What about you? What is the whole purpose of killing the animal and the blood and all this ritual? What's the purpose of it? God wants intelligent cooperation. He's made us far more intelligent than every other animal.
That exists, not a little bit. far more intelligent. Why? If we're going to just waste it when it comes to religion, I don't have to think about these things, but some people, you know, they get their paycheck and they look at that paid stub and they're checking everything. 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.
Now here's Pastor Rick with his continuing message in the book of Leviticus chapter 7 on today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. We may have bad doctrine. Oversight Because we have imperfect knowledge. There could be a lot of things that we offer up prayers to God that we may look back at later and say, you know, that. I wasn't mature then, or that wasn't right.
And yet God doesn't shove us away. He may not answer the prayer. But he does not shove us away.
So, I want to say that again, peace with God does not depend on my attaining sinless perfection. Because in that while we were still sinners, he died for us.
Well, that doesn't mean that later on, if we sin, he's going to throw us out. And the legalist has a problem with that. Because the legalist really believes that they are going to, if not already, Achieve sinless perfection. Paul himself says, not that I have attained or am already perfected, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God. Gonna let my Mess ups Keep me from God.
They're supposed to bring me to him. That's what these sacrifices are all about. You're unfit. That's why you're allowed to bring an offering. To make that confession known, Jesus said, unless you repent, you will likewise perish.
Luke chapter 13.
Well, coming back to this, verse 14, and from it, He shall offer one cake from each offering as a heave offering to Yahweh. It shall belong to the priest who sprinkles the blood of the peace offering.
Well, the heave and the wave offerings were not offered by fire. Part of the priest's portion on these would he would consecrate them to the Lord by waving them from left to right or heaving them from up to down, saying, This is your Lord's, but Lord, would you let me keep this? And he could take portions of these sacrifices. Home and bake 'em, barbecue 'em, fry 'em, however, he wanted to do. He didn't have to eat it there at the temple.
The thanksgiving grain offerings with the sacrifice Belonged to the priests who officiated over these offerings, who the one that sprinkled the blood. around the altar. He could take the cakes and the flour and the things like that.
So again, in the context of religions, of religious ritual, the blood. made whatever it touched pure.
Well, that's Christianity. That is the cross of Christ. Everything has blood on it because everything has guilt on it. in a fallen world.
So the Old Testament sacrifices and the cross of Christ are all bloody. They are all blood stained. They all have to do with our guilt. Being Dealt with by God because nobody else can. And we tell this to the unbeliever: you're dead in your sins.
Christ is the way, the truth, and life. There is no other way to the Father. It is either the blood of Christ or the blood of the blood. or you are dead in your sin. The flesh, verse 15, the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offering for thanksgiving.
Shall be eaten the same day it is offered. He shall not leave any of it until morning. But if the sacrifice of his offering is a vow or a voluntary offering, and see there's the pledge offering baked into the No pun intended peace offering. And then there's also the vow offering the free will offering.
So again, verse 16: For if the sacrifice of his offering is a vow or a voluntary offering, it shall be eaten the same day that he offers his sacrifice, but on the next day, the remainder. Of it. Also, it may be eaten.
So it's going to put a limit on that. Verse 17. The remainder of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day must be burned with fire. And so, an appeal to the individual's conscience to do what they're supposed to do, to abide. by this offering And uh We're going to get to some other Things about that, the appeal to the conscience.
Well, I'll get ahead of myself a little bit. When Paul says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are edifying, there's an appeal there to the conscience. As we're seeing Here, you're either going to sneak and eat the meat on the third day, Or your conscience won't allow you to violate the commandment of the Lord, and you will burn whatever's left on the third day if there's anything left. Verse 18: And if any of the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offering is eaten. At all on the third day, it shall not be accepted, nor shall it be imputed to him.
It shall be an abomination to him who offers it. And the person who eats it shall bear the death. guilt. Yeah.
Well, uh the priest could eat the meat. the same day or the next also. But eating it on the third day Uh brought punishment. The idea is not a casual meal. Verse 19: The flesh that touches any unclean thing shall not be eaten, it shall be burned with fire.
And as for the clean flesh, all who are clean may eat of it.
Well, Haggai, the prophet, talks about this. Can something That is Ritually unclean. Brush up against something. and make it clean? No, it's going to make it unclean.
The defile will defile. But can something clean touch up against something?
So he gets into that whole thing in Haggai 12 and 13. And I think it's it's worth reading, but not right now. Verse 20. But the person who eats the flesh of the sacrifice of the peace offering that belongs to the Lord. While he is unclean, that person shall be cut off from his people.
Moreover, verse 21: the person who touches any unclean thing, such as human uncleanness, an unclean animal, or any abominable unclean thing, and who eats the flesh of the sacrifice of the peace offerings that belongs to Yahweh, that person shall be cut off from his people.
So there are the rules, and he gives you a few examples, but it's not an exhaustive list. For instance, if you touched a dead body, you're ceremonially unclean. You have to go through a process to be made ceremonially clean, and there was some waiting involved. And so again, looking for the Levitical laws to be precise, it's not always going to happen. But what we have here at the bottom of verse 21.
is um that person shall be cut off from his people.
Now a legalistic mind without even trying, is just always trying to get people into hell. You're going to hell. You're going to hell. Just like, I can't believe you did that. You're going to hell.
They may not be as. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but then they're thinking. And they look at doctrine. And this is a good example. Whereas, someone who just looks for the grace of God that has been on their life is saying, well, Maybe there's a solution here.
I mean The call is on God's side, but I'm not eager to damn souls.
Well, here's one of them: that person shall be cut off from his people. Does that mean? It's a capital crime and they are to be killed. Stoned.
Well, the phrase is used for both. Throughout the Old Testament.
Sometimes it does mean capital punishment, sometimes it does not. And so there's an example. Which way do you lean? I read this, I say, well, I sure hope. That the person is not stoned for this.
There are bigger crimes, you know. But although this would be, you know, if it's blatantly violating the law, maybe it was left up to the priest to decide. Because again, there are these little areas in here, we just don't have all the information. Either way, it's not good. I would not want to be that guilty person.
Maybe God leaves it out and kind of says, It's for me to know, for you to find out if you mess it up. But again, Moses and the priests. We don't find them. Perplexed about these things. They conducted their business like they knew everything.
that belong to these sacrifices. And um I'm very satisfied with that. I do not feel like I've got to try to memorize these sacrifices. Verse twenty two. And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, You shall not eat any fat of ox, or sheep, or goat.
Verse twenty four. And the fat of an animal that dies naturally and the fat of what is torn by wild beasts may be used in any other way, but you shall by no means eat it.
Well, that's mostly clear. What gets a little foggy was That in uh previous Offerings Uh well let me let me put it I'll get back to that. The unslaughtered animals That died naturally or from another beast or something like that. They could only be used for practical reasons. You could take their fat and use it to grease things.
You could. Take their skins, but you couldn't eat any of the meat. None of it was for consumption.
However, on an animal that Because these animals weren't bled properly. That's one of the reasons. The blood's trapped in when they died, whereas when they're ceremonially slaughtered. that bled out first and then the animal can be eaten. This is one of the stipulations James asked the Gentile Christians to be sensitive of in the presence of the Jewish believers, he appealed to their conscience.
Abstained from fornification, from things offered to idols, from things strangled, which is just kind of a sideway of breaking the law if you were a Gentile. And and of consuming blood.
Well The prohibition from God about animal fat If it were for all fat of the animal, then it would have just been: you shall not eat the fat. But as we covered earlier in Leviticus, the fat attached to the muscle. Could be eaten the fat along with the meat, but the fat with the organs was not. And so the people would know this, the Levites knew it. God published the Levitical law so the people could have a look, see what was going on.
And that's why I read that part from Samuel where the people understood the protocols of their sacrifices. And they just mentioned it. Hey, you know, the fat's supposed to go first. That's the protocol.
So that indicates again that they knew their scriptures when it came to the sacrifices. Verse 25. For whoever eats of the fat of an animal of which men offer an offering made by fire To Yahweh, the person who eats it shall be cut off from his people. Moreover, you shall not eat any blood in any of your dwellings, whether of bird or beast. Whoever, verse 27, eats any blood, that person shall be cut off from his people.
So a lot of cutting off going on here, and again You know, some of the better commentators say, no, that's a death sentence. And some of the better commentators say, no, maybe that's not necessarily so. We don't know for sure. Uh but it is kind of a indicator of how you lean, right? Who are you rooting for?
I hope they die. I hope not. But God knows what he's doing, and they did too.
So here he's summarizing Leviticus 3: blood may not be eaten. We got that in chapter 3, also, verse 17.
So knowing God's aversion to this, why would any believer Have blood pudding. Or eat some of the stuff that's made, blood sausage, or things like that. Why would you do it if you know that God is? Said This is abomination to me. This you know, blood is the life of the animal.
Well, in the New Testament again. To get the gospel out, if you try to get the gospel to people by first adjusting their diets. the point would have been missed and Souls would not have been saved.
So again, Paul says, All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but I should not. be brought under the power of any And in another place, but not all things edify.
So we have to learn to draw lines. as believers and connect dots. which I find many Christians not very good at. You know, they don't give the benefit of the doubt many times. They just jump to conclusions.
There's another word for it, it's discernment. or wisdom And if you've been around Christianity a bit, you learn to think it through a little bit more. You're not such a quick draw. God is better served when there is intelligent cooperation from his people. Not just emotional.
Intelligent, thinking it through a little bit, in the presence of the Word, not trying to alter what the meanings of Scripture is or is not. Pointless Is it not? to sacrifice the life of an animal and not connect the death of that animal to one's own standing before a holy God. Wouldn't that be a pointless offering? Yeah, I bring no you know, I brought this sacrifice down, I killed it.
What about you? What is the whole purpose of killing the animal and the blood and all this ritual? What's the purpose of it? God wants intelligent cooperation. He's made us far more intelligent than every other animal.
That exists, not a little bit. far more intelligent. Why, if we're going to just waste it when it comes to religion, well, I don't have to think about these things, but some people, you know, they get their paycheck and they look at that paid stub and they're checking everything.
Well, if you have that approach with some of the things of Scripture also. Not saying everyone does this, of course. Verse twenty-eight. It only takes one to come across one or two people like that to To understand that this stuff is possible. It's possible to be so blind to things that are so clear.
Verse 28, Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, He who offers the sacrifice of his peace offering to Yahweh shall bring his offering. To Yahweh from the sacrifice. Of his peace offering.
Well Again, none of the Old Testament sacrifices were an end. In themselves. The Old Testament saint was saved by faith just like the New Testament saint. And the prophets went out of their way to say, If you want to drag To those who were insincere, if you want to drag your sacrifice to the temple, God's not going to receive it. We covered that Isaiah 1, beginning in chapter 2.
Chapter 1, verse 11. He talks about God doesn't want the fake offerings. He covers it in Malachi 1, verse 7, forward from there. The psalmist writes, Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and put your trust in the Lord.
Well, the righteous sacrifice involves faith. And uh that too is covered throughout the prophets. And the Psalms. In the Old Testament. And so my point is Yeah, the sacrifices were mandated upon the people, but that was not the end of the Yellow Brick Road.
There was more to it. It had to do with the sincere and contrite heart. It had to do with the coming of greater things of Messiah that we at the New Testament can look back with more authority than them. than they, and be sh more sure of our salvation. No other religion on earth has these type of metaphors and types and illustrations fulfilled by a single source who has backs that up with prophecy, too.
So it's not just predictive prophecy concerning Messiah, it's all of these word pictures going around. His own hands, verse 30, rereading, it shall bring. The offerings made by fire to Yahweh, the fat With the breast. He shall bring the That the breast may be waved as a wave offering before Yahweh. and the priest shall burn the fat on the altar, But the breast shall be Aaron's and his sons.
Verse 32. Also, the right thigh you shall give to the priest as a heave offering from the sacrifices of the peace offering. You all getting this down? Verse thirty-three Okay. He among the sons of Aaron.
who offers the blood of the peace offering. And the fat To have the right Phi For his part.
So the officiating priest gets that.
So the worshiper. made a peace offering So that The Lord received the blood. And the fat, verse 33. The priests received the breast in verse thirty and thirty one. The right thigh here could be shoulder.
See, a butcher may say, well, you know The shoulder is the front leg, the top of the front leg, and the thigh is the top of the back. Yeah, maybe butchers doing that, but the pre- These guys were butchers too. And anyway, the right thigh, it could be the shoulder, referred to as the shoulder.
Now, it's not the same Hebrew word, but when it talks of Messiah, And it speaks of the government being upon his shoulder.
Now the significance begins to come to the front. The breast, we think of the heart, the passions, and the shoulder bearing the burdens. The priest would have on their shoulders the stone, the high priest, he would have the six stones on each shoulder with the names of the tribes of Israel, so that he could bear on his shoulders the weight of the people. And so there's a lot built into that. There's government, righteous government.
And there is uh the burden. of the things that go along with it. That means care. There is the care and the significance. Uh oh A priestly role is that you do care for the people.
When you intercede as within the royal priesthood of the New Testament, it's because you care for the person you're interceding for. That the burden of that person is on your shoulder also. And it's inescapable. God will always send people who can fit on your shoulders. Whether you try to shrug them off or not, it's another story.
but they are there. I have never been in front of the Lord and said, well, what to say, what to say, what to say. I've always had something to say because there's always somebody who needs something said on their behalf in front of the throne of God. And I encourage you, if you can, especially if you can get up. From time to time, get on your face and pray to the Lord.
It is to me just a heightening to pray on your knees. to pray driving. We pray in your face. All of these things are available to us. And each one has a significance.
That doesn't mean if you don't do it, you know, That something you know you're missing. Yeah, you can't. I don't have that authority to lay that. I wish I did, I wish I did, but I don't have that authority. But I can say in my own life.
Um I I prefer Alternate postures. When praying to the Lord.
Now sometimes I may get in one of these postures and it's just not there. And I'll cut it short because I'm not going to fake it or force it. But at other times it can be quite Quite powerful.
So these are symbolic acts that we have been discussing here, indicating the offerings. were for the Lord, but given to the priests. The wave offering, they were more numerous than the heave offerings, if you must know. I saw it. Jewish scholars, they're the ones that tell us the wave offering was from left to right and the heave offering was up and down.
And so you think about that as you go home tonight. But Is there any significance to this?
Well yeah, if you're a New Testament Christian and you know the cross of Christ was horizontal and vertical. We know that because Pilate had put over the top of the cross Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews.
So we know it had that top piece to the T.
Well, if you do a wave offering from left to right and you do the heave offering up and down, you are making the sign of the cross. You'd have to be a Christian to see that. And you say maybe you're you're forcing it. I don't think I am, but I could see why you would say that. What other things do you get wrong?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, uh these movements again symbolize that the unburned pieces at the altar were consecrated to God. And so we come now to verse 34 through verse 38. In verse 36, we'll go down to, because this is pretty much the same language as we have covered. It speaks about these statutes being one for the Jews forever. Verse 36, Yahweh commanded this to be given to them by the children of Israel.
On the day that he anointed them by a statute forever throughout their generations.
So, an unending statute for the Jewish. people, not the church. And things will be a little different when Christ sets up. His throne in Jerusalem. We have a lot of information on that, but not everything.
Now, if you think skipping these verses is a bad thing, what will you say of me when we come to 1 Chronicles? And we skip all those names. See, then you want me to skip them.
So, anyway, here, we'll finish verse 37, 38, and then we'll pray. Yeah.
This is the law of the burnt offering: the grain offering, the sin offering, the trespass offering, the consecrations, and the sacrifice of the peace offering, which, verse 38, Yahweh commanded Moses on Mount Sinai, On the day when he commanded the children of Israel, To offer their offerings to Yahweh in the wilderness of Sinai.
So he summarizes what has just taken place. Moses has been getting this at the temple that's finished now, but still no offerings were made. They're just the rules are being given. The next chapter, the priests will be anointed. And to give the offerings, Moses is going to be the one.
That offers the sacrifices and does the anointing in the place of God on earth. He's sort of, you know, been. Uh given that authority by God to represent In that form. And then, after that, then the priests will begin to take up their duty. And so Um Close with this verse from Hebrews 3, verse 5.
And this ties in. to its saying That Moses on Mount Sinai received these things from the Lord.
So Hebrews 3, 5, and Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant. Again, I don't think Moses gets enough attention as being one of the greatest figures in human history among people. But 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.
