Recently I’ve been going through some of my old sermon tapes and converting them to mp3 (nerd alert). These tapes are from the beginning of Mars Hill Bible church in 1999, when we spent most of the year studying Leviticus in the “Sanctynasium (Sanctuary + Gymnasium).” Basically our church took place in a haggard old gym packed with 2,000 people and the fire marshals had to turn people away. Now that is church!
When you first read through Leviticus it’s kind of like a B-grade slasher movie with no plot……I’ll wait for everyone to get that joke. The book contains a detailed list of sacrificial procedures and as you study it you realize that it’s all about forgiveness and being brought closer to God. The Hebrew word, “Korban,” for sacrifice means “to draw near to.”
In the Old Testament, you continually find a God that wants to be near to his people. It’s almost like he can’t wait to get down to Earth. One of the greatest books of all time is God In Search of Man, by Abraham Joshua Heschel.
I was also surprised/grateful to remember that Leviticus even contains a sacrifice for “unintentional sin.” A lot of people in church have this image of the God of the Old Testament as some cranked up angry God, and I just see a totally different picture. I see a God of grace and forgiveness. A God that is so forgiving, he even forgives people for unintentional sins.
I need to remember that in my own life, and remember to forgive others, even when they may not realize that what they are doing is hurtful. For more on spending a year studying Leviticus see the post, “We Love the Scriptures and Want Them To Sweep Us Off Our Feet.”
Hi Rob,
There are a bunch of people looking for this Leviticus series to no avail. Is this something you could post online?
Thanks!
Kevin
Unfortunately I only have the old cassette tapes and they are in pretty rough shape. Have you tried calling the church and seeing if they would send out copies?
I can also give you an update when I’m finished converting the tapes, it is an extremely tedious and time consuming process and I haven’t been able to devote as much time to it as I would like. The messages are copyrighted so I’m not sure if I’m able to post them online once I have them in mp3 format.
Hi Rob, I was reading that another person contacted the church and their response was “we didn’t records anything before 2003”. I looked at their online store and didn’t see any leviticus sermons there. I think it would be quite a treasure if you could post these in some form. I haven’t heard any of the sermons, but heard that they were very inspiring.
See link below. It’s a complete lie that they didn’t record sermons before 2003.
Hi Rob –
Any chance you’d be willing to privately share these Leviticus Sermons? I’ve been looking for them everywhere but can’t track them down. Love to trade an email about this possibility.
Thanks,
Tim
Hi Rob –
Any chance of privately sharing these Leviticus Sermons? I’ve been looking for them for a long time and can’t seem to track them down. Love to trade an email about this if possible.
Thanks!
Tim
Hi rob, I think I’ve commented on here before, but I thought I’d just check in again. If you have converted those Leviticus sermons I’d love to get copies if at all possible. I’m actually going to be in Israel this spring if you’re still over there. Let me know if you’d be open to sharing them, Cheers!
Tim
See links below.
Hey Rob, I’m working on putting together a dissertation proposal for a Ph D. and was wanting to see if Rob Bell’s take on Leviticus could play a part. Have you finished converting the tapes? Would you be willing to email me what you have? I would not post them, or make them public. I just want to listen to them for research reasons. I have already contacted the church and they said they don’t release MP3’s that are not in their online store.
Any updates? I would love be really blessed by these sermons!
Not sure if this is website is active at all – but I have a lot of missionaries that have been asking me to track down the same thing, also the series you did on Numbers. They are of course willing to pay any fees or purchase, but we have been trying the same thing and ended up with the same answers. Or Kevin, if you ever were able to track them down? Thank you so much for the help and time! – Jenny
See below. The Numbers series was only like 2-3 sermons and I don’t have that one. It seemed like he lost interest in Numbers and never preached through most of the book.
Rob,
Would you be willing to sale or share the mp3 files of Mars Hill early years? Thanks!
Hi, I’m very late to this post, but still VERY curious if you or anyone has Rob Bell’s Leviticus sermons or ANY of his other early sermons (pre-dating 2006 or so) available online to download. I know I speak for many in my community who would absolutely go bonkers for these and even provide money or resources towards this cause.
Please advise. Most appreciated!
Hi, I’m very late to this post, but still VERY curious if you or anyone has Rob Bell’s Leviticus sermons or ANY of his other early sermons (pre-dating 2006 or so) available online to download. I know I speak for many in my community who would absolutely go bonkers for these and even provide money or resources towards this cause.
Please advise. Most appreciated!
Have you been able to convert these…. You would make a of people happy if you put them up for download.
Joe, I have been able to convert, I’m just not sure of the best way to distribute. I’d be happy to put them in a dropbox folder for you and leave them up there for a day or so so you can download. Or if you have other suggestions let me know. Just a warning, the audio quality is pretty lackluster, but definitely listenable.
I think posting a Dropbox link on here for a day or two would be perfect! I have been looking for these for a long time.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w5jahqszvov90md/AAATyf9D_tDdho_vqopfLjN6a?dl=0
If anyone has suggestions or an easy way to distribute these to everyone who wants them let me know. I’m definitely happy to share, just not sure about the best/most efficient way to do so.
It looks like since this is a WordPress site, it should support you uploading media directly. Then people could download the files directly. Here’s a link with instructions – https://en.support.wordpress.com/audio/
Otherwise soundcloud would be a very easy option: http://www.soundcloud.com
Very, very excited for the possibility. Thank you for being willing to share. Please let me know if I can be helpful!
I’m on vacation and don’t have my laptop with me, so I’ll have to wait until I’m back home on Jan 4 to post. Sit tight, appreciate all the comments and suggestions, they’ll be up when I’m back home.
Can someone check out this link and let me know if it works for you. It’s the Leviticus series and a few random sermons from when he visited Willow Creek. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w5jahqszvov90md/AAATyf9D_tDdho_vqopfLjN6a?dl=0
See if this link works for you. I was able to (hopefully) figure out how to to this remotely: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w5jahqszvov90md/AAATyf9D_tDdho_vqopfLjN6a?dl=0
I would be incredibly excited if you choose to share! Thank you so much for considering!
WordPress allows you to upload media directly if you want ( https://en.support.wordpress.com/audio/ ) or sound cloud might be another easy option if you are interested- http://www.soundcloud.com
Happy to be of help if I can- again thanks so much!
That’s incredibly excited! Thank you so much for considering sharing all of your work! WordPress will allow you to directly upload the media depending on the kind of account you have (https://en.support.wordpress.com/audio/) or soundcloud works well too (www.soundcloud.com). Happy to be of help – but thank you so much for all you are doing!
Just to be clear, I’m not Rob Bell. The Numbers series he did immediately after Leviticus was only a few sermons and he never went back to preaching on Numbers again. I don’t have the Numbers collection b/c it was short and not very good. It took a significant amount of time to convert these so thanks for your kind words! See links below.
I think a link on here to Dropbox would be great!
It’s coming. Will be up January 4.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w5jahqszvov90md/AAATyf9D_tDdho_vqopfLjN6a?dl=0
Hey Rob, thank you so much, this was an enormous gift! I’m “Gordon” who wrote above about putting together a Ph D dissertation proposal about Rob Bell. I got stalled on this endeavour mainly because I can’t get my hands on his early sermons. Of course Leviticus is his famous early sermons, so this was huge to get these. Do you have any others? or do you know someone who would have them? Thanks a lot for your work!