Tag: Leviticus 4

Leviticus 4:1-2, 35.

¹ Then the LORD spoke to Moses: ² “Tell the Israelites, ‘When a person sins by straying unintentionally from any of the Lord’s commandments which must not be violated, and violates any one of them — ³⁵   Then the one who brought the offering must remove all its fat (just as the fat of the sheep is removed from the peace offering sacrifice) and the priest must offer them up in smoke on the altar on top of the other gifts of the LORD. So the priest will make atonement on his behalf for his sin which he has committed and he will be forgiven.

As Christians, we believe that God inspired the Bible, and it is therefore worthwhile to read, learn, teach, preach, and know. Our congregation is in the middle of an experiment to test that belief. We have decided to eat the whole elephant – one bite at a time. We determined to read the whole Bible over eighteen months. Some of the passages will be pretty easy to read. The stories of the history of God’s dealings with his people – the biblical narratives – are easier to read. A reader can imagine being in the story and experiencing the event. Doctrinal texts are easy, too, because we all have questions about what God wants us to believe and how we should act. Wisdom literature is practical because we all want to make the right choices – to please God and live his way.

But we have come to a section of Scripture that most people find more challenging to read, and some find it hopeless to understand. If you started our little experiment on January 1, you probably felt this way about midway through Exodus. Now that you are in Leviticus, you might find your daily reading a bit of a challenge. Every day, you encounter a fresh set of rules and regulations about the Tabernacle – which you have never seen, and sacrifices that you will have never participated in – and will never join in. You are going to be tempted to skip over the “irrelevant parts.” As much as you might want to believe that the whole Bible is God’s word, you might be tempted to consider these difficult parts as beyond your ability to comprehend. You are not alone.

What we are experiencing is all too common for any generation. We are in the middle of a section of Scripture that most people skip reading. It is a section with the most pages stuck together because it is so infrequently visited. It isn’t that we think this section does not belong to God’s word. It is mostly because we have no clue as to why it is in God’s word.

What we need is to crack the code. Some documents are impossible to understand until you find the code that they are written in – the knowledge that helps us to make sense of what otherwise would remain a hopeless jumble of words and phrases. When we were reading the narratives of Genesis and the first part of Exodus, we found the code to help us decipher that text in the historical background. When we were studying the commands of Christ in the Gospels, we found the code in the personal application of those commands to our everyday lives. But what is the code that can help us read and understand the regulations of the Old Testament sacrificial system?

I believe there is a code. What’s more – I want to assure you that you will not have to go back to college and learn a lot of new things in order to understand it. You already know the code that will help you master the reading and comprehension of Leviticus. Once you apply the code to what you read on these pages, you will see that every rule is relevant to you personally, every statute and ordinance and judgment and regulation.

What is this code? It is theology. The trick to understanding all these complex passages of Scripture is what the rest of Scripture teaches about God, Jesus Christ, sin, and salvation. Unless we see the truths about God from Scripture in these obscure texts, we will always get hopelessly stuck in these pages. But once we start seeing the code at work, we will find that we have a new Bible in our hands.

So, today, I want to crack the code of Leviticus 4, which is all about the sin offerings. You will notice from the title of this morning’s sermon that I call them failure offerings. In my translation of the Bible, I use the word “failure” to translate the Hebrew and Greek words that are usually translated as “sin.” My reason for doing this is that sin is one of those words that we have assigned a religious meaning and that religious meaning can keep us from understanding the word’s biblical meaning. There are lots of words like this in the Bible. In my translation, I try to use other words for these religious-sounding words that everybody seems to understand but nobody can explain. The word I use for the concept of sin is failure. Sin is missing the mark. It is trying to do the right thing but ending up doing the wrong thing. When we use the word sin, we usually think of intentional transgression – rebellion against God’s commands. But every one of the regulations in Leviticus 4 have to do with unintentional sins.

We are used to thinking of unintentional failures as mistakes. We don’t hold people accountable for their mistakes. We might give someone an “F” on the test that they failed, but we don’t punish them for failing. We don’t consider it a personal affront to us if someone makes a mistake. But the sin offerings of Leviticus 4 are all about getting forgiveness for things done wrong that were inadvertant – unintentional. We cannot crack the code of Leviticus 4 until we answer the question of why God requires atonement for unintentional failures.

Our failures offend God’s holiness.

Look at verses 16-17. They say, “Then the high priest must bring some of the blood of the bull to the Meeting Tent, and that priest must dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle some of the blood seven times before the LORD toward the front of the veil-canopy.” We are familiar with this part of the Tabernacle. It is a curtain that separates the holy places where God resides from the mundane places where just anybody can go. We know that when Jesus was crucified, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, signifying access to the Father. This veil represented the holiness of God contrasted with the corruption and sinfulness of all humanity.

The blood of the failure offering was to be sprinkled on the veil. On one side of the veil were defilement, depravity, and sin. On the other side were holiness, purity, and sinlessness. On one side of the veil were mortal and temporary beings. On the other side was the immortal and infinite God. In between, the blood was sprinkled. The blood of the sacrificial animal symbolized the atonement.

Why does human failure need to be atoned for? Why do our unintentional sins need forgiveness? Why can’t God say, “They’re just human after all? They are going to make mistakes. They’re not perfect like I am.”

We say those kinds of things all the time. We make a mistake, and we don’t run to the altar and throw ourselves on it. We say, “Nobody’s perfect.” We say, “I’m only human,” and go on with our lives. It was a mistake! We don’t make a federal case out of it. We shrug it off. At most, we say, “I’ll try to do better next time.

But failures under the Mosaic covenant cost the life of a precious animal. They could not be overlooked. From the priests to the leaders to the commoner, everyone had to seek forgiveness for sins—all sins, not just intentional transgressions. Why? Because we serve a holy God, and he does not compromise his holiness. He is different from us. Every time we fail to measure up to his perfection, we incur guilt, and that guilt must be atoned for.

Every sin. Every day – that is why the blood must be sprinkled seven times. We can’t say, “I went to church on Sunday, so I’m good for another week. We can’t say, “I went to church last Christmas, so I’m good. We need God’s forgiveness for every sin, every day, every hour. We are sinful creatures. We are constantly in need of God’s forgiveness. The sin offering was a way of seeking that forgiveness. It was a way to reconcile with God in spite of our constantly failing him.

Our failures affect our prayer lives.

The first part of verse 7 says, “The priest must put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of fragrant incense that is before the LORD in the Meeting Tent.” Incense in the Bible is frequently used to accompany prayer. Some of the blood of the sacrifice of the sin offering was put on the horns of the altar of fragrant incense to symbolize the fact that when we fail God, we sever the connection between ourselves and our creator. The lines of communication are broken. Everyone who has ever tried to pray with a guilty conscience knows about this fact. We can’t seem to reach God because there is a barrier to our prayers.

But the regulation for the sin offering shows us that it is not just our intentional rebellion that does this. Even the mistakes we make can sever the chord and disrupt the signal to heaven – and from heaven. The phone lines are down. The telegraph wire is cut. The wifi signal is lost. We cannot even ask for forgiveness because it seems like there is no way to reach God. But the good news of the sin offering is that the blood can make a difference. The life’s blood of the innocent sacrifice can atone for the sin and reestablish the connection.

Our failures hinder our influence.

There is not just one rule for the sin offering. There is a set of requirements for the priest, starting in verse 3. There is another list of requirements for when the whole congregation fails, starting in verse 13. When a leader fails, the requirements are outlined starting in verse 22. When a common person fails, the regulations start in verse 27. Every person can fail, and every person needs to make atonement for that failure. However, there are different requirements depending on the sphere of influence that the sinner has. We hold our leaders to a higher standard than we do ordinary citizens. The reason is that our leaders are more likely to cause others to fail by their example.

When a leader fails, they need atonement for their sins. They also need to show that they confess their sins and seek forgiveness visually. There will be no cover-ups. There are to be no special circumstances where people look away and refuse to acknowledge the sins of the priest or the elder because of their status. If atonement is not accomplished, the sins will trickle down to the whole congregation.

Our failures affect our worship.

The final part of verse 7 reads, “and all the rest of the bull’s blood he must pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering that is at the entrance of the Meeting Tent.” The altar of burnt offering was where sacrifices were made that were consumed by fire so that the entire sacrifice would ascend into the sky to be enjoyed by God himself. They were a symbol of reconciliation with God. They were a means of worship.

The reason that sin offerings involved this altar is that sin servers the connection between God and man. We saw that this breech in communication affects our prayer life with the mention of the fragrant incense altar. The same is true with the altar of burnt offering. Not only does sin disrupt our prayers to God, but it also disrupts our worship of God. This is wrong because God created us to show our appreciation for him. Some people deserve praise because of the good things they do. God deserves worship because of who he is.

The thing that is most wrong with the world today is not climate change, the immigration crisis, drug abuse, or gender dysphoria. The thing that is most wrong in the world today is that God is not worshiped as he deserves to be worshiped. Sin has separated us from our heavenly Father.

The sin offering gave the believers in God an opportunity to confess their failures before God. It offered them a means of consenting to God’s plan to provide a substitute to pay for those sins by a blood sacrifice. The sinners were told to place their hands on the head of the sacrificial animal. We see this repeated throughout the chapter (verses 4, 15, 24, 29 and 33). Placing their hand on the head was a way of identifying with the victim and letting the victim take the punishment of death in their place. By putting their hands on the victim, they transferred their sin to the sin offering. In fact, the language suggested that each person would lean on the victim, symbolizing the fact that they were depending on the victim to atone for their sins, failures, and inadequacies.

Now, here is the theology that cracks the code of Leviticus 4. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul writes, “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.” Jesus Christ is the sin offering. He is God’s ultimate and eternal solution to the problem of human failure. He fulfills every aspect of the Levitical regulations concerning the failure offering.

I should say … every aspect but one. There is one aspect of the regulations that Jesus does not fulfill by his sacrificial death on the cross. That is the fact that the failure offering was voluntary. Once discovering his sin, the sinner had to come to the Tabernacle and confess his sin by means of the sin-offering ritual. God did not perform this sacrifice for the sinner. For the same reason, our instructions in the New Testament are as follows:

“If we say we do not bear the guilt of sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9).

The one thing Jesus did not do for you on the cross was confess your sins. He cannot do that for you. If you go your whole life, never acknowledging your failures before God, he is obligated to make you pay for those sins. All of your sins can keep you from eternal life—even the ones you don’t recognize as sins, even the ones you don’t know you are committing.

The more we know about what God wants of us, the more we realize that we need his forgiveness constantly, consistently, and perpetually. But the blood of Christ already shed on Calvary’s cross is the one sin offering for all people and all time.

The “Devotions from Leviticus” book is 204 pages long and was released on September 15, 2024.