Leviticus episode 7 - Why Humanity Needs A High Priest To Stand Before A Holy God

Holiness isn’t a soft glow. It’s a blazing reality that exposes our best masks and raises a hard question: who can stand? We open Leviticus 22 and follow its thread through the strict life of priests, the demand for perfect sacrifices, and the aching human desire to be forgiven for the one thing you’d rather never name. Along the way, we confront the limits of sincerity and spiritual effort and uncover the deeper solution: a perfect priest and a spotless offering we could never produce on our own.

With Richard Bewes, Dr Paul Blackham, and Rev Joseph Steinberg, the conversation moves from ancient symbols to living substance. Levitical priests were signposts, not saviours, pointing ahead to Jesus whose zeal for the Father’s house and compassion for the unclean fulfil the law’s deepest intent. When he touches a leper and purity flows outward, we glimpse holiness not as isolation but as life that defeats decay. Treating sin like a deadly contagion makes sense of the law’s rigour and explains why the sacrifice had to be without defect: only a flawless substitute could bear guilt and share innocence.

Hope comes into focus through the new covenant promise that sins will be remembered no more. Not just pardoned on paper, but carried away beyond reach. That’s why the torn curtain matters: access is open, and the priesthood of all believers begins. We now carry God’s presence into ordinary places, representing him with prayer, truth, and compassion. If you’ve ever wondered whether forgiveness can be both morally serious and emotionally freeing, this conversation offers a bridge: from symbols to substance, from distance to welcome, from fear to a durable joy.

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Transcript

Setting The Scene At Sandown Park

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Hey, book by book, it's a delight for us to come and share with you in this study. Now I'm joined here, I'm Richard Bughes. I'm joined here by Paul Blackham, the Dr. Paul Blackham, who lives in London. And I'm also joined by the Reverend Joseph Steinberg, who's uh from Oxford, working with the Church Mission Society, and he's an American, he's from Miami in Florida. And we're going to just do some studies together, but we'd like you to share in it as well. We're joined, as you can see, by a few friends here as well. And where are we? We're in the beautiful surroundings of Sandown Park in Surrey, England.

Why Humanity Needs A Priest

SPEAKER_01 1:05

So let's now have a look at the book of Leviticus. It's a terrific book. We're enjoying this series of studies very much. And as we come now to this number seven, off we go with Leviticus chapter 22. Let me read just a few verses from this. The Lord said to Moses, Tell Aaron and his sons to treat with respect the sacred offerings the Israelites consecrate to me, so that they will not profane my holy name. I am the Lord. Say to them, for the generations to come, if any of your descendants is ceremonially unclean and yet comes near the sacred offerings that the Israelites consecrate to the Lord, that person must be cut off from my presence. I am the Lord. This is a solemn matter about the priesthood. And Joseph, I'll start with you because you've got this Jewish background from which you come. Why does the human race itself desperately need a priest before the living God?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

The reason we need a priest is because God is so holy. We see this as we read Leviticus. And it's so easy to actually have a view of God as we go through and we compare our lives to the world around us, and we begin to have a view of God as just a sort of loving sort of Santa Claus, Father Christmas sitting there saying, Well, they're kids, it's okay. But in fact, we also have a notion of justice when things go wrong and we want to see right done. And I think that's closer to God. In fact, it God is even much further along than that. And one of the earlier studies, we looked at the burnt offering. And I think the burnt offering is very much a symbol of God's all-consuming holiness and that it consumes, it's burnt up. The whole offering is burnt up because God's holiness is like a consuming fire. Um, it's sort of in the same way, when you turn a light on, darkness disappears. So when we as unholy people stand before God, in a sense, we were nearly annihilated in a sense. We're just, we cannot stand there. It's like the light coming on. And so when I read Leviticus and I look at my own life, I've got to say I a hopeless sinking depression comes over me uh because I understand what an what a terrible person I am, to be honest with you. I might sit in a in a in a seat as a reverend, but I'm just a terrible sinner. And uh and I loathe myself in the light of God's truth. So what hope do I have? The only confidence that I have is in a mediator, a priest that God has given to us, the great high priest, in fact. And uh the picture in Leviticus is really nothing more than a symbol in the end of what God was going to do in the person of Jesus. And I've mentioned this in past studies,

Holiness As Consuming Fire

SPEAKER_00 3:40

but Hebrews chapter 10, verse 12 talks about this once-and-for-all-time sacrifice, this great high priest who, once he made that once-and-for-all-time offering, was able to sit down at the right hand of the Father. And it's so important to understand the role of the priest because he is the one in whom we hope. He is the one in whom who brings us to God so that we can have this restored relationship and brings God to us and he mediates our presence together so that we can again enjoy the fellowship of the living God in the way we were meant to. And Jesus is the one who does that.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

They they did a survey in one of the countries of the Middle East as to what do you want more than anything else in life? And across the board, the answer was forgiveness. More than success, more than things like that, forgiveness, forgiveness. And that is seems to be a general thing right across the the board. Absolutely. But when we think then about these priests of the uh of the Leviticus, um this whole tradition that was raised up by God, they these priests had to live lives of extraordinary dedication and commitment. And we must ask why was that actually necessary?

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Well, we've seen the the seriousness of the job. And that if you I mean, sometimes when people say um, well, I I hope I'll be okay when I stand before the living God, I mean, you think, well, would you do would you stand in front of a truck going a hundred, a tenton truck going a hundred miles an hour? You've got more chance of survival doing that than you have of standing before this living God. Desperately need this priest. And this job, these Levitical priests, because they were pictures of the priest.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Only pictures.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Only pictures. In a sense, they're actors playing a role. Who's what what's the role they're playing? The role of the Messiah who comes. Now, they the fact that their lives are so um committed and dedicated and uh the the home life, every part of their life is regimented as a life of total dedication. It's telling us so much about what it would require of the one who really stands between the holy God and civil humanity. He he has to be someone so extraordinary and so dedicated and 100% perfect and committed. And so it always makes me think when I read all this about the the way in which the Lord God demands this incredible sanctification and dedication from these Levitical priests. I always actually think about John 2. And when the disciples see Jesus and see how passionate he is for the temple, for instance, and he goes to the temple and the people aren't treating it seriously enough, and he drives them all out, and then they say, the disciples remembered uh what it said with a prophecy about Jesus that it said um, zeal for your house will consume me. And they saw, wow, this man, Jesus, no one is as zealous for the living God and dedicated as he is. And that's true. So when we look at this, we think, wow, if they were dedicated, but even their dedication pales compared to him.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, of what exactly. And actually, if you go further and say that there are quite heavy restrictions as to who could be a priest. For example, there were to be no uh physical defects in them. That sounds a little

Dedication And Limits Of Priests

SPEAKER_01 6:50

bit harsh, do you think?

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Well, if we understand what Paul's saying, that the priests were a symbol of the great high priest who was to be, in a sense, a symbol of sinless perfection, then of course they had to be perfect. They had to be different. And if we understand again the context of the book. Yeah. You have again the understanding the world is that which is unclean, clean, and then holy. Israel wasn't holy, the priests were holy, something set apart, sanctified, something holy unto God, then we understand that. And you know, what also reminds us again of the way God did not design the world to have disease, to have decay, to have death, and how he hates these things. And again, thinking of the life of Jesus, one of the things that struck me when I was reading the Gospel of Matthew for the first time, when I was still not yet a believer in Jesus, but seeking, was, you know, understanding, having read Leviticus in the context of the uh the leper being unclean, seeing Jesus and how he dealt with a leper, because if I was the Messiah and I saw a leper, I would say, hey, you leper over there, be healed, and then I would be able to come into contact with him because he was no longer a leper. But in fact, Jesus goes over and he lays his hands on the leper and heals the leper. And that to me shows uh a number of things. It shows that God hates disease, he hates decay, he hates death, but that the power of God is greater than the power of sin and death. So Jesus is this amazing symbol, this high priest who was holy other than, and God hates these things so much so that ultimately he will eradicate them. He will bring in his new creation, he is totally committed to that.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

All this again and again is pointing to Jesus. Paul Blackham, when we think about these priests, for them uncleanness was a life-threatening danger. Why is the Lord so strong about this?

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Well, that's right. If they uh had become unclean and then wandered into the Lord's presence from uncleanness to holiness, death, why is it like that? Because of the how passionate the Lord gone, as Joseph was saying, how passionate he is against uh death and disease and sin and corruption. And I always think about the example, I remember someone who worked in uh tropical medicine and they would study these really severe tropical diseases, very, very infectious. And they told me the sort of regime they had about going in and out of the room in which these diseases were kept, and they had to go into a room and they had to shower uh and then go through another room and be why and I might have thought, oh yeah, what's the point? You know, just just go just you know come out the room and go home. They dare not, because the things, the diseases in that room would have would have could have killed thousands and thousands of people.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

It's a very good analogy, because I mean I've been in hospital fairly recently, which is why I'm still trying to fatten up a bit, you know. And uh the care that they took over sterilization, yeah, the nurses, the doctors, you know, the masks, all of that. Um and uh so that's a wonderful analogy, actually. I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

The Lord God is saying, look, this sin has to be handled as if it was the worst poison or the worst disease ever. And it makes us realize that it is like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

But then, Joseph, if the you know, priests had to be perfect, then apparently so do the sacrifices. That's right. I would like to ask, why did the sacrifices have to be perfect if in fact they were only going to be killed anyway?

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Well, again, it's all in the power of the symbol. These sacrifices, um, we're reminded again in Hebrews, the blood of bulls and

Jesus’ Zeal And True Priesthood

SPEAKER_00 10:20

goats could never take away sin, but they were foreshadowing, they were a picture of what was to come in the person of Jesus. If Jesus had had any guilt, any sin in his life, he would not have been able to offer himself. So these were symbols of sinless perfection. And again, just to remind everyone, you know, the substitute was brought, the symbol of sinless perfection was brought. Hands were laid on the animal's head as an act of identification. What were they identifying? Their sin onto the animal, but also the animal's sinlessness onto themselves. So they were being clothed in a sense, symbolically, in that sinlessness that was. Yeah, and so then there was the death and the exchange of life. And so so this animal had to be this perfect symbol. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

I mean, sometimes people, well, we modern people often lose sight of these very profound truths revealed through the priests and the sacrifices. Why is it important then, here in Leviticus, which many people ignore, to keep these themes in our thinking and in and in our preaching as well, and in our Bible studies and so forth, Paul?

SPEAKER_02 11:21

Well, I think it is because these are fundamental truths. And I think um people take I mean, for instance, some people think sincerity's enough to you know, the pro the if if we're sincere uh towards God and maybe, you know, we um go on a retreat or or I don't know, p have some meditation time, as long as I'm sincere, that'll sort out the problem with God. Or other people might not think, they might say, no, no, what's needed is lots of religion. I need lots of rules, I need lots of rituals, that'll sort it out. What we come back to, and we think, why do I need to go and understand all this complexity about priests and their dedication and blood and and because the fundamental reality, the real solution to the human condition, the problem of life, the universe, death, everything is found not through our initiative or our sincerity or our religion, but what we do need is this perfect priest which we cannot produce ourselves, and a perfect sacrifice that we cannot ever produce ourselves. We need to understand these fundamental, profound truths that lie at the at the depths of our being. And I think when we do grasp them, there is a we sort of know this is the answer in our hearts. We know that these other things are not adequate, that it required the blood of God to cleanse the universe.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

And and more than that, it actually is the basis on which we have a hope. Yeah. Otherwise, we go through life with this heavy cloud. If we understand these things, we we actually bec understand we're in a hopeless situation. But we have this great high priest who gives us this incredible hope that that makes life worth living, makes God's love worth sharing, because we know that we have this future where he will return. There is a man in heaven, but he will return and set up his eternal kingdom, and it will be a wonderful kingdom without death, disease, decay. All these wonderful things will will be here forever, and all the horrible things will be gone. We will all be holy.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah, and of course, the that that future covenant that was to be when uh the Lord prophesies, gives us that

Disease, Purity, And The Leper

SPEAKER_01 13:30

prophecy through Jeremiah chapter 31. It's about verse 34. For I will forgive their sins, and their iniquity I will remember no more. Their sins I will remember no more. Which prompts me then to ask myself, you know, what's the worst thing you ever did? What's the worst thing you ever did? You can't talk to anybody else about. And God says, because of what's been done in the priesthood of Jesus, that thing will be forgiven. Not only forgiven, but forgotten. He somehow buries it into the sea of his forgetfulness.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

The psalmist says, I cast the sins away from as far as the east as from the west. That's right. You can't get any further than that.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

So we might say, you know, to the Lord, look, Lord, you remember that awful thing I did. But I have come to Christ about it through his blood and through the priesthood. He says, That thing, what is it? I don't remember. I don't remember. That's the biggest miracle of the Bible. Yeah. Pretty much so. Just as we close off, I mean, what about the priesthood of believers that we find in like in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse, it's about verse 9. You know, you are a holy nation, holy priesthood, to declare the wonderful works of him who called you. Either of you want to speak about that?

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Well, again, it's that when Jesus died, um, the curtain in the temple was torn. We'll be thinking a little bit more about that in some coming studies, too. But the the whole schematic, in a sense, changed in in many ways from the nations being unclean to Israel being clean and the priests being holy, to all of us through this great high priest being priests, being holy, set apart, sanctified. Now we represent God to the world. Now the glory of God is going to all the nations. And it's a wonderful community thing again that we've been talking about in previous studies. We are all priests. We've gone even beyond that of Israel, which was clean. Now we're priests. It's a marvelous thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

As we find as we stop then, uh there's I was uh born in Kenya, and I remember a little place that we used to go to called Darasha Yangai. That's Kikuyu. It means the bridge of God, God's bridge. It was a little natural bridge that had been created by the erosion of uh by wind and rain. And so the locals called it in the uh sort of animistic past uh God's bridge, Darasha Yangai. And I think of Jesus as being God's bridge, he conveys us right into the very presence. But then also we, if we are following him and as uh ourselves being called to be priests in that sense, then we're also doing the priestly work when we share with others the wonderful things of God. When we do that, we're being priests too, in some small measure, following him who is the great high priest overall. Thanks for joining us. We'll be right back another time.