Vayikra – Torah with Joseph

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. My name is Joseph Shulam and together with Brad TV, we are doing every week the portion of the Torah that is read in all the synagogues around the world. This Shabbat, all the synagogues will be reading from Leviticus chapter one. We are starting a new book, we’re starting Leviticus and the portion starts in Leviticus 1:1 and ends in Leviticus 6:7.

Now the book of Leviticus is a very very important and interesting book but it is not very useful to most Christians. Very few sermons are taught from the book of Leviticus and scholars in Christian universities and colleges spend maybe an hour on the whole book of Leviticus, in a survey of the Old Testament usually. But the book of Leviticus is probably one of the most important books in the Law of Moses, of the five books of Moses, because it’s called Leviticus. It means the law of the priesthood mainly instructions for the priests for the worship at the tabernacle.

But one of the interesting verses is the very first verse. In Greek in English and all the language it is called Leviticus because it deals with the Levitical priesthood. In Hebrew, the name of the book is the first word of the book like in Exodus it’s Shemot – “Names” in English, and in Genesis it is Genesis or Bereshit in Hebrew, “In the beginning” in English. And the first words of the book usually also gives it the name because there were no names in the ancient scrolls. So in Hebrew it’s called Vayikra which is translated into English as “and He called,” and the Lord summoned, called, Moses.

Leviticus Continues Where Exodus Ends

Now that in itself is a very interesting thing. Why, because it is a direct continuation of the end of the book of Exodus. The books were divided essentially by the fact that the scrolls were made out of skin, out of leather, usually goat skin and they were heavy. And if you have a whole scroll of the whole Torah even today in our synagogue in Jerusalem, it would weigh about 15 kilos. 15 kilos in pounds would be, what, 45 pounds. So it’s not easy to carry it.

And of course they didn’t have printing presses and they didn’t print miniature bibles or, like today, where we have a whole library on our phones and on our iPads, and on our computers. My phone for example has more than one library of biblical material and teachings of the church fathers and of church history and geography and maps and atlases. Wasn’t like that in the ancient days. They had to consider the size of the scroll to make it practical to use it. So Leviticus is a direct continuation of what happened at the end of the book of Exodus. I’m going to read from chapter 40 verse 38 of the book of Exodus, the last chapter of the book of Exodus verse 38. And it says: “For the cloud of the Lord was above the tabernacle by day, and fire was over it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, And the cloud lifted up and Moses was called by God into the tent of meeting and God starts talking to him.”

Moses Is Summoned Into the Tabernacle

What does it mean Moses was called by God, summoned by God? This is what it means. Moses could not enter the tabernacle, even though he was a Levite, but he was not a priest. And Aaron was a priest, the chief priest and the sons of Aaron were priest. They could enter into the tabernacle at will, but Moses could not and that’s why the book of Leviticus starts, God summoned Moses, called Moses, come in talk to me. And he gives him instructions,

Now, this to us is a curious text. Why? Because God is initiating the service in the tabernacle and they just finished building the tabernacle. The last portion of the book of Exodus is an accounting, a report of all the work and all the workers and all the furniture and all the instruments and the structure of the tabernacle. Kind of a bookkeeper’s report. It is the end of the book of Exodus, and now the Tabernacle is finished.

The cloud is above it by day and the pillar of fire by night and they’re beginning to continue their journey after the time they spent around Mount Sinai approximately around two years from the time that they arrived at Mount Sinai and then they got purified and then they received the law and then they had the golden calf. And then they had the golden calf before receiving the law and then they received the law and then they were commanded to build a tabernacle and that took them time. So now they’re ready to move on but God is giving them instructions of how to worship, what kind of animals to use for the sacrifices.

Sacrifice Is a Human Phenomenon

Now, sacrificing to God is a human phenomenon. There is no ancient religion in Asia, in the Middle East, in North America, Central America, South America, Africa, the Aboriginal in Australia, the Maoris in new New Zealand, all the ancient peoples understood internally, innately that a relationship with God or even with gods requires sacrifice. Some of them like our neighbors on the other side of the Jordan that worshiped Moloch, sacrificed their own children to Moloch. The Indians in what is today’s Mexico sacrificed their young maidens to their gods. People sacrificed animals, people sacrificed gold, silver, precious materials. Sacrifices are a natural response to divinity. Even if you believe in idols like the river god in Egypt, the god of the Nile, they sacrificed to him. Why? Because the desire of the human being that is dealing with something that is out of his control, the gods were out of their control, is to appease those gods, to please them, to give them gifts that way the idea was that those gods are not going to show their anger on the people.

You sacrifice to the Nile god hoping that the Nile will act normally and at the right time you will have the rising of the Nile. And at the right time, it will not flood the fields and destroy the crop and cause havoc to human beings and to their economy. If you lived in Northern Israel or in Israel altogether, one of the chief gods was the god Baal that we hear Amos, Hosea, and all the prophets speaking against, against Baal and the worship of Baal.

An Israelite Temple With Pagan Idols

Something very interesting that is very very new and recent. They built a train, a fast train to go from Jerusalem to the airport near biblical Lydda and from Lydda on to Tel Aviv and from Tel Aviv north all the way to Nahariyya and on to the Lebanese border. In order to span a valley, a very interesting valley just in front of my house actually, they built a bridge, a huge bridge for that train to go on. Well, when they were building the bridge, and this happens very very often in the land of Israel, they had to dig, when they dug, they found archeology. Archeology dating to the days of the kings of Judea, Hezekiah, Ahaz, actually from the days of Ahaz, even before Hezekiah.

They found a temple, an Israelite temple, not a Canaanite temple, an Israelite temple that had all the trappings of an Israelite temple. We are talking a temple that was outside of Jerusalem let’s say eight miles from Jerusalem, and eight miles from the temple that Solomon built. So there was an alternative temple. And in that temple, they had eclectic gods worshiped. In that temple, besides the God of Israel, beside Jehovah the God of Israel, they found statues of Baal, statues of Asherah, of all the Canaanite gods that were worshiped by our neighbors, and that were forbidden by God in the Torah, but they also found alters and they found the holy of holies and they found a structure very similar to the one that Solomon built on the hill of the threshing fields of Araunah that David bought from them, from the Jebusite, Araunah. Syncretism still exists.

It exists in Judaism, it exists in Christianity. It exists in most religious groups because the environment and the surrounding and the culture of your neighbors and your co-neighbors that live within your camp, influences you. And so it’s very interesting that they’ve found the temple, Israelite temple with pagan idols in it. By the way, when they dug in the old city in the Jewish quarter and they dug the house, that is called the house of the high priest or the house of one of the princes of the Hasmonean kingdom of Judah, they found in the house of the high priest, household gods, idols.

So yes, the book of Leviticus came to arrange and control and instruct on how to worship God in the tabernacle, or later in the temple. But it has a lot of very important principles. And the first thing that we learned from it, is you’re not gonna sacrifice human beings. You can sacrifice from the beef, from the sheep, from the goats, from the birds, doves, you know that when Mary and Joseph came to dedicate baby Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem in Luke chapter two, they didn’t bring a sheep or a goat or a bull or a cow. They brought two turtle doves.

God Looks at Us in Relative Terms

What does that tell us about God’s relationship to worship and to sacrifice. Are we going to see it in chapter five in our section? God looks at us differentially. He looks at us in our worship, not in absolute terms but in relative terms. And in our portion in chapter five of Leviticus still within the reading of Shabbat, next Shabbat, we find out that if you’re rich and you sin, you have to bring a bull, heavy, expensive, a lot of meat. If you are not so rich, you can bring a goat or a sheep. For the same sin, you can bring a goat or a sheep. If you are not middle class, lower social economic class you can bring two turtle doves. But if you’re a poor of the poor, all you have to bring is a handful of meal, wheat flour, anointed with oil and that will atone for you as much as the bull will atone for the rich person.

I love this folks, because religion, and that’s true for modern Judaism, and it’s true for modern Christianity, wants to look at everything in absolute terms, but God doesn’t. God doesn’t look in absolute terms. He looks at us relatively and we have the story in the gospel of Luke of two people that go to the temple and want to contribute. A Pharisee comes and contributes a thousand denarii which is a lot of money. It’s a thousand days wages. Three years wages he contributes in the temple, he’s rich. No problem. An old widow comes and contributes two pennies. Two. Two widow's mites, we call those today. We buy them from the stores that sell archeological things, real things, you can buy them today, each is about $80. A real thing, the real coin that the widow gave.

Each one today is $80, in good shape, museum quality shape coin, authentic with a certificate but this widow gave two, two pennies, and Yeshua asks who gave more. The answer is the widow gave more because that’s all she had. That’s all she had, she gave everything she had. The rich Pharisee gave from a surplus, relative appreciation of each individual by the Lord, God, creator of the universe, is something that is important for us to know. Religion tends to see everything in black and white but not the New Testament, not Yeshua.

And we, as the disciples today in the 21st century also ought to look at our brothers and our sisters in the same differential way, relatively, because we can’t require the same thing from the poor in our congregations. As we, the holy spirit should require from the rich, we don’t require anything in our congregation. We leave it up to the people themselves as individuals, to decide. We very seldom talk about money. We only once a year, we talk about money when we read the portion of contribution in the book of Exodus when they’re taking the contribution for the tabernacle. That’s the only time that we talk about collection. We never mention it. We don’t pass a plate. We don’t have a box. Why don’t we do it? We don’t do it because of the teaching of Yeshua. Yeshua said, when you give money in the temple or in the synagogue, give it in secret. Don’t blow the trumpet and say, I’m coming now to give a contribution.

I gave so much to the Lord, I gave so much to the church, I gave so much to the synagogue, no.

Believe in Yeshua and Believe Yeshua

We need to take the words of Yeshua seriously to believe in Yeshua is good and important but it’s more important to believe Yeshua, what he instructed us to do, how he instructed us to live. It is more important to believe in him. Yeah, to believe in Him and then to ignore what He teaches, to ignore his commandments is not good. We read the first letter of John. We have the gospel of John, we have three letters from John. The first letter of John he says, if you don’t keep his commandments, no good.

Yes, and Yeshua said go into all the world to make disciple, teaching them to observe all things which I have commanded you. So evangelists and missionaries that go around and teach people about Yeshua. Very seldom, if ever have I heard the foreign missionary in Israel teach people that they have to keep the commandments of Yeshua, of Jesus, the commandments of the apostles. We have plenty of commandments. And the truth is that we must believe in Yeshua, in Jesus, and we must believe Jesus. Whatever he told us, whatever he taught us, whatever he commanded has to do.

Why Did God Command Sacrifices?

So all over the world, human beings that have gods have deities, sacrifice. Sometimes sacrifice human beings, sometimes sacrifice their own sons and daughters. Maimonides is one of the great rabbis that lived in the 12th century in Spain. Most of his life in Spain. Moses Maimonides asked this question in a book called “The Guide to the Perplexed.” Why did God command us to do these sacrifices? With intricate instructions in the book of Leviticus, we’re going to still see it, of how to do the birds, to pluck their feathers, to clean them, to open them. What to do with the liver, what to do with the kidneys what to do with, oh, these laborious commands of how to do the sacrifices in the tabernacle.

But Maimonides asked why, why did God need that? Because we have text both in the New Testament and in the Old Testament that says, God doesn’t need these sacrifices. We’re not doing it for God. God doesn’t eat roasted meat on the grill, on the altar. So why, Isaiah chapter one says these things, the most crucial one is Jeremiah chapter 7:21-23 that God says, I didn’t command your forefathers when I took them out of Egypt to sacrifice. I don’t need those sacrifices. I don’t want those sacrifices. What I really want is for you to listen to me, to have a relationship, to hear what I say, to take me seriously, that’s what I really want. God says in Jeremiah chapter seven, same thing in Hosea 6:6 says, “I require mercy more than sacrifice.” Yep. God is not an idol so why did God command the whole 13 chapters of the book of Leviticus?

Almost half the book of Leviticus is dealing with sacrifices. The Levitical code is here. That’s why it’s called Leviticus in Greek. So why did he command us to sacrifice? Maimonides says because he knew our nature and we were gonna see what our neighbors were doing and we would wanna do the same as they do because the environment is a very powerful thing and it decides the consciousness. And that’s why bad friends corrupt our children and good friends encourage our children. That’s why the environment that we are living in, can sometimes not a hundred percent true, but I would say most of the time can influence our families.

So for this, Maimonides says God gave them a pure, controlled, dictated by divine will form of worship, similar to their neighbors, even our temple that Solomon designed with Lebanese workers, 50,000 workers in Jerusalem, Lebanese workers. A lot of people that came from Lebanon and built the temple of Solomon and all of its furnishings and everything, the architecture was very similar to the architecture in Tyre in Lebanon. The architecture of the temple of Jerusalem is not unique to the Hebrew nation and it’s not unique to the Hebrew God. God gave us something similar.

Not exactly, but very similar so that we don’t go around and do what those people that built under the train tracks, under the bridge of the train in the valley of the oaks. No, the valley of the Cedar, that’s the name of the valley in front of my house where that archeological dig is still going on with that Israelite temple with pagan idols in it as well. Yes, so that we don’t copy what the pagans do, God gave us an orderly, systematic, godly code of the tabernacle of the temple and the priesthood and what they have to do and what they shouldn’t do.

We Ought to Want to Sacrifice for God

This is very very important for us to understand dear brothers and sisters. And I’m not going to get into the details of how to sacrifice, how to slaughter the cow, the beef, how to slaughter the turtle doves, how to put the wood on the altar, all these details I’m not going to get into ‘cause they’re not relevant for us but what is relevant for us and this I summarize is that, yes, we by nature ought to want to sacrifice for God. We ought to want to share our moments of joy and our moments of sorrow, our moments of riches and our moments of lack. We want to share them with God because it pleases God.

The joy of the Lord is your strength. We read in Nehemiah. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Yes, it’s true. When we sorrow, when we are sad about our own actions and about our own sins and about the sins of our countries and the sins of our communities, it makes God happy because it makes him see how much we care about what is good, what is true and what is right and what is pure and what is beneficial to ourselves and to the next generations in his name. In the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So yes, read the book of Leviticus. Read from chapter one to chapter six and follow these ideas that I shared with you. God bless all of you and strengthen you in Yeshua’s name, amen.