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October 22 | Leviticus 4-6:7 ISG

Leviticus 4:1 - 5:13 (ESV)

1 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If anyone sins unintentionally in any of the LORD'S commandments about things not to be done, and does any one of them, 3 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 the LORD for a sin offering… and the priest shall burn them on the altar of burnt offering. 13 “If the whole congregation of Israel sins unintentionally…15 And the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands on the head of the bull before the LORD, and the bull shall be killed before the LORD….And the priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven. 22 “When a leader sins, doing unintentionally…24 and shall lay his hand on the head of the goat and kill it in the place where they kill the burnt offering before the LORD; it is a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement for him for his sin, and he shall be forgiven.27 “If anyone of the common people sins unintentionally… 29 And he shall lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and kill the sin offering in the place of burnt offering… and the priest shall burn it on the altar for a pleasing aroma to the LORD. And the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven.
1 “If anyone sins in that he hears a public adjuration to testify, and though he is a witness, whether he has seen or come to know the matter, yet does not speak, he shall bear his iniquity; 2 or if anyone touches an unclean thing…; 4 or if anyone utters with his lips a rash oath to do evil or to do good, any sort of rash oath that people swear, and it is hidden from him, when he comes to know it, and he realizes his guilt in any of these; 6 he shall bring to the LORD as his compensation a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat, for a sin offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him for his sin.7 “But if he cannot afford a lamb, two turtledoves or two pigeons…And the priest shall make atonement for him for the sin that he has committed, and he shall be forgiven.11 “But if he cannot afford two turtledoves or two pigeons, then he shall bring …a tenth of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering. He shall put no oil on it and shall put no frankincense on it, for it is a sin offering… 13 Thus the priest shall make atonement for him for the sin which he has committed in any one of these things, and he shall be forgiven. And the remainder shall be for the priest, as in the grain offering.”


The Text in Context
The sin offering is the fourth in a series of five offerings found in Leviticus 1:1–6:7.Why are the sin and guilt offerings not treated with the earlier atoning sacrifice, the burnt offering? Probably because unlike the burnt offering, the sin and guilt offerings are obligatory.1 The burnt, grain, and fellowship offerings can be offered whenever one feels the need; sin and guilt offerings are mandatory whenever one commits certain offenses. This passage is ordered from weightier to less weighty persons/groups: the more significant the person/group, the more expensive the sacrifice and the deeper into the holy place the blood was taken.

Historical and Cultural Background
Leviticus 4 speaks of the “horns” of the altar (vv. 7, 18, 25, 30, 34). These were not literal horns but rather vertical extensions from the four corners of the altar that are clearly evident in altars found by archaeologists. Ritual manipulation of blood for cleansing rituals was also known among the second-millennium BC Hurro-Hittites. Their Zurki (“blood”) rites used blood for expiation and sanctuary purification in a way reminiscent of Leviticus’s use of blood.

Theological Insights
“Leviticus 4’s teaching about sin, guilt, and the need for atoning sacrifice undergirds biblical teaching of that topic throughout the Bible. Sin offends God and makes him disposed to punish people. He cannot simply ignore sin. Sin, to be forgiven, must be purged and atoned for through sacrifice.
From the New Testament perspective, the sin offering foreshadows the purging of sin through the cross. Although the book of Hebrews denies that the blood of bulls and goats could actually take away sin (Heb. 10:4), it identifies Christ as the ultimate offering to do away with sin to which these sacrifices pointed: “But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26). Peter too uses the language of sacrificial, substitutionary atonement in referring to the death of Jesus. Christians have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, who was “a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Pet. 1:19), and “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Pet. 3:18).
The apostle Paul picks up on the Old Testament’s sacrificial imagery as well. Twice he seems to use the word “sin” in the Old Testament sense of “sin offering.” Romans 8:3 reads, “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering [margin: “for sin”].” The NIV’s main rendering, “sin offering,” indicates that Christ’s death does for us what the sin offering did for Israel: it provides purification from sin and allows God to forgive us.
Similarly, 2 Corinthians 5:21 reads, “God made him who had no sin to be sin [or, “a sin offering”] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Here the NIV margin’s reading probably is correct, identifying Christ as the sin offering that provides the purification from sin that put us in right standing before God. Even if the other rendering, “to be sin,” is adopted, the concept of the sin offering underlies the language.
Blood atonement is at the heart of Paul’s gospel. In the Old Testament animals died for the sins and offenses of people so that those people could be forgiven. According to 1 Corinthians 15:1–3, “Christ died for our sin”; and this was not by chance but was “according to the Scriptures.” Among the Scriptures according to which Christ died are the ones describing the sin offering. The sin offering provides the conceptual framework for understanding the meaning of Christ’s death.
Thus our passage, far from being a bit of historical trivia concerning ancient Israel’s rituals, turns out to undergird the Christian gospel itself. The gospel teaches that Christ has come to be our sin offering that purges our impurities before the presence of God, so that through his atoning death we can be forgiven.

Sin offering
“Sin offering” and “sin” are the same word in Hebrew (hatta’t), denoting both the offense (“sin”) and its remedy (“sin offering”). The Day of Atonement hatta’t offering covers ceremonial uncleanness in addition to various transgressions and sins (Lev. 16:15–16). It is offered as part of a ritual for cleansing lepers (Lev. 14:19), for purification after childbirth (Lev. 12:6), for purification from an abnormal male or female genital discharge (Lev. 15:15, 30), and for purification after touching a corpse (Num. 6:9–11; 19; Ezek. 44:25–27). None of these are sins, though for each the purification involves the hatta’t offering. For that reason, Jacob Milgrom has proposed calling this sacrifice the “purification offering” (cf. HCSBmg) rather than the “sin offering.” Thus, while sin is one of the main reasons for this offering, as this chapter emphasizes, it is broader in scope.
Sin is a pollution that offends God. Sin is a distasteful subject. People do not like to admit that they are sinners. Leviticus 4 reminds us that we are. It deals with the problem of human sin and the need of its cleansing before the holy God. Sin is doing “what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands” (vv. 2, 13, 22, 27). It produces guilt (vv. 3, 13, 22, 27), defiles the sanctuary, and offends God, so that the sinner needs to be “forgiven” by God (vv. 20, 26, 31, 35). The rituals of blood sacrifice that would have to be repeated many times over the years were an indication to Israel of how seriously God takes sin.”
The sin offering is a remedy for sin. The sin (or purification) offering (hatta’t) is the most important sacrifice for cleansing impurities in the Old Testament. It cleansed the unintentional or inadvertent (not high-handed) offenses of persons so that their impurities could be removed from the presence of God in the sanctuary and their offenses could be forgiven. The sin offering purified the tabernacle from Israel’s impurities. The thing onto which the blood is sprinkled indicates what the blood cleanses. Thus the sacrifice for the high priest cleansed the holy tabernacle with its incense altar. The offering for the community also cleansed the tabernacle and the incense altar because Israel’s representatives, the priests, could go into the holy place. The sacrifice for individual leaders or common Israelites only went as far as the horns of the altar because that was as far as any non priest could go. “The principle is that the blood went as far as the particular person or collective group of persons could go and, therefore, decontaminated the tabernacle to that point.”
Sin offering makes it possible for God to remain within the sanctuary. In decontaminating the tabernacle, the sin offering allowed God not to be angry with the ones who produced the contamination defiling his abode, but rather to forgive them (Lev. 4:21, 27, 31, 35). The purification offering thus served to teach Israel about the holiness of God. God’s holiness was incompatible with Israel’s impurities. For God to remain in Israel’s midst, human impurities needed purging through the sin offering. The New Testament speaks of both the church and the Christian’s body as God’s sanctuary indwelt by the Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 6:19; Eph. 2:21–22). As the sacred space of the sanctuary had to be regularly purged of sin’s pollution by the blood of sin offerings, so the sins of both the church and individual Christians need to be purged by the blood of Christ so that God’s Spirit will not be grieved.

High Handed Sins
The sin of the "high-hand" which is nothing less than abuse of the very person of God, appeared in the Bible and appears to be alive and well today. It comes with the spirit of "did God say" and marches right into the church when people basically taunt God by saying: "I can do whatever I want, with whoever I want, whenever I want, and I demand that both God and the church bless my actions." According to the Bible, this is nothing less than rebellion, whether it is overt or covert. Since we know from the Bible that "rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft" [I Samuel 15:23] should we be surprised that this kind of rebellion might come with lying and seducing spirits?

Financial Report for the month of August.

Giving: $ 6,730.45
Expenses: $ 8,962.64
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Needed: -$ 2,232.19


Financial Report for the month of September.

Giving: $ 8,392.45
Expenses: $ 9,072.37
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Needed: -$ 679.92

References:

Sprinkle, Joe. Leviticus and Numbers (Teach the Text Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baker Academic, 2015.

Gane, Roy. Leviticus, Numbers: The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004.

Guide Questions
1. There is a recurring statement about atonement (vs. 20, 26, 31, 35, 5:6, 5:10, 5:13). What do these passages tell you about atonement?
2. In your own words, what is the kind of sin described in Leviticus 4:27-31? How is this different from high handed sins? (Numbers 15:29-31; Deut. 17:12-13; Refer to our Guide: High Handed Sins)
3. What is the punishment for high handed sins? (Leviticus 24:10-16; Numbers 15:32-36)
4. Would you consider the Corinthian church’s tolerance for deviant sexual behavior an example of high handed sin? (1 Corinthians 5) Who is Paul asking the church to disassociate from? (1 Corinthians 5:11-12). Give two specific conditions.
4. How exactly are we to disassociate in the present world? (1 Corinthians 5:5; 1 Timothy 1:20) Give practical ways and realistic scenarios.

Prayer

1.Pray for specific prayer requests.
2.Pray for a new place of worship for 2024.