Leviticus 5-6 - Offerings Recap and Zacchaeus

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. If you are one of the people that listens to this either late at night or early in the morning, I kind of feel you right now.

We are in Leviticus 5, and I might be 5 and 6 today, and maybe just a smidge into 7 if everything works out.

But I am recording this at the end of a long day, but a good day, and I got some work done, and I'm really excited for the coming weekend at Tabernacle. And just really excited for what God has in store.

Got some Bible studies and things coming up, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm just going to jump right into Leviticus 5.

We have been going through how does a holy God live with unholy people, and the answer is through God making a way for us to be in His presence without being destroyed.

And the way He does that is by offering these pictures of Jesus and symbols of God's life-giving presence and of the seriousness of sin. So we've looked at some of the different offerings that have gone through.

So there was a burnt offering, there's a grain offering, a fellowship offering, a sin offering, and we're going to look today at the guilt offering.

And then as the writer here is going through, he then specifies some particular extra things you need to know about the offering. So we've gone through, we've noted some different things, that some portions of the sacrifices are important to God.

We've noted that blood is a picture of life, of God having given this, in all of the things that we've looked at, God having given this animal's life in exchange for the life of humanity. There is something different about humankind.

We aren't just one of the animals. We are special to God, because we are made in His image. We are made to do what He does.

And so, He loves us and He cares for us. We saw yesterday some of the various things that we can look at in regards to how big of a sacrifice, how pricey of a sacrifice one would need to make, perhaps if they were in different stations in life.

And it wasn't that, you know, if you're the poorest person or if you're the tallest person, I said tallest person, but I meant like richest, most acclaimed person, that you had to do the exact same thing.

And if you couldn't afford it, well, I guess that's tough. God's just angry with you now. You know, there was kind of sliding economic scales, if you will.

There wasn't a flat tax rate. But that everyone had to do different things. And we also saw that God had, with that, everyone, no matter what they brought, it was always the exact same way.

That atonement, that that salvation, that that being right with God, that covering was made for sin, it was always done the exact same way, whether it was the very, very expensive bull, or if it was something very un-expensive, like a female goat.

God had, everyone had to go in the same way. Sometimes it costs someone a little bit more, but everyone went through the same way. And we saw how that kind of pointed us to Jesus.

All of us go through Jesus, and sometimes it might cost us a little bit more to follow him.

Perhaps if we've got a lot in this world, I can think of even what Jesus told the rich young ruler, where he says, you know, the rich young ruler goes, okay, I've kept all the commandments from the time I was a kid.

And Jesus says, great, there's only one thing you're lacking. Why don't you sell everything that you have and follow me?

And it was his riches, all the things that he would lose if he were to follow Jesus, that made him turn his back and go, you're a great God, but you're not that great to me.

So let's look now at what the cases were that would require a sin offering, which is what we looked at yesterday, and that's something where there's an unintentional sin, like it wasn't just blatant, oh yeah, I'm going to do this in defiance of God,

like someone forgot something or someone wasn't trying to disobey God, but they did. And as we talked about sin, even when it's unintentional, has consequences.

So Leviticus 5.1, when someone sins in any of these ways, if he has seen, heard or known about something he has witnessed and did not respond to a public call to testify, he will bear his iniquity, like he's guilty and needing to offer that offering.

If he knew that he needed to testify, and maybe he was scared of testifying against a particular person, or he was scared because it would get a friend or family member in trouble, that he needs to give a sin offering.

If he has not borne that public witness to what he was a witness to.

It says, or if someone touches anything unclean, carcass of an unclean wild animal, unclean livestock or an unclean swarming creature, without being aware of it, he is unclean and incurs guilt.

So here, we'll get into the list of the clean and unclean animals later. Most all of those had at least something to do with God's character of being life-giving.

And these are some of the same categories that we would read about even in Genesis 1 and 2, which I'll highlight later in some sermons in Genesis.

But here, if you touch one of these animals that's ceremonially unclean, you need to give a sin offering.

He says, or if he touches human uncleanness, this might be refuse, might be bodily fluids, something like that, any uncleanness by which one can become defiled without being aware of it, but later recognizes it, he incurs guilt.

Or if someone swears rashly to do what is good or evil, concerning anything a person may speak rashly in an oath, without being aware of it, but later recognizes it, he incurs guilt in such an instance.

So you make a promise to God, or you make like a severe promise, an oath, that you are absolutely going to do something and you don't do it. Well, you've lied, you've incurred guilt on yourself. You need to submit a sin offering.

If someone incurs guilt in one of these cases, he is to confess he has committed that sin. He must bring his penalty for guilt for the sin he has committed to Yahweh. A female lamb or goat from the flock is a sin offering.

In this way, the priest will make atonement on his behalf for his sin. But if he cannot afford an animal from the flock, then he may bring to Yahweh two turtle doves or two young pigeons as penalty for guilt for his sin.

One is a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering. So the sin offering is for what he did wrong, but the burnt offering, well, that's something that's kind of often, as we looked at, something of thankfulness to the Lord.

It's saying Godlike, thank you for, you know, not consuming me. Thank you for giving me what I need. I'm grateful.

And so I'm giving this entirely to you. He is to bring them, the two turtle doves or the two young pigeons, to the priest who will first present the one for the sin offering. He is to twist its head at the back of the neck without severing it.

Then he will sprinkle some of the blood of the sin offering on the side of the altar. While the rest of the blood is to be drained out at the base of the altar, it is a sin offering. So the exact same procedure that we'd read about before.

He will prepare the second bird as a burnt offering according to the regulation. In this way, the priest will make atonement on his behalf for the sin he has committed and he will be forgiven.

But if he cannot afford two turtle doves or two young pigeons, he may bring two quarts of fine flour as an offering for his sin. He must not put olive oil or frankincense on it for it is a sin offering.

So here he's saying, like, don't make some extra grain offering and then just be like, oh, yeah, I guess I'll bring this into for my sin offering. He goes, no, no, there's a difference. Grain offering is like, hey, thank you, God.

I'm so grateful. This is, you know, you're wonderful and I'm giving this to you and it will go to feed the priests and the Levites. God says, no, there's a difference between sin and gratitude.

And don't try and bathe your sin in just, oh, God, thank you for being so gracious and never actually deal with your sin.

Even just as I'm thinking about that, like I feel like there's probably been times in my life where I have had that thought where I'm just like, oh, God, you know, thank you for forgiving all of my sin and not actually dealing with it and going, OK,

God, I'm done with this. And I'm not going to talk that way anymore. I'm not going to think that way. I'm not going to say that anymore.

Maybe that sparks something for you as well. God puts a difference between gratitude and sin. And we can be grateful for God's forgiveness, but that doesn't excuse us away from being sorry for our sin or rejecting.

OK, we've got the two quarts of fine flour. He can't prepare it like a grain offering. He has to bring it to the priest who will take a handful from it as its memorial portion and burn it on the altar along with the fire offerings to Yahweh.

It is a sin offering. In this way, the priest will make atonement on his behalf considering the sin he has committed in any of these cases and he will be forgiven.

The rest will belong to the priest like the grain offering, but it's different than the grain offering because it does include the olive oil and frankincense in it.

Okay, so that's the sin offering and kind of the various gradations of, alright, for the common folk, based on your economic status, here's how you need to do it. Now we're going to look at the guilt offering. This is in verse 14.

Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, if someone offends by sinning unintentionally in regard to any of Yahweh's holy things, he must bring his penalty for guilt to Yahweh.

An unblemished ram from the flock, based on your assessment of its value in silver shekels, according to the sanctuary shekel, as a guilt offering.

So basically, however much the sanctuary shekel weighed, there would be that thing that would give the measurements for, oh yeah, this is worth that much, or this is worth that much, this many shekels or that many shekels, and you're supposed to

compare the coinage. Again, coins during that time period were very custom made a lot of times.

You didn't have a nice press that made sure everything weighed the exact same and everything used the exact same amount, and it was more kind of guesswork. So he's going through here an unblemished ram of a specific value.

He is to make restitution for a sin regarding any holy thing, adding a fifth of its value to it and give it to the priest. So whatever they did, so I think some of the things will be mentioned in here.

But let's say someone accidentally ate some of the food that was only supposed to be for the priest. Well, he would then give of enough thing to cover the cost of that plus 20% of its value.

So here there's this reparations that's taking place with the guilt offering. He says, Then the priest will make atonement on his behalf with the ram of the guilt offering and he will be forgiven.

If someone sins and without knowing it violates any of Yahweh's commands concerning anything prohibited, he is guilty and he will bear his iniquity.

He must bring an unblemished ram from the flock according to your assessment of its value as a guilt offering to the priest. Then the priest will make atonement on his behalf for the error he has committed unintentionally and he will be forgiven.

It is a guilt offering. He is indeed guilty before Yahweh. So you can't just go, oopsie, I know that was against God himself.

Like this wasn't just a man law. This is against what God has said. And he says you can't just go, oops, it's serious.

So chapter six then starts off continuing this thought of the guilt offering.

Yahweh spoke to Moses when someone sins and offends Yahweh by deceiving his neighbor in regard to a deposit, a security or a robbery or defrauds his neighbor or finds something lost and lies about it or swears falsely about any of the sinful things a

person may do. Once he has sinned and acknowledged his guilt, he must return what he stole or defrauded or the deposit entrusted to him or the lost item he found or anything else about which he swore falsely.

He will make full restitution for it and add a fifth of its value to it. He is to pay it to its owner on the day he acknowledges his guilt.

Then he is to bring his guilt offering to Yahweh and unblemished ram from the flock according to your assessment of its value as a guilt offering to the priest.

In this way, the priest will make atonement on his behalf before Yahweh and he will be forgiven for anything he may have done to incur guilt.

So this is a much kinder system than many of the things that were common in this world or even some of the things that you may find in certain countries today where, you know, you steal something and you might lose a finger as opposed to in the

Bible, hey, yeah, he stole this security deposit. He robbed him. He defrauded this person. And God said, all right, the what you got to do is you got to give back whatever you stole and add 20% of its value.

What's really cool about this, even as I just think about how this is referenced at other points in scripture is Zacchaeus, the text collector in the New Testament.

When Jesus comes and he comes to Zacchaeus' house, Zacchaeus experiences salvation and his response is, hey, whatever I stole from people, I'm going to give back to them. I'm going to restore everything to them and I'm going to give back 25%.

So their grace working in Zacchaeus' heart prompted him to do more than God had said, that he wasn't kept back by, I guess I can only give 20% or even just an obedient heart that says, I want to obey God. I want to give 20%.

He was all in on the generosity. He says, if God has been lavishly good to me and he has forgiven me, then I can be lavishly restorative in restoring my relationship with other people that I have wronged.

So I think that's just kind of a cool connection as you look at the Bible of, okay, well, where would this even show up? Well, it shows up with Jesus.

So then in verse number eight, Moses begins or the Lord speaking through Moses to and then through Moses says Moses wrote it down. He's going through now a review of all of the other offerings that we've just gone through over the past six chapters.

He says, okay, wait, here's a few other things we need to know about these offerings. So the burnt offering is first in verse number eight. Yahweh spoke to Moses command Aaron and his sons.

This is the law of the burnt offering. The burnt offering itself must remain on the altar's hearth all night until morning while the fire of the altar is kept burning on it. The priest is to put on his linen robe and linen undergarments.

He is to remove the ashes of the burnt offering the fire is consumed on the altar and place them beside the altar. Then he will take off his garments, put on other clothes, and bring the ashes outside the camp to a ceremonially clean place.

The fire on the altar is to be kept burning. It must not go out. Every morning the priest will burn wood on the fire.

He is to arrange the burnt offering on the fire and burn the fat portions from the fellowship offerings on it. Fire must be kept burning on the altar continually. It must not go out.

Now, we might read that and go, okay, well, why does the fire have to keep on going? Like, why can't they ever let it stop?

And the answer is, as we'll read about, I think it's in chapter number nine, is that the fire came from God initially, and it signified his presence, that God is always with us.

And it's not that when you do a sacrifice, all of a sudden, God's there now. It's that God is always there in the Tabernacle with his people. And then even something I read earlier, as you think about, God appeared to Moses first in the burning bush.

Then when he was leading the children of Israel through the wilderness, he went as a pillar of fire.

And when you think about the New Testament, that the Holy Spirit was the one that, as John the Baptizer prophesied, hey, Jesus is going to baptize you with fire and with the Holy Spirit.

And that's exactly what happened, that you had those things that were like tongues of fire that rested on the apostles when they received the Holy Spirit. And the Book of Hebrews would tell us that our God is a consuming fire.

So this is showing these people, God is always with you. He doesn't just show up at random times. It's not when you think about the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.

That he's like, hey, maybe your gods are asleep, maybe they're on a journey, maybe they are using the restroom. You know, where did your gods go? As opposed to, he knew exactly where his god was.

And when he prayed, God brought down fire from heaven. So here it's God's presence. And for you today, God's presence is always with you.

He doesn't just show up when you go to church. He doesn't just show up when you open your Bible. He doesn't just show up when you bow your head and close your eyes.

God's presence is always with you. Are you aware of that? Does it change how you live knowing that God is with you?

He is Immanuel, God with us. And he lives in us and God's not taking away his Holy Spirit until we have passed. And we have returned to the one who made us.

Okay, so that's the burnt offering. He says, keep the fire going. Here's this procedure that I want you to go through.

And again, many, many details that could be elaborated on, but time fails. Again, the book that I referenced last episode. Go look at that in the show notes.

There's a book. And you can also look at some resources like gotquestions.org. I spent some time on there today and was helped in some of my understanding in different things.

Okay, you have the burnt offering, then the grain offering. Now this is verse 14. Now this is the law of the grain offering.

Aaron's sons will present it before Yahweh in front of the altar.

The priest is to remove a handful of fine flour and olive oil from the grain offering with all the frankincense that is on the offering and burn its memorial portion on the altar as a pleasing aroma to Yahweh.

Aaron and his sons may eat the rest of it. It is to be eaten in the form of unleavened bread in a holy place. They are to eat it in the courtyard of the tent of meeting, the Tabernacle.

It must not be baked with yeast. I have assigned it as their portion from my fire offerings. It is especially holy, like the sin offering and the guilt offering.

Any male among Aaron's descendants may eat it. It is a permanent portion throughout your generations from the fire offerings to Yahweh. Anything that touches the offerings will become holy.

Yahweh spoke to Moses. This is the offering that Aaron and his sons are to present to Yahweh on the day that he is anointed. Two quarts of fine flour is a regular grain offering, half of it in the morning and half in the evening.

It is to be prepared with oil on a griddle. You are to bring it well needed. You are to present it as a grain offering of baked pieces of pleasing aroma to Yahweh.

The priest who is one of Aaron's sons and will be anointed to take his place is to prepare it. It must be completely burned as a permanent portion for Yahweh. Every grain offering for a priest will be a whole burnt offering.

It is not to be eaten. So here he has this grain offering, mentions the specific way it's supposed to be prepared, and he says this is who it's for. He says it's for Aaron's sons.

So this then plays into Jesus in Luke 6 and then whatever the parallel passages are in Matthew and in Mark.

When the Pharisees get after the disciples for picking things of grain on the Sabbath and eating them, and Jesus goes, OK, the point was never to be oppressive on people.

He goes, OK, you guys know that the showbread, the grain offerings, and there's some other things too, that were a portion for the priests, the Levites, and only them, only Aaron's descendants.

He says you guys know about that, how God said this, but David, he took from some of the showbread that was at the Tabernacle, and he ate of it. And not only that, he also gave it to the men that were with him. And you guys know this.

And David is that man after God's own heart. He is the one that, you know, his descendant is going to reign forever and ever. And so he goes, OK, so don't you realize that man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man.

So here even how Jesus phrases some of these things makes us think about, OK, what's the purpose? What's the heart behind this? And it's number one, to care for the priests and Levites, that they would have something to eat.

It wasn't intended to be, all right, if someone's hungry, if someone's on the run for their life from a maniac king who wants to kill him, you can't give it to the poor. That's not the point.

The point is to respect God, to respect his presence in life. So then the sin offering. And then we have just the very, very last one, just one second.

Okay, so we're just going to get through this last section with the sin offering at the end of Chapter 6. And then we'll start in Chapter 7 tomorrow. He says, Yahweh spoke to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons, this is the law of the sin offering.

The sin offering is most holy and must be slaughtered before Yahweh at the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered. The priest who offers it as a sin offering will eat it.

It is to be eaten in a holy place in the courtyard of the tent of meeting. Anything that touches its flesh will become holy, and if any of its blood splatters on a garment, then you must wash that garment in a holy place.

A clay pot in which the sin offering is boiled is to be broken. If it's boiled in a bronze vessel, it is to be scoured and rinsed with water. Any male among the priests may eat it.

It is especially holy, but no sin offering may be eaten if its blood has been brought into the tent of meeting to make atonement in the holy place. It must be burned.

So that's going back and looking at the sin offering and the sins of the high priest, the sins of the congregation, and then, yeah, so the sins of the high priest and the sins of the congregation as a whole, like all of the people messed up, those

offerings could not be eaten by the priests, but the ones for the leaders of the people and for any common person, those could be eaten by the priest. The other ones, because it affected like such a huge portion of people and because it was such a

serious matter before God, those needed to be dedicated entirely to the Lord. So that is Leviticus 5 and 6. Again, thank you for journeying with me in this.

I know these aren't maybe some of the fantastic dynamic stories of Acts, but here is really like day to day life for these people, for interacting with God's presence, for seeing how holy God is, how seriously he views sin, how much he cares for

people and wants a relationship with them, does not want them to be destroyed, doesn't want them to not know his presence. He's there with us. And I love the thought of the fire never going out because God's presence was always there with them.

And then the fact that God cares for his people, and these rules were never meant to be something to beat people over the head. These rules were for caring for people and for picturing Jesus. How do you treat the Bible?

Is it something that you use to beat over other people's heads of, hey, you know, you need to be doing this? Or are you realizing this is like God's relationship manual?

This is his love letter to us that describes who he is and how he thinks and what his history is. Let's value God's word. Let's place an importance even on Leviticus.

And hopefully as we look at some of these details and revisit some of these things and look at where it's mentioned elsewhere in Scripture, I hope that it would be an encouragement to you.

I know I started off the episode a little on the tired side, but even diving into these chapters, I've been encouraged in what God's done in my heart, what He's convicted me of, even just a little anecdote of there's a difference between like a

gratitude offering to God and a sin offering to God. Deal with your sin. It's good to be grateful for God, but just being grateful to God isn't the same thing as dealing with your sin. So hope that would be an encouragement to you today.

Thanks for tuning in to this much longer episode today. This is going to be fun to upload, but look forward to diving into Chapter 7 with you tomorrow.