Today we are continuing a new sermon series I have entitled “Route 66” because we are taking a journey together through all 66 books of the Bible in 66 Sundays. My challenge to you, after hearing a message about each book of the Bible is to read the book of the week.
Our study today is focused on a book that forms a major roadblock for some people in continuing their journey on Route 66. Almost everyone I have ever met, who has tried to read through the whole Bible from beginning to end, gives up, or is tempted to give up, when he or she gets to the book of Leviticus. Why is Leviticus such a stumbling block?
I think the main problem is found in the type of literature that Leviticus contains. Whereas Genesis and Exodus contain mostly story, Leviticus is full of laws. Thus, the book can read somewhat like bylaws or a constitution for an organization or a country. It can be, for some people, almost as boring as reading the phone book.
In spite of that fact, I do believe Leviticus contains some valuable points of teaching for us today. We’ll get to that in a moment. But first, let’s talk about the author, date, theme, and structure of the book…
Author
Over the course of the last two Sundays, we have talked about the traditional view that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. I have also pointed out that there is no internal claim to Mosaic authorship in any of these books. That is true of Leviticus as much as it is true of Genesis and Exodus. The view of modern scholarship, for the past 200 years, as we have also seen, is a bit more complicated than the traditional view of authorship.
Over the past two Sundays I have mentioned how most modern scholars believe that there were multiple sources for the first five books of the Bible. They designate one of those sources by the letter “J” for Jahwist or Yahwist because that author uses the personal name for God, Yahweh. There is a second source “E” that stands for Elohim because that author uses the more general name for God. And then we have talked about the source “P” that stands for the priestly author. Because of the nature of the literature contained in Leviticus, it should perhaps come as no surprise to find out that this book is drawn largely from the Priestly source. But according to modern scholars, the authorship of Leviticus is even more complicated than that. Many modern scholars believe that chapters 1 through 16 were written by “P” but that in chapters 17-26 we have what is called “The Holiness Code” and it is written by a different author designated by the letter “H”.
One difference between these authors is that for P, the Tabernacle is the sacred, holy, space. For H, it’s the land of Israel as a whole. P focuses on the holiness of priests, whereas H focuses on the holiness of all God’s people.
As I have said before, this theory of multiple authorship reminds us of something very important about the Bible from the get-go. The Bible is not simply one book by one author. It is a collection of books, a sacred library if you will, containing many voices of faith writing over many centuries. This makes the foundation of our faith richer rather than poorer.
Date
The traditional dating for the book of Leviticus goes along with the idea of Moses as author. Thus, the traditional date puts the writing of Leviticus in the 15th century BC, during the time that the Israelites were wandering in the Sinai desert for forty years. The view of modern scholarship puts the date of writing for Exodus much later, anywhere between the 10th and 5th centuries, so as early as the time of King David or possibly as late as the post-exilic period. In any case, it is the view of most modern scholars that many of the sacred stories of Israel were first passed on orally, then written down by their separate sources, J, E, and P, H, and others. It was only much later that these sources were combined to form the first five books of the Bible as we know them today.
Once again, if you want to know more about who wrote the first five books of the Bible and when, I highly recommend reading Who Wrote the Bible by my former professor, Richard Elliott Friedman.
Themes
So, let’s talk about the themes in this book. Leviticus gets its name from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) and the title means “relating to the Levites”. The book is so named because it deals largely with the services of worship in the tabernacle that were conducted by the priests, the sons of Moses’ brother Aaron, and the rest of the tribe of Levi.
The major theme of Leviticus is holiness—the holiness of God and human beings. In Leviticus, spiritual holiness is symbolized by physical perfection. Therefore, the book demands perfect animals for sacrifice and requires priests to be without physical deformity. A woman’s hemorrhaging after childbirth (chapter 12), sores, burns, baldness (chapters 13-14), a man’s bodily discharge (chapter 15), and specific activities during a woman’s period (chapter 15), all may be signs of blemish (or one might say “pollution”) that clouds one’s relationship with God. According to Leviticus, a person with a visible skin disease must be banished from the camp until healed. Before re-entry he must offer a perfect sacrifice. For Christians, all of the sacrifices in Leviticus point forward to the perfect sacrifice of Christ.
The author or authors of Leviticus probably would have agreed with the more modern statement: “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” And one can see how, for a large group of nomads traveling through the desert, rules about hygiene would be very important.
After the covenant ratified at Mt. Sinai, Israel thought of herself as the earthly representation of God’s kingdom and thus their government was theocratic. (A theocracy is a system of government in which priests rule.) According to Leviticus, the Lord was establishing his administration over all of Israel’s life through the priesthood of Israel. Israel’s religious, communal, and personal life was so regulated as to establish her as God’s holy people and to instruct her in holiness.
I love the way C. S. Lewis summarizes the whole of the Old Testament in his book, Mere Christianity. Lewis writes…
He [God] selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was—that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.[1]
To my mind that is a great summary of the Old Testament. Leviticus shows us the beginning of God’s choice of the Israelite people and the hammering process God used to teach them about holiness.
Special attention in Leviticus is also given to religious ritual. Sacrifices had to be offered at the right place, at the right time, in the right way, by the right people. Again, Christians see all this as symbolic, in a way, of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus the Messiah.
Old Testament sacrifices, while having some similarities to sacrificial offerings to the gods of other cultures, are given a whole new meaning within the context of God’s covenant relationship with Israel. There is inherent in the offering of sacrifices the idea of a gift to God, and the dedication of the giver, communion with God and propitiation of God’s wrath against sin, as well as restitution for wrongs committed. The various offerings in Leviticus each have slightly different functions, but their primary function is always atonement and worship.
To the modern reader, Leviticus may appear hopelessly outdated with its strange rituals, including the blood and gore of animal sacrifice. However, the questions Leviticus seeks to answer are as important for us as they were for the ancient Israelites, namely… How are sinful people to be reconciled to a holy God? What is the proper way to worship God? How are humans to act toward each other in the context of God’s covenant?
Leviticus answers these and other questions using imagery familiar to the Israelites. Christians have traditionally believed that all this ceremonial ritual is fulfilled in Christ and no longer binding on us as law. However, the underlying message about the importance of holiness is still applicable to us today.
Structure
The structure of Leviticus works out like this…
- The Five Main Offerings (1-7)
- The Ordination, Installation and Work of Aaron and his Sons (8-10)
- Laws of Cleanliness—Food, Childbirth, Infections, etc. (11-15)
- The Day of Atonement and the Centrality of Worship at the Tabernacle (16-17)
- Moral Laws covering Incest, Honesty, Thievery, Idolatry, etc. (18-20)
- Regulations for the Priests, the Offerings, and the Annual Feasts (21:1-24:9)
- Punishment for Blasphemy, Murder, etc. (24:10-23)
- The Sabbath Year, Jubilee, Land Tenure, and Reform of Slavery (25)
- Blessings and Curses for Covenant Obedience and Disobedience (26)
- Regulations for Offerings Vowed to the Lord (27)
Key Concept—Love Your Neighbor as Yourself
By my count, the book of Leviticus is quoted 18 times in the New Testament. 8 of those times are quotations of the same verse, Leviticus 19:18 where we read, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”
The Gospels quote Leviticus 19:18 five times. When Jesus was asked, “Which commandment is the most important?” He answered with a verse from Deuteronomy and this verse from Leviticus. Jesus said…
The most important one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)
Paul agreed with Jesus. He said, “whatever other commands there may be, they are summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Romans 13:9) And in another place Paul said, “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:14) James called this command from Leviticus “the royal law”. (James 2:8)
We have, perhaps, heard this commandment so many times that it is hard for us to think too deeply about it. It has become a sort of truism, almost a cliché. And yet, I tend to believe that we cannot think deeply enough about this command. So, let us, at the very least, ask: what does it mean? To answer that question, let’s look at each individual word in this deceptively simple statement…
Love
There is perhaps no greater word in the Bible than this one, other than the word God or the word Jesus. The word appears some 686 times in the Bible, 425 times in the Old Testament, 261 times in the New. There are different Hebrew and Greek words that get translated as the one English word love in the Bible. The Hebrew word in this case is aheb and is the general or garden variety kind of Hebrew word for love. Aheb is used of love between human beings, as here in Leviticus 19:18. The word can be used for love of things, like food. Aheb is used of our love for God and, most importantly, of God’s love for us.
The word that is used in Greek to translate this Hebrew word is agape. As we have seen so many times, agape is a contra-conditional kind of love. It is a love that works in conditions that otherwise seem unfavorable. Agape is a kind of love that enables us to love that which is seemingly unlovable. Paul summarizes the ultimate example of this kind of love in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
The love spoken of here in this commandment is not, primarily, a feeling. After all, one cannot command a feeling, or at least, such a commandment would not be very effective. No, the fact that this is a command reminds us that love is primarily an action: doing what is best for another, for oneself, or for God. God’s love for us means that he does what is best for us.
Your Neighbor
Who does this command call us to love? It calls us to love our neighbor. In the immediate context of Leviticus, that neighbor is one’s fellow Israelite. “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people…” But in this same chapter in Leviticus there is also the commandment to love the alien, the foreigner, as oneself (19:34). The people of Israel are thus commanded to love all human beings, not just their own people. And this, says Richard Elliott Friedman, is extraordinary. Why so? Friedman explains…
The law of Leviticus is pervaded with the notion of distinction: between priest and layperson, between holy and secular, between pure and impure, between Israel and the other nations, between good and bad, and sometimes between permitted and forbidden with no reasons given. The book defines the priest’s task (to distinguish, Lev 10:10) in terms that explicitly recall God’s creation by distinction in Genesis 1. The law of the eternal light recalls God’s first distinction in the creation (between light and darkness). Leviticus forbids one to merge that which has been distinguished in creation: to breed two species of animals together, to sow a field with mixed seed, or to wear clothing of mixed fabric… It establishes a specific location for sacrifice and excludes all others. Nadab and Abihu are killed for an act that exceeds their defined function. However, Leviticus does include one exception to this pervasive idea of differentiating, which, ironically, is perhaps the most famous line in the book namely: “Love your neighbor as yourself!” Besides everything else that is impressive about this instruction, it stands out as anomalous in a book that so regularly makes distinctions. In relations with one’s fellow human beings one is commanded instead to equate them—to oneself and, by necessary implication, to one another. The exception improves the rule. The distinctions in ritual and ethical matters serve various needs of the people and the will of their God, but underpinning the distinctions is a principle of equality of treatment for all.
Another point: Note the progression: Love yourself, Love your neighbor. Love the alien. Love God (coming later, in Deut 6:5).
Jesus was famously asked, “And who is my neighbor?” And he answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Thus, Jesus’ answer to the question seems to be: “My neighbor is whomever I meet on the road, whomever is in need, whom I might help.”
As Yourself
It would seem to be sufficient for God to simply tell us to love our neighbors. But intriguingly there is added to the commandment this defining clause: as yourself.
This raises all sorts of questions. First, how do I love myself? And maybe even more importantly: do I love myself? Maybe that’s the problem. Perhaps we do not love ourselves, or we love ourselves very poorly, and thus we also love our neighbors poorly.
Some commentators say that love for self is assumed in this command. But you know what happens when you assume. I don’t think we can assume that we love ourselves. And so, I think this commandment contains a gentle reminder that we need to love ourselves.
But how? That is the $64,000 question. How do I love myself when I don’t have particularly affectionate feelings toward myself, when I don’t like certain attributes of my being or doing?
I think that the only way that we can truly begin to love ourselves, and thus begin to love our neighbors in turn, is if we begin to experience God’s love for us. And how do we do that?
Once again, Paul puts it so well in that wonderful fifth chapter of his letter to the Church at Rome. He says, “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5)
If you have never experienced the love of God, or if you feel like you are running a bit low lately, why not ask the Holy Spirit to pour the love of God into your heart?
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