With a group of friends, I am reading Sinclair Ferguson’s Devoted To God, a book about holiness and the ways in which God instructs us to be holy even as he is holy. In this week’s reading I found a helpful illustration of the Old Testament rites and ceremonies and thought you might benefit from it as I did. Ferguson describes them as acting like pop-up picture books…
The Lord unfolded it at first through liturgical rites and ceremonies prescribed in the law given to and expounded by Moses. Think of these as being like the pop-up picture books we give to and read with small children. They learn not only from words but also from pictures. The appeal is made to their senses: they hear the words; but they can also see and touch what these words express. In the same way the Lord built physical ceremonies and objects into old covenant life, which the people could hear, see, touch, and even smell. They experienced a multi-media expression of their sin and of God’s grace and way of salvation. They also learned that they were to be separated from the world, different from others, and devoted
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