Key Bible Passage(s):

Lev.

Tier 1:

Under Moses, God has put the ancient Church into a kind of school.  It’s a period of training to help the Church through all ages to understand and believe the Gospel. Leviticus comes to us in the 3 sections, exploring (1) the Tabernacle and sacrifices, and the Priests who administer them (2) holy, clean and unclean and (3) how to live ‘clean’. It’s no surprise that all of these point to the ministry and death of Jesus as THE Priest.

Tier 2:

Leviticus helps us to understand how to live a New Creation life in an Old Creation world. It teaches us how to recognise the effects of the fall, and the curse. And it points us to Christ as the only One who can render us clean… and keep us clean while we anticipate the fulfilling of His work in the renewal of all things, a new creation where there is nothing unclean: no disease, no death, no decay.

Tier 3:

The reality of living faithfully in an unfaithful world can be exhausting. In His wisdom, the Lord conceives of a way of strucutring life that draws us incessantly back to the Gospel for refreshing and recalibration. The way time is structured is liturgical, confronting us with aspects of Christ’s work and teaching us to rest in them and to celebrate them.

Readers often find Leviticus difficult to understand since it is written in the language of ancient ritual, with rules about festivals, sacrifices, ritual washings, and the like … it will help to bear in mind that ritual is “acted theology.”

Michael LeFebvre

Group Discussion:

How does this way of reading the opening section of Leviticus ‘fill out’ your understanding of the cross of Christ? ...and of our response to the cross?

How can we recapture the joy and spiritual intimacy of the Fellowship/Peace Offering in our own experience of discipleship and Church?

What if someone in the ancient Church wanted to worship God differently?  Do we have freedom to decide how we will approach God in worship?  What does this mean for the way in which so many Churches re-structure worship?

What would say was the primary purpose of worship in the context of the Tabernacle?

and later in the session:

When people are ordained today to become ministers in the Church, does it have anything to do with the Levitical priesthood, and the role of priests in the ancient Church?

What is the relevance of the story of Nadab and Abihu for today? What might be a comparable ‘unauthorised’ action in our own worship?  Do you think the Lord still deals with people in the same way?

Should we re-cultivate a sense of ‘uncleanness’ in the Church today?  What might be the benefits? How could it be open to abuse?

Do you keep any festivals (e.g. Sabbath)?  How do you make sure it remains focussed on the Lord, rather than simply becomes a time of selfishness and indulgence?

Homework:

Over this half-term we have been working to memorise Matthew 5:43-48. You will have to keep refreshing the rest of the Sermon on the Mount whilst you do this (except for Matt.6:1-4, which we’ll memorise next half-term).

(we’ll memorise the whole of the Sermon on the Mount over the 3 years of DTP)

To Be A Christian: Q&A 25-34

Read: Numbers 9-21