Since seventy AD, they've been gone. They were never adequate. And they were never intended to be, but what they were intended to do, they achieve.
So as we use the word love, which has degrees, And I love that shirt. Love that. Dessert. I love my child. The degrees of love we're not using, it's not the same intensity.
belonging to the meaning. As we use the word love. And well, it's the same thing with. The sin offering. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston.
Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Leviticus. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Leviticus chapter 4 with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Leviticus chapter 4.
Remember All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. It's for him to know and for you to find out. And if you're dealing with junk in your life, depression, all that other stuff, it's the Word of God. That's going to get you out of it if you stay the course. Don't expect instant results, but you will get results.
But you have to persevere. In church services, there can be those who draw undue attention to themselves and become a distraction. At the brazen altar of the Jews every one was too busy. to become an undue distraction. It was labor intensive.
Not only was there the slaying and the butchering of the animals, the skinning of the animals, but There was also the clean-up behind the animals. There were many people there with different types of animals, a very busy area at times. And Leviticus it would help to know as a variety of Hebrew words Particularly with these offerings that are used in different ways, that allowed Moses and the priests to better understand. How to follow the instructions God gave them for these sacrifices. We've lost a lot of their meanings.
We don't have all the information about all the sacrifices. There are no human experts today. On the Hebrew sacrifices, not even amongst the Jews.
So, as you know, and this is not a problem for us because Christ has fulfilled all we need to know, and we have enough of that information to be made stronger in our faith. Even the rabbis of latter generations after they lost the temples. Have lost the meaning. of a lot of what's going on from the Hebrew.
So we lack many details, not a concern. This is what we know, and that's this is what counts. Be they a sin offering or trespass offering, both are still sin offerings. You say, oh, it's a guilt offering. They're sin.
They're dealing with sin, all of them. They're technical terms for us, and we're not to be distracted by that. I'm saying this because if you have, you know. Study Bibles or commentaries, you go crazy trying to figure these things out. trying to get scholars to agree on what they're not even sure of.
And so you come across such words, it seems like. It appears because, you know, it's. It's obscure. Both offerings of the sacrificer, and that is a word, sacrificer. If it's not show up in your word, Document, add it to dictionary.
The old timers used it and we're using it. Anyway, the offerings were for the sacrificer to be forgiven.
Well, the only people that are forgiven are guilty people. People who have sinned. And so don't get caught up in, well, this is sin offering, there are some differences. And I'll return to that. But Here in chapter four.
Moses is zero, or God is telling Moses, zeroing in on unintentional sins. That's just one aspect. One aspect of the offering. Because the sin offering accompanies other sacrifices that have nothing to do with unintentional sins. and the knowledge of them.
Yeah. Sin offerings were elsewhere used for various purifications, is what my point is. Paul gives us a lot, just this one little statement in Hebrews, a sort of a blanket statement about the sin offering. Because you say, well, is it daily? It's used for purification.
Does it purify the altar before they can put the whole burnt offering on? How do we use this thing? It's used at Yom Kippur, then it's used at the anointing of the priest, it's all over the place. Is it limited to this? You see?
Takes hours of research to even say what I just said. Paul says every priest, Hebrews 10:11. Ministering daily the offerings repeatedly The same sacrifices which can never take away sins.
So, by that statement, he's saying there's a sin offering every day that they used to minister. That once the temple was lost, all the details went with it. Over the millennium that's gone. And according to Hosea in chapter three of his prophecy, in verse four, these sacrifices. were to be set aside.
And they are to this day. Since 70 AD, they've been gone. They were never adequate. and they were never intended to be, but what they were intended to do, they achieved.
So as we use the word love, which has degrees, Yeah, I love that shirt. I love that. Dessert. I love my child. The degrees of love, we're not using, it's not the same intensity.
belonging to the meaning As we use the word love, and it loves the same thing with. The sin offering There's the unintentional sin. Deliberate sin? Flagrant sin? Unconscious sin?
Their degrees.
So, again, I'm saying all of this so that you can take a A sigh of relief and say, okay, I don't have to study the Jewish sacrifices. But I do have to pay attention to any lessons that the Holy Spirit points out to me. While I'm going through my readings of the scriptures. No sacrifice was provided for those who committed. Certain deliberate sins.
In light of the law, For instance, in Numbers chapter 15, there was the man who was out gathering sticks on a Sunday. Pardon me, Saturday, they're Sunday. which was forbidden. It was the Sabbath.
Well, there was no offering for him. He was not pardoned. He was executed. He broke the law. It was a capital crime.
especially in the early days of the nation. There was this.
So just this intolerance for such things. David, King David, his only hope when he sinned with Bathsheba and had Uriah killed. The only hope for him was mercy. Not the law. The law had no provision for him.
There was no hope.
Well, David, just go down to the temple and it'd be fine. That's why he writes. In the 51st Psalm about his being forgiven. You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offerings.
Yeah, not for the crime you committed, David. Remember the woman in John chapter 8 caught in adultery? Jesus said, You're forgiven. Essentially? Go and sin no more.
How come he didn't say go to the temple and make your offering? Because there was no offering for that. It was a capital crime. And it was not unjust what he was doing. It was unjust what they were trying to do to her.
She was guilty, but so they were. They were doubly guilty because they tampered with God's Word. By bringing her forward and not the man and other things that they were doing with their hardened hearts. Therefore these sin and trespass offerings Remind us. Not so much.
For what we fail to do But who we fail to be? We fail to be like Christ, the standard. That God is looking for in His creation. We can't do it.
So we need atonement, and God has provided it. And remember, man is not a sinner because he sins, he sins because he is a sinner. It's his nature. It's our nature. Whether it be willful or not.
Sin never goes unnoticed by God, and that also is part of the meaning. And that's why we have it, one reason why we have it broken up into. Uh uh sin offering, trespass offering, next chapter. Four categories are given to us. If the priest sins, if the nation as a people, if they sin together, which We have examples of.
If the leaders since If the individual sin, well, here are unintentionally. Here are The instructions for them To find atonement.
Now we look at verse, we'll take verse 1 and 2.
Now Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, If a person is If a person sins unintentionally against any of the commandments of Yahweh, In anything which ought not to be done. And does any of them? We'll pause there.
Well, the sin offerings prefaces are these first two verses. Likely the second day that God summoned Moses. Verse 1, He called him. And there are about over 30 of these in Leviticus, and gives us the idea. that God probably took 30 days to about 30 days to hand these Levitical laws To Moses, though some of it is narrative.
Well, again, unintentionally As by error or circumstance, saying to God, I did not know that was a sin.
Well, it's still a sin. And you still did it. And it has to be dealt with. Not premeditated sin, as we'll get in the next chapter. Achan, for example, His act of stealing in violation of God's commandment.
and then lying about it, was Intentional.
So these sin offerings would have been no benefit for him, and he too was executed for his sin. Whereas there are those who can receive asylum in a city of refuge. If they committed an unintentional Crime or Yeah, I know we'll st we'll stick with that. But they were still guilty in the eyes of the person violated. For example, you're out in the forest as a lumberjack, and the axe flies off your handle and kills a co-worker.
Now there's going to be an avenger of blood in the family.
Somebody who just can't get past that. Yeah, I know it was an accident. But I can't live with this. And so God instructed the Jews to put these cities of refuge up. Numbers chapter 35.
You shall appoint cities to be cities of refuge for you, that the manslayer who kills any person accidentally may flee there. God is saying there are just some things in people. that they can't do. I get it. And I'll give some slack there.
I have I'm a growing file on divine exceptions, where God makes an exception. And there are quite a few of them throughout Scripture. which would drive the legalists insane. Because they think nobody should be excused but them. Anyway, you can hear it in my voice that I have a disdain for a legalistic approach to the scripture because If Christ were legalist we'd all be going to hell, and that'd be that.
Anyway, back to this. But I still love the Legalists. And I'd love to criticise them. All right, anyway, back to this.
So you accidentally kill somebody and you flee.
Now, in such cases, that individual is innocent. But even if he wanted to go to the temple, He would risk his life. If he left the city to go offer this. This um Sin offering Maybe he knew he was negligent. You know, I should have checked that axe.
You know, I knew it was wobbly, and I did it anyway. You know, I am guilty of this unintentional sin.
Well, when the high priest died, if he died in his lifetime, he'd be able to leave the city of refuge and. could not legally be Attacked by the Avenger of Blood, and then he could go to the temple and offer a sin offering. But um In every case, again, intentional or otherwise, sin can never be lightly excused. That's part of the message here. Once aware of sin, you can't shrug it off.
It has to be brought before the Lord. And we do it in our hearts whenever we get like, you know, you're driving, and you say, oh, you know, Lord, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I we just shouldn't have felt that way about that Other driver Um And it's a daily thing, is it not? I'd be at the temple every day offering this one. If if I had to drive.
Where are you going? To the temple. What'd you do wrong? Oh, I'm I'm I'm on the road driving. Should be in.
Anyway, coming back to this, verse 3. If the.
Well wait, we've got some of you here that don't drive yet. It's coming. Be ready. Be ready. Uh anyway, back to this.
Verse 3 If the anointed priest sins, Bringing guilt on the people, let him offer to the Lord for his sin. Which he has sinned, a young bull without blemish as a sin offering.
Well, now the first one up is the priest. No specific sin is mentioned. Under the sin offerings. The individual knows through conviction, or maybe there are some witnesses that say, you know, that was wrong, and you got to deal with that. But anyway, Um in contrast to the Trespass offerings that's coming next chapter.
Those categories, some of them are listed so we get a better idea. Of God narrowing it down. And I'll make those contrasts when we get to that chapter, hopefully next session. But the priest And the leader. Their sin was potentially more destructive because it had a greater influence.
And it could be, the damage would be widespread, that influence. And so he's dealt with first. He has a costly offering to bring, a bull. And even as high priest, and this is the high priest. Um Even as the high priest, he's not excused.
A young bull without blemish.
Well, we've covered that. Don't bring your hand-me-downs to God. um as a sin offering.
So no different. When both the sin offering and the burnt offering were. Presented to God, it appears, and here's where it gets obscure: that the sin offering came first. The sin offering we know was used to purify the altar. How much?
How often did it have to be purified?
Well, going by what I read in Hebrews, it was a daily thing, but you won't find that. If you dig into the Old Testament, you'll find it for certain occasions.
So I do believe the sin offering based on Paul was something presented every morning by the priest, and then the whole burnt offering and the grain offering, and they did this in the morning and they did it at sundown also. Every day.
Well, Isaiah says this about the sin offering. It pleased Yahweh to bruise him, the Messiah, He has put on him He has put him to grief. When you make his soul A sin offering.
So that alone, from a New Testament perspective, makes Leviticus 4. relevant to us. Christ is the type that's being spoken about in this chapter.
So there's a literal application to the Jews bringing their offering to the temple, and then there is a spiritual application, which is greater because it has eternal meaning to it. And it's through the ages, and it is Christ. It represents Christ. Interesting. The stipulation unintentional sin is not spoken about the high priest and his sin.
It is about the others, the leaders, the nation, and the individual, but the high priest is just in the preface. But when it mentions him, It doesn't mention it downplays. The unintentional sin. And I think it's because our sin offering. In Christ, Christ, our sin offering.
It was intentional. God planned it from the foundations of the world. He wasn't trapped. Wasn't a mistake. And I think there's a very subtle indication of that by omitting the word.
Unintentional only for the high priest.
So, verse 4, continuing about the high priest, he shall bring the bull to the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the Lord. Lay his hand on the bull's head. and kill the bull before Yahweh. Wonder, did Adam and Eve see the carcasses of the skinned animals that were slain to cover them? They're in Genesis chapter 3, because the Bible says.
That God skinned an animal to cover them. All of a sudden, we're conscious of their nudity. The point I'm making is. The ugliness that is created by disobedience to God, sin. was something that was uh object right there in front of everybody.
for the Jewish people. Even if you were in the camp in the wilderness, You always knew when that smoke was burning, Coming from that tabernacle for the offerings, was constant. Verse uh five. Then the anointed priest shall take some of the bull's blood and bring it to the tabernacle of meeting.
Now, the specification, the anointed priests.
Well, they were all anointed. Only the sons of Aaron could be priests, but this is a specification. If you want me to back that up, we'll be here a lot 20 minutes more. going through all the other scriptures that could to bring us to that conclusion. This is the high priest.
And um This act of bringing the blood Into the sanctuary, into the tabernacle of meeting. would disallow the priests from eating the meat. from this offering.
So that specification. If the offering is made on the brazen altar outside the tabernacle and none of the blood goes inside the tabernacle, then it's likely going to be a meal for the priest. But if any of that blood gets taken into the sanctuary, now you can't eat it. It's unto the Lord. And remember, as you go through these, it's two altars.
There's the brazen altar where the fire was to burn the animals. And then there was the golden altar. which seems to in many ways have a higher status with God. That was inside the tabernacle. That is the altar where they burned the incense, where King Uzzziah, a good godly king, got too big for his britches and wanted to go and offer incense on that altar, and the priest withstood him, and he was smitten with leprosy on the spot.
So Just a little Gory background information. Verse 6. The priest shall dip his finger in the blood, and sprinkle some of the blood seven times before Yahweh in front of the veil of the sanctuary.
Now, here's where it becomes Christian, really. I mean, it has been all along. The priest shall dip his finger in the blood. Man has a role in his atonement. Man has something to do.
You'll get those and those works. This is responsibility. Forgiveness finds blood. on man's fingerprint. For that priest to put his finger in the blood.
Now, his fingerprints have been singled out. Sprinkled in front of the sanctuary, in front of the veil.
Now, that thick curtain that separated the two parts of the sanctuary: the holy place where the lampstand and the showbread was. And then the the The holiest of holies were the Ark of the Covenant, was behind the veil.
Well, that's significant to us. Mark chapter 15. Jesus cried out with a loud voice and breathed his last. Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
Now that veil was quite larger and thicker than the veil in Moses' tabernacle. That's the temple. Of The second Jewish temple started by Zerubbabel and then, of course, expanded by. Wicked Herod.
So it's not insignificant that the sin offering has attached to it a priest. Oh. Is involved in the atonement. We'll come back to that. Verse seven.
And the priest shall put some of the blood on the horns of the altar. of sweet incense before Yahweh, Which is In the tabernacle of meeting. And he shall pour the remaining blood of the bull at the base of the altar of the burnt offering which is at the door of the tabernacle of meeting.
So the distinction there it is: the two altars, the golden altar of incense. Inside the tabernacle. Where there were horns on that golden altar, also. It wasn't very large, it was the size of maybe some pulpits. And then the brazen altar.
Outside in the courtyard where the animals the meat and the organs were placed for burning. The horns speak of power.
Well, we get that from other verses too. Jeremiah 48 just makes it clear. Uh but anyway, um The blood is put on the horns of the altar. A symbol of power. For us, the only Blood that has any power is the blood of Jesus Christ.
And we have songs that. Speak about nothing but The blood of Jesus Christ. Why do we see Abraham and Lazarus In Sheol Broken into two compartments before the death of Christ, one side for the wicked, the other side for the righteous. And Abraham and Lazarus are on the side of the righteous. Why aren't they in heaven?
Well, because The blood of the animals could only cover the sins but they could not remove them And The message to mankind is, no one gets to heaven without Christ. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me. And thus, in Ephesians, we read that he led captivity captive. He took hold of the righteous, Abraham and all the others, and into heaven they went.
And such Are the words to the thief on the cross? Today you will be with me in paradise. If that thief died before A day before he would have and and and if he had Been righteous, he would have gone to Sheol where Abraham was. If he had remained unrighteous, as he was. On the cross before Christ got into his life, then he would have gone to the wicked side.
Anyway, Um Why would these things be hard to believe? Everything we see with our eyes in the physical universe has a parallel.
somewhere in the spiritual. Mm-hmm. Thanks for tuning in to today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. Pastor Rick Gaston is currently going through the book of Leviticus. We're glad you joined us.
We trust that you're gaining some valuable insights into God's Word as we go through this Old Testament book. Cross-Reference Radio comes to you from Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Virginia. If you'd like to subscribe to our podcast, you can do so by going to your favorite app store and downloading from there. For any additional information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreference radio.com. Make sure to come back again for the upcoming edition in the book of Leviticus, as Pastor Rick has much more to share.
We thank you for being with us right here on Cross Reference Radio. Yeah.
