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READINGS
Psalm 20:1-9
To the chief musician. A Psalm of David. May Jehovah answer you in the day of distress; the name of the God of Jacob set you on high. (2) He sends your help from the sanctuary, and upholds you out of Zion. (3) He will remember all your offerings and make fat your burnt sacrifices. Selah. (4) He will give you according to your heart and He will fulfill all your plans. (5) We will rejoice in your salvation, and in the name of our God set up banners; may Jehovah fulfill all your prayers. (6) Now I know that Jehovah saves His anointed; He answers him from His holy Heaven with the saving strengths of His right hand. (7) These trust in chariots, and these in horses, but we will make mention in the name of Jehovah our God. (8) They have bowed down and have fallen, but we have risen and stand upright. (9) Save, O Jehovah! The King will answer us in the day of our calling.
Psalm 40:6-8
Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; You have opened ears to Me. You have not asked burnt offering and sin offering. (7) Then I said, Lo, I come, in the roll of the Book it is written of Me; (8) I delight to do Your will, O My God; and Your Law is within My inmost soul.
John 4:23-24
But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeks such, the ones worshipping Him. (24) God is a spirit, and the ones worshipping Him must worship in spirit and truth.
Arcana Coelestia 10143.
[2] ‘A burnt offering’ means Divine worship because burnt offerings and sacrifices were the chief features of the representative worship among the Israelite and Jewish nation,…[3] But what the Divine worship meant by sacrifices and burnt offerings is must be stated briefly. In particular sacrifices and burnt offerings have meant purification from evils and falsities, and at the same time implantation of goodness and truth, also the joining together of the two, thus regeneration,…With the person in whom these things have been accomplished true worship exists. It does so because purification from evils and falsities consists in refraining from them, steering clear of them, and loathing them; the implantation of goodness and truth consists in thinking and willing what is good and what is true, and in speaking and doing them; and the joining together of the two consists in leading a life composed of them. For when the good and truth residing with a person have been joined together his will is new and his understanding is new, consequently his life is new. When this is how a person is, Divine worship is present in every deed he performs; for at every point the person now has what is Divine in view, respects and loves it, and in so doing worships it.
SERMON
This morning we begin a new series in which we will be looking at some of the content of the book of Leviticus. Of all the books of the Bible the book of Leviticus probably wouldn’t win a popularity award for being the most interesting or easiest read. Leviticus gets it name from the tribe of Levi who, of the tribes of the Israelite nation, were given the responsibility for priestly duties associated with the tabernacle and in latter times the temple. On the surface of it it’s contents are pretty dry consisting of a book of laws and ordinances that set down the hows, whys and wherefores of Jewish religious worship. It has to be remembered however that it is very difficult to separate Jewish religious life from any other area of Jewish life so we find that the book also contains laws that relate to the general aspects of daily life as well. So if you were to begin reading the book of Leviticus you would be entering a world of laws to do with offerings and sacrifices, their various kinds, how they are to be preformed and when and for what purpose and all this in considerable detail along with laws that stipulate dietary requirements and social interactions with others.
You might read of these things and wonder what relevance they could possibly have for us today and whether they have any real application to our lives. In fact this was the response of the Christian Church to this book. Its apparent lack of relevance saw it disregarded as a practical guide for life and it came to be viewed purely as a historical account of things that no longer have any practical application for people. The view was, that by coming into the world, the Lord fulfilled all things of the Word and so it was no longer necessary to engage in this form of ritualistic/sacrificial religious worship. But from the perspective of Spiritual Christianity this is only part of the story. Yes, it is true that in coming into the world the Lord did away with the need for this sacrificial based worship, but it is a great mistake to read from this that this part of the Word, and other parts like it, no longer have any real relevance for the human race. This is the kind of conclusion that is drawn by those who read the Word from their senses, and who can’t extract their thought from the literal meaning of the words they read in the literal text.
Spiritual Christianity for the New Christian Church teaches that all the Word, every minute part of it, has spiritual significance and application. We are taught from the Heavenly Doctrines that we are to read the Word, not from our senses and own reasonings, but from what doctrine teaches and that if we do this we read from the Lord who is the doctrine itself. We need to understand that the rituals and sacrifices of the literal sense of the Word as recorded in the book of Leviticus are the forms that the laws of spiritual life take when they manifest on the most external plane of the mind.
If we don’t go beyond a mere external reading of this material we will become bored with it fairly quickly, for to read it in this way is to read it from the natural man, for whom spiritual things hold no attraction. But here is a word of advice in reading the Word – you cannot bring your ordinary approach to reading when you come to the Word and hope to get anything out of it. The Word is not a newspaper, or magazine, or novel, it is Divine Truth and we need to remind ourselves of this fact and what that means for us as we come to open this most holy of books. The Word is the means by which the Lord communicates with you and you with Him and in this sense it is the tent of meeting, the tent of appointment or what it refers to as the tabernacle. Everything in the Word is for our spiritual benefit – nothing is superfluous or without meaning and if we can’t see its meaning the problem lies with us and our lack of understanding and not with the Word. The opening of the Word as to its internal meaning occurs for people in accordance with their need. Need in this sense is defined in terms of what’s required for our spiritual nourishment as we look to apply its truths to life.
So what of the contents of the book of Leviticus? We find in its opening chapters descriptions of a series of offerings. The general term translated as Offering from the Hebrew literally means Approach Present as in “a gift offered to facilitate an approach to another.” So in very general terms the offerings we are going to be looking at in the coming weeks have to do with what is brought as our worship to facilitate our being brought into a fuller more conscious connection with the Lord as the Word. Now for anyone who is seeking to live the spiritual life knowing the laws that govern our approach to the Lord is of utmost importance and something we should be seeking to understand.
The fact that these laws take a very concrete form in the literal sense of the Word that involves the sacrifice of bulls and goats and birds is simply how these laws are represented on the most external natural level. The fact is the laws are universal and on a deeper level have nothing to do with the offering of livestock. The killing of an animal on an altar doesn’t bring us into closer connection with the Divine, and it never has, it merely represents, in a very graphic external way the inner processes of worship that belongs to the world of our minds or spirits. Once we really get a hold of this spiritual principle then instructions concerning how and what can be offered to the Lord can be used to build our understanding of how these laws are relevant for our lives today and can be used as guides for our spiritual growth and development. It’s so important that we learn to move beyond the outer representation so that we can access their more universal spiritual or inner application. For it is in doing this that the quality of our spiritual lives can be increased for the benefit of others.
If we could only see that these are not merely laws that govern some ancient ritualistic worship form but that they are spiritual laws that can never be done away with for they are the very laws that govern every person’s approach to the Lord. This knowledge should govern our approach to the Word so that our reading of it is done with focussed attention. The words need to fall on an awakened part of our mind which may mean that we read less more carefully rather than more. If you take the time to read the sections of Leviticus we cover each week in your private devotional time, then please read with attention. Don’t let the words fall on the stony well worn paths of the mind that you employ when reading secular material. If you read with attention, with reverence, then new pathways can be cleared in your mind that will increase your openness to finding new connections and receiving new insights.
The first seven chapters deal with the laws and ordinances connected with a number of different classes or kinds of offerings. Some offerings involve livestock, others involve a mixture of grain and oil. The livestock offered include that which is from the herd, that from the flock and birds. Grain and oil offerings can be raw, baked or fried. There are five general kinds of offering mentioned; The Assent Offering also called the Burnt Offering, the Food or Grain Offering, the Peace Offering, the Sin Offering, and the Guilt or Trespass Offering.
When the natural man reads of bulls, goats and lambs it thinks of animals in the world, when it reads of grain, flour and oil it thinks of plant matter, not so the spiritual man. When the spiritual man is tuned into the Word it thinks of spiritual things when reading of livestock and plant material, even as the angels do. This occurs because it knows that the Word is only concerned with spiritual matters and spiritual matters have to do with the mind, and in particular of a person’s relationship to the Lord, or goods and truths of the Word. In actual fact had the ancient Israelites been more spiritually aware not one drop of blood would have ever been shed in the name of the Lord for they would have been able to discern what these things represented inwardly and applied them accordingly. But the state of the Church was such at that time that no one knew the true meaning of these things and so took them literally.
This is not the case for us. We have in our possession the ability to access the spiritual meaning of these things through the revelation given in the Heavenly Doctrines that constitute the Lord’s second coming to the human race. So to think spiritually is to see what bulls and goats, and flour and oil represent and correspond to and so to understand the laws that govern our relationship to the Lord as the Word. In broad terms animals and plants correspond spiritually to the things belonging to the two primary faculties of the human mind. Remember everything in the Word is representative of things in the world of our mind which is our spirit. So if we are going to understand anything about these offerings we need to have a firm grasp of what the animal and vegetable kingdoms represent within us.
The inner world of the spirit can be divided into the things of the heart and the things of the intellect. These two dimensions to the human spirit are universally recognised in all major religious/spiritual traditions and in modern psychology. Heart things are desires, loves, emotions, feelings and affections. These are the things that move us, that sustain us, that provide us with warmth and purpose and meaning in life. The things of the intellect tend to be more fixed and rigid; not so given to movement, these don’t tend to be thought of as warm but are seen as analytical and cold. A cool head belongs to someone who is generally regarded as coming from the intellect or reasoning whereas a hot headed person is regarded as someone who tends to be more driven by their emotions.
Of course these are broad generalities but it is getting hold of the general principle that’s important at this stage of our study of the laws of the offerings. Animals, particularly warm blooded ones such as those used in the offerings and sacrifices, carried a symbolic meaning for ancient peoples who, in the things of nature, saw represented their own inner world or those things belonging to the heart or will. Their ability to roam under their own motive powers was seen by the ancients to reflect the things that move and influence aspects of human motivation. Plants on the other hand lack this freedom of movement and, being fixed in the earth, were seen to characterise those things that grow and develop in the intellect to build a person’s understanding. Ideas and intellectual things were seen to correspond to plants, ideas and concepts begin as seeds that grow and develop in the mind into structures of thought that can provide food and shelter to nurture and protect the things of the heart just as trees do for animals and birds. In the relationships between the things in the world around them the ancient peoples saw reflected inner realities, how the desires or affections of their hearts seek out ideas and concepts in their understanding by which they could bring what they desired into being.
We have spoken many times of such things in the past so there is no need to go into any more detail here, the principle that is important to get a hold of in regard to the character of the offerings is that they are of the animal kingdom on the one hand and the vegetable kingdom on the other. When we read of animals being offered we should think primarily, although not exclusively, of the things belonging to the heart or will being brought into the service of the Lord and our neighbour and similarly when products of the vegetable kingdom are the focus in the various offerings we need to think in terms of those things within that belong to the intellect or understanding being offered to the Lord so that our ideas and concepts reflect the truths and principles of the Word. When we can see this then we can begin to see how the laws of the offerings can bring us into a fuller sense of how the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts might be acceptable in His sight which is our spiritual worship. Next time we will begin our exploration of the meaning of the burnt offering, so in preparation for that I would encourage you to read through the first chapter of Leviticus, to do it meditatively and expectantly. Don’t be too concerned if you don’t understand it all – just read it with a sense of awareness that these laws are first and foremost spiritual and as such will prove to be extremely relevant to you as you look to pursue a spiritually focused life.
Amen.
