery, slavery, prostitution, borrowing money, making vows, marriage, skin diseases, providing food to the hungry, widowhood, weights and measures, revenge, generosity, and worship. And more. 

He lays out principles for every single area of our lives. Not just how we dress when we come to church. Not just how much we put in the offering plate—everything.  

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Leviticus is part of the one and only holy God's invitation to sinful people to come close. 

This is a book we struggle to read, let alone understand, and I certainly don't enjoy it. Today, we’re not bound by its rules. I don't need to know how much frankincense to sprinkle on my flour before bringing it to the temple. I don't need to know what to do with the two goats. And, as your pastor, I absolve you of any responsibility to show me your mouldy clothing or your skin lesions. 

But as followers of Jesus, however difficult we find Leviticus, we should be captured by its vision for who we are, and by the two things God is saying to us.  

First: the holy and powerful and loving God has come to find us. Not just to find the family of Israel. To find all of his human creation, inviting us to become a holy people.  

Second: God cares about every area of our lives. Financial, sexual, relational, spiritual, egos, attitudes, politics. Humans will always keep doing things that, to us, seem like a good idea at the time but that make a tremendous mess. No matter how hard we try, we will keep sinning.  

God knows, as we should know by now, that it’s not humanly possible for us to live up to his holy standard. We can't live lives of godly holiness without failing and having to try again.  

So if God has called us to live a life of holiness, and he knows that we can't, it follows for me that there's more to the message. There’s more to the invitation than the family of Israel received at Sinai. There’s more to come beyond Leviticus. 

Once we understand who God is, once we understand who we are, we as believers in Christ may begin (with hindsight) to look at the rest of the text, and to understand that it is pointing us towards... more. 

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As part of the library of scripture, Leviticus is hard to read, but it helps us begin to get a handle on who we are, and on what will need to be done for us, allowing us to fully accept God’s invitation.