He puts his finger in it. We covered that in earlier sections. Hands-on ministry, bloody ministry, the horns of the altar, we covered that. The horns are emblems of power.
Well, there's no power on the altar without the blood. And this is one of the great lessons. There must be the blood of Jesus Christ in the life of anyone who says, I'm a Christian and hasn't dealt with their sin. You can tell them straight out then you're not a Christian. But you can be one.
And you can do it instantly. But Not without the blood. 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 in the book of Leviticus, chapter 9, with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio.
So we know that this will be a manifestation of God. They'll know this is a manifestation of God. but he will not appear to them in human form. Verse 7 And Moses said to Aaron, Go to the altar, offer your sin offering and your burnt offering, and make atonement for yourself and for the people. Offer the offering.
of the people and make atonement for them. As Yahweh commanded.
Now, that little Yahweh commanded, a big deal. Again, no creative license when it comes to faith. That's what makes heretics heretics. They just, you know, well, not how the Bible commands it. Let's just do it this way.
This is a new time, a new era, a new generation, new culture. That's the road to heresy. A heresy is a A serious offence before God. the heretic would violate the first and second commandment very quickly and justify themselves doing it. But as covered, sin must always be addressed first, and so your sin offering, and then again the same pattern for the peace offering.
Um When we get to verse 15, we'll... Get a little bit more detail on the people. I don't really have to talk much to this audience about the sin offering. If there if you are unbelievers or if you belong to a church that didn't have expository teaching, then get into it. But I would be preaching to the choir.
He's clearing the way for devotion. And gratitude and peace in dealt with first, of course. To claim to be devout. A devout Christian or a Christian. Even a non-devout Christian, say, I'm a Christian.
Without the cross of Christ, means that you are an impenitent soul and not a Christian. You cannot. You've got to have your sin dealt with at the cross. And this shows up early on, and here it is in Leviticus. God making sure that sin offering presented first.
Now, we do come to this big word here. A big not in the sense of a hard word to learn in our language, but Big in its How profound it is, atonement. Kofar.
So let's just consider this word a kofar. 'Cause it has everything to do with us. shows up first in Genesis chapter 6. That's the Ark of Noah And there in verse 14, God commands Noah. To Put pitch inside and outside the ark.
Oil base, it's like caulking. to insulate the ark. Help keep the water out, even preserve the wood. And the word cofar. That's the covering that he that's used in Genesis 6.14.
Then here, for example, other places too throughout the Old Testament. But here in Leviticus 9, 7, atonement, same word, kofar. But what about Exodus 25, 17, the mercy seat. That Hebrew word is kofar. It's a covering.
That's what the word means: a covering. And then the men had to pay the temple fee, a ransom fee. In Exodus 30, verse 12, and that word ransom there is kofar.
Now some of verb and noun, same word though. Yom Kippur. Kippur comes from the Hebrew kofar. A covering for cleansing. But in the Old Testament, from the New Testament standpoint, it's only on the surface.
And when we talk about The Leprosy. On the soul, on the life, the skin. If it goes deeper than the skin, it is a leprous sore.
Well, there's very many metaphors in that. The implications are quite remarkable. The covering is not going deeper than the skin. We'll have to wait till they get to the New Testament. Before the Antidote is strong enough To take away the sin and not just cover it.
So, the implications are soul-changing. Ultimately, sin must be permanently put out of God's sight. In the end only God Himself could do it. Didn't happen in the Old Testament. The Old Testament sacrifices could not finish the work.
And so we read John 19, verse 30: Jesus on the cross.
So when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, It is finished. And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit. What's finished? The dealing with sin. Because now he has gone deeper than the skin.
It's not a covering, it's a removal. The biblical use of this single word introduces a dynamic doctrine concerning Jesus Christ.
Now this Root word for kofar. There's an equivalent in the Arabic language. which has the same root meaning, to cover, to conceal.
Now the scholars will go into all of that and that's good. But we don't need them to get us there. We can simply watch the application of the word. Noah covering the wood and the ark, How far? Atonement, a covering for the sins.
The mercy seat covering the chest. of the ark, where the tablet and the word and Aaron's rod would be. And uh Then, of course, the ransom. We follow, it's a covering. We don't depend upon the etymology of the word language of that world, but it does.
it does lend its support to cover the sin. But then, when the New Testament comes along, and we all should know this, John. Chapter 1. The Apostle John, writing about a day in his life when John the Baptist, it says, saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold, a Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. no longer an atonement, in a sense of the Old Testament word.
It's an atonement ultimately. The result is that sin is dealt with before God and makes the sinner. Able to approach God. But this is why we find Abraham and Lazarus. And righteous Sheol, and not in heaven.
But on the day of the crucifixion, The outlaw that confessed Christ was promised to be in paradise. Abraham couldn't get in because sin was only covered. But on the day that Christ died, the sim was removed. And now heaven is open, To those Who come to Christ? And so we know the Old Testament system of atonement.
At the brazen altar, symbolized. Covering, not removal, that had to wait for Christ.
So the Old Testament system. Dealt with surface sin. If you follow The analogy. But the New Testament plan of salvation removed the penalty. It removed the sin.
By going beneath the surface and into eternity, And Satan wasn't happy about that. The New Testament Christians didn't even know about this until after the resurrection. Not really. That's why Peter was trying to talk Jesus out of going to the cross. He didn't understand what he was doing.
He was trying to stop Christianity.
So the point is, and here it is in Leviticus. We are getting the gospel in Leviticus. Verse eight: Aaron therefore went to the altar and killed the calf of the sin offering. Which was for himself. This one again is for him, the high priest, not for the other priests.
But for him personally, Now Aaron's first attempt At being Israel's high priest. Found him making a golden calf For the people to worship. In the name of Yahweh, Here is who brought you out of Egypt. And that's in Exodus 32, verse 29. His first sacrifice As not only the appointed high priest, but the consecrated high priest is what?
A calf. Not a golden one. On his behalf, It is his own sin offering. I don't think the irony was wasted on Aaron. I don't think it was wasted on Moses.
I don't think the brothers, you know, they were very mature at this stage in life. Maybe if they were in their 20s, they might have had a little giggle, not encouraging that. I think it was more solemn at this point. I think Aaron knew that God gave him a second chance. And he's not offering a golden calf, For the people to worship, he's offering the blood of a calf.
to worship Yahweh according to the commandment. And so, what we get out of this is, we don't have to wait to get to Jonah to hear about God will restore what the locusts have eaten. We see it showing up in other places in Scripture, too. You have your awful moments. Serving God.
And yet, God gives an opportunity for recovery, and that's what we're looking at here in verse 8. The high priest is not above the law. Nor out of the reach of God's love. And that's important. Because, you know, if you're having life's going well for you, you might be sensitive to God's love.
You come to church, you sing, you can feel the Spirit moving. Or maybe you're going through some tough times. You sense God's love, though, in the midst of whatever you're going through. But then there are those times without any reason. Nothing Drastic is taking place.
You just can't sense the love like you used to sense it. But it's there It's not dependent upon our mood or our feeling. And by faith we know it's there. Thus, the benefit of maintaining your daily devotions. Your daily devotions won't let you get away from these things.
Nowadays we can make this analogy, you buy these new cars and if you move too much to one lane it starts shaking and everything. You get in your lane.
Well, your devotions do that. They shake us up a little bit. And you can read and say, you know, I remember a time when I read this verse and I was so moved in the spirit. But now I j I just not moved. Yeah, well, get up and go do your duty anyway.
That's no excuse. We can't call in sick. I can't serve today. I'm not in the mood. What would that look like from Hell's perspective?
They would have a lot of fun with that one.
Well, in verse nine Then the sons of Aaron brought the blood to him, and he dipped his finger in the blood, put it on the horns of the altar, and poured the blood at the base of the altar.
So again, they're bringing him, of course, a vessel with the blood, because he killed the animal, and and as it bled out, they Caught the blood in the vessel and bring it to him. He puts his finger in it. We covered that in earlier sections. Hands-on ministry, bloody ministry, the horns of the altar, we covered that. The horns are emblems of power.
Well, there's no power on the altar without the blood. And this is one of the great lessons. There must be the blood of Jesus Christ in the life of anyone who says I'm a Christian and hasn't dealt with their sin. You can tell them straight out then you're not a Christian. But you can be one.
And you can do it instantly. But not without the blood. not without the cross. not without repentance. And there's no such thing.
As New Testament repentance without The blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin.
Now, verse 9: We've covered the kidneys and the fatty lobe and the liver. I was listening to Um Alexander Scobie, I think, is last name. Who'd who would reads through the Old Testament. And that very rich voice. And I was reading this, and it's like, you know, if I could talk, if I had a voice like that, I would read the whole verses too.
It's like almost pleasant listening to him talking on the fatty lobe, and he's using all this old King James language, and it's quite poetic. But we've got business to take care of in verse 10, the latter part, the last clause, as Yahweh had commanded Moses. We cannot stress that enough. Creative liberties when it comes to commandments of God, forms heretics, apostates, and liberal theologians. And they do much damage.
The last wave that we saw of heresy has been the emergent church. If you don't know about that, just stay away from it. You don't need to learn every heresy. You don't need to learn the enemy's language to fight the enemy. You just need to know how your weapons work.
Uh so uh anyway And that was a heresy. And it is still around, but it doesn't have the name. It was never an organized movement. But whatever you have, these churches that are just into thrilling the people. Doing ministry the way we don't find in the New Testament, you got a problem.
And Jesus taught the people many things. That's the role of the shepherd. Uh verse 11. The flesh and the hide he burned with fire outside the camp. These are ideas and practices And movements For the royal priesthood that would be us, we are a royal priesthood.
to learn from. There are things that have to be taken away. They're no good. They're not to be integrated into our system of faith, as Jude said, once delivered. to the saints, to the church, This is what Paul was trying to say in Colossians 2.8.
You have no need of these things. You're complete in Christ. Why would you look to the world to learn how you should? live morally and spiritually. You're complete in the scripture.
Stop trying to salvage so you can integrate. In a single word, leaven. Mix in. To what God has done?
some things people have done.
Well, that's what's going to come out in chapter 10 when Nadab and Abihu look to mingle in.
Some hot stuff. With God. and are killed on the spot. It was imperative. That the sin offering be properly finalized.
Of all the offerings, this one's a little different. even from the trespass offering. The cross of Christ Was not treated with the honor. Of those offerings outside the temple.
So I'm connecting the cross of Christ with the sin offering in the Levitical. Priesthood. And for the people under the Levitical priesthood. I'm making that connection. And it was proper.
That The flesh and the hide be taken out. And that'd be pretty heavy stuff again. These aren't little pigeons we're talking about. The bull or the goo or the g or the goat. The other sacrifices got to stay where the temple was.
But not this one.
So the cross of Christ was not Given that same honor, and here's where it comes to life, because Christ is that sin offering, Isaiah 53, 10. Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him. He has put him to grief. When you make his soul a sin offering, One of the problems with Israel trying to say, well, you know, Isaiah 53 is talking about us, Israel. How flattering?
Self-flattering. Not true. You love that we can love Israel, we can love the Jewish people. But we do not agree. With any system.
that does not exalt Jesus Christ as the Son of God. And we're not going to do them any service by caving into anybody.
So there we know, Isaiah 53, Jesus is the sin offering. It tells us right there. The offerings for sin, the flesh to hide, were taken outside. That's important. John's Gospel chapter 19 verse 20.
Then many of the Jews read this title, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. For the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city. That means it wasn't in the city. It was outside the city. That's where you take the sin offering, the flesh and the hide.
And that's really all they could. crucified was the flesh Of Christ, they could not harm his soul or spirit of who he was. Much more than a soul and spirit, the essence of who he is, God, self-created.
So he's taken out of the city. And It was what do we read in Hebrews? Despising the shame. That's Christ's attitude toward the cross. There's nothing giddy about Hebrews 12:2, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
What is that part about? who for the joy that was set before him, Well, there was the delight of returning to heaven, giving up humanity and sitting at the throne of God where he belongs. But the joy that was set before him were the souls that would come to him, that would come to the cross for salvation. That's what it was all about. God choosing out of Creation People who will love him by faith.
No one else has had this opportunity that we know of. The angels have not had this opportunity. They've seen God. The angels do not have to exercise faith. They're in heaven, they see the throne.
We do.
So, without the cross of Christ, all religion is meaningless, all of it. Without the cross of Christ, all the other offerings. Without the sin offering, all the other offerings were of no value. They would help you in no way. Your devotion offering, your meal offering for thanksgiving, your peace offering, meaningless.
Unless sin was first dealt with, and that's why it's the first offering that was made by the priests daily. Isaiah 53:11. And he shall see the labour of his soul, and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many. Why not all?
Because not all will come to him. for he shall bear their iniquities. I am so glad I have got somebody else. to take my punishment for me. Um I'm not good enough to take my own punishment.
I'm not good enough to survive it. He is, and only he is. And so, again, how the scripture snaps together, you cannot find some happy country place and sit down as a creative writer and author the Bible. It can't be done. There's too many parts to it.
Not only are the types and the illustrations, but you have the prophecies, you have the morals, you have the wisdom of the scripture. It is. Too much. for man to produce And now we come to verse 12. And he kindled the burnt offering, and Aaron's sons presented to him the blood, which he sprinkled all around the altar.
Which again, as a picture of Christ, the disciples. Did not sprinkle the blood of Christ on the cross. It was Christ who was there. How did he do it? By permitting it.
They could have called legions of angels to put an end to the whole thing. Verse 13. Then they presented the burnt offering to him with its pieces and head, and he burned them on the altar.
So his sons were butchered the animal, but Aaron placed it. Which is again. Linked to our High Priest Christ Jesus. Both Aaron's and the people's sacrifices were lengthly, And involve hard work. We can't lose sight of that.
It's helpful, I think, healthy for a church to understand. The church does not need anybody to serve. The church wants people to serve, of course. And if you see a need and you feel prompted to answer that need, that's the Holy Spirit at work. These things are out of our hands.
Otherwise, you have. The pastors Or the leaders of the church trying to drum up business and guilt you into serving and call you up. Hey, we need, and now it's, you know, not Holy Spirit-led, it's man-driven. That's my take on it. I don't care for that.
I don't find it in the New Testament, I don't find it in.
Some of the old school Calvary chapels, I find this dependency on the Lord. And to depend on the Lord is to make yourself vulnerable. I don't know of another way to depend on God and not make yourself vulnerable at the same time. Then that calls for what? Faith.
You're not going to get away. That which does not have faith, says the Apostle Paul, is sin. a pretty heavy stuff to lay down. On a church, on the individuals. And so, yeah, you delight when people say, you know, I want to do this, because you know.
The chances are very high. It's the Holy Spirit at work in them, not you. And you get much done that way. That can offend another church that's not doing it that way. All I can say is this is how we try to do it.
And sometimes it's kind of spooky. Because We can see we have All our eggs in one basket in certain places, and there's nothing we could do about it but trust God.
Now there's an idea. Look, when we get to heaven, one thing we're going to be glad to be rid of is faith. We won't need it anymore. will be complete, will be like him. We'll be on the next level.
We'll be glorified. That's the word, glorified. And there'll be no risk of losing anything. Ever again. And I can't wait.
Now, this is not a rebuke on faith. Again, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Well, we're going to have the evidence. We're going to see him. We're going to be there with him. And so it is a glorious thing to pursue the day without where we will not have to. Go sight unseen.
Let me ask you, would you like to go through all eternity? Exercising faith? I would like to just uh Be there with the shepherd. And the apostles, you know, Jesus primed them. He says, I'm not going to be here with you forever.
Now you can see me. You can touch me. John laid his head on his bosom. He was right there. What a void when he was no longer there.
Now, what are they doing? Scrambling to believe. Drawing from his teachings. How do you think it was with Peter when as he aged before they Martyred him, and I believe he was.
Well, I know he was martyred. I have no doubt Jesus said he was going to be martyred. What about those times when those lonely moments when he had to question himself? Is he in the right place? What about when he's just exhausted from trying to serve and trust the Lord?
Paul said at one point we despaired even of life.
So these things are encouraging to us. Uh 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.
