• : Leviticus Chapters 12,
• 16
• 18
• Ritual after Childbirth
• The
• Day of Atonement
• Laws of Sexual Morality
• General Morality Laws
• Key Verses and Themes
• Chapter 12
• Circumcision & 2 Doves:

Lev. 12:3, 8

A reminder of the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham is given when we read that boys are to be circumcised on the 8th day after birth. Here we read that there is a purification process after childbirth, which involves a sacrifice, and if a woman is poor, she can offer 2 doves instead of a the more expensive lamb & dove for her baby. See the NT reference for why we read this short chapter.

• Chapter 16
• Scapegoat

Lev. 16:8-10

Two goats are chosen by lots for the Day of Atonement; one is sacrificed, and the other is the “scapegoat”, released into the wilderness. Atonement means “reparation for an offense or injury”, in this case atoning for sin.

• Chapter 18
• Laws of sexual morality:

Lev. 18:6-23

Laws against having sexual relations with relatives, the same-sex, animals, half-siblings, etc, and how abominable they are to God.

• Child sacrifice to Moloch:
• Lev. 18:21

Moloch is a pagan god (demon) whose worship involves infant/child sacrifice.

• Homosexuality is an abomination:
• Lev. 18:22

In the present day, this includes any and all acts of

• sodomy

, even within marriage.

The podcast episode below discusses this even further.

• Bestiality is perversion:
• Lev. 18:23

Self-explanatory.

• Chapter 19

See discussion questions for a full chapter breakdown.

References to the New Testament & our Church practices

• Circumcision & 2 Doves

Luke 2:21, 24

The fact that Jesus was circumcised shows that He was not opposed to the Law, which the Pharisees often falsely accused Him of being, and the Virgin Mary offering 2 doves proves Mary’s poverty. See how Christ humbled Himself in every possible way for our salvation!

• Day of Atonement
• Hebrews 10:10

See discussion questions.

• Laws of sexual morality

1 Corinthians 5

See the discussion questions for what St. Paul writes about this EXTREMELY RELEVANT & IMPORTANT TOPIC!

• Discussion Questions

Leviticus 12

Does the 40 & 80 day waiting period from this chapter tie into today in the Church where women have to wait 40 days to take the Eucharist after giving birth?

• Yes, it is related to this. Remember from

Genesis 3:16

that God said to the woman “I will sharply increase your pain in childbirth; in pain you will bring forth children”, which was a consequence of sin.

Particularly before this century, women would give birth at home, and go through a “

churching

” process, in which after childbirth, they are still recovering, bleeding, weakened, etc. And so the Church, ever so alert as to remind its children of sin, kept this 40-day waiting period to remind us of the sin that caused this painful birthing process in the first place. Important to note the Church does not strictly keep to 40 days, if it’s a few days more or less, they will pray on the mom and administer the Eucharist still. That prayer is a blessing to the new mother,

• who acts as a mini-Church

, raising her child to be a faithful Christian!!!

In the OT, why did boys have 40 days and girls 80 days? Because the girl would eventually develop her own reproductive system and have monthly periods; girls who started puberty would thus leave serving the temple as virgins, but boys would never have that process. One other point is that boys had that milestone of circumcision on day 8, where as girls did not, but the Church Fathers are silent on this…meaning it’s not significant.

• AFTER READING CHAPTER 12

***What’s in the other chapters?***

Remembering that Week 1 ended with God telling Moses and the priests to distinguish between Holy & unholy, Clean & unclean,

• Chapter 11-

Law on Clean & Unclean Animals:

Which animals can be eaten with specific criteria. Touching animal carcasses made someone unclean too.

• Chapter 13-

Law on Leprosy:

Determining what the severity of each case of leprosy is, which a priest must determine. A leper had to show himself to the priest. Lepers had to be put outside the camp, and yell from afar, “unclean, unclean!”.

• Chapter 14-

Law on cleansing Leprosy:

Outlining the process on how to clean leprosy, again the priest must be involved in cleansing the person or household.

• Chapter 15-

Law on bodily discharge:

Outlining how semen, menstrual periods, and any unusual bodily discharge makes men/women unclean, and the process for purifying, again through the priest.

• Leviticus 16

What’s going on in this chapter?

God is giving Moses instructions to pass onto the High Priest, Aaron, regarding how Aaron is to enter the Most Holy Place /Holy of Holies, which is where the Ark of the Covenant was (see graphic from Exodus Week 6).

The instructions were about the Day of Atonement, which was once a year, where Aaron

(and later high priests)

would do what is described in the chapter, namely the bull, ram, & goat offerings, as well as the process with the scapegoat.

THE DAY OF ATONEMENT:

God said the Day of Atonement was to be an everlasting statute in v.29 & 34, so why don’t we do this anymore?

Obviously, since Christ, who is the reality of the shadow that was the Day of Atonement, fulfilled this. We’ll see the direct comparison in Hebrews chapter 9, but first:

• 2 Goats:

Goat 1

was to be sacrificed as a sin offering, and its blood would be sprinkled on the Ark’s Mercy/Atonement seat

• (the cover)

as well as elsewhere.

• Goat 2
• was referred to as the

, which Aaron was to “lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task.”

v.21

So one goat is slain, and one goat has all the people’s sins transferred to it, and is let go, and the entirety of Israel is cleansed this way, via the service of the high priest…

We established earlier that we don’t do this anymore because of Christ’s death on the cross (

• and resurrection

and the Qurbana we now have.

Well, how does Christ’s self-sacrifice on the Cross fulfill the shadow of this Day of Atonement? Let’s look at both goats,

Goat 1

: Was slain, blood was used by the high priest to enter the Holy of Holies (God’s presence).

Christ:

Was crucified, His sinless, righteous blood was used by the high priest (Himself) to enter man’s flesh into the Kingdom of Heaven (God’s presence), that is, when He ascended 40 days after the resurrection (Ascension).

Goat 2:

High priest transferred all sins of the people to it, it was let go into wilderness, outside of camp.

Christ:

Voluntarily, as high priest, bore the sins of mankind, crucified outside of Jerusalem, i.e. outside the camp.

So Christ fulfills the shadow of this part of the Law too, in that His passion covered both aspects that the 2 goats did— death and bearing away sin.

So technically this everlasting ordinance still sort of exists, it’s just been fulfilled in its actuality by Christ Jesus.

• Fasting:
• Why did the Israelites have to not work &
• afflict/deny

themselves this day?

The Aramaic translation is more true to the meaning of the text, because it says instead to

• "vanquish/destroy”
• yourselves instead of

afflict.

Does that mean to hurt yourself? No, but think of it closer to humbling yourself, and as mentioned before, through you do that through prayer AND fasting. Prayer so that we acknowledge and admit our constant dependence on God and His grace, and our weaknesses and sins, and fasting to humble said flesh that is weak and in sin, showing our faith through the work of fasting, so that God in His grace, shows us His mercies. Destroying yourself is almost like denying yourself, which is what Rabi preached last Friday regarding taking up Your Cross. Christianity is all about this; it’s not a religion of physical comfort.

That being said, so too we fast in the weeks leading up to Easter Resurrection Day, which recalls that great Day of Atonement that Christ performed in His sacrifice, which is once and for all! (

Hebrews 10:10

). So we no longer have a Day of Atonement; that occurred 1992 years ago in ~33 A.D. Instead, we have a remembrance of it when we celebrate the Liturgy.

• Leviticus 18
• Laws of sexual morality St. Paul:

How serious is this sin of sexual immorality?

These types of sins, referred to as abominable by God, truly are so. This was so bad, that St. Paul is embarrassed in his writing about it that he mentions the pagans to display how low down it is.

He, being afar but not willing to wait to arrive in Corinth after a journey, passes judgement in the name and power of Jesus Christ, so that the Corinthians would act immediately and remove this person from among them.

• What does he mean by “deliver them to Satan…” in

v.5?

He means to cast them out of the Church and into the world, meaning away from God and into separation from Him, which is what Hell is and what Satan stands for, separation for God, so that he can suffer the hardships that will come from it, and yearn again for God, learning to fear God and then repent and once again be apart of the Church.

• v.29

shows the Israelites who did this were also to be cut off from the people.

So this serves a few purposes.

Removing the old leaven

: Leaven, as we learned from Exodus, can stand in for sin, and by removing this person, the Corinthians would remove sin from among them, preventing being corrupted by it, like how a little leaven/yeast makes all the bread rise. Also, it would teach the Corinthians that they are to blame as a whole, for not correcting this sin to teach others to fear God, and for preventing the man himself from repenting!

• Correcting the sinner:

Allows that person to be led to repentance as mentioned above.

• St. Paul confirms in

vv.9-12

that people in this sin should be put out of the Church i.e. shunned, TO REPENT,

NOT SHUNNED IN THE PROCESS OF REPENTANCE

, mentioning also that he has no business to judge people who don’t believe. That does not mean St. Paul does not care about unbelievers; he does, instead, he is telling us to correct and discipline ourselves within the Church, because we ARE believers. If someone, gently and in love, comes to rebuke you on something, they are “following their Scriptures”. They are actually risking a lot, i.e., your possible bad reaction, losing your friendship, having you spread word about what you did, just to attempt to prevent you from being in error and sin. That’s love: That person is showing you love, because they’re sacrificing their own potential suffering to better YOUR soul! How much more in this generation, where a brother correcting his sister

on this subject

can be easily gossiped into being a pervert, or a sister correcting a brother can be called a b*tch or worse. We will further discuss how you correctly approach someone in Week 8.

So another lesson to take here is, for yourself and for others, do everything it takes to prevent lust and temptations, because here the sinner is instructed to be given over to Satan, and in

• Luke 17:1

says woe to someone who causes others to sin. Now a woe from Christ is a curse.

So do not be the sinner, nor the person causing others to sin; for both lead to death. That means in your social media posts, your clothing, your texting with others, your speech with others, any interaction with others, you MUST be constantly alert to avoid this.

Included in these sins is fornication, which is sex outside of marriage, which the accursed “hookup” culture has deceived mankind into thinking is normal. The Bible is abundantly clear that fornication is a deadly and abominable sin.

Matthew 15:19, 1 Corinthians 6:13, 18, 1 Thessalonians 4:3–5, Galatians 5:19–21, Ephesians 5:3, Hebrews 13:4.

• Leviticus 19

What are some of the important laws/ordinances given in this chapter?

• V.1-4

— Things echoed from the 10 commandments.

V.5-8

— Worship the Lord in free will, and uphold his commandments for how to worship & sacrifice.

V.9-10

— Don’t be greedy! We are taught to not be totally absorbed by profit but to share humanely with our neighbor, a.k.a. our fellow man. So countries, companies, and bosses who kill, harm, and otherwise hurt and bother people to maximize their GDP or profit margins are absent of love and are displeasing to the Lord.

V.11-13

— Outlaws cheating/stealing/lying/fraud. Honor laborers and pay fairly and on time. We are hirelings of our God,

• (The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard,

Matthew 20

looking for a reward of our labor, so if we deny a laborer’s pay in this life, God will deny us our pay in the next.

• V.14

— Do not take advantage of, nor bully, the disabled!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

V.15

— Be a fair judge, not favoring the poor because of their condition, nor favoring the rich because of theirs! Evil judges lack God’s justice and righteousness and thus let murders and rapists go free.

V.16

— NO GOSSIPING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also, do not be a bystander if your neighbor’s life is threatened.

V.17-18

— Do not hate your fellow man, nor bear grudges, nor plan vengeance, for vengeance is the Lord’s,

Romans 12:19

. Love your neighbor as yourself, which is 1 of the 2 things Christ says all the Law hangs upon. see

• Exod. Week 5
• V.19
• — Don’t mix animals, seeds, or
• materials.We

will discuss below, because it seems ridiculous at face value.

V.20-22

— Saying do not commit adultery. A concubine is a female slave, who would become free via her marriage.

V.23-25

— Offering the 1st fruits to God. Why the 4th year? For in the first 3 years, most fruit trees don’t bear much.

V.26

— Eating blood and fat was outlawed in the OT overall. Soothsaying and divination as well, see

• v.31
• V.27
• — Similar to
• v.19

about mixed fabrics; we discuss this in-depth down below.

V.28

— Outlawing changing your body or tattooing it for the dead. Why does it add, “for the dead”? Because pagans would disfigure themselves in rituals, like for the dead, and tattoo marks would accompany that. Does that mean tattoos are a sin/evil? Let’s examine.

What tattoo mark do you have? If it is something other than a Cross, family member’s name, or something simple like that, your conscience is already going to tell you it’s bad, don’t kid yourself!

But let’s say you have a cross or loved one’s name. Well, why get it? Is it to show off your faith or proclaim what you believe in? That is wrong, Christians are to be known by their good works (

Matthew 5:16

). If it’s a reminder to live for Christ, why get a tattoo instead of wearing a cross? Or if it’s for a loved one, does the tattoo Mark teach and remind you of love, or the Scriptures that tell you to lay down your life even for your friends

• (John 15:13),

which is to mean love means sacrificing at any level.

Is your tattoo somewhere where you have to show a lot of skin to see it? Then you lack modesty, and have to risk causing others to lust, in order to make your cross, heart, or name visible. What about how much the tattoo costs? Could that large sum of money not have been used to feed the homeless or help the Church, family, friends? What about the tattoo artist? Is that person an unbeliever, and someone who tattoos evil symbols or marks upon others? There are also health risks associated with tattoos. So while the Church will not condemn you to hell for getting a tattoo, it will admonish you for doing so, because there’s no good reason to get one.

V.29

— Pretty straightforward. Notice the word “cause” here. Many women are pushed into prostitution from a young age by older people and/or the conditions. How wretched are these poor souls!

• V.30
• — Similar to

v.3

, coming right after mentioning prostitution to put emphasis on avoiding Canaanite practices.

V.31

— Don’t try to know God’s will apart from how He chooses to reveal it. Rely on Scriptures, prayers, and the Church to help recognize His will. Mediums and spirits LITERALLY open the soul to demons. Those who claim they can summon the dead actually summon demons impersonating the dead.

V.32

— Yes, you should definitely stand up when an old person walks in out of respect! If this applies to them, do not be surprised that you are to stand when priests and bishops enter a room; they have the Sacrament of Priesthood and impart the power of the Holy Spirit!

V.33-34

— Essentially boils down to loving your neighbor as yourself. This does not mean those strangers could do whatever they wanted. He “shall be to you as one born among you…” meaning those strangers were subject to laws!

• V.35-36

— More on deceit. Dishonest scales are an abomination to God.

Proverbs 11:1.

This means any dishonest measurements.

V.37

— Observe AND PERFORM these statues, meaning they had to know AND DO THEM. Knowing Scripture means nothing if you don’t live by it. It’s actually significantly worse to know Scriptures and not live by them; we will discuss that in one of the later weeks in-depth!

Does Lev. 19:19 still apply to us today? What about all these OT laws in general?

No, because these laws were symbolic in meaning initially, though they did indeed have to be upheld. How do we know this? Because the law given here on not mixing wool and linen, i.e. fabrics, was already “broken” in

Exod.

28:6, 15; & 39:29

, because in those verses it describes using mixed fabrics for the priest’s garments.

The symbolic meaning to the Israelites was that every time they had to separate their plant seeds and clothing materials, they would remember they too were set apart from the rest of the nations, and that they had to live accordingly.

So the Church Fathers interpret mixed animals as to mean mixing Christians with non-Christians in worship, seeds as to mean mixed doctrines, like mixing the Word of God with worldly and pagan doctrines, or even mixed desires,

i.e.

spiritual and worldly things, virtues and vices. Mixed clothing stands in for appearing holy/righteous on the inside but being sinful within.

• Which brings us to

Mark 7:1-23

. Here, Christ shows us what does not necessarily need to be upheld from the Law anymore, and what still stands.

V.1-5

— The Pharisees would wash their hands up to their elbows before eating, which is not how they were instructed to wash, but was upholding a passed down tradition. They Pharisees were looking for something to ridicule Christ for, so they attacked His disciples regarding this, because they could not accuse the disciples for breaking the Law [of Moses].

V.6-13

— Christ rebukes the Jews, using Moses as their accuser, because they used tradition to accuse the disciples, and breaking Moses’s Law is worse than breaking man’s tradition. Notice how He did not say the traditions they had were necessarily bad, but that they abandoned God’s commandments

• in favor of the traditions

. The Pharisees used to teach children to dedicate their money to God

• (by gifting to the temple)

, and then if their parents asked for money, to say it is Qorban

(Qurbana⇒offering)

, and that their parents could not have it. Then the Pharisees would use the money for themselves while the kids ignored their parents’ needs.

V.14-23

— Christ then explains to us we are not to understand in a bodily, physical manner the rules of the law regarding food, which we apply here now to the mixed clothing verse. In

v.19

Christ makes all foods clean, which is why Christians do not have kosher/halal and non-kosher/haram foods like the false religions do. In

Vv.20-23

Christ explains what actually defiles a man, those evil things listed, which come from within someone.

So how do we know what OT laws “still apply” and which don’t? The type of sins listed in

V.21

are mentioned explicitly as evil in both the OT & NT; most are. With something like mixed fabrics, which the NT does not explicitly talk about, we know that what comes from within a man defiles him, so wearing a 50% cotton & 50% polyester t-shirt is not a sin!

So really to stress today’s main lessons, when you avoid sexual immorality, it’s preventing actions that we see on the outside, but it’s displaying your purity and faithfulness from the inside.

This Week's Study

Listen to Rabi's podcast episode on the proper Christian response to those suffering in the sin of homosexuality (LGBT).