Three Gifts

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Sunday school from January 6th, 2019

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Let's pray. Lord, let my cry come before You. Give me understanding according to Your Word.
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Let my plea come before You and deliver me according to Your Word. My lips will pour forth praise, for You teach me
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Your statutes. My tongue will sing of Your Word and all of Your commandments, they are right.
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Let Your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen Your precepts and I long for Your salvation, O Lord. And Your law is my delight.
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Let my soul live and praise You, and let Your rules help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep, so seek
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Your servant, for I do not forget Your commandments. In Jesus' name, Amen. That, by the way, is taken straight out of Psalm 119.
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That's verses 169 through 76.
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All right, were there any questions that came up as a result of the sermon?
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Today being the epiphany, we heard the visit of the Magi and worked our way out from there.
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In one of our Aletheia services yesterday, somebody noted that they'd never realized that there was a span of time between when the shepherds show up and when the
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Magi show up. And that confusion is caused by our modern day nativity scenes and the fact that we kind of conflate everything down into one event.
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But the nativity of Christ is different than the epiphany. And so the epiphany takes place anywhere from one to two years after the birth of Christ.
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So Jesus is a toddler, you know, walking around like a drunken sailor. So, no questions?
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All right, brace yourselves. Things are going to get bloody.
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We are going to be working our way now through the book of Leviticus. We've done our pre -work in the book of Hebrews, noting that all of the sacrifices that we're going to be reading about in the book of Leviticus are symbolic prefigurements of the death of Christ.
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And so Hebrews made it very clear that the blood of animals could not make us perfect, could not really truly cleanse our consciences.
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And so we are cleansed and forgiven and made perfect then through the once for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who is our prophet, priest, king, sacrifice.
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He's kind of like everything all in one. And then we noted again that the temple that used to be in Jerusalem was a copy of the one in heaven.
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That's the idea. So as we work our way through this, you're going to note, there's a little bit of a rhythm to the book of Leviticus.
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And we're going to hear about the same sacrifices a few times.
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And each time around the track, there's kind of, the best way I can put it is, is that if you were to kind of put
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Leviticus into kind of a thematic order, it's not linear. It's actually, it's a circular nature to it.
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You know, you're going to circle around the same themes. And every time you come back to a same sacrifice, you're going to learn a little bit more about it.
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And it's unmistakable, some of the things that we will be reading, how they will relate not only to the death of Christ, but will have implications then as it relates to a proper biblical understanding of the
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Lord's Supper. And the best way I can put it is, is that as we work our way through this, we're going to note that the sacrifices that were offered for the forgiveness of sins, for atonement, they were food offerings.
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The person offering the sacrifice, he and his whole household would consume part of the sacrifice.
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Part of the sacrifice was reserved for the priests, and they would consume part of the sacrifice.
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It's kind of an interesting thing. You know, and so you'll note then, even with the Passover, so the Passover lamb is clearly a type and shadow of Christ.
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The Passover lamb is consumed. It's eaten, not supposed to leave any of it. The atoning sacrifices that we're going to read under the
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Mosaic Covenant and the priestly system that God set up for the Levitical priesthood, again, these are to be consumed.
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So when we get to the New Covenant, the New Covenant, Christ is our sacrifice.
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Do we consume Christ? Yeah, we do. And I know somebody listening right now is sitting there going, no, we don't, that can't possibly be, ew.
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Yeah, well, what does Jesus say? Take, eat, this is my body. Take, drink, this is my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.
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And they sit there and go, well, it has to be a symbol. Well, if Jesus wanted it to be understood as a symbol, he would have said, take, eat, this bread symbolizes my body.
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Take, drink, this cup symbolizes my blood. But here's the interesting thing.
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What we're gonna be reading about in Leviticus, these sacrifices are the symbols.
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These are symbolic of the death of Christ. They are symbolic of his atoning sacrifice.
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The symbols are in the Old Testament. The reality is in the New. So you don't, the symbol gives way to the real thing, to the substance then in the
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New Testament. So Leviticus chapter one, verse one. Yahweh called
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Moses, spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, when any one of you brings an offering to Yahweh, you shall bring your offering of the livestock from the herd or from the flock.
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If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish.
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He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before the
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Lord. So you note here of this particular kind of offering, male without blemish.
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Jesus is a male without blemish. The without blemish is symbolic, kind of type and shadow of the sinlessness of Christ.
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So he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.
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Then he shall kill the bull before the Lord and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
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Then he shall flay the burnt offering, cut it into pieces, and the sons of Aaron and the priests shall put fire on the altar, arrange wood on the fire.
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Aaron's sons, the priests, shall arrange the pieces, the head and the fat on the wood that is on the fire on the altar.
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But its entrails and its legs, he shall wash with water and the priests shall burn all of it on the altar as a burnt offering, as a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the
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Lord. If his gift is for a burnt offering is from the flock, from the sheep or the goats, he shall bring a male without blemish.
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He shall kill it on the north side of the altar before the Lord and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall throw its blood against the sides of the altar and he shall cut it into pieces with its head and its fat and the priests shall arrange them on the wood that is on the fire on the altar.
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But the entrails and the legs, he shall wash with water and the priests shall offer all of it and burn it on the altar.
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It is a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord. So you'll note here, now we're starting to see this phrase that you're gonna see a lot of, especially in the next chapters.
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These sacrifices are called a food offering and we're gonna see then that as Leviticus unfolds that God will at some point chastise the
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Levitical priests for not eating and consuming the portion of these sacrifices that they're to eat.
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The expectation here is that this is a food offering. Yes, we're gonna burn all the parts that are for the sacrifices to the
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Lord but this is still a food offering which is kind of an interesting thing. In the pagan world, if you were to sacrifice in the pagan world to Apollo or to Zeus or something like that, those temples became the meat markets in the ancient pagan world and the whole thing belonged, you'd sacrifice the animal that none of it was for you.
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If you wanted any of it back, you had to purchase it from the butcher on the other side of the temple. Here, the expectation is that these offerings for atonement, for sin are to actually be eaten.
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And so you'll note that as we go around the track a few times with these things, that will become clearer and clearer and clearer.
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God teaching through repetition and then every time he goes around the track with some of these offerings, the second repetition will have even more information.
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The third repetition will even have even more information and revelation regarding the nature of these sacrifices.
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And you're gonna note then that just put yourself in the wilderness at the tabernacle with these priests and all of these animals and the one thing that really becomes evident is that taking care of the forgiveness of our sins is a bloody affair.
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And I'm not sure how much blood a bull has, but I'm pretty sure it's substantial.
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And they are to drain these animals of their blood and then take their blood and it gets thrown against the side of the altar.
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And in the altar itself, you have a blazing fire going. So here you've got this blood hitting the side of the altar.
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You can hear the sizzle. And I don't know if you've ever smelled blood. It's awful.
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Huh? It's another pain. Yeah, yeah, smelling the blood. So here you've got barbecued blood on the side of the altar because it goes from sizzling to burnt to smoking.
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And just consider like the experience itself is all consuming, sights, sounds, smells, the heat coming off the burning altar itself.
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I remember years ago when I was in high school, they had the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
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And oh boy, did I overdose on that. I tried to get to everything I could possibly afford. I couldn't afford many of the great stuff, but I spent a couple of days at the
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Coliseum and my seats were not that close to the cauldron that had the
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Olympic flame burning in it. But wow, I mean, even from 60, 70 yards away, you could feel the radiant heat coming off of the cauldron for the
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Olympic. And that wasn't even a large, you know, the one in Los Angeles was pretty small.
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So you can imagine, you get a full burning altar here and this fire is really stoked up.
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And, you know, you got heat and then you got the sound of the animals. You got the bleeding of the sheep or the lowing of the bulls and them making their sounds.
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In one minute, they're making their sounds. The next minute you hear, and then you don't hear anything anymore.
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And then think about like the time of the Passover. Some of the historians, Jewish historians, describe just because the sheer number of animals that were being sacrificed in the temple complex in Jerusalem during the time of the
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Passover, that there was a literal river of blood running from the north side of the altar down to the top of the altar.
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You know, out of the temple. Sight, sound, this is just all encompassing.
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And you begin to think, yikes, taking care of the forgiveness of our sins is really, like I said, a bloody affair.
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Now, if his offering to the Lord is a burnt offering of birds, then he shall bring his offering of turtle doves or pigeons.
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And I always like to point this out. God always comes up with a provision for people who are in poverty.
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You won't see God sitting there going, well, you can't afford a bull, you can't afford a sheep, you can't afford a goat.
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Well, you're just not gonna have your sins forgiven. God says, all right, you can offer pigeons or turtle doves.
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I mean, New York City is just filled with pigeons. But you kind of get the idea.
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How hard is it to catch a pigeon or to purchase a pigeon? They're not that expensive. And so God always has provision then for somebody who's poverty stricken.
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So the priest shall bring it to the altar, ring off its head, burn it on the altar. Its blood shall be drained out on the side of the altar.
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He shall remove its crop with its contents, cast it beside the altar on the east side in the place for ashes.
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And he shall tear it open by its wings, but shall not sever it completely. And the priest shall burn it on the altar, on the wood that is on the fire.
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It is a burnt offering, a food offering, the pleasing aroma to the Lord. Leviticus 2.
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So when anyone brings a grain offering, grain offerings are part of this. Now, I note the grain offering here because, as I've said before, there's often a misconception when it comes to the offering of cane.
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You think of Genesis chapter four, story of Cain and Abel. Cain brings an offering to God of the first fruits of his produce, of his crops, grain and fruits and stuff like that.
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And then Abel brings a sacrifice from one of the, a sheep from the flock.
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And people just assume that the reason why God didn't accept Cain's sacrifice is because he offered
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God a salad. You can offer God a salad. God'll take a salad. So it's not like he's on a diet, but you get the idea.
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So it's not the nature of the sacrifice because you notice there are grain offerings. There are offerings of the produce of the land.
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These are legitimate offerings. The issue with Cain was that he didn't have faith. So when anyone brings a grain offering as an offering to the
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Lord, his offering shall be of the fine flour. He shall pour oil on it, put frankincense on it, bring it to Aaron, the son's priest, and he shall take from it a handful of the fine flour and oil with all of its frankincense.
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And the priest shall burn this as its memorial portion on the altar."
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So here you're gonna note, frankincense gets mixed in with the grain offerings. Frankincense was a major ingredient of the incense, from the incense altar.
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And so you can see here, it gets mixed in. And so this will somehow flavor the scent itself.
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Frankincense is a big deal, which is why when we talked about the epiphany today, I think that how the ancients understood the significance of the three gifts, the gold, the frankincense, and myrrh, gold befitting of a king, frankincense befitting of God.
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Because you're gonna note here that the frankincense gets then offered to the Lord. And so that's a good way of interpreting it.
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And then myrrh is an embalming spice. And so frankincense makes an appearance here in Leviticus.
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"'The priest shall burn this as its memorial portion "'on the altar, a food offering "'with a pleasing aroma to the
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Lord. "'The rest of the grain offering shall be "'for Aaron and his sons. "'It's a most holy part of the Lord's food offerings.'"
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So the expectation here is that a portion of it is burnt. The other portion of it is baked and turned into bread.
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And this then becomes the method of paying the priests for their work, one of the ways in which they are paid.
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And it's not just for the priests on duty, it's also for their family, their sons, their daughters.
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And so every day when a priest would come home when he was off work, his shift was finished, he would be bringing with him groceries, meat, bread, to bring back to his home so that they would be able to eat and thrive.
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So when you bring a grain offering baked in the oven as an offering, it shall be unleavened loaves of fine flour mixed with oil or unleavened wafers smeared with oil.
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And if your offering is a grain offering baked on a griddle, it shall be a fine flour, unleavened, mixed with oil.
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You shall break it in pieces, pour oil on it. It is a grain offering. And if your offering is a grain offering cooked in a pan, it shall be made of fine flour with oil and you shall bring the grain offering that is made of these things to Yahweh.
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And when it is presented to the priest, he shall bring it to the altar and the priest shall take from the grain offering its memorial portion and burn this on the altar, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the
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Lord. Again, note the repetition on the food offering part and the pleasing aroma, pleasing aroma to the
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Lord. But the rest of the grain offering shall be for Aaron and his sons. It's a most holy part of the Lord's food offerings.
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No grain offering that you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven. That's verboten. Leaven symbolic then of sin.
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Leaven symbolic of the fallenness of our nature, of the planet itself.
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So leaven is always gonna be symbolic of a corrupting thing. But man, leaven is good.
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Oh, you ever have a good sourdough? Man, I'm telling you. Okay, so you kind of get the idea. So sourdough is off the menu, anything related to the holy breads of God.
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No grain offering that you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven. You shall burn no leaven nor any honey as a food offering to the
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Lord. As an offering of first fruits, you may bring them to the Lord, but they shall not be offered on the altar for a pleasing aroma.
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You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. Now, this is interesting.
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Okay. Salt does not appear very often in Scripture. Does not appear very often in Scripture at all.
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But here's the interesting thing. All sacrifices end up being salted.
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Isn't that weird? They end up being salted.
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It is a universal ingredient for the sacrifices.
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Now, think in your memory banks. Think of Jesus' preaching and teaching. What does
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Jesus say about us? Salt. You are the salt of the earth.
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If the salt has lost its saltiness, it's no good for nothing. All right?
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Now, run this, run what Jesus is saying then through this idea that the sacrifices themselves are salted.
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Okay? Now, throw into the mix something like what
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Paul says in Romans 12. Therefore, in light of God's mercies, offer yourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to the
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Lord. Like I said, salt doesn't appear that often in Scripture.
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It's quite minuscule as far as its overall thematic appearances.
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And yet, here it shows up clearly, clearly.
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With all of your offerings, you shall offer salt, the text says. Listen again. You shall season all your grain offerings with salt.
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Those get seasoned. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offerings.
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With all your offerings, you shall offer salt. In light of that theme, what's
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Jesus talking about when he says you're the salt of the earth? What makes Christians salty?
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Huh? No. You have to go the opposite direction on this. Huh? Okay, you're in the ballpark.
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So if all your offerings have to have salt, right, and you're the salt of the earth, and the salt is for the sacrifice,
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Jesus is our sacrifice. You see what I'm saying? This is going.
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Thematically, this ends up pulling you right back to Christ. The way a Christian is made salty is by the sacrifice of Christ.
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No sacrifice was offered without salt. Not one. Yeah, salt preserves.
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Salt disinfects. Yeah, now you can kinda start working the theme out, yeah. Now that's a different thing.
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Okay, yeah. So in our modern English parlance, when we talk about somebody being salty, that's a reference back to kinda rough sailor talk.
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You know, that person's really salty, which means that the things that they say or speak may not, you may not wanna repeat in polite company, right?
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But see, that's the opposite. That's the opposite theme here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if somebody calls you salty, yeah, come see me.
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You might need an absolution. Yeah. Right. But the biblical theme then is that salt goes with the sacrifices,
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Christ is our sacrifice. If we're the salt of the earth, then we are made salty by Christ and his offering.
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How does salt become salt less? Yeah, those who have no faith in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, those who is their sacrifice, they lose their saltiness.
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Does that make sense? Mm -hmm.
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Uh -huh, yeah. Exactly.
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So this is the nature then. Again, I talked on it, now you're starting to see it, is that Leviticus is not linear.
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It is not organized like an encyclopedia. So sacrifice numero uno.
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This is a sacrifice of a bull. Here's everything you need to know about it. Instead, the way it works is that it first shows up, you get a hint that this is a food offering, then when you get to the grain offerings, you learn, oh,
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I have to have salt with that one as well because all the offerings have to have salt. Does that make sense?
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This book requires you to read it and reread it and to kind of see how the different parts all work together because it keeps circling around the same things, and with each circle you're going around, you're gonna pick up more information.
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You're gonna pick up more revelation. And so if you think you know everything about the sacrifices of bulls or animals from the flock just because you've read
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Leviticus 1, you don't. You don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So God sits there and goes, read it again, read it again. And here's the fun part.
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The ancient church, the ancient church considered this book, Leviticus, to be one of the most critical books to properly understanding
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Christ. It was a major catechetical book. And when we're done with it, you'll see why.
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But so many people, they consider Leviticus to be one of the dry, gravely portions of scripture. And technically, if you don't know what you're looking for, it would be.
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It's like, how does this relate to anything? The temple isn't even there today, man. It was always in there.
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No, read the book. Find Christ in it, and then as these sacrifices keep being described and things being added to what's necessary for them, then you can see how it all relates.
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Mike, uh -huh?
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Oh yeah, yeah. So modern -day Judaism follows the kosher laws of Torah, which are going to kind of be twofold.
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Number one, you're gonna have a clear distinction between clean and unclean animals, and you can't eat unclean animals.
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You can only eat clean animals. And then on top of that, if you're eating a clean animal, it gets drained of all the blood.
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There is no juicy porterhouse steaks in ancient
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Israel, and this is a shame. This is a shame.
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I know, I've said it before, my grandfather, when he would come to California, he lived in New York, and in the part where he lived,
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New Hyde Park, all of the slaughterhouses were run by people who were ethnically
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Jewish. And so all of the cows, you know, that were slaughtered and sold for meat in the stores that my grandpa would go to when he lived in New Hyde Park in Long Island, they were all bloodless.
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There was not any blood left in them. So he would come to California and visit us, and we'd always end up going to a major steakhouse, right?
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And oh my goodness, you'd think he had died and gone to heaven. I mean, there he is just cutting that nice, juicy, medium -rare steak, you know?
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And he'd get it in his mouth, and he would just go, ooh, ooh, you know, because it was juicy, and he'd say, can't get a steak like this where I'm at in New York.
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So yeah, that's still practiced to this day, though, yeah. And so you're gonna note then, and this is an important thing, is that you'll see this as we work our way through.
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There is a strict prohibition regarding the eating of blood in the
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Mosaic Covenant. You shall not eat the blood. You shall not eat the blood.
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Why? Because the life is in the blood. The life is in the blood. You shall not eat the blood.
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Drain the blood. You shall not eat the blood. Why? Because the life is in the blood. And it's over and over and over again. You see this repetition, which means that it's kind of fascinating, because then you get to Maundy Thursday, and Jesus says, take drink.
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This is the blood of the new covenant. What? So you'll note the prohibition in the
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Old Testament of drinking the blood gives way in the New Covenant to take drink, this is the true blood of Christ, shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.
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And you sit there and go, why can we now have the blood of Christ? Answer, the life is in the blood.
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Yes, it does. Uh -huh, yeah.
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This is how they would mummify, you know, to kind of those salts, salts like that to mummify a body.
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So, all right, let's keep working our way through here.
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But like I said, the salt theme, not a big one in scripture. And this is a text that a lot of people are unaware of.
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But every offering, with all your offerings, you shall offer salt. Which means, think about it this way.
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You know, it's like, how much salt do you think the temple would go through every year? A lot.
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So if you offer a grain offering of first fruits to Yahweh, you shall offer for the grain offering of your first fruits fresh ears, roasted with fire.
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Mm, that sounds good. Crushed new grain. You shall put oil on it, lay frankincense on it.
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It's a grain offering. And the priest shall burn it as a memorial portion, some of the crushed grain and some of the oil with all of its frankincense.
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It's a food offering to the Lord. Three. If his offering is a sacrifice of peace offering, he offers an animal from the herd, male or female, he shall offer it without blemish before Yahweh.
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He shall lay his hand on the head of his offering, kill it at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall throw the blood against the sides of the altar.
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And from the sacrifice of the peace offering as a food offering to the Lord, you're gonna know the repetition, as a food offering to the
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Lord, he shall offer the fat coverings, the entrails, all the fat that is on the entrails, the two kidneys with the fat that is on them at the loins and the long lobe of the liver, and he shall remove with the kidneys.
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Then Aaron's son shall burn it on the altar on top of the burnt offering, which is on the wood on the fire.
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It's a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the
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Lord. If his offering for a sacrifice of peace offering to the
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Lord is an animal from the flock, male or female, he shall offer it without blemish. He shall offer a lamb for his offering, and then he shall offer it before the
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Lord, lay his hand on the head of his offering and kill it in front of the tent of meeting, and Aaron's son shall throw its blood against the sides of the altar.
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Then from the sacrifice of the peace offering, he shall offer as a food offering to the
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Lord, its fat, he shall remove the whole fat tail, cut off close to the backbone, the fat that covers the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails and the two kidneys with the fat that's on them at the loins and the long lobe of the liver, he shall remove with its kidneys and the priest shall burn it on the altar as a food offering to the
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Lord. If his offering is a goat, then he shall offer it before the Lord, lay his hand on its head, kill it in front of the tent of meeting.
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Now, you're gonna note, we're gonna get more data behind the laying of the hand upon the head.
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We don't get a full description of what that's all about, but what do you think that's for?
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So here you got this animal. All right, we're now like, we're second time around this track with these sacrifices.
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And in the first instance, we didn't hear anything about laying our hands on its head. Now we're told you do this.
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Why? Huh? Uh -huh, yeah. Yeah, you know your book of Leviticus, right?
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See, when we get to the day of atonement, this will be fully explained. But now we see, okay, second time around, okay, here we've got these sacrifices again.
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You got sheep, goats, bulls, stuff. And now we've learned you're supposed to take your hand and put it on top of the animal.
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This is invoking, if you would, kind of the idea of a transference, a transference of the sins of the person for whom the animal is to be sacrificed.
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This has a lot to do with substitution then. So my sins now laid on this animal.
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This animal is going to die in my place with my sins on it.
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And that's the purpose of the laying on of hands, the transference of sin. And so you'll note here that you begin to get a biblical understanding then of this idea of imputation, to impute something to another person.
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So Christ's righteousness is imputed to us by faith, by grace through faith.
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God's grace then, when we are brought to faith in Christ, the righteousness of Christ, you can almost see
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Jesus in the waters of our baptism taking his hands and putting them on us and transferring to us his righteousness.
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That's the positive side of imputation. But when you read Isaiah 53, and I'm gonna open this up, duplicate,
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Isaiah 53, I'll start at verse three.
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This is a prophecy about Christ. He was despised, rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
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And as one from whom men hid their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs, carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him, stricken and smitten by God and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions.
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He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
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All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned aside everyone to his own way. And watch this, and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
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So you'll note then the type and shadow which are these animal sacrifices.
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As we keep working with them, now we have the added element of laying hands on them, the transference, the laying on of our sins on these sacrificial animals.
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Symbolic of what God would do for us in Christ. God himself, the
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Lord, in a sense, laid his hands over Jesus Christ. He goes then to the cross and he is our sacrifice.
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A burnt offering, if you would. Roasted in the flames of the wrath of God for our sins.
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Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Sure. That's a little bit different.
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So for instance, in James 5, it talks about anointing somebody with oil.
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That's a different kind of laying on of hands. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
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It would be for a different purpose. In this particular case, the laying on of hands, and by the way, this is interesting.
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Laying on of hands appears another time in Scripture and it occurs in one of the pastoral epistles, the first or second
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Timothy, in reference to pastoral ordination. So when a pastor is ordained, there is a laying on of hands of an already ordained pastor and so there's some kind of a symbolic thing going on there and I think even our theologians would argue it's a little bit more than symbolic, but God himself is imparting then, giving to the pastor as he's being placed into the pastoral office.
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Yeah, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and other chrisms, if you would, that for him to fulfill his office, the duties of his office.
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A transference. So the laying on of hands is mentioned in regard to pastoral ordination, but in this sense then, we see the negative side of it where God lays on Christ our iniquities.
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So the fulfillment of these Levitical sacrifices finds its terminus in Jesus. So if the offering, verse 12, again chapter three, is a goat, then he shall offer it before the
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Lord. Lay his hand on its head. Kill it in front of the tent of meeting. The sons of Aaron shall throw its blood against the sides of the altar.
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And then he shall offer from it as his offering for a food offering to Yahweh, the fat covering the entrails and the fat that is on the entrails and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them and the loins and the long lobe of the liver he shall remove with the kidneys.
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And the priest shall burn them on the altar as a food offering with a pleasing aroma. All fat is the Lord's. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwelling places that you eat neither fat nor blood.
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So now we learn, okay, same sacrifice. You gotta lay your hands on it.
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Oh, and by the way, no one gets to eat any blood. No one gets to eat any fat. I'm not a big fan of eating fat, but I mean, isn't that like the major component of Crisco?
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You know, I'm just saying, you know. Oh, I know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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All right, we continue. Notice the circular nature. So the
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Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel saying, if anyone sins unintentionally in any of the
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Lord's commandments about things not to be done and does any one of them, if it is the anointed priest who sins thus bringing guilt on the people, then he shall offer for the sin that he has committed a bull from the herd without blemish to Yahweh for a sin offering.
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Now I want you to consider this. In our confession of sins, in which we open our services with, we confess that we sin against God and thought word and deed by what we do and by what we don't do.
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This now enters into another thing, and that is it is possible to sin against God unintentionally.
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And there's another category that's even more frightening. You can sin against God unknowingly.
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And you sit there and go, what? So I had no intention of sinning against you,
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Lord, but how was I supposed to know that there was a dead body just three feet away from me?
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I had no idea. You're not supposed to do that. Well, I didn't intend to sin against you in that way, but you did.
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So what I think is fascinating is that people, when we hear the concept of intentional sins versus unintentional sins, we sit there and think, well,
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Christ died for our unintentional sins, but he didn't die for our intentional sins. This starts to come up with that squirrelly theology of like mortal and venial sins, at least the way
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Rome works it out. Rome will sit there and say, oh, a venial sin, that's a little one, that's not a big deal.
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Mortal sin, that's a big one, that's a big one. Here you got intentional and unintentional, and you're gonna note here, this fellow, hypothetically described here, who's sinned unintentionally, small sacrifice or big sacrifice?
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Big. I mean, I didn't even intend to sin.
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I'm just a victim of circumstances here, and yet I sinned against God, and you want me to sacrifice a whole bull or an animal from the flock for an unintentional sin?
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You would think using our logic, you know how we kind of have a hierarchy of sins, right? Using our logic, an unintentional sin, yeah, maybe you get a pigeon, right?
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An unintentional sin calls for a full, expensive animal sacrifice.
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All of your unintentional sins, by the way, and you have committed them, I've committed them as well, all of your unintentional sins require
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Jesus Christ to bleed and die for them. And so you'll note then that a careful study of Leviticus makes it clear that intentional or unintentional doesn't matter.
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Unintentional will still result in a very hefty sacrifice being required for that unintentional sin to be forgiven.
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Does this make you think that small sins aren't small? They're huge.
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This is why we like to point out, and Luther is the one who kind of made the point, you know, years ago during the
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Reformation, that Christ didn't just die for the worst sins you committed,
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Christ also died for your very best good deeds.
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And the reason why is that every one of your good works is still going to be in one way or another soiled with sin.
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None of us does a perfect good work. And then you think about the fact that Jesus says, do not do your good works to be seen by others, right?
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Isn't that the nature of our sinful nature? You sit there and go, man, I am such a good person.
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Did you see what I did? Yeah, right? And see, when you're doing that little end zone dance, talking about how great you are and how good you feel because you did something good, all of a sudden your good work turns into something very different, right?
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So, uh -huh.
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That makes the unintentional ones worse. Right. Yeah, I am not scared of the sins that I recognize in my own life as sin.
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Because those are dealt with, and those are dealt with weekly, daily, by confessing, believing, and trusting that Christ has bled and died for those.
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It's those unintentional sins that really scare me. We human beings, because of the corruption that we experience as a result of humanity's fall into sin, we all have these ginormous blind spots in our lives.
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Just ginormous. And it's always, not only humbling, but frightening when somebody looks shocked at something that I said.
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It's like, what? Do you even realize what you sound like? No? I didn't know.
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And then you realize, ay, that's another problem within me, right? But in our confession of sin, no one.
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Yeah. You know, that's, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's another sin that you know.
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Uh -huh. Okay? Yeah. Uh -huh.
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Yep. Yep. That's exactly right.
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Yeah, the magnitude of sin and the depth that it runs, it's frightening. Okay, so let me give you an example from the
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Mosaic Covenant that I think will help kind of get you in the ballpark as far as categories that we're talking about. For instance, there are very strict rules for Levites as to whose dead body you're permitted to be in the presence of.
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And I mean, very strict rules. It's gotta be a close relative, and it can't even be like, you know, a second cousin or something like that.
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And so then what ends up happening is, is that if you are in the presence of a dead body that is not one of those close relatives, you are unintentionally sinning.
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Now, if you're in that presence knowing that you shouldn't be there, that's an intentional sin. But, so here's the thing.
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I mean, there's like a radius that you gotta stay outside of. And if you're in the presence of somebody who's died who's not one of these close relatives, you've now unintentionally sinned because God forbids you to be in the presence of a corpse that is not related to you at that particular point.
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And so that becomes something that's actually quite easy to do, unintentionally, yeah?
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So there you are, you're helping a fellow who's fallen off a wagon. Poor guy is gurgling and sputtering, and it looks like he's broken his neck, and so you're trying to assist and to aid him and to comfort him, and he crumps and he dies.
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He goes from being alive to being a corpse. Oh no, I'm now in the presence of a corpse.
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That's an unintentional sin. You see, that's the category we're dealing with here.
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You know, yeah. Okay, the answer to the question is yes, it's both, and I'll explain how.
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So the question was, when it comes to where are all these animals coming from? And we'll see this as we work our way through the book of Leviticus.
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The expectation is that when you're offering a sacrifice, it is one of your animals. Now, if you're traveling a long distance, and you don't think that animal is gonna survive the journey,
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God permits you to sell the animal, convert it to money, travel to Jerusalem, and then purchase a sacrificial animal of equal, no blemishness, all right?
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Now, the question then comes up, how then do you, where do the Levites get the animals in order for these fellows who are coming from a long distance to sacrifice them?
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Answer, the way they're getting them from are from animals who are dedicated and given to the
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Lord, specifically, and there's a valuation for that. And when you get to the very last chapter of the book of Leviticus, you'll see this, that it's kind of like the six -point
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Helvetica font legal ease portion of the book of Leviticus that explains how the valuation charts work for if you sell somebody into indentured servitude, if you are dedicating an animal to the
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Lord, there's a valuation for that, and all these other things that kind of work itself out in that way.
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So the way, the mechanism then for the Levitical system to have the sacrifices for the long journey folks was that they were given as a gift to God by Israelites.
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So there's a whole economy that kind of crops up with this as well. So, answer to the question?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. And thankfully, you'll note that over and again it says a food offering, right, a food offering.
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So you, let's say you and Marilyn are traveling from Oslo to Jerusalem, it's a long journey, right?
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And so upon arriving in Jerusalem, you guys purchase yourself some sacrificial animals, but you're not traveling by yourself, you're traveling with your children, your grandchildren, maybe even cousins and uncles and stuff like that, you're all traveling together.
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And so as the head of the patriarch of the clan, then what happens is that the sacrifice that you give is gonna be for yourself and your whole family that is with you, and then once the offering is made and a portion of it is roasted, that portion comes off the altar, and you and your family and the priests get a portion of the meat, and you are expected to eat it together as a family.
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So this isn't a sacrifice that ends up with no benefit to you, it turns into, if you would, kind of a very important family feast.
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It's kind of interesting. Which, by the way, you would have eaten that animal anyway. Or sold it, right?
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Yeah. So it's kind of fascinating how it all works. Now, we'll stop there, we'll stop there.
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I wanna get farther into the intentional and unintentional concepts next week. So we'll end there for today.