Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 27, 2022 | Leviticus - The Purification Offering

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February 27, 2022 | Leviticus - The Purification Offering · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to see you guys.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get started, I would love it if we could go ahead and bow our heads in prayer.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Love to pray for what's going on over in Ukraine together.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you, and Lord, our hearts hurt for our brothers and sisters in Christ across the ocean.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we all trust in you, and we know that it's a scary time for many people over there, and uh they have reason to be scared.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but Lord, also, they understand that they have hope that is found in you, and we ask that you would strengthen them during this time.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, God, that you would keep them safe, that you would help them, um, and that they would be able to use this opportunity, Father, as you have throughout history to spread your kingdom even further.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, God, we ask for everything that is going on over in Ukraine, all of the turmoil and the loss of life and the war.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Father, that you would bring peace sooner rather than later, and ultimately that you would be glorified by what is going on over there.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: God, we love you and we thank you.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: We trust in your plan.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and uh we pray for those, God, who are in danger now.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um, if you haven't been with us, we are going through Leviticus, right?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I am keeping my promise to making it easy for you guys to catch up, because today we are in Leviticus 4 and 5.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are 27 chapters in Leviticus.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: We are not gonna be going this slow through the entire book, believe me, but um, for those of you who are playing along at home, uh, this is one of the days where reading the chapters or having read the chapters beforehand is gonna be pretty helpful because I'm gonna shoot you straight.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get into the weeds today on this one.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we are still going through the sacrifices.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been with us the last couple weeks, you know that two weeks ago we looked at the burnt offering.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Last week was the grain offering, and today we're going to be looking at something called the purification offering.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what a good thing to know and to understand about all of these uh sort of rituals and offerings that God had outlined is that they are all communicating an eternal aspect of God's character or character or something about our relationship with Him.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the same thing is true today.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can sort of think of the purification offering like if you had it had rained outside and you sent kids out into the yard to play, they're going to come back with muddy shoes and grass stains and things of that sort.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's kind of to be expected.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a component of our world, and in particular sin, that we don't often think of, which is that not only is sin harmful in its effects, not only is sin require forgiveness unto a holy God, but sin also quite literally pollutes the world around us.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you think back to the book of Genesis and uh chapter three and the fall of mankind, uh you know that the sin of Adam and Eve, that God cursed them, right?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that God also, that curse extended uh not only to them and to all of mankind, but to all of the animals, to all of the plants, even to the ground itself, that everything was going to be a lot harder than it had been before.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so this morning, as we're talking about the purification offering, uh your Bibles might have it listed as the sin offering.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'll explain the difference there in a moment.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to sort of keep this in the back of your head.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're sort of talking about another component to sin that we normally don't consider, which is that it makes us dirty.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that the sin in our lives, uh, not only the sin back in the Israelite time, required cleansing before we could enter into the presence of God.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you were here for the first week when we talked about Leviticus, one of the main theme of the book is God's holiness and how, not because of preference, not because of style, but God cannot allow sin into his presence because he is holy.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: He is good, allowing evil within would be against his character.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so the purification offering, if you will, is a love letter to the Israelites so that they might enter into his presence once more and be free from the stain of those sins.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that was kind of the preamble here, okay?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because the purification offering is going to challenge us, and it's going to challenge us this morning to think about sin differently than we have in the past, to think more deeply about it and its sort of overarching effects on us and those around us.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: But in Leviticus 4, which is where we're at today, four and five, we're told about the type of circumstances that require this sacrifice.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Leviticus 4, 1 through 2.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord spoke to Moses, tell the Israelites, when someone sins unintentionally against any of the Lord's commands and does anything prohibited by them.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is the intro here.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the purification offering is different than the ones that we have looked at already, which were voluntary, and that this one is mandatory and prescribed in certain situations.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: The doctor has prescribed medication for a certain ailment.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that they just do whenever they feel like it.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the purification offering, like all of the other ones, there are given at certain times of the year and during set during certain festivals, but this is how it begins.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: When someone sins unintentionally against any of the Lord's commands and does anything prohibited by them.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are two things that this uh offering covers.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: The first is accidental violations, which are done through negligence, carelessness.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, basically, it is an accident.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: They made a mistake.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the second is events requiring purification or being ritually unclean.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we haven't talked about that.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a huge part of the book of Leviticus, is being clean and unclean.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: We just haven't gotten there yet.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're gonna have to kind of file this one away until in a couple weeks we get to that portion and understand that there are certain things that God has commanded his people to do or to stay away from that, even though they aren't sins in and of themselves, they are reminiscent of the fall of mankind.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: They are things like um childbirth and skin disease, um, sores on your body.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um there are things that, uh, if you are bleeding profusely, that are all here because we live in a fallen world.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so even though they aren't bad in and of themselves, like childbirth, obviously, um, they are things which still must be purified.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so here's where the difference comes in, because uh the sin offering and the purification offering are sort of interchanged between different versions of the Bible.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why we're going with purification today is for this exact reason: that there are things which it covers which aren't in and of themselves sins, but still must be cleansed.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: The word for sin and purification is coming from the same Hebrew root, and so you can justifiably translate it both ways.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing it the latter way because I feel like that helps us to understand that, you know, um having children or having a physical disease was not something that God was angry about, um, but rather it was something that still required cleansing.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so um, all of these things, right, are the requirements, but it's obvious that the Israelites themselves were like, hey, we need some help because what does this cover again?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So then in chapter five, um, this begins sort of the a longer section on examples for reasons why they would need the purification offering.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: 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.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or if someone touches anything unclean, a carcass of an unclean wild animal or unclean livestock, or an unclean swarming creature, bug, without being aware of it, he is unclean and incurs guilt.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: How you accidentally touch a dead animal, I do not know.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But apparently that was one of the things that we were on the lookout for.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these mistakes were things that once more were done accidentally or ignorantly, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody that the text is basically like if it was hidden from their eyes, is a literal translation of it, that they would make a mistake as we've all done before, come to realize it later, and then repent on behalf of that mistake.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, once more, I just want to reinforce this idea that the purification offering was not necessarily something done only for sin.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: This was something that Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph, did.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Luke 2, 21 through 22.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: When the eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And when the days of their purification, according to the law of Moses, that's what we're talking about, were finished, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: One of the few, or not one of the few, one of the many examples where a small knowledge of Leviticus helps us understand the New Testament even better.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but by talking about and getting really specific about all of these things that were covered by the purification offering, there's a whole other section of things that were not covered by the purification offering, things that sort of transcended God's design for this offering, where he said they were too severe to be covered.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: So what wasn't covered?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Two things.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: One would be intentional violations, that would be willful sin.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's a big difference between saying, like, oh no, I messed up, like I have done something, I didn't intend to do it, this was a mistake that I made.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, God.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a big difference between that and saying, Lord, I know what you require, and I don't care.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do it anyway.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's a hierarchy that's presented here, and it's one of the really compelling sort of things that we learn from the purification offering is that there's kind of a hierarchy to sin, and that there are different ways that God handles sin in our life.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so these intentional violations, they weren't covered under this particular offering, but at the Day of Atonement, which we've talked about before, um, the Day of Atonement was something that was done for the entire nation of Israel once a year.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: All of the sins, even intentional ones, were wiped away by the scapegoat.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you're interested more than that, I talked about the Day of Atonement in a series called Church Words a couple months ago.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you can look it up there.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless, these things were covered, just not here.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there is one final category of things that God says under these rules, under these regulations, the only solution to them is death.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that is capital offenses, or what I'm calling capital offenses.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of Numbers, it is sins of a high hand.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this is somebody who is basically blaspheming the Lord in the way that they are acting.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Their choices have gone so far, have transgressed God's command so much that they aren't even making mistakes.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: They are enemies of God.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's an example of this later on in Leviticus.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord spoke to Moses, say to the Israelites, any Israelite or alien residing in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech must be put to death.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: The people of the country are to stone him.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I will turn against that man and cut him off from his people, because he gave his offspring to Molech, defiling my sanctuary, something that we're talking about today, and profaning my holy name.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Two things that are not good, and that God takes action against.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you've pro if you've been reading through the book of Leviticus, okay, you've probably seen God take actions like this against people before.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can sort of elevate them to this understanding of how severe that sin was, because God said that death was the answer in order to protect the rest of the Israelites.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: In this situation, Molech is a is a pagan god.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: We find out later in the Bible that it's a demon, that the Israelites are worshiping by um burning their children on the altar.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so God says there's only one solution to that one.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So all of this gives us once more a very interesting concept, which is that God has a hierarchy for how he handles sin, and that some of our sins are greater than others.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: If we've ever heard when we were growing up the phrase that all sin is sin, that's true, and that's still true, but there are certain sins which go further against God's will than others.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the purification offering, if you read Leviticus 4, it actually outlines this pretty clearly based upon the order of the individuals who are supposed to bring the sacrifice.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first one is within Leviticus 4 that intentional sins are worse than accidental sins, these mistakes that were made in ignorance.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, intentional sins are not even covered by the purification offering.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: The next sort of step that is made is that sins that are done by a community, by a group of people, in this situation, by uh an entire like nation of the Israelites, are worse than ones done by an individual.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then it even matters who is the one that is sinning and the leadership or influence that they have.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the worst is that a priest is sinning, sort of the liaison between God and his people, and actually his sin, his individual sin, extends to the whole community.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the gravest error.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond that is when a group, when the Israelites themselves, as a as a collective, make a mistake, they sin.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond that is when there is a leader, an individual leader amongst the Israelites, and then finally is the individual, literally the people of the land, but that does not mean that the sacrifice was still not necessary.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you, if I can give an example real quick, um, this helps us to understand why the um uh uh creating the golden calf in Exodus was such a big deal, because it was done intentionally by the community and led by the priest.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of these things were coming together, and God says, this has gone so far against what I've commanded.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that even further within the purification offering, that there are different levels that the priest must go to to pay or sort of to atone for these sins.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um when we get to the part about how they are supposed to walk through this process, uh, walk through the offering itself, if it was a priest or if it was the community that committed the sin, then the blood of the animal, in this case a bull, was taken all the way back deep into the veil, which separated the holy place from the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant is at.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was sprinkled on the tent of meeting itself, and then it was sprinkled on the altar, and then the sin, the the uh the impurity was so great, was so grave, because it had been done by either large groups of people or the leader of the people, that then the rest of the animal was taken outside the city and burned.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: But then if it comes to a leader or the Israelites themselves, they were to offer a lesser animal, not a bull, but it goes it goes all the way from um goat to sheep to uh uh doves and pigeons to flour.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So God was allowing everybody, no matter their economic status, to be able to offer sacrifice, but it would just be sprinkled on the altar itself.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: It says put on the horns of the altar.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a difference in how God is handling this sin.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's a difference in the severity of this sin, and it brings us to our first point for today, which is that all sin requires purification, but the judgment is based on the severity and effects of the mistake.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: All of our sin requires purification.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that you and I have ever done must be cleansed.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this is sort of, this is why it's so interesting.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's separate almost from the component of forgiveness.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's just saying, like, we have polluted the world around us, we have harmed the world itself, not only ourselves, but those we love and the environment, and moreover, we cannot enter into the presence of God, we cannot have fellowship with Him until we have been cleansed as well.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's this sort of double idea beyond forgiveness that we have to be seen as pure in God's eyes.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the judgment of the Lord is based on the severity and effects of the mistake.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you, here's where we go wrong.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Here's where I go wrong, at least.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: We love to play this game.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how bad is this sin scale?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: We put it on here.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still working on the name.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the final name.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't landed on this one yet.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm taking suggestions.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: But we love to think about our lives and place them, mistakes that we make, on this scale, right?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And here's how it works.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: You'd say, murder's really bad.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Murder's not a good thing.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a box that I have not checked, I have not killed anyone.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I put it all the way over here.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's ending somebody's life, a part of God's creation.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty far over on the how bad is this sin scale.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: But when I think then and move on to a, I'll say a lesser sin, like cheating on a test, something that I've done before, I put it way back here because I'm comparing it to the sin of murder.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so here's where we go wrong.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than comparing our mistakes and our sins, our rebellion, against God's holy standard, we compare it to other people's sins.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so we say, I'm not really as bad as they are because I haven't killed anyone yet.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And until I get to that point, or, you know, heaven forbid, I get, I draw closer and my sins become worse in comparison to somebody else's, then I'm doing okay.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really that bad.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not the way that God's system works here.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the way that Leviticus tells us that God is viewing our sin.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: He says, even if you remember my slide a few uh a few slides ago about the Israelite being at the bottom of the totem pole here, even the individual Israelite who accidentally sinned, even their transgression against God, which was unintentional, still required the death of an animal.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: It still required blood to be shed, because even if they didn't realize it, they were stepping out against God's holy will.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is so important to understand.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if we play this game and we are constantly comparing ourselves against other people who are far worse, because we would never compare ourselves against somebody who is holier than us, because we're always comparing ourselves against somebody who has sinned more or is doing something that we think is wrong, we often come out of that situation feeling pretty good about ourselves.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: When in reality, what we should understand is that there are no good sins.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: That God hates all sin.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Even the cheating on the test, even the small things, the stealing the candy bar from Walmart or whatever it is, even these things, when we decide to walk against God, they are things that are deserving of punishment.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is only when we begin to compare ourselves against other people that we think that we are actually walking rightly.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so the purification offering helps us to get to this point.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: That we say, God, not how bad is my sin, but rather what is the effect of my sin?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the other problem.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: We don't understand the true effects of our sin.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's hidden from us.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: We think we might, we would like to be able to see the fallout and assume what is going to happen when we make a mistake, but in reality we don't understand.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is a picture of an explosion over in the Marshall Islands on Bikini Atoll.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And from 1946 to 1958, the US government loved to use this location to test their nuclear bombs.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um twenty three nuclear bombs were dropped there over the span of those 12 years, each one roughly a thousand times stronger than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody who lived on the Marshall Islands, there were a few, everybody who lived on the Marshall Islands.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Islands were told by the US government that, hey, you'll be able to come back soon.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: We just need to do some testing.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: You guys need to evacuate here because it's not going to be safe, but once we're done, you'll be able to return.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not understanding, actually, as they didn't have the science backing it yet, the effects of radiation upon the environment and the world.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Seventy years later, nobody can live on the Marshall Islands because the radio radiation is still too high.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: They don't understand, we didn't understand, the U.S.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: government did not understand the effects of the decisions that they were making.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: They knew it was going to be harmful, but they did not appreciate the gravity and how it would fully affect everyone.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that is our problem, which is that we consider sin to be this light grievance against the Lord, as long as it's not one of these really bad ones.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: But in reality, every single sin we have committed separates us from God.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: It angers him, it dishonors him, and it defiles his sanctuary.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is why when we end up talking about Jesus and we see that he has gone into the heavenly sanctuary and his blood has cleansed those elements, it's all the language of the purification ritual is just happening in heaven because we could not enter heaven because of our sin if he had not done that.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Our sin has calamitous effects on the world around us.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the hardest part to understand is even the smallest sin we have ever committed in our life is deserving of God's wrath.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: One more time for the people in the back.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Even the smallest sin that we have ever committed in our life is deserving of God's wrath.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: If that is upsetting, it's because we're comparing it to other people.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: If that bothers you, it's because we don't understand the holiness of God.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: If, however, you think that might be fair, it's because you are now beginning to understand, as we are all walking this journey together, that the only standard we are ever to compare ourselves against is God's holy standard, which we fall short continuously.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Side note, Bikini Atoll sitting at the bottom of the ocean is Bikini Bottom, for all you SpongeBob fans.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um the island at the beginning of the intro is Bikini Atoll.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I just I just wanted you to know that.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we get to this point this morning where hopefully my endeavor is that we can see this ritual, this this uh offering that God has required for his people, for some of the smallest sins, that even then, once they realized, comparing themselves against God's word, that they had fallen short, they still had to ask for forgiveness.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this tells us not only the devastating effects of our sin, in God's view, but it also helps us to understand our continual need, even now, for purification.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is not something that has escaped us by sort of going over the different covenants in the time in the Bible.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Every single one of us, as long as you've sinned before, still needs purification.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is why, this is one of the beautiful parts about studying Leviticus, is that we begin to appreciate some elements in the New Testament more and more because we're learning that vocabulary, that understanding, and we can appreciate um the death of Christ even more, and how exactly, to be honest with you, it worked that his death was sufficient for our sin.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go to um Hebrews 9, 13 through 14.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow, all things in the purification offering, sprinkling those who are defiled, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, excuse me, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we can serve the living God.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's got a lot of stuff in it.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there are two things that this passage is doing.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: One, it is comparing the Old Testament to what happened in the New Testament, or rather the uh Mosaic law to Christ, and then it is telling us because of the difference between those two, like how much better uh Jesus is than the Old Covenant, that should spur us on towards something.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: So here, uh, if it's not clear already, if you read Leviticus 4 and 5, it will become more clear, right?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: All the language that we have been looking at for the blood of goats and bulls, two of the types of sacrifices that were allowed during the purification offering, the ashes of a young cow, something that was required for the priest or the community purification offering, they had to burn it outside, so a severe sin.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um sprinkling those, right?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is the idea of sprinkling the blood on the elements of the tabernacle, those who are defiled.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so if all of those things, if they sanctify or make righteous for the purification of the flesh, we've sort of transcended ideas now.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is the first flip that happens because we are now beginning to talk about ourselves and our own sin and sort of uh this idea that the sin is applied to our fleshly bodies, the part of us that is rebelling against God.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if they are purified under the Old Testament, how much more will the blood of Christ, here's his resume, who through the eternal Spirit, the Holy Spirit, offered himself without blemish, another Levitical concept, to God?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: How much more will this idea of a perfect sacrifice, not a bull, but a perfect sacrifice who did not deserve death and yet fulfilled all of the requirements, willingly went to the cross for our sins out of love?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: How much more will that sacrifice, compared to the Old Testament, help us?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if we understand that, then it should cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we can serve the living God.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's posed as a question, but a rhetorical question.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: The writer of Hebrews says that basically, how much more when we compare these two things, how could that not affect us?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: When we think about Jesus and we think of our sin, how even our smallest sins are needing of purification by God, how God looks at sin and setting aside even the small ones, how we understand how God feels about, especially the sins where we have intentionally walked against him and intentionally said that we don't care for his commands or anything that he's asked us to do, and we say that we want to go our own way, when we understand the gravity of those sins too, or attempt.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Man, and then we think about Jesus that has wiped all of that clean.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: That should cleanse our conscience from dead works.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: This idea that we are still having to work in order to be saved, that we are still, that we might even have to give an offering to God in order to cleanse ourselves, that would be a dead work because Jesus has already done it once and for all.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so our consciences are cleansed, our minds should become clear so that we can serve the living God.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's the application there.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's how Jesus draws us forth into this place where we say, Lord, sort of like last week when we talked about reflecting about all the things that God had done for us.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we say, when we think about how much greater Jesus is than everything in Leviticus, and believe me, if you're reading Leviticus and you're like, I want to go back to that time, you and I have different perspectives.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am very much thankful for Jesus and the fact that he has fulfilled that covenant so that I don't have to offer sacrifices.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: That part of my job is not killing bulls for you guys, but that I get to talk about the Bible and all the great things that God has done and will continue to do.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is what we're heading towards, that we are serving the living God.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: But a reminder, sort of a callback to Leviticus, though, is that in 1 John 1 9, we are reminded that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Here is the reason why the purification offering in Leviticus can still apply to us, though, is because the idea behind that whole offering was don't you recognize how you have fallen short of God's law?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to be vigilant and you have to pay attention and you have to consider God's word in order to recognize the areas where there's a discrepancy, where we've fallen short, you have to care about whether or not you are abiding with the Lord, abiding a word that John loves to use in this letter.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: But John reminds us, even under Christ, that we are to confess our sins.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: We are to go back to the altar and say, God, you know what?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: I messed up.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: I made a mistake.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: And because of Jesus, we can come to him and say, it was an accident or it was something I did and I shouldn't have done.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Every single one of those mistakes, God is righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: This purification that is offered, right?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Being wiped clean is something that all of us can have in Jesus Christ if we accept him as our Savior.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got to tell you, if we don't accept Jesus as our Savior, as the once and for all sacrifice that has purified us, we're in Dutch because we are impure people who love to defile things and are seen as unclean.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: The same concept of Leviticus is drawn through the rest of the Bible, and for those who have rejected the Lord now, they are not able to enter into his sanctuary because they have not been cleansed.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the pathway to do that, the lone pathway.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: A quick way to think about this that I thought was helpful for me is when I consider, and as I was working on this this week, I'll be honest with you, there was a bit of an aversion to this idea that there are all of these sins in my life which I'm not being vigilant to guard against.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to think that I'm somebody who tries hard to honor God's word, but when I compare myself to some of the standards that are in the Bible, I realize that I have not been very vigilant in some areas of my life.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I have allowed what I'm going to say, mice to get in.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: If any of you have ever had the misfortune of having mice get into your house, you know that you did not invite them in.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: You did not put a sign out on the street saying, all varmints, please this way, come in, I have got this wonderful pantry for you.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is something that we discover, and we typically discover it by seeing the signs of the mice, uh, before we see the mice themselves.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: When we have been called to be vigilant against sin, to not compare ourselves against other people, but to compare ourselves against the holy law of God, knowing that even our smallest sins are worthy of his wrath.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: But knowing that we can go to Jesus and ask for forgiveness, the thing that completes that cycle is that we are continually looking for ways in which we have allowed sin to enter into our lives, that we can exterminate it, and that we can walk in holiness with God as we move forward by the power of the Spirit.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it takes us sort of looking with a critical eye at our lives.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how old we are, no matter how long we've walked with Jesus, no matter how awesome we think we are in God's sight, there are still ways in which we are continually falling short of God's plan.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: And part of this cycle of loving Jesus is that we look for ways in which we can continue to draw closer to Him, knowing that He will forgive us when we do so.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: So to finish out our time this morning, I've got four really quick kind of statements that I think this purification offering has showed us.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, four ideas about sin and how everything that I'm going to say here in a moment applies both to the Levitical standard of righteousness as well as what we have been called to do today.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that judgment is based on the severity and effects of our sin.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: God takes our knowledge into account, he takes our intention into account.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is why, if you're, for instance, reading the New Testament, and Jesus is saying, Woe to these cities, they will be worse off than Sodom and Gomorrah, who, if you remember, did not, were not like, you know, sent off into the night quietly.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, judgment from God is based upon the severity of the sin.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is true for those who have not accepted Christ, that there are things which God weights more heavily than others.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus saying, Woe to anybody who leads one of these children astray.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: It would be better if they had a millstone tied around their neck and they were thrown into the ocean, right?
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying, for those who have taken advantage of the vulnerable and led them astray, that is more severe.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for us, even though we have been covered by the blood of Christ, we still must understand that God does view sin and sort of this standard, this framework, that there are some things that we do that affect a lot of people.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: And like it's shown in the purification offering, especially if we are in positions of leadership or influence, those sins can have devastating effects.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's important to remember that God does care about the severity and effects of our sin, but that even the smallest of our sins are still worthy of judgment.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, we must compare our sins to God's standards, not the world's.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be the easiest way we walk astray and we are unable to fulfill God's command to look at our lives objectively.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: If we are always saying, at least I'm not them, well, you're right.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are always going to be worse people.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you just compare yourself to like Hitler, okay, we're all sitting pretty.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so if everything we are doing is comparing ourselves against the world, we are not going to understand God's standard for holiness.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: We need to compare ourselves against ourself and the thing that God has called us to, which, if you remember in Leviticus, be perfect as I am perfect.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: We all fall short of that.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Third, that trusting in Christ means that we are clean forever.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: For those who had faith in the purification offering, they were clean for a moment.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: They were purified for a moment until they sinned again.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: For those who have trusted in Christ now, every sin that we have committed, have committed now, and will commit in the future is covered by Jesus.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is important, though, that we understand that that process of being covered and being seen as clean by God does not mean that we abdicate the role of reminding ourselves when we have walked off of that path and endeavoring to try and walk that path rightly again.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is why in the Lord's Prayer, when he tells us how to pray, it's forgive us of our sins.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's still a part of a thing that should constitute our relationship with God.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that we can always go back to him knowing that he will forgive us.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And fourth and finally, that we are to be uh be vigilant against sin, find it, end it, and give it to God.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know there are sins in all of our lives that we could be more vigilant against.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: There are things that we have allowed like mice into the pantry that we have just said weren't that really big of a deal.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it's that we don't understand the true effects of our sin.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: We don't appreciate what it means to willfully go against God and say that we don't care for what he says.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we think about these things, as I pray that as you walk away, you think about how we can be more vigilant against sin, knowing that when we go to God with these sins, we can be forgiven, that that would prompt within you this gratitude for Jesus.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: That despite all of the language of Leviticus, despite the knowledge of God's wrath, despite everything that we know about who God is and his holiness, that Leviticus is for the Israelites providing a pathway for them so that they can be with a holy God, and that Jesus now for us is this pathway so that we can be with a holy God.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: God has not left anybody out in the cold.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Every single person can come to him through Jesus Christ.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: But that is the pathway now.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: And outside of that path, it is impurity.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's walking in rebellion against God.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's dangerous.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Fatal.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go ahead and pray.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you, God, for the fact that you have provided a way for us to have a relationship with you.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: And God, I'm thankful for something like the purification ritual that could remind us of the effects of even our smallest sins.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, nothing escapes your sight.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know us better than we know ourselves.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: And God, I ask that by the power of your spirit, you would uh work within us to reveal these areas of our life where we have sort of skirted by, where we have set them aside, where we have, you know, just ignorantly moved forward thinking that it wasn't a big deal.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: God, it's a big deal to you.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, please help us as we take this journey to compare ourselves against your holy standard and realize truly how far we've fallen short.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: God, please remind us of the peace that surpasses all understanding that can be found only in Christ.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Remind us, Lord, that you have provided that pathway.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that as John says, Lord, as you say, that when we go to you, when we confess those sins, God, you are righteous to forgive, and you will cleanse us from every impurity.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Father, that's a promise you have made, and we're thankful for that.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord, for Jesus that paved that way for us.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in his name we pray.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And keep reading Leviticus if you haven't already.