The book of Leviticus contains many rules and regulations, but the vast majority of them have little to do with what we would call personal morality. These rules and regulations have much more to do with liturgical acts of worship. Clearly, God instructed the people of Israel with great care and detail about how they should worship Him.

For example, the first chapter of Leviticus describes how the burnt offering was to be carefully prepared. The next six chapters then describe the guilt offering, the fellowship offering, and the sin offering. The whole book of Leviticus centres on chapter 16 in which God instructed Israel about how to celebrate the great Day of Atonement. The last chapters (23-25) are devoted to various instructions about the great feasts.

To be sure, there are chapters in Leviticus that deal with personal morality (notably chapters 19 and 20), but there is much more instruction on how to worship than on how to live. If one were to weigh all the material in the book of Exodus, he would discover a similar pattern.

This pattern would suggest to us a couple of things. First, when God renewed the covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai, while it was very important to God to instruct his people on how they should live as a holy people from day to day, it was even more important for God to instruct them on how they should worship Him at the Tent of Meeting. A second conclusion that we can draw from this pattern is that how we should live as believers is a much simpler matter than how we should worship God.

Now, we do know that the two principles of life and worship must never be separated. God hates it when his people are scrupulous about observing the formal details of worship, but then give no effort in fighting against sin in their personal lives. For instance, this is the reason why God said such shocking words though the prophet Isaiah,

The multitude of your sacrifices – what are they to me? says the Lord. I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals... Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations – I cannot bear your evil assemblies.Isaiah 1:11, 13

God consistently teaches us that when formal worship is pursued while personal morality is neglected, proper worship will fail because it is built on hypocrisy.

However, the other side of this matter must not be ignored. Today there are many who believe that it is very important that we show reverence to God by being morally pure. And moral purity is, of course, good and fitting for Christians. But sometimes people think very little about how the church should worship God. Some may even despise the official, liturgical act of worship within the church.

The idea that organized religion is contrary to pure spirituality is quite strong among some Christians. Support for this viewpoint is sought in the words of the Lord Jesus to the Samaritan woman when He said,

God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.John 4:24

This text is interpreted by some people to mean that now we need to cut our worship services loose from regulations on how to worship. Instead, the thinking goes, let our worship services be spontaneous, free, and spiritual!

This is improper. The regulations of Leviticus are spiritual and true, for also this book was inspired by the Holy Spirit; and, what is more, the God who spoke through Moses is the same God who speaks through Jesus Christ. The Lord still cares deeply about how we worship! Thus we are challenged to discover how Christ has fulfilled the law so that the spirit and truth contained in the instructions on liturgical worship might be observed by us.

May believers everywhere think carefully about the church and may we worship God in her! And may the Christian church also reflect carefully on God’s instructions for worship, knowing that it is a matter of great concern to Him.