EMMAUS SCHOOL OF BIBLICAL STUDIES

One of the major themes is showing that God is holy and that we need to be holy just like him move. It says in Leviticus 21:8, and for they are holy to their God and you shall treat them as holy since they offer the food of your God they shall be holy to you, for I am the Lord, I who sanctify you am holy. The book of Leviticus shows how everything points to God and how god remains faithful and holy through every circumstance. Is says in the key verse Leviticus 11:45 for I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God you shall be holy for I am holy. This book tells us to be holy just as Christ is holy, this is an awesome book, even though it has a lot of blood and it has all the laws, it shows how God wants us to lead a holy and simple life.

Moses wrote the book of Leviticus as a priest’s handbook. The main idea conveyed throughout the book is that a holy God makes a way to dwell with an unclean unholy man. Man is then called to “Be holy as I am Holy.” The holiness and many other characteristics of God are seen through the giving of the law throughout Leviticus. All of the sacrificial system and the feasts also serve the purpose of establishing a paradigm through which to understand and atonement and the need for blood shed in the remission of sins.
The truth seen throughout the Pentateuch is that man lost the proper relationship with God as a result of the fall, and God gives the law not as a means of being righteous but as a means of seeing ones need for atonement. It was not about works with out a heart condition. I was reading in A.W. Tozer’s Pursuit  of God this week and one of the chapters discussed that in the fall man altered his relationship with God and thus destroyed the “proper Creator-creature relation in which, unknown to him, his true happiness lay.”
God’s purpose in reaching down to mankind was to restore this relationship. The problem most of us have is that we do not believe that God’s best is our best. We are not willing to exalt God above all else, and thus escape from the faulty understanding of the world. The reason we have a relationship that is dead with God is because we approach him through our carnal desires, and understanding. Tozer summed it up best when he said, “Much of our difficult as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly”

Leviticus has many weird things in it. Just reading once one probaly wouldn’t catch the significance of it. Digging a bit into the culture and what God was preparing them, you see God in his goodness protecting his people and teaching them about himself. Things pointed to Christ, that something better was to come. As the Lord teaches us we are to teach others, discipleship/teaching. God wants to be known and will be known, he chooses in his goodness and grace, to use us in that process. The holy God chooses to use his people.

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At first glance Leviticus is a tough book to read because it is full of very specific and seemingly grotesque laws that God wants the Israelites to do. He is very specific about offering sacrifices for certain things and a lot of people get stumped on why they had to do it then and why we don’t have to now. A part of our assignment was to read Hebrews again along with Leviticus and it really serves as a bridge to understanding why they had to do such specific sacrifices etc. Leviticus is such a foreshadowing book of what Christ was going to come and fulfill later. Everything that they had to do served as a purpose to remember who God is and how their sins cause innocent bloodshed. Twice a day they would sacrifice a lamb so that they would remember that their sins need atoning for. They never atone for their own sins but the priest serves as the mediator before God to atone for sins. Once a year the high priest would enter the holy of holies in the tabernacle and atone for his sins and the sins of Israel. He had to continually do this over and over again until Christ came and did away with this symbolic sacrifical system that could never completely wipe away sins.

Hebrews 9:6 says that the priest had to continually go into the tent and 9:9 talks about that being a symbol of the present time. Hebrews 9:11-14 says “But when Christ came as high priest of good things that have come, then through the greater perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!”

The priest would go in continually to offer an animal sacrifice without blemish to atone for his sins and others. Christ became the great high priest by sacrificing himself without blemish to atone for the sins once and for all. He doesn’t have to continually sacrifice because he didn’t have to atone for his own sins because he didn’t have any. He atoned for our sins for us. Atoning always had to do with God doing it and never man. We are incapable of atoning for our own sins. Christ was the sacrifical lamb. This is why John the Baptist says in John 1:36 when he sees Jesus “look, here is the Lamb of God!” Christ fulfilled what Leviticus was pointing to, doing away with its old covenant and became “mediator of a better covenant” (Hebrews 8:6).

God had deep pure reasons for giving Israel all these very specific laws. He wasn’t doing it arbitarily but had his holy purposes for them. Leviticus 11:44-45 says “For I am the Lord your God; sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming creature that moves on the earth. For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; you shall be holy, for I am holy.” The nations around Israel were not holy. They were perverse and God was wanting them to not associate with them so that by being separate from them they would be holy. The Israelites came out of Egypt where they were slaves to a nation that didn’t worship the true God and now they are about to run into the Canaanites that have a really perverse way of living. God was going to refuse to be worshipped in the way that the Canaanites worshipped their gods and this is why he gives them all these specific orders. He wants them to be holy as he is holy. God was blessing them with all these things because they didn’t know any better, not cursing or burdening. He has their best intrest in mind the entire time whether they see it or believe it.

Holiness is a requirement of the Lord for His people. The Lord is Holy. I have learn from Leviticus that i serve a holy God. That to approach him i must be holy. that i am holy because i was redeemed by Jesus. i want to live a holy life unto the Lord so that i can used for His divine purposes. i know i can make some changes to be more holy in my life. that i can watch what i say, do, think, act,  and watch. that i can be light in the world with the Holy Spirit and Jesus righteousness making me holy and acceptable before the Lord.

I also learned how beautifully the Pentateuch fits together. That God created man in HIs own image and saw that it was good. That the Lord saved the Israelites from Egypt for relationship. and that he gave them the Law in Leviticus so that they would know Him. HIs character and what holiness looks like. i learned that i am grateful i serve a living God who is holy and cares about me. that He set me free to be in fellowship with HIm and He set me apart from the world to be in it but not of it. to be an example of Holiness.

The major theme of Exodus was that the Israelites were redeemed for a relationship.

God rescues Israel out of a hopeless situation of slavery and brings them out into the wilderness, which is a place of his great provision. The wilderness is an incubator where God continues the work of building a nation and changing the minds of the people so that they understand he alone is God. Moses depicts this journey to the reader which demonstrates a God that is experienced and cannot be labeled or put in a box. The journey from slavery to sons and daughters is the story of Exodus. Their identity as a nation comes from who dwelt among them, not what they could do.

This is demonstrated best in the tabernacle system. The word tabernacle means dwell, and this was God’s purpose for humanity all along, sin simply messed it up. So the only way a holy God can dwell with an unholy man is if his sins are covered by the atoning sacrifice. The blood of lambs finds its value in the lamb that was slain and made atonement once and for all.

People often search for purpose and wonder how they are to live their lives. Purpose is found in your creator, so in order to find your purpose shouldn’t you learn to know you creator better?

Exodus was a great book to study.  We see God rescuing his people from 400 years of slavery, showing His power, glory and faithfulness.  He is making himself known to His people, setting them apart from all other nations, dwelling among them, and showing them their imperfection before Him.  He is drawing a distinction between His holiness and the imperfection of humanity.  He is teaching them their need for His mercy and forgiveness.  And so much of what he does, though it is physical history, is also a foreshadowing of the future work to be accomplished through Christ.

I was most impacted by watching the Israelites lack of faith and trust in their God regardless of how many times he proved himself worthy and faithful.  Throughout the book of Exodus God did amazing things for his people, and they believed and trusted in him in the face of those miraculous happenings.  Yet over and over again, as time passed and they encountered new obstacles they doubted him, lost faith, and failed to believe he was even among them at all.  Despite them, God continued to show that he was powerful, he was in control, and he was faithful.  God desired his people to recognize him as their God, to know Him, to remember what he had done for them, to worship, and to trust that he would continue to be faithful.  Millennia later and men still act the same way.  I know that I forget (or sometimes even fail to recognize in the first place) what God has done for me in the past.  I fail to completely trust Him with my future.  Just as with the Israelites, I need to make sure that as God works in my life I recognize it and never forget his presence, his power, and his faithfulness.

Man, the Isrealites had a time! Struggling with the Egyptians, fighting to keep some sort of dignity, wanting to stay safe. God consistantly reigns as hero in all the situations of the Isrealites…Isn’t he always?! Knowing that through this process the Israelites went through God wanted to redeem them for a relationship. What God set up for them was not the best, it forshadowed Christ. I like what Tom said during lecture that the Tabernacle was a mere copy of the true one. To recieve the good they must understand the bad. Gosh, we all need that. To truly understand what Christ has done for us, we have to understand the bad…our sin, how we can so easily self destruct, or become so selfish. Nothing God does is for himself, but for us to know him & have a relationship with. I’m thankful for Exodus, its encouraged me to journal more, to be quiet before God, to keep that aspect of our relationship alive & i pray i thrive in it.

Exodus is a really great book. I was actually surprised with how packed full it is of really wonderful things. The heartbeat behind the whole book is God’s redemption/deliverance of his people so he can dwell and have relationship with them. Exodus 6:6-7 “I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians.”

Everything that God does physically with the Israelites is a foreshadowing of what Christ was to do later for all mankind. He delivers his people from bondage, breaking the powers of the Egyptian gods with his almighty power, then forming them into his nation set apart from the world. Christ set us free from the slavery/bondage of sin that we could not get ourselves out of. He gives the Israelites the law as a guideline as to how they are to live because before, while they were in slavery, they didn’t know how to do this, just as without Christ, we do not know righteousness. The law was never meant to give them salvation (as Galatians tells us) but it was a disciplinarian that they much needed and it was such a blessing to them, not a curse. We are like children who need a parent to raise us because we don’t know any better and that is what God does so patiently, compassionately, lovingly, graciously, and mercifully. God’s great characteristics are powerfully seen through out the entire book.

One of my favorite passages in the whole book is Exodus 34:6-8. Prior to that the Israelites had committed to the covenant and then turned right around and broken it by creating a calf to worship. Moses comes down the mountain and in his anger throws the tablets with the covenant on them down and breaking them, symbolizing the brokeness of the people and the inhability to keep the law. God tells Moses that he is going to restore and mend the broken covenant that the people couldn’t restore. After this is when God tells Moses what he says in Exodus 34:6-8, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.”

 I will change my life by pursuing hard and fast of the Lord with the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life. I will stop operating independently from the Lord. I choose to let Him pursue me. I want to be in relationship with Him. I want my faith to increase daily; I can do that through prayer, fasting, and studying my bible. I will change my life for the better when in my habits, choices, decisions, and lifestyle decide to not plan sin or choose sin. I can change my life by surrounding my self with good things, people, places, and content. I will change my life by being less self-fish too. I want to fight the good fight and come out in Heaven sitting in the presence of the glory of God.

 

            I can carry out these changes by making a commitment to honesty and accountability. By living in Grace more and less condemnation. I will carry out these changes through the power of Jesus working in me. I will choose to not allow myself to go places in my thought life I should not. I have learned the value of relationship with God. I want to fully understand the implications of the gospel. And I want to have abundant faith I can share. I want to obedient. I am thankful the Lord has not given up on me. I do not want to struggle with disbelief. I value God’s character and am thankful He is shaping mine each day to be better, more like His. 

Exodus is such an AWE-INSPIRING book! God is so present and working his majestic signs and wonders throughout! I love how God does all that he does just so that the Israelites, the Egyptians and the whole world will know that he is God. He is revealing himself to humanity through the power that he displays in Exodus. Why would he do this? Because he wants to be in relationship with his people. That is why he speaks for ten chapters giving Moses the law and the ritual laws and instructions on how to set up the tabernacle. One thing that I learned from Exodus is that God is powerful and really should be viewed with awe. I do not feel like I have been taught about this powerful, majestic, mighty God, as much as I have the loving, forgiving God. I am so glad to see that they both do exist in the same God. This is shown over and over again in Exodus when the children of Israel are complaining, and disobeying God yet he continues to provide for them and protect them. I do feel like I got a good look at how much God hates idolatry, and it made sense to me. God hates it because it is a lie. The Israelites replaced the truth of YHWH with the lie of a golden calf, claiming that the calf had led them out of Egypt. If Exodus has taught me one thing it is that God is uncontainable and so glorious we cannot look into his face. My application for this book is to remember the Exodus and to never forget God’s power. One way I can practically do this is to not put him in a box. Remember the EXODUS!

This was my third time studying through Exodus in the SBS setting and like always it continues to be one of the most personally encouraging books to work through. What an amazing testimony it is to God’s faithfulness, power and majesty. Two thoughts: 1) I think its important that we as christians never forget the awesome things that God did for mankind in the Exodus narrative. We can learn so much about his character as we see Him act in the book. It’s neat to think too that what God accomplished for Israel was meant to inspire faith in everyone to looked on, even the Egyptian officials. Im excited to meet Egyptians in heaven who were drawn to to God as they looked on and saw Him prove his power and reality in the events surrounding the narrative. It truly is an AWESOME thing that God did! 2) I am always encouraged by how God revealed his character to Moses (ch 3) and then to all Israel (ch 19). I love chapter three. What an invitation it is for Moses to know God as he walks with Him through the months and years to come. Heres a plug for a good friend. Adam Cox, the director of the 24/7 prayer boiler room in Kansas City has some great thoughts on this chapter. Check it out online. You can listen to an online audio feed of a talk he gave on Exodus as part of his “the God story series” (www.kcboilerroom.com) look for the link “the god story” “Exodus.”

What did we cover with Genesis?

We talked about how God is discipling a nation.  A nation of people that have known nothing but slavery for the past 450 years.  How were they effected by that?  No social structure, no land, no economy, surrounded by Egyptian gods, etc.  Where is God to start, how is he to explain to them who He is, who they are, how they fit into his universal plan of redemption etc?

He has to start at the beginning.

And that is what he does in Genesis, the book of beginnings.  In Genesis we see the beginning of Creation, the beginning of mankind, the beginning of sin, the beginning of grace, the beginning of a nation.  We talked about how important these concepts would be to our Original Readers, and we didn’t stop there, we looked at how important these concepts are to us and how we have a starting place to answer questions that our society is asking.

We spent a lot of time in the first couple chapters of Genesis.  We talked about how believing or not believing that man kind is created in the image of God effects everything!  Human beings have worth and value and dignity because of Who created them and because they are made in God’s image.  Think how this truth truly lived out would effect business, government, education, family, church, etc?  And then think for a moment what if YOU truly believed this truth, how would things change in your life, if you lived out of the knowledge that you have a God-given value, worth and dignity, how would you treat other people if you really believed this about them?

We also dealt with the Fall and what took place at that event.  The separations that took place as a result of man’s choice to refuse to stand in his rightful place as creature to Creator and believe that if they trust and obey God, all will be well with them, instead they chose what Satan was offering.  Autonomy from God.  Satan suggests that the because God did not give them EVERYTHING He had not given them ANYTHING.  And so they are separated.  Separated from God.  Separated from themselves.  Separated from other man.  Separated from nature.

And then we see what a beautiful, gracious, loving God we have as he set into action His Universal Plan of Redemption.  Even right as the punishments are being dolled out he gives a promise, he won’t leave us this way, he will send his Son to fix what we messed up.  As the rest of Genesis unfolds, yes we see great depravity and all kinds of heinous sins, and yet a bigger theme than the sin in Genesis is the GRACE in Genesis.  God relentlessly pursuing mankind and his grace “making beauty out of ugly things.”

The book has been really interesting and intense for me. It is that one book that everyone opens to and starts trying to read, then gets about to Cain’s descendants and gives up. It was really amazing to see all of these bible characters, but really see them. In all of their sin and depravity. The thing that I thought I really gained from the most out of Genesis was the whole story of Joseph, seeing how his circumstances lead him to where God wanted him to be. That is really encouraging for me to know that God will be in control of my life like that and I will be right were he wants me to be at the end of the year.