Exodus and Leviticus

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Exodus and Leviticus are the second and third books Moses wrote after Genesis to help Israel understand her identity as a nation set aside by God to reach the rest of the world for His Messiah.  God offers all nations through Israel the salvation from punishment for their sin and an eternal relationship with the Creator.  To accomplish this, the Lord uses Genesis 1-11 to document what is wrong with the world and the remainder of the Pentateuch (or Torah) to document exactly what He is going to do about it.  This is very much like Paul did in his letter to the church at Roman.  While Paul tells us that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Ron 3:23).  Moses illustrates for us how humankind has disobeyed and fallen short of every form of rule God documented for us.  When God gave us only one Law, "Thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," we ate the fruit of that tree.  When God required blood sacrifice of Adam's children, one obeyed and the other offered vegetables.  When God gave the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, we were blatantly disobedient to the foundational first commandment, "Thou shalt not have any other gods before you" (Ex 20:1-3).  

What God was going to do about our disobedience was to bring us back to Him through His mercy, grace and love.  In the Older Testament, He established a sacrificial system by which humankind could acknowledge their sins, confess those sins over the heads of various beasts and have that sinned atoned for through the spilling of the blood of those beasts.  In the Newer Testament, God eliminates the penalty of sin by "loving the world so much that He sacrificed His only begotten Son, that whoever would believe in Him, would not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).  

In Exodus (leaving or departing), God sums up how a great relationship between Egypt and Israel went bad because "...there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph" (Ex 1:8).  God had used Joseph to rescue Egypt from certain starvation as recognized be the Pharaoh in establishing him as second in command of the entire nation.  But after 14 prosperous years and several iterations of leadership, a king was installed who did not remember what Joseph had done and why Israel was in Egypt at all.  So, after 400 years in Egypt, God led Moses to convince Egypt to ":Let My people go."  The releasing of Israel establishes the "Exodus."

In Leviticus,  the name of the Book has nothing to do with the Tribe of Levi, at all.  It is simply the priestly view of how the people must institute or actualize the Law given in Exodus to establish the sacrificial system discussed earlier.  It answers the question of how living the Law looks in the practical application, that is, "living the Law." 

These Bible Studies were written over many years through many ministries.  They are complied here to facilitate Bible students getting data and information to more easily follow the teachings of our God and Father.  Question can be input into the system via email and will be answered in the order of receipt.  Enjoy!!