Leviticus 7 - Expired Gratefulness and Priests' Portions

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

I can't believe you're back. It's Tabernacle Talk, and we're journeying through the Book of Leviticus together. Today, we are in Leviticus 7.

So we have been walking through, looking at this central thought of how does a holy God live in the middle of an unholy people? Like how does his justice, how does his righteousness interact with them?

And how can they survive being next to such pure holiness? And the answer is because God makes a way for his people to be in relationship and proximity to him. And we've been looking at some of the different offerings that God has for his people.

We looked at a burnt offering, we looked at a grain offering, a peace offering, a sin offering, a guilt offering and an ordination offering. And so that's been what we've been looking at in chapters one through six of the Book of Leviticus.

And I've tried to every single time remind us of this central fact that all of the offerings, all of the sacrifices, it all points to Jesus.

And it shows us how much God loves us, that he went through all of the work of mentioning all of these things, making all of these provisions so that Israel would not be destroyed by his presence, that he has no desire that anyone would perish, but

that everyone would come to repentance, that they would have a walk and a life with him. And that's what God wants for you today, even as we dive into his word.

And today in Leviticus seven and verse one, it says this, these are the instructions for the guilt offering. So he's talked about it a little bit earlier. Now he's given some more details.

It is most holy. That is set apart to God. It's important.

It's his.

He says, the animal sacrificed as a guilt offering must be slaughtered at the place where the burnt offerings are slaughtered and its blood must be splattered against all sides of the altar saying, hey, God's life is now in all of these places,

wherever the blood goes that where death had been here, that there was sin, that there was defilement. Now the blood symbolizes that God's forgiveness, God's new life is all over the place. That's what that indicated.

The priest will then offer all its fat on the altar, including the fat of the broad tail, the fat around the internal organs, the two kidneys and the fat around them, near the loins and the long lobe of the liver.

These are to be removed with the kidneys and the priest will burn them on the altar as a special gift presented to Yahweh. This is the guilt offering. Any male from a priest's family may eat the meat.

It must be eaten in a sacred place, for it is most holy. So we've talked before, this was how the priests ate, like how they had food was through the giving the offerings of God's people.

And this was something that the Lord had set up for many of the offerings, not the burnt offering, as we've talked about before. He says, the same instructions apply to both the guilt offering and the sin offering.

Both belong to the priest who uses them to purify someone, making that person right with Yahweh, or make an atonement covering for them. In the case of the burnt offering, the priest may keep the hide of the sacrificed animal.

Any grain offering that has been baked in an oven, prepared in a pan or cooked on a griddle belongs to the priest who presents it.

All other grain offerings, whether made of dry flour or flour moistened with olive oil, are to be shared equally among all the priests, the descendants of Aaron.

So they're even something that here, though it's dedicated to the priests, when Paul in the New Testament is thinking about how God's people support their spiritual leaders today, he doesn't take it from Leviticus 7.

He takes it from the verses that say, hey, when an ox is treading out the corn, like mashing all the stuff up to make, you know, I don't know all of the agricultural things back then, but whenever an ox is treading out the corn, he says, don't muzzle

it so that it can't eat from some of the labors of what it's doing. And that's the verse that Paul uses when he says, hey, you need to support your spiritual leaders, just like you would support your animals as they're working, that they get to eat.

He says, you need to do the same for people. I just think that it's funny that he doesn't bring in this passage. He says, your pastors are some, they're some workhorses, they're some oxen, and you need to take care of them.

Then down in verse number 11, now he's talking about the peace offering again that we read about in chapter three, and he's giving some more explanation and specifics.

These are the instructions regarding the different kinds of peace offerings that may be presented to Yahweh.

If you present your peace offering as an expression of Thanksgiving, the usual animal sacrifice must be accompanied by various kinds of bread made without yeast, thin cakes mixed with olive oil, wafers spread with oil, and cakes made of choice flour

mixed with olive oil. This peace offering of Thanksgiving must also be accompanied by loaves of bread made with yeast. One of each kind of bread must be presented as a gift to Yahweh.

It will then belong to the priest who splatters the blood of the peace offering against the altar. The meat of the peace offering of Thanksgiving must be eaten on the same day it is offered. None of it may be saved for the next morning.

I want to mention here that that's just a really interesting detail that the meat of the peace offering of Thanksgiving had to be eaten on the same day. You couldn't prep it for a few, you couldn't save it for future days.

For your Thanksgiving, your Thanksgiving, it doesn't carry over into future days. Every single day we need to bring our thanks to God.

I think of what Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5, where he says, pray without ceasing, and everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

And, oh, and he starts it off with rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

That Paul's saying, your Thanksgiving, your rejoicing, your gratitude to God, your prayers to him, thanking him for what he's done, it needs to be a constant thing. If you haven't praised God today, your Thanksgiving to him yesterday doesn't count.

You've got a new day, new mercies, new breath, new food, new actions, new interactions with your family or your friends or your coworkers, and you gotta thank God for what he's done for you today.

Your Thanksgiving isn't going to hold over till tomorrow. You gotta give some new Thanksgiving tomorrow. That's a really cool portion of Leviticus 7, and that's verse number 15.

Verse number 16. If you bring an offering to fulfill a vow or as a voluntary offering, the meat must be eaten on the same day the sacrifice is offered, but whatever is left over may be eaten on the second day.

Any meat left over until the third day must be completely burned up. You don't want people to get sick. If any of the meat from the peace offering is eaten on the third day, the person who presented it will not be accepted by Yahweh.

You will receive no credit for offering it. By then, the meat will be contaminated. If you eat it, you will be punished for your sin.

God says, I don't want you to harm yourself in any way or accidentally get food poisoning. It's contaminated. Don't do that.

He says meat that touches anything ceremonially unclean may not be eaten. It must be completely burned up. So maybe if a particular type of animal or bug that was unclean, ceremonially unclean, touched it, you would have to completely burn that meat.

He says the rest of the meat may be eaten, but only by people who are ceremonially clean. If you're ceremonially unclean and you eat meat from a peace offering that was presented to Yahweh, you will be cut off from the community.

He says, all right, you're now in a state of being ceremonially unclean.

If you touch anything that is unclean, whether it is human defilement or an unclean animal or any other unclean detestable thing, and then eat meat from a peace offering presented to Yahweh, you will be cut off from the community.

So now he says the specific type of things that you cannot touch, that you would be ceremonially unclean, that these things, human defilement, whether that would be excrement or fluids or things like that, God says, once those things have touched

you, there's a period of cleansing that you go through. It's not that you've, in a sense, sinned through touching something. You clean your kid's poopy toga. I don't know what the clothing item would have been during this time.

He says it's not like you have lied or murdered someone or something like that or broken a Sabbath law. He says you are ceremonially unclean.

And so you need to, what we'll read later in the book, how you get ceremonially clean again, how you have that washing. He says, then you always said to Moses, verse 22, give the following instructions to the people of Israel.

You must never eat fat, whether from cattle, sheep or goats. The fat of an animal found dead or torn to pieces by wild animals must never be eaten, though it may be used for any other purpose.

You go, okay, I need to burn some fat for a candle or a lamp. God says, that's totally okay. You can do that.

You, you know, I don't know some of the other uses of fat. Maybe one of you knows some uses for fat. He says, you can use it for any other purpose.

Just don't eat the fat. He says, anyone who eats fat from an animal presented as a special gift to Yahweh will be cut off from the community. No matter where you live, you must never consume the blood of any bird or animal.

Anyone who consumes blood will be cut off from the community.

So here, both with the fat and the blood that belong to the Lord, that these are things, the fat of the animal, again, we might interact with this some more as we walk through Leviticus, where he might give some more definition for why he would say

this particular thing. It's not really mentioned as much in the New Testament, which I don't know about you. I tend to be more familiar with some of the teachings of the New Testament. And so that one, I'm like, hmm, that's interesting.

Well, we'll see more as we go through. Why would God want all the fat of the animal? Other than that, he says, hey, this is important to me.

Don't eat it. And then we've already been over blood, that it symbolizes life. And God says, this isn't something that you take on to yourself.

Life belongs to God. God gives life, and God, in a sense, is the only one qualified to say when life can be taken, and life belongs to the Lord just as fat does.

Verse number 28, then Yahweh said to Moses, give the following instructions to the people of Israel. When you present a peace offering to Yahweh, bring part of it as a gift to Yahweh.

Present it to Yahweh with your own hands as a special gift to Yahweh. So, if you'll notice, in verses 29 through 30, he says God's name, one, two, three, four, five, basically six times in three verses, God wants to get your attention.

Hey, this is about God. There's this peace offering to God. Present it to God.

It's a gift to God. It comes from you as a gift to God. This isn't about people, this is about God.

I think all of us get that. He says bring the fat of the animal together with the breast and lift up the breast. Then the priest will burn the fat on the altar, but the breast will belong to Aaron and his descendants.

Give the right thigh of your peace offering to the priest as a gift. The right thigh must always be given to the priest who offers the blood and the fat of the peace offering.

For I have reserved the breast of the special offering and the right thigh of the sacred offering for the priests. It is the permanent right of Aaron and his descendants to share in the peace offerings brought by the people of Israel.

This is their rightful share. The special gifts presented to Yahweh have been reserved for Aaron and his descendants from the time they were set apart to serve Yahweh as priests.

On the day they were anointed, Yahweh commanded the Israelites to give these portions to the priests as their permanent share from generation to generation.

These are the instructions for the burnt offering, the grain offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering, as well as the ordination offering and the peace offering.

Yahweh gave these instructions to Moses on Mount Sinai when he commanded the Israelites to present their offerings to Yahweh in the wilderness of Sinai.

So, that's chapter 7, and we'll look at tomorrow, the ordination of priests and the priests beginning their work in Leviticus 8 and maybe into 9 if we get there.

As we look at these things, I think it's so important for us to remember it's all about God, it's not about us, it's not about our righteousness, it's about the fact that Jesus made a way that He paid the ultimate sacrifice so that we wouldn't have

to worry about submitting all of these sacrifices anymore, that as we think about the cost that was incurred in blood and sacrifice and in time spent and all of those things, realizing that Jesus did all of that for us. And so since we have now been

brought not just to the outside of the Tabernacle and not just into maybe that first quarter of the Tabernacle, but that we now live in the presence of God. It's like we are in the Holy of Holies.

We are in the innermost part of the Tabernacle because of the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us, that same God, ultimately Holy, the one who, as we'll see in the next couple of days, whose presence destroys sin, kills people who are in sin, that he

loves us so much. He gave up so much for us so that we would not have to suffer death, but that we could have everlasting life through him, that the Holy God loves unholy you.

And if we neglect to remember that, all of the sacrifices, everything that happens, will begin to just become rote. But as we read through these things, let's realize, okay, God's got some things that belong to him that he views as important.

And today, you are God's portion. He views you as important. And he has given you the gospel.

Just as he gave the priest that breast and the right thigh of that peace offering, he says that he has given you the gospel. He's given you the ministry of reconciliation.

It's something that belongs to God, that's important to him, that he wants you to now go share the gospel with others. And just like the Israelites, they couldn't say, I'm going to keep this for myself. I'm not going to give this to the priest.

God said, no, that's not how this works. And so for us, that he has given us the gospel, that he intends for us to give to other people, we can't hoard it.

And then even thinking back to the beginning part of the chapter of our gratitude, our thanksgiving, isn't meant to be kept all to ourselves, and we're not meant to just do it one time, and then maybe a week later, oh yeah, I guess I can be thankful

again. Our thanksgiving has to be done every single day without stopping, rejoicing in what God has given us. Let's be thankful for everything that he has done and is doing in our lives. Thanks for tuning in to Leviticus 7.

Tomorrow we're in Leviticus 8, and we're looking at... So there was all those summaries of the offerings, and now the next section we're going into dives into, okay, so how was this first implemented?

We're hearing about Aaron and his descendants, the priests, but how did all that start off? And we find out about that tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in and see you then.