Did this a little late so I'm going to let Rayburn do the talking for me....
every one of the sacrifices ... began with a worshipper placing his hand on the animal’s head, transferring his sins to the animal that then was killed in his place, and its blood in some way sprinkled or poured on or about the altar. In every one of these acts of worship... the matter of human sin and God’s provision of atonement is front and center. But it is precisely this reality that has largely disappeared from much of evangelical worship today. This concentration on human sin and guilt and the need for atonement – atonement provided by the death of a substitute – long since disappeared from liberal Christianity, but until recently, it was a defining characteristic of the evangelical Christian church service. Christ was our Savior from sin and from death which is the punishment of sin and that fact was central to our worship services...
the order of events is important in worship because order is crucial to the meaning of things in life... Sex before marriage is the way of death; sex after marriage is the way of life. The difference between life and death is only the order in which things are done. In Leviticus 1:3-9, for example, there is scrupulous attention paid to the order of events in the burnt offering. Why? Because it is one religion, paganism, if the worshipper kills the animal and then puts his hands on its head and by so doing identifies the gift as his own. It is another religion entirely, Christianity, if the worshipper puts his hands on the animal’s head and then kills it, thus symbolically transferring his guilt to a substitute. The acts are the same, only the order is different, but the order determines the meaning of the act....
As Paul often made a point of demonstrating in the very structure of his letters, in what we might call the “liturgy” of his letters, it is legalism if ethics (God’s law and our obedience to it) come first and salvation second. It is Christianity if salvation comes first and then ethics. And so his letters always betray that order: first the exposition of God’s work in saving us from sin and death through Christ (Rom. 1-11; Eph. 1-3; Col. 1-2), then a “therefore,” and then, and only then, his exposition of the Christian life (Rom. 12-15; Eph. 4-6; Col. 3-4). We must obey God’s law, but it matters mightily whether that obedience is put before or after our salvation; that is, whether we obey in order to be saved or because we have been saved!...
Do you want to be a very obedient Christian? Then have a living sense of how much you owe to God in Jesus Christ.
Where will the joy in reconciliation be if there is no confession and prayer for pardon, if there is no sense of the alienation that sin created between ourselves and God? Where will be the renewal of our gratitude if we do not know ourselves to have received anew and afresh the forgiveness of our sins?...
It is God whom we meet in worship, who speaks to us, to whom we speak, who grants us forgiveness, who fills our hearts with various good things: from conviction to joy, from love and gratitude to inspiration and commitment....
That is why Israel must come with faith and expectation and why she must so strictly observe the ritual order. This is Yahweh’s house; she is entering his presence, and must do so in that way that he has ordered. To approach the Lord on your own terms is the rankest disrespect toward the Almighty and bound to fail to produce the blessing one seeks when he or she comes to church....
What [Christians] need is to find themselves in the presence of God and be renewed in faith, hope, and love in that encounter with God himself. The Lord has appointed the worship of the church on the Lord’s Day as the principal means of such an encounter and that is why that worship is supremely important to the Christian life and why every effort must be made – from the minister’s study, preparation, and superintendence to the congregation’s expectation, concentration, and participation when at worship – to conduct that worship in the most biblically faithful, interesting, beautiful, serious, and joyful way.
I also appreciated his summary of Chapter 30....
What we have then in this chapter are two fundamental emphases that are found everywhere in the Bible, proved everywhere in human experience and are fundamental to human happiness and welfare. 1) Honesty and faithfulness are essential to harmony, happiness, and goodness in human life as they are necessary to a right relationship with God, who is himself truth and faithfulness in their highest form; and 2) there is a unity in marriage and family, a unity that must be preserved against all the attacks made upon it – wittingly or unwittingly – including attacks upon that unity made by individuals within the family acting as individuals. Before we think Numbers 30 strange or terribly old-fashioned, we should look around us and see what we think of a society in which both personal integrity and marital and family unity are disappearing. And then we should take great care to put these principles of integrity and unity into practice, to show the world what it is missing!
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage: Numbers 31-32
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