Why The Old Testament Matters – Lessons from Leviticus

If you were to ask anyone who has tried to read the Bible which part they find the most difficult, the book we are looking at today is likely to be at or near the top of their list. It’s probably at or near the top of your list. Leviticus—just the sound of the word is ancient and seems truly foreign to our current reality. What does it mean? And isn’t learning about Jesus the most important thing for us to do anyway? What is this going to teach us about Jesus? Well, the answer to that question is more than you might expect. This overview may not make you fall in love with Leviticus, but hopefully by the end you will have a better understanding of why it matters and how it helps us understand the work Jesus did for us.

At the root of Leviticus is Levi, one of the 12 sons of Israel and the patriarch of the tribe of Levi. The descendants of Levi, or the Levites as they are typically called, were set apart from the rest of the tribes of Israel and designated as workers for the tabernacle or temple, or in other words, the place where God dwelled on earth. This included the priests, who were the most set apart of the entire tribe. The priests descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses, whom we have already talked about in this series. So, as you might be able to guess, this book is called Leviticus because the featured players are these very people. The Hebrew title for the book actually means “law of the priests,” so from that, we know we can expect to find two things in this book: law and priests.

And boy, does Leviticus deliver on that expectation! Therein lies most everyone’s struggle to connect with this book. Christians don’t live under the law, right? And most of us who are Protestants don’t have any priests as a part of our church—we moved past priests as intermediaries a long time ago. What we did not move on from, though, is one of the most prominent themes in the book: God’s requirements for holiness. This theme can be summed up well in Leviticus 20:26, which says, “You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be mine.” God does not now dwell in a building, nor do we need a priest in a temple here on earth to help us get to God, but we do still need to be holy, and Leviticus helps us understand how Jesus makes that possible for us.

… learning about the law helps reveal the nature of God…God didn’t put together a list of arbitrary rules for people to follow. Each one of them exists because of who God is.

How does it do that? For one thing, learning about the law helps reveal the nature of God, by defining what separates us from Him. God didn’t put together a list of arbitrary rules for people to follow. Each one of them exists because of who God is. When we read things like, “Bring this certain offering at this certain time,” they indicate something to us about who God is. Over time, the more we get to know about God, the more we realize that we are not God and that what we have to offer pales in comparison to everything He has. We don’t have any hope to be like God on our own. We can’t even hope to be with God without some sort of intervention.

Intervention is where the priests come in. When Leviticus was written, the priests functioned as the mediators of reconciliation between God and the Israelites. The sacrifices they made were meant to represent the penalty of sin and our need for a greater sacrifice. Their heritage as descendants of Aaron, along with the ritual cleansing and ordaining they went through, qualified them to make the sacrifices. God would not accept offerings given by anyone else, nor could anyone else approach God where he dwelled in the holiest places. Jesus, however, changed things. 

Because Jesus was God, He could approach the Father. And because Jesus was God incarnate, or to phrase it another way, a human with a body, He could also live side by side with us. Through Jesus, people got to experience God with us for the first time. Because He sacrificed His life on the cross, we no longer need to sacrifice animals or crops for our sin; His sacrifice was enough to pay for it all. This is why we think of Jesus as our great high priest. The writer of Hebrews sums up this idea beautifully: “Therefore, since we have a great high priest…Jesus the Son of God—let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need (Hebrews 4:14–16).

Finally, because of our great high priest Jesus, Peter tells us that we who follow the Lord “are being built to be a holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5). Just like the descendants of Aaron, we have been set aside to serve the Lord. So, when we look at Leviticus, we see a pattern for ourselves. But instead of animals and crops, we offer “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). These spiritual sacrifices are not meant to atone for our sin. Just as “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4), we know there are no other works we can do to save ourselves (see Ephesians 2:8–9). Our high priest Jesus did that for us (see Titus 3:4–7). The spiritual sacrifices we make now are part of our sanctification, which is the process of becoming more holy and set apart for God. Just as he said to the Israelites in ancient times, He still desires for us to be holy today.

If we did not have Leviticus in the Bible, we would miss all of these things. What a loss it would be to not understand the value of Jesus’ sacrifice and to not have the chance to know Him as our great high priest. The next time you read Leviticus, keep these things in the back of your mind, and they will help you see through the details of “do this and don’t do that” to where we are now, which is a place where we get to experience the presence of God dwelling in us because Jesus is better than anything else.
If you would like more guidance on this, check out our resource Understanding the Bible. It’s a podcast with a workbook that you can go through on your own or in a group. It is available wherever you listen to your podcasts, on the church’s app, or on our website, experiencecc.com.