In this video, Scott Brown and Kert Martin discuss the books of Leviticus and conclude the study through the book of Matthew. The theme of Leviticus is "holiness". Every part of life can be divided into what is holy and what is not holy. It is a good reminder of how we are to live -- as a holy and righteous people.

2 Corinthians 7:1 (NKJV) - "Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."

Okay, hey, Kurt Martin, good to see you. Good to be here, Scott Brown, how are you? I'm doing great. So Kurt is an elder at Reformation Christian Assembly up in St. Louis, Missouri.

Yeah. St. Louis. I was so happy to be with some of the people in your church a couple weeks ago. That was a real joy.

Yeah, it was a great time and a lot of guys from the St. Louis area, which I was glad, and had some guys from Cape and Kia-Kakai, it was a good time. That was nice. Well okay so we're here to discuss of all things Leviticus chapter 1 through 21 big spin and then about the middle of Matthew 27 all the way to Mark 3, 35. Now also if anybody wants to listen to an audio message on Leviticus that gives a sense of it, you can go to JTTB.CO forward slash Leviticus and you can listen to an audio message of any of these books by doing the same thing with the tagline of whatever book it is.

So so here we are Kurt we're we're on holy ground The theme of the book of Leviticus is holiness. The hymn couldn't be any other hymn to pick a holy holy holy to sing along with the book. You know it teaches us about sin, it teaches us about worship. You know the first 10 chapters are about worship in the tabernacle and then 11 to chapter 27 it's about holy living outside the tabernacle. Amazingly, maybe shockingly, the book of Leviticus is the sixth most quoted book in the New Testament.

There's nine references in the New Testament and Jesus quotes Leviticus more than any other Old Testament, I'm sorry, Jesus quotes Leviticus 20 verse 18 more than any other Old Testament verse. Really? The word holy is all over the book, it appears 87 times, and you know you read about holy clothing and holy sacrifices and a holy place and holy days, a holy law, a holy nation. The theme of Leviticus is holy. Amen.

Well, it is a theme of holiness. You know, something that struck me as my family gathered to read, to begin this, as I told you earlier, it's not a book that you're gonna necessarily run to and open up, but I was just, I was just struck as we read it and looking at the, just the thing that struck me was the offerings and how the offerings had to be without blemish. And there's this divine presence, the holiness of God. There's this desire for sacrifice and atonement. And we know when you read this, and then we were at the end of Matthew 27 there, and that just points so wonderfully to the Lord Jesus Christ and then Hebrews, places like Hebrews nine, it talks to our great high priest.

And I was just struck by all the things that they had to do, preparation and sacrifice and consecrating the priest to even do the sacrifices. And that's what really stuck out to me is that makes it the holiness of God and then the holiness of Jesus Christ to be our great high priest and him to be the final sacrifice and the final atonement for our sin. That's one of the things that really, really stuck out to me about this book that a lot of times you wonder what some of these things mean and when you look to Christ, you see that they were the shadow of the things that were fulfilled at the end of Matthew, we read about his arrest and his crucifixion. Isn't that amazing? We're in Leviticus and then we go to Matthew and Mark and particularly at the end of Matthew, we go to the fulfillment of what we're reading about and it's amazing.

Well, I think it was Paul White that said last week, wasn't it, that the scriptures are amazing in their unity and their continuity and you just see this fulfillment over and over again and as we've said a lot in our little church, These are things that man could never write. I mean, men wrote them, but we know that the spirit carried them along. So it is an amazing fulfillment of everything that God wanted to be seen in the foreshadowing, in the fulfillment in Christ. And it's just wonderful. To me, it's just a great encouragement.

Yeah, amen. Yeah. Well, you know, there are a number of things that might be confusing to people in Leviticus. One is the whole concept of ritual states of uncleanness, and there are three ritual states in Leviticus there's the unclean and the impure there's the clean and the pure there's holy but the sacrifices for the ritual sacrifices for these things are really interesting. There's a sacrifice if you touch a corpse.

There's a sacrifice required if you are in menstruation or with intimacy. And it's really interesting, none of those things are evil. Like it's not implicitly evil to touch a body or to give birth to a baby or have sexual intercourse. It's not evil to menstruate. So you have these, they're like ritual states and these are actually, can be called good things.

But what Moses is telling us is that every part of life is divided into what's holy and not holy. Saying that when you're having a baby, when you encounter a dead body, maybe each of your father or your friend, when you're experiencing sexual intimacy or anything like that everything we do requires the mercy of Jesus Christ. So there's even a sacrifice for things that aren't even wrong on the surface and I think everything's affected by evil and God's mercy covers everything. Wow. It's a beautiful...

Yeah, that's profound and I think sometimes we don't, I don't think I think about that enough, Scott, when I'm reading the Word or thinking about the imputed righteousness of Christ, how we are supposed to live and think like that. I mean, they had to physically do things to be purified and to make them holy or clean again. And we've had that done to us by the blood of Christ. And it's a great reminder on how we are really supposed to live before God as a holy righteous people. And I think reading these things kind of brings it back to how blessed we are to be under grace and to be under the Lord Jesus Christ.

Oh my, oh my, and it's interesting too that Moses brings out really a profound distinction of different kinds of sin. There's a remarkable insight, you know, there's what's called high-handed sin in Leviticus 4 verse 20, and then there's just full-scale rebellion against God, and with that kind of sin there you're cut off, you're excommunicated, but not true with what's called high-handed sin or things like that. There's a recognition that all sin violates the holiness of God, but it acknowledges our sinfulness and also the hope for atonement for our sin. I think it also, one of the things that sticks out to me when I read all the things that were sacrificed is that the seriousness of how God takes sin and the things that they had to go through, even like you said, when things weren't necessarily center wrong to be clean. And it really makes you stop and think about what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us.

I mean, that's the thing that went over and over in my mind as I read a book like Leviticus that I think sometimes we don't realize that in our lives, that his imputed righteousness and that we are to live a life that is separate, that's what holiness is all about, that we are to be separate. And not that the Christian walk is not a wonderful adventure but I think there is, there's sometimes I think we take too much liberty in the fact because we are under grace. We need to take serious what Christ did for us and the seriousness that God takes with sin. And that's why it's all laid out here in a book like Leviticus, and to think that the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled it all. To me, that's overwhelming.

Yeah. What are your thoughts about the strange fire of Nadab and Abihu in chapter 10? This has to do with holiness and worship. Well that's a good question. You know, I don't know if I really know, Scott.

I think one of the things that I think about is that, you know, they were given specific instructions and I think God is such a God of order. When I see the design of the tabernacle and other things that were made. And these two, as it says in verse one or two, it says that they used unauthorized fire. So they violated God's law, God's instruction to them. And we see this in other places, was it Uzziah that touched the ark when it was gonna fall?

And so I just, I think that's another case in my thinking when I read this, because I don't have a lot of explanation on it, except to say that these two men violated the way God wanted them to do these things. And I've even read where some of you think they even came to this lighting this fire, maybe they were even intoxicated or under the influence of something. So I just think it's an indication and I'd like to hear what you think that they were not following God's laid out instructions and they're paid the penalty for it. Yeah, that's the way I understand it. God prescribes exactly how worship should be placed.

He's defined it And adding or subtracting from God's order of worship is rebellion against him. And there's a really rich commentary on this across the centuries, particularly those who connect this what we call the regular principle of worship, that only God can regulate worship. Man has no right to change it, mess with it, get creative with it. It's trouble for people like us. We live in the era of Christian history that I'm just gonna call creative Christianity.

It's all around us, it's all over us and it's in us. That's the problem. We always wanna have something cooler than God. That's what Nadab and the Bible wanted. Yeah, I like that, yeah.

Well, and I think too, we need to be careful with our liberty. I mean, we do have liberties, but I do think God has prescribed how he wants to be worshiped. And isn't it great that he has told us how he wants to be worshiped and we are to worship him the way that he wants to be worshiped, not the way that we want to worship because as I told my children this morning, if I started doing all the things that Kurt wanted to do, even in worship, we would really get off track and we're preaching through 1st Corinthians and you really see that. So we wanna do the things that God prescribes. And we want to embrace this with joy.

This is the adventure God has set the path for us. I'm an old coach. You follow the rules and set a plan, you know, and you follow those things and you embrace them and you thank God for them. So I know with my children, we don't like authority, we don't like submission, but yet submission and authority are the two things that set us free. That's what sets us free.

When we don't want to surrender to these things and go by God's guidelines, we really just demonstrate what bondage we're still in and we're really all looking for freedom and that's what Christ came for. Yeah and the greatest freedom it is in Jesus. Amen, that's right. Hey let's shift over to Matthew. You know at the end of Matthew the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world has been crucified, He's been put in the grave, now He's raised and His disciples are now encountering Him as the resurrected Lord.

So we move from the shadow of the Old Testament, the sacrifice to this risen sacrifice. Risen. Amen. So what are your thoughts as we move into the very end of Matthew and then the first three chapters of Mark. What really sticks out to you?

Well, the one thing that sticks out to me is as I said earlier, you see that as we said earlier, you see the fulfillment of so many things for the atonement and so forth. But I'm always grieved when I read passages late in Matthew when I see how the Lord, not only was his trial a mock, but when I see how Jesus is mocked and he's stripped and he's spit up on and the crowns, the thorns are twisted and they kneel and they mock him and they strike him. And I was thinking that the Lord could have taken their breath away and killed them. Instead, he submits to his father. We're talking about submission to authority and He submits to his father and he doesn't say a word and he goes to the cross and he dies for our sins.

And as they were confused about what he meant by rising on the third day, gonna destroy the temple and rise. And then he predicts this and tells them this, He yields up his spirit, he yields it up, and then he dies, and then Scott prays be to God, they seal the tomb, and they're gonna, that we don't want this rumor to get out because they've said he's gonna rise again, so we seal him, we put a Roman guard, and then he rises anyway and the tomb is empty. And again that's a story that man cannot write. Don't you love it that he appears to the women first? Jesus is always doing this.

He's always appearing to the lowest of society and women were at that time. You know, I'm preaching the gospel of John and this week I'm preaching on returning the water into wine. It's really funny because the servants knew that Jesus turned the water into wine, but the waiter didn't know. He got it. You know, it's the spirit that gets revealed first, you know, it's just the way he turns everything upside down and it's not the rich and the powerful.

He goes after even his disciples were uneducated. But anyway, this is a big wrap for now. But so then you have the Great Commission, the disciples are sent out with the Great Commission. And then moving into Mark, we have John the Baptist coming, the last prophet of the Old Testament speaks, and then 400 years later, now we have John the Baptist. And that's the beginning of the gospel of Mark.

And you just see God's faithfulness, he keeps his promises. Mark is just such a remarkably beautiful, has such a beautiful beginning in that sense. Well, it does. And I marvel going from Matthew into Mark and then thinking about, you know, where we have more of an introduction to Jesus in Luke, how Mark just hits the ground running. We have the preparation for the Baptist, and then all of a sudden the Lord's baptized, and then boom, in verse 14 of chapter one, Jesus starts his ministry, and it's kind of like, off we go.

And he calls his disciples and he starts healing and the kingdom of God is among you. And I love that. I love that about Mark. Yeah. And he's, you know, Jesus begins his ministry healing.

Yes. And he continued, I didn't count how many healings there were in the first three chapters, there are a whole bunch of them. Oh yeah, healings everywhere, yeah. There's healing in his wings, and the shadows of the Old Testament, plenty of first person, they're all fulfilled in Jesus. He's the healer.

And you have these friends, you know, who lift their buddy down through the roof. He's paralyzed. Isn't that great? No, I love that. And I love it because it says there, it says, and he, Jesus, was preaching the word to them and the four men carried him there and opened the roof and dropped him down.

And yeah, I love that because it says we never saw anything like this and I just I know you know about about anything like the Lord Jesus with his healing and his love And I love the fact that it says that he was preaching, he was preaching the word to them. And I think we need to preach the word more like Jesus and teaching in parables. And so I also love the fact that the Lord never relents. As we get into chapter three, He heals the man with a withered hand and the crowds begin to follow Him. And it says, whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they fell to the ground and cried out that you are the Son of God.

Oh my, right. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, they knew that healing was putting them on notice. Yeah, and then he strictly orders them not to make him known. And I just, I don't know, I love that.

And then he calls his apostles. So yeah, I love Mark. I love the pace of Mark. And I just love the compassion that we see in the Lord Jesus and at the beginning of his ministry here in Mark. Yeah and one of the most remarkable things is about Matthew right?

We get the how God, how Jesus encountered Matthew and then he goes to his house and what is it and everybody and you know the religious people are mad at him because there are all these messed up people in his house and Jesus says it's not the well who need a physician I'm here for the sick I know I know It's so humbling because I'm one of the sick and you love it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, interesting, Mark really deals with the Sabbath as well. He really really has Jesus as the Lord of the Sabbath.

Jesus teaches how to celebrate the Sabbath. Some people look at this and say, no, Jesus was abrogating the Sabbath. No, he's telling us what the Sabbath is really like. And by the way, he heals on the Sabbath. Yes.

And you know, there's abundance and joy on the Sabbath. That's what he wants the Sabbath to be all about. Amen. You know our churches, our churches, you know, have really embraced the idea that there are ten commandments not nine. That's right.

That we should set aside the Sabbath for rest. I'm so grateful. There seems to be a rising number of churches who are embracing that conviction. It's a day of delight, isn't it? And I just pray that that would just continue to spread throughout the churches that we're associated with.

And it is. Well, anyway, we've run out of time, man. But we've really, we've covered just such beautiful things in these books, the love of God to send a sacrifice for sin in the Old Testament and the new, and then to be the one who receives sinners, who need a physician, who need healing. Well, that's us. I'm so thankful.

Amen. I enjoyed it Scott. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hey have a great day.

Great there at your church. You too. God bless brother. We'll talk. Bye bye.

Thanks