Saturday, November 15, 2014

Why Preach Leviticus?


  Similarly, if you only look at the highlights of the Pentateuch, you’ll preach the famous stories, but you’ll probably also miss what the Holy Spirit has to say through much of Leviticus. Chapter after chapter of regulations about sacrifices, offerings, washings, purifications, and the like does not seem at first to make for good, exciting sermons. Yet all that concern for purity in sacrifice is a crucial part of the Christian story. It was pointing to the ultimate sacrifice of the perfectly obedient One, who shed His blood so that we could be forgiven once for all. Jesus paid it all. His blood washes clean.
That is why the book of Leviticus is important, and why we need to preach it even if it’s not filled with dramatic stories. Do our people feel the burden and weight of sin that called for such detailed regulations and rituals? Do they feel the release and exaltation of not having to do these things every day, of not having to sit outside the tent, of not having to worry about being ritually unclean? By the power of the gospel, there is no one who needs to be unclean or unrighteous in God’s sight, for sinners are washed one for all in the blood of the Lamb. Every text - not just the ones we know well - cries out about the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
Al Mohler,
He is not silent, Moody Publishers, 2008 Pg. 96-97