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Leviticus 4+5
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
But, welcome today. My name is Jeremy. And if we haven't had the chance to meet yet, then I would love to do more than tell you my name from the stage. Sometimes, Sundays are just really busy. And churches have had a lot more than sermons.
Speaker 1:And so every Thursday is booked off in my schedule to meet with people, to have a coffee, and to hear stories. And I'm always up for a really heavy theological conversation, but I would love to just hear your story as well. So either of those are good. But if you're ever up for that, I promise I will buy the coffee, or if you wanna meet here, I will do my best to make you an exquisite latte out there in the lobby. But there we go.
Speaker 1:On that note, however, we have been talking about this idea of launching a second parish for a while now. In September, we brought Scott onto the team, and so he and Darlene and their family are here to help us start leading towards that project. But the conversation so far has been somewhat nebulous. We haven't settled on a location yet, although we do wanna stay in the core. We don't have a lot of details yet.
Speaker 1:And so you might be wondering, well, what is going on with this? Well, the pace has been very deliberate. We wanted Scott and Darlene to settle in, to learn more about commons, and we wanted to work on forming a team that will help to guide and make those detailed decisions together. That's the stage we're at now. And so our plan is to launch a second parish in September 2017, but there is a lot of work that needs to be done in the background to get there.
Speaker 1:And so our first step is to pull together a core team of about 10 to 12 people who are just really sold on the idea of expanding our voice. They wanna be part of a startup culture, and they wanna work closely with Scott and I to help shape that next adventure. And so here's what we're proposing as we get ready for this. Next month in November, Rachel and I are gonna be hosting a series of dinner parties in our home with Scott and Darlene and their family. And what we are looking for is people who've thought and prayed about this and really think this might be what God is calling them to.
Speaker 1:And we just wanna sit and eat and talk and dream together about what this new parish could be. And so by the November, we are confident that we're gonna have this core team together that's really gonna start shaping some of the details, and in the New Year, we'll really start moving forward with the larger group. Now we're gonna have some special sign ups for these dinner parties next week. And if you know that this is for you, you've just been waiting for us to say when, you can email parish@commons.church, and we will find a date that works for you. But for most of us, what I'd like to ask is that we all pray about this for the next week or two and see if perhaps this is something that God might be speaking to you about.
Speaker 1:Most of us are here because God has been doing something incredible in Kensington, and that's great. We need most of you to stay here. So maybe that's if you want to, and that's fine. But maybe you have felt the pull and the tug to be part of something new, and maybe you're just really drawn to something entrepreneurial. Maybe you recognize that the conversation that's happening here in this room is important, and there are other neighborhoods that need to have this conversation too.
Speaker 1:If so, my prayer is that as you think and pray about it this week, God will begin to make that clear to you in your conversations. And so if you sense that God's leading you, here's the invite. Rachel and I would love to have you over for dinner so that we can talk about these next steps together. So think about it this week. We'll talk about it more in the coming weeks.
Speaker 1:K. We are still in the book of Leviticus this week, and we are going to look at two more offerings again today. However, I still do want to look back at last week as well because last week, we talked about the first three offerings in this book. There are a lot of different ones. Last week was the burnt offering, the grain offering, and the peace offering, and how they all worked together in ancient Israel.
Speaker 1:Burnt offering was a way of entering into God's presence. This is how you announce yourself before God. The grain offering was a way of remembering God's promise, his covenant with his people. And then finally, there was this peace offering. This was all about saying thanks to God.
Speaker 1:Now this wasn't to make peace with God. This was a way to thank God for all the peace already in your life. And I hope what we're seeing already in this series is that all of these different offerings and sacrifices each point to something slightly different, something significant about how these ancient cultures imagined God. However, before we move on, I do wanna look at one small thing in the opening of these chapters that I didn't have time to point out last week. Chapter one verse two starts, when anyone among you brings an offering to the Lord, bring as your burnt offering an animal from either the herd or the flock.
Speaker 1:Chapter two verse one starts, when anyone brings a grain offering to the Lord, their offering is to be of finest flour. Chapter three verse one says, if your offering is a fellowship offering, you are to offer an animal from the herd, you are to present before the Lord an animal without defect. Now you hear the difference. When you bring your burnt offering, when you bring your grain offering, if you bring a fellowship offering. Now when God says when, what is the expectation?
Speaker 1:You're gonna do this. Right? It's mandatory. If your boss says, when you get me the TPS report, can you make sure you put a cover sheet on it? You know that's not optional.
Speaker 1:By the way, three people have seen Office Space, and that's okay. Because that makes me like that joke even more. Well, burn offering and the grant offering are whens. The peace offering is an if. And so sometimes this peace offering is known as the free will offering for that reason.
Speaker 1:But I want you to notice here, God gets it. There is such a thing as a sacrifice of thanksgiving. When we don't really feel it, but we choose to be grateful anyway. That's a really important thing. Sometimes you need to choose to be thankful.
Speaker 1:Some of us here in this room, we need to hear that. We need to do that because sometimes we don't remember what is good often enough. But sometimes you just can't. And God is not asking you to fake it. I think that God is hoping that if the people bring their burnt offering and they prepare their grain offering, then thankfulness will come naturally and honestly from them, but he doesn't ask them to fake it.
Speaker 1:And so when you come to church, I hope that we will tell God's story well, and I hope that you will be reminded of all that you have to be grateful for, that everything is gift and God is good. But please know that no one is asking you to fake a smile or pretend to be anywhere but but you where you are. Not me, not this community, and certainly not God. If you can bring a peace offering, great. If not, then simply be in the presence of God.
Speaker 1:Let's pray. God, we come today from weeks that have given us life, from weeks that have drained our energy, from weeks that have been hard and long and still other weeks that have seemed to fly by with ease. But we all come today into your presence because we long for an encounter with the divine, To know that we are loved. To feel that we are welcome. To understand that we might come today without pretense or facade, without the mask that we sometimes feel we need to wear at other times in other places.
Speaker 1:God, we want to be grateful. We want thankfulness to be part of our essential makeup. And yet sometimes, we are simply grateful that you welcome us even in our selfishness. May we be changed in your presence today. May we learn a habit of gratitude this week.
Speaker 1:May we sense that what we are invited into is nothing short of the most authentic, raw, and real relationship the universe affords. May we dive into that presence today. In the strong name of the risen Christ, pray. Amen. Okay.
Speaker 1:Today, we are in Leviticus. We're looking at chapters four and five, and so we are talking about something that's commonly called the sin and the guilt offering. And let's open our text at the start of chapter four, and there we're gonna read this. That the Lord said to Moses, say to the Israelites, when anyone sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord's commands. Now last week, we talked about the first three offerings as a group, and you get that signal at the end of chapter three where the peace offering is placed on top of the burnt offering.
Speaker 1:It's a package. Chapter four starts in a very similar way to the start of chapter one with God speaking again. And here when Yahweh speaks, he says, when anyone sins unintentionally. Now this is really important because we're gonna unpack these two sacrifices today. But notice here that this sin offering, it's called the in Hebrew.
Speaker 1:It is for unintentional sins. Now if we jump to Leviticus chapter five verse 14, we read that the Lord said to Moses, when anyone is unfaithful to the Lord by sinning unintentionally in regard to any of the Lord's holy things, they are to bring to the Lord as a penalty a ram from the flock, one without defect, and of the proper value in silver according to the sanctuary shekel, it is a guilt offering. Now this is called the in Hebrew. And it is for when you sin by misusing one of the sacred items in the tent of meeting. There's these ritual ceremonial items, and if you misuse those, you need to present a guilt offering.
Speaker 1:But notice that is also for unintentional offenses. Now I know that sometimes the popular misconception is that spilling blood made everything okay in the Old Testament. No. In the Levitical system, you simply cannot go out and sin and then sacrifice a goat to make it all better. That is not what these sacrifices were for.
Speaker 1:There is no simple sacrifice in the Old Testament that covers intentional, the King James calls them high handed sins. This is part of why the book of Hebrews in the New Testament is so adamant and goes on and on and on about how much better things are with Jesus. The work of Jesus covers everything. Not so in some of these Old Testament sacrifices. So the obvious first question is, well, what happens if you do sin intentionally in Israel?
Speaker 1:Well, that's what restitution was for in the Levitical system. So the start of chapter six says, if anyone sins and is unfaithful to the Lord by deceiving their neighbor now notice here, if you deceive your neighbor, you've tricked them, you misled them intentionally, who have you been unfaithful toward? It's the Lord Yahweh. So you've sinned against Yahweh, but what do you do to make that better? Chapter six says, if anyone deceives a neighbor about something entrusted to them or left in their care or about something stolen or if they cheat their neighbor or if they find lost property and they lie about it or if they swear falsely by any such sin that people may commit.
Speaker 1:When they sin in any of these ways and realize their guilt, they must return what they have stolen or taken by extortion or what was entrusted to them or the lost property they found or whatever it was they swore falsely about. They must make restitution in full, add a fifth to the value to it, and give it all back to the owner. Sacrifices are not about getting you off the hook in Leviticus. So as bizarre and unjust as it sounds to our ears, this is why Deuteronomy 22 says that if a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and he rapes her, He shall pay her father 50 shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, and he can never divorce her as long as he lives.
Speaker 1:Now that sounds horrific, and it is. I'm not defending that in our culture today, but the thinking around this back then was you have done something terrible, and you can't just take that back. You can't sacrifice a goat and make it better because there is no restitution for this thing that you have done. Therefore, you will care for this person for all of their needs for as long as you live. Saying you're sorry doesn't cut it.
Speaker 1:You need to make things right. Now hold on to that because we're gonna come back here at the end. But first, let's talk about this idea of unintentional sin. Now the word here is in Hebrew, which, to be honest, kind of sounds like what you might say if somebody tried to tell you their sin was unintentional. It's baloney.
Speaker 1:It's. But the root word here is. Comes from Aramaic, and it means a mistake or an error. And, really, that's what all sin is biblically, to miss the mark. But Shagog carries with it the idea of inadvertent or accidental.
Speaker 1:And so the question is then, well, how exactly do you sin accidentally? The Jewish commentator Jacob Milgram puts this into two categories for us. He talks about things you do consciously but didn't realize were wrong, and he talks about things you do unconsciously that are wrong. They just kinda slip out. You didn't mean to, but it happened.
Speaker 1:So let's think about these. First, things you do consciously. In the libidical system, this could be as simple as offering the wrong type of animal in a sacrifice. Maybe you brought a female goat because sometimes that's okay, but this is a burnt offering and that requires a male goat. Well, you didn't mean to.
Speaker 1:You just got confused about things. No problem. You talk to the priest. That's what a katat is for. Maybe you accidentally ate some of the special fat from the offering that was meant for God.
Speaker 1:So part of the offering was for the priests, part of the offering was for God, but once the animal is cut up, you just can't tell what's going on. Visually, you're not sure. You ate the wrong thing. Afterward, you realize it. No big deal.
Speaker 1:A sham, a guilt offering. What does that mean for us today? We don't do a lot of these offerings. Well, let's say this. You invest in a company because you get a lead, and it's a good opportunity, a good investment.
Speaker 1:And then you read, and you research, and you find out that this company has been profiting off of the suffering of others, They are doing things that are immoral and unethical, and they're making a lot of money, but it's not good. When you consciously invested in that company, that was your choice, but you didn't know how wrong it was. Now you do, and this is a problem that needs to be dealt with. What about things you do unconsciously? Well, Paul writes in Romans and he says, I do not understand what I do.
Speaker 1:For what I want to do, I do not do. And what I hate, I end up doing that. Psalm 19 says, who can discern their own errors? Lord, forgive my hidden faults. Now see sometimes, there are things that each of us do.
Speaker 1:Maybe because of brokenness, maybe because of hurt, we've been hurt, Maybe because of this buildup of sin and separation in our lives, but we do them and we don't really mean to. We we didn't consciously choose to do it. It just sort of happens. So sometimes, I get angry with my wife, Rachel, and it really has nothing to do with her. I just I had a bad day, and I need to take it out on someone.
Speaker 1:And as soon as it happens, like, soon as I hear things coming out of my mouth, I'm like, oh, that is not good. Like, that's not right. That's wrong. I didn't mean to. I didn't consciously think about saying it, but I did it.
Speaker 1:I need to take responsibility for that, unintentional or otherwise. Now those are reasonably clear cut. I think we understand that. But then there are also those moments where it's a lot more complicated. Right?
Speaker 1:Leviticus five one says that if anyone sins because they do not speak up when they hear a public charge to testify. Chapter five verse four says, if anyone thought lessly takes an oath to do anything and doesn't follow through. I mean, are those unintentional? I was called to testify, but I was afraid of what might happen. I was scared of the consequences.
Speaker 1:I didn't wanna speak publicly on the record about what I knew. Now how do you call that unintentional? And yet, at the same time, I think we all get that sometimes fear just overtakes us. Our anxiety freezes us. We get overwhelmed and the things that we do aren't really a reflection of what we wanted or who we are.
Speaker 1:Maybe we make a promise and we intend with the best of intentions to follow through, but then we just forget. I'll pray for you, but we don't. What I want you to see here is that there is a surprising amount of humanity in Leviticus. No. You can't thumb your nose at God and get away with it.
Speaker 1:You can't intentionally defy him and then make a sacrifice and pretend things will be okay. God is holy and he won't be mocked, but the text seems to be very aware of the ambiguity that threads its way through our lives. I want to do good, says Paul, But I'm fearful, and I'm selfish, and sometimes I let that get the better of me. So this unintentional language, it covers a lot in Leviticus. But here's what we need to pay attention to.
Speaker 1:Unintentional or otherwise, sin needs to be dealt with. Just because I didn't mean to hurt you, doesn't mean I didn't hurt you. And just because I didn't know that my clothes were made in a sweatshop, doesn't mean I get a pass on that. The holiness of God, the otherness of God is important in this book. And so the thinking and the sin and guilt offerings, this and the sacrifices, is that the mistakes of the people, unintentional as they may be, risk polluting God's holiness.
Speaker 1:You can read through chapter four and five, and you can see some of the subtle differences here. But the thinking is this. Basically, you have this tent of meeting where God lives. And the closer you come to the tent, the farther into the tent you go, the more holy it becomes because you are moving closer to God. So there's an entrance to the tent where they usually made sacrifices.
Speaker 1:There's the holy place where only the priests would go. And then at the back, there was the holy of holies where God lived, where only the high priest could go, and even then, only once a year on the day of atonement. And so in Leviticus, depending on who has sinned, you need a ritual to cleanse as far as that person was permitted to go into the tent of meeting. So if the anointed priest sins, then the sacrifice has to be a male bull without defect. And we need to sprinkle blood right up to the curtain that separates the sanctuary of God.
Speaker 1:If the community sins, so somehow the whole nation unintentionally makes a mistake. Well, then we're gonna need a young bull. Doesn't need to be perfect, but the blood is still going to need to be sprinkled right up to the curtain that separates the holy of holies. If it's a leader in the community, we need a male goat, and the blood needs to cleanse the altar and the entrance to the tent. And if it's just a normal person, you or I, someone who makes a mistake, we still need to fix that, and the blood needs to cleanse the entrance, but we can use a female goat for that.
Speaker 1:The idea being, God is holy, and he's different, and he is unlike us. And even if we don't mean to, if we're not perfect, if we're not cleansed, if we're separated from him, we're at a distance from God, and that distance needs to be closed. Now, again, we're not talking about forgiveness the way that we understand it today. Not until we get to the day of atonement where sins are covered and wiped away and sent away in Leviticus. But this portion is about the purity of God, the holiness of God, and it's about making sure that we don't accidentally contaminate God's space.
Speaker 1:Now this is very different from Christianity because we don't think of God occupying a particular physical space on the world. However, there is still an incredibly important reverence that we sometimes lose sight of in church. In Christ, we are invited to come to God. We are welcome at his table, and this is good, and it's beautiful, and we should never stop talking about that gracious invitation. It is good news, and that comes first.
Speaker 1:But we should also not take lightly the magnitude of that offer. That the divine source of all that is, goodness and love and grace and truth embodied, he has invited us to his table. We would do well to prepare ourselves for that dinner. Because unintentional or otherwise, sometimes there is something you need to deal with before you come and meet with God. Now, do you remember Matthew five?
Speaker 1:Jesus is talking about murder and anger. And he says that if you are offering your gift at the altar, and while you're there, you remember that your brother or your sister has something against you, Leave your gift there in front of the altar. First, go and be reconciled to them, then come back and offer your gift to God. Now what's he talking about here? He's talking about a sin offering, a kata.
Speaker 1:In fact, he says that if you are there to make your offering and someone has something against you, the word is kata in Greek. He says you leave your kata, and you deal with the kata. Now these words are not related. This is a completely different language, but there is an onomatopoeic resonance there that is probably not just a coincidence. Jesus says, before you come to God, unintentional or otherwise, you work to make things right in your relationships.
Speaker 1:And notice here, Jesus' focus is not on the ritual. It's actually on the relationship. In fact, he says he doesn't even feel the need to put the onus on the offender in this situation. He just says, if you're making an offering and anyone has anything against you, no mention of whether they are right or wrong or confused or misinformed. He says if there is a break in the relationship, then you go and you do your best to make things right.
Speaker 1:Now you can't always ensure that's gonna happen. Right? The word that Jesus uses here in Greek is. It means to be in harmony, and harmony takes to Paul writes in Romans, and he says, if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. But the truth is, some people are just not in a good place, and they're not healthy.
Speaker 1:And as much as you try, you simply can't force them to be at peace. You can't take ownership for that. In fact, the English word that we use to translate Jesus, this word reconcile, that comes from Latin, and its most ancient use, it means literally to come and sit with again. But you can't force someone to come and sit with you again. That's not what reconciliation is.
Speaker 1:It takes two. That can be incredibly hard when you want to be reconciled, and you are ready to move forward, to own your part of the story and what you've done wrong, but the other person won't acknowledge you or forgive you or the damage that maybe they have done to you that they won't take responsibility for their actions. And so you forgive, you always forgive, but if it's possible, as far as it depends on you, before you bring your offering to God, you go and you make things right in that relationship. Now, why is it so important to Jesus and to Paul that we take the initiative when it comes to these relationships? See, in Leviticus, the concern is that we might bring some pollution, some contamination into God's space.
Speaker 1:God was local, and he was contained, and there was a tent where he lived, and we had to keep things that came near to God pure. But where is God today? And how does Jesus transform our imagination of the divine? He frees God from our attempts to localize him. In Jesus, we learn that God is spirit, that God is present, that God is with us and in us and through us at all times and in all places.
Speaker 1:But what that means is that now any sin, any brokenness, any hurt that we have participated in, unintentional or otherwise, that is always being brought into the presence of God. Now we don't need to be afraid of that. God has very intentionally and explicitly entered into our story. And in Jesus, we come to understand that sin does not contaminate God. In fact, God wants to enter into our brokenness.
Speaker 1:That's what he wants to do so he can heal us. But that does not mean we are off the hook when it comes to the hurt that we cause in the world. You see, the great irony of the Jesus story is that in one sense, everything gets easier. No more sacrifices, no more rituals, no more tent of meeting or fear about entry into the presence of God. No.
Speaker 1:We simply confess our brokenness. We turn to Jesus. We trust him, and we are forgiven. No goats necessary. And yet, on the other hand, you and I, we are now always in the presence of God.
Speaker 1:And the only reason we don't have concern about holy space like they did in Leviticus is because everywhere is holy ground. And every relationship is sacred. Every moment is fused with the divine. Every decision and choice and word that we speak now gets weighed through the lens of grace and peace and the story of Jesus. In Leviticus, they needed a periodic sacrifice for unintentional sins, lest they accidentally contaminate God.
Speaker 1:Today, we recognize that God has invaded. Perhaps we could say that he has contaminated every moment of our lives. And so if you have been hurt, someone has injured you in some way, would you know today that this pain that you carry with you, it is in the presence of the one who longs to heal your soul? He is not at a distance from you, and he's not waiting for you to come to some specific place. He is near to you now.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, if you know that you have hurt someone else, unintentional or otherwise, understand that you bring that pain into the presence of God wherever you go. And this is not a small thing. Because our sin is not out of view, and the hurt that we cause is never hidden from God. You see, the ritual of worship is important, but the habit of a life at peace, that takes precedent. So leave your offering at the altar, and do your best to live how Jesus would in the world.
Speaker 1:That's what it means to honor sacred space today. When all ground is God's ground, and every moment is infused with his presence. Let's pray. God help us to make sense of these cultures and rituals that seem very distant from us. This imagination of you contained and boxed in.
Speaker 1:This idea that we can't bring our sins too close to you, we can keep them at a distance from you. And instead, to recognize that in Christ, the full story is revealed. And we recognize that you are everywhere. You are in us and through us, in every moment and every place. And in one sense, that makes everything so much easier.
Speaker 1:Because wherever we are, we simply turn to you. We confess our brokenness. We trust in you. We know that you are there to welcome us and love us and begin to heal us. And yet at the same time, God, the weight and the significance, the sacredness of all of our choices just gets exploded exponentially.
Speaker 1:Because now everything that we do, we do in your presence. And so God, we would ask that your spirit would be present, that we would feel it close to each of us, guiding us, reminding us, making us aware of where we have caused hurt, giving us grace and power to forgive where we have been hurt, but to follow in your footsteps and to be transformed into the likeness of your son. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.