Lesson 2 - Leviticus Introduction Cont.

[Music] [Music] [Music] last week we looked at some basics about leviticus to set the stage for our study this is needed because Leviticus is complex but it's fascinating now this week before we get into the details of the burnt offering which is the first subject of the first chapter of Leviticus and it's a very specific type of the several types of sacrificial offerings there's some principles that we need to address now some of these principles don't jump right out at us in fact they're not actually stated until we get into numbers and then Deuteronomy however it's good to know them before we read Leviticus because then we're not going to make some assumptions that turn out to be false now one of the most enlightening but probably least understood theological elements of the sacrificial system is this the Levitical sacrificial system that God gave to Israel did not have a remedy for all sins that could be committed did you catch me on that it did not have a remedy for all since that is while the sacrificial system was primarily but not entirely established by you Jose for the purpose of atonement of sins not every sin could be atoned for not every sin could be covered by an animal sacrifice now chew on that for just a minute think about the ramifications since Jesus Christ is said to be the fulfillment of that very same sacrificial system now this concept is among the reasons why today we have these great theological debates between very reasonable knowledgeable godly people over whether or not all of our sins under every possible circumstance are covered by issue as passion on the cross and these debates are typically held under the title of eternal security or as a question that many a believer has wrestled with can you lose your salvation now since the Levitical sacrificial system did not provide atonement for some sins but did for others which is which what sins could someone commit for which they could not turn to the sacrificial system to atone for them to provide them with you Hovey's forgiveness the Torah is very clear on this intentional sins in general cannot be atoned for it now sometimes we're gonna see words used in the Bible to describe this category of sins is called intentional as high-handed or great sins the idea is that this is a category of sin for which there is no excuse in God's eyes these were premeditated sins these sins involve denying either the truth of the holy scriptures or you Hovey's righteousness and pronouncing and enforcing these law and ordinances he gave to Moses these were sins of out-and-out defiance against the king of the universe they were planned or committed with gross negligence that is committing a sin you fully knew was a serious sin but you did it anyway nobody's done that though having I think so now all that that sacrificial system atoned for was the unintentional non high-handed sin and we're gonna slice that Indian a little thinner as we go but for now I'd like to give you a couple of examples of how the Torah classifies sins so that you get a bigger picture of it murder is an intentional and high-handed sin while we may have this ongoing debate in America about whether any killing of a human being amounts to murder you know the death sentence for certain criminal acts or even resulting from the military combat biblical law made it all pretty cut-and-dried for the Israelites the killing of a human fell into a couple of different categories justified or unjustified justified killing was not murder justified killing would be for example that you caught an unarmed thief in your house at night and you had no way to make a quick judgment as to the level of danger this thief posed to you and your family so you killed him and the law of Torah you were justified in killing because you were assumed to be protecting life yours your guests your family's killing that same unarmed thief during daylight hours however when you reasonably could have discerned whether that thief was a known dangerous criminal or whether or not he was armed he is unjustified taking his life in this case was only about protecting property and God doesn't allow that trade-off life for property is not allowed any Hebrew knew this therefore the unjustified killing was an intentional sin it was not covered by a sacrificial atonement but the justified killing was not intentional so it was coverable another example for you adultery if a married man had sex with a married woman who was not his wife this was an intentional sin they both knew the law in this manner or they should have because the prohibition against adultery was common knowledge it was not accidental it wasn't a mistake it certainly was not justifiable therefore this was not covered by the sacrificial system atonement could not be made for this that person was usually cut off curette executed for this sin and by the way execution usually by stoning itself was considered justifiable killing so what happened to those who could not make sacrificial atonement for their sins because their sins were classified as intentional they were turned over to the other part of God's justice system called the curses of the law that is all unintentional sins could be remedied by a proper sacrifice the sacrificial system atoned for those sins and this was a great blessing because by God's grace your sins could be atoned for but no intentional sins could be covered by the sacrificial system now it was a matter for the curses of the law to take effect let me be clear I'm not talking about law in some vague sense or in some local criminal justice system I'm talking about the biblical law is found in the Torah to be fair some unintentional sins did require reparation in addition to a sacrifice if there was an injured party for instance of a man's donkey broke its leg in a in a hole you had dug and failed to cover it up then you'd have to make an animal sacrifice at the tabernacle and make reparations to the man for the loss of his donkey but in doing so you have both made peace with God and you have fairly compensated the injured party party for your error now everything's okay now please bear with me as we go through this I mean this is such an important principle to apprehend because it's not only going to help us understand the Old Testament Hebrew mindset it's gonna a this wonderfully and understanding so much of what Paul was talking about in so many of his references to the law in his letters to the various churches in numbers 15 27 through 30 it says this if an individual sins by mistake he is to offer a female goat in its first year as a sin offering the priest will make atonement before Yahweh for the person who makes a mistake by sending it advertently he will make atonement for him and he will be forgiven no matter whether he is a citizen of Israel or a foreigner living with them you are to have one law for whoever it is that does something wrong by mistake but an individual who does something wrong intentionally whether a citizen or a foreigner is blaspheming Jehovah that person will be cut off from his people because he has contempt for the word of God he has disobeyed his commands that person will be cut off completely his offence will remain with him see this is a great example of what is called the curse of the law now if you ever wondered why so many pastors and teachers and and church leaders prefer not to teach or even really have you read the Old Testament this passage has got to be at the top of the list this statement and the principle it's so clearly and unambiguously spells out is a thorny theological problem when trying to fit it in with modern-day doctrines because even though most modern pastors are generally unfamiliar with the Old Testament they would unhesitatingly agree with the statement that Jesus satisfied all the requirements of the sacrificial system we've all heard that from the pulpit probably everybody in this room would agree with that statement but exactly which sacrificial system is it referring to that Yeshua is the perfect sacrifice once and for all and an authorized substitute for all those prescribed animal deaths that were used to atone for sin within the Bible sickle sacrificial system as found in Leviticus that is an absolutely accurate statement those pastors and I would have no problem with that but what do we do about the stark reality that God plainly said that now that you know what is right and what is wrong in my eyes to intentionally do wrong is to sin against me is to blaspheme against me and for that you will be cut off and for those sins there's no atonement they'll stay with you forever yikes see this is a much more difficult issue when we actually examine the sacrificial system then when we are blissfully ignorant of it and just assume some things that aren't so that is when we look at the actual words of the Bible in context and not just accept a greatly distilled down and unquestioned doctrine that fits some premeditated agenda now bear with me I think I know some of you are starting to get uncomfortable with this and many think you know where I'm headed and you're probably wrong all right so hang in there with me the Hebrews knew they had a big problem here the Torah simply does not provide a way for an Israelite to reconcile with God once that Israelite commits a high-handed or a great sin or intentional sin so in time the writers of the Jewish traditions took over you can read of all kinds of remedies for this seemingly unsolvable problem in the Talmud after all who wants to commit one of these high-handed sins and then you go through life knowing that your fate is inescapable the great sages and rabbis made sweeping pronouncements that range from saying that the Day of Atonement Yom Kippur was what covered intentional high-handed sins even saying that doing good deeds and or showing heartfelt repentance covered intentional sins some said that being sorry enough or studying Scripture enough or doing a great act of repentance and a great good deed could even almost magically turn that intentional sin into a deed of merit in God's eyes of course none of that's in the Holy Scriptures but this just highlights what a serious matter they understood intentional sin to be and how these religious Hebrew authorities would go to such great lengths to conjure up these tortured procedures on how to rid themselves of this rejection by God due to their commission of an intentional sin now let me put this in in kind of a modern term what we call the unforgivable sin they call the intentional sin because generally speaking those sins had no available means of atonement therefore they remained Unforgiven indefinitely now back in Exodus we started reading about the first of a series of laws that were given to Israel which began with the Ten Commandments now in Hebrew thinking there is no difference between religious law and civil law they're just one in the same the religious biblical law was the civil law the biblical law was all the law that the Hebrew society lived under at least while they were governing themselves they would be they would have laughed at our questionable Western concept of separation of church and state we learned of laws in exodus prescribing immediate death for adulterers and murderers and idolaters and of other laws that even prescribed death for gross negligence some laws dealt with property and therefore usually just involved reparations when wrong was done someone discovered to be a thief was not jailed instead they had to make reparations to the person they stole from and these reparations always involved giving back well more than they took there were laws involving accidental injuries to people or animals and the remedy for these also was normally reparation if you couldn't or wouldn't make any of the required reparations guess what your life was turned over to that person who had been harmed or had suffered loss more or less as a zas life until you worked off that debt to him now these sorts of issues their remedies and their punishment punishment all of this is covered in the biblical law so a good way for us to understand the justice system that God set up for Israel is to think of it consisting as two primary components the law and the sacrificial system now a Hebrew would probably argue about that little a little bit on some technical merits and they'd be correct because technically the sacrificial system is contained within the law as part of the law at least in a common way of speaking but the functional way that the biblical justice justice system operated also made the law and the sacrificial system as somewhat separate systems used for different and nearly opposite in fact purposes sometime back back in Exodus we went into great detail about God's justice which in Hebrew is called mish pot the law is not God's justice but it is part of God's justice system the law had a role to play in God's justice system just as the sacrificial system had a role to play in God's justice system one foundational principle underlying God's justice system is quite similar to our American legal system whereby we declare some crimes less serious than others and so we classify those offenses accordingly and we have different processes about how we deal with the less serious versus the more serious we generally classify the less serious crimes as misdemeanors the more serious ones as felonies and to make an analogy admittedly imperfect but close enough to make the point the sacrificial system atoned for misdemeanors but not for felonies I'll take that too literally it's just an analogy God and his justice system defined a misdemeanor as an unintentional sin a felony as committing unintentional sin now whereas we believers want to classify sins according to big ones and little ones bad ones not so bad ones little one is oh I don't know cheating on your taxes and big ones robbing a bank bigger one is premeditated murder it seems that God begins by classifying sins as unintentional or intentional now we have to remember that all crime among the Hebrews was sin everything a Hebrew did wrong was first and foremost an offense to God and the Old Testament Hebrews sought that way certainly the doing of wrong often and usually manifested itself in the form of someone doing harm against somebody else but the key is that all right and therefore all wrong was defined by God so in all cases wrongdoing of any kind among Israelite society was by definition a violation of Yahweh's laws so every wrong was a sin now let's be clear before we even start reading Leviticus the sacrificial systems purpose was not to extract a penalty from the wrongdoer the sacrificial system was not an escalating system of penalty fees or fines in the form of more valuable or less valuable animals the choice of which depended upon the severity of your offense the idea was not so much that the bigger the sin the bigger and the more expensive animal you had to give up you didn't pay a dove for a little tiny sin and a bowl for a great big one the sacrificial system was there to maintain your relationship with God and to rip parent if it got broken as a result of your sin it was there to benefit the sinner far more than to appease God and whatever form the appeasement of God was to be it wasn't about paying him off it was about obedience it was about reconciliation within his system of justice so that you could have your relationship restored to him that's what it was all about let me put it another way please please please pay close attention because I think it's gonna change the way you've ever looked at the law the sacrificial system represents the blessings part of the law the curses of the law represents the punishment part of it if an israelite sinned unintentionally he can always turn to the sacrificial system that's laid out in detail in Leviticus and then be reconciled with God isn't that exactly what we believers in Yeshua rely upon when we sin we turn to the sacrifice of Jesus as our way out if in committing a sin a person does harm to another person either financially or bodily then some reparation to that harmed person is usually prescribed together with the appropriate animal sacrifice at the tabernacle as reparations to God reparations to the person reparations to God further forgiveness real forgiveness not some inferior kind atonement this was all achieved and peace with God was restored to the wrongdoer the sinner through the indispensable sacrificial system that was the agent of atonement they were blessed by this process they weren't being punished however a someone sinned intentionally high-handed they could not go to the sacrificial system and gain reconciliation with God instead they were to be what dealt with under another part of the law called the curses of the law instead of being under the blessing and grace of the sacrificial system they were put under the punishment of the curses of the law let me state that again the sacrificial system was based entirely on grace it was that animal that lost its life rather than the person who committed the sin the curses of the law though that was different and when a sin was of a type that required a punishment under the law although Hebrews usually didn't lose their physical lives but sometimes they did they did lose their relationship with God and there really was no defined method to regain it that was a terrifying possibility that every Hebrew faced every day of his or her life I mean did an Israelite honestly believe that they could go their entire life and never once intentionally break one of God's laws never once have a really bad day and deliberately sin see the sad reality is that as much I don't know inner enjoyment has to many of us get and looking back in time at those stiff-necked Hebrews who tended to wander off and do idolatry from time to time comparing them to ourselves who would never do such a foolish thing as bow down to a pagan god those Hebrews sins were almost always unintentional they work like mad never to sin because they knew the consequences what about us we're almost the exact opposite church doctrine and tradition has led us to the point that we hardly if ever even consider unintentional sin our view is if we didn't mean it if we didn't even recognize it as sin ah there's nothing to it it's not even really sin God just kind of winks and looks the other way for that kind our attitude is that it's almost not a sin if you didn't know you were being disobedient that ignorance of the law is a good excuse so can I actually kind of be to your advantage to remain ignorant of the law and yet it was precisely this kind of sin the unintended sin that the sacrificial system was designed to accommodate it was the unintentional sin for which millions I don't know billions of God's animals were put to death to atone for things mended things they gave little thought to almost all of the sins that we modern believers currently think of is the kind of everyday variety if you would the garden-variety sins actually falls into the category of deliberate and intentional we mean to do it even though I'm later we might kind of regret it we know what's wrong we do it anyway we know it's an offense to God yeah we'll deal with the consequences later when we have a sinned confessed to God it is usually by the biblical definition and intentional sin that we're confessing and they Levitical sacrificial system didn't cover this kind of sin now please be aware we're gonna new anse this term intentional sin considerably more as we go along in our lessons so it's not as entirely cut and dried as it might seem right now now since the sacrificial system of the Bible only covers sins that were not intended and if Jesus fulfilled only that system where does that leave us when most of the time we sin deliberately we know it's wrong well here's the good news just to help demonstrate how Paul saw Christ as fulfilling more than the Levitical sacrificial system with all its definitions of what it couldn't couldn't could not atone for you only have to go to Romans 3:25 since all have sinned and come short of earning God's praise by God's grace without earning it all are granted the status of being considered righteous before him through the act redeeming us from our enslavement to sin that was accomplished by the Messiah Yeshua God put Yahshua forward as a Khepera force in through his faithfulness and respect to his bloody sacrificial death what did Paul just say here first understand that where my Bible has the wording tapara yours may say mercy seat it may say sacrifice of atonement something like that but Khepera is a is a Hebrew word that means atonement but in the Greek the word used here is a listeria hell Asteria which is used to other places in the New Testament and both times it's referring to the mercy seat the lid to the Ark of the Covenant so it's not wrong to translate this as atonement but when we realize that it is more referring directly to the most important furnishing in the most important location of the tabernacle which is central to the Levitical sacrificial system then we see how thoroughly tied together the Levitical sacrificial system and Jesus Christ is yet even that is not fully representative of everything the issue will fulfilled a key phrase and the verses we just read was enslavement to sin that phrase are as others very similar have always received a lot of attention from believers but if we'll apply what we've learned today that once a Hebrew committed an intentional sin and there wasn't any hope of atonement for that it lends new meaning to the words enslavement to sin commit and intentional sin and boy you are its slave for ever there is no out there is no escape from an intentional sin under the Levitical sacrificial system see this is what Paul had in his mind because of the Hebrew thinking of that day it was intentional sins that were the problem those were the sins that hung over your head forever you weren't a slave to unintentional sins only to intentional sins because the sacrificial system as it had existed from Moses day forward was fully capable of dealing with unintentional sins notice the first portion of our Romans 3 scripture that we just read I just read to you it says that because not one person has ever gone in his lifetime without sinning that by God's grace there has now a method by which all those sins can be atoned for to Paul it was obvious that Messiah did something more than what the sacrificial system of Leviticus was capable of doing and what Christ could do and here comes the punchline he could atone for those intentional sins in our lives as well as all the intent unintentional ones that the sacrificial system had always been taken care of so now you have a good idea of the basic principles of the justice system the mish pod that the Israelites lived under it's no wonder that over the centuries the Hebrew scribes and sages and then rabbis eventually adopted and developed a lot of tradition to deal with the inflexibility and the seeming harshness of such a system and simply had no remedy for intentional sins and those traditions they developed in many cases simply overturned God's ways and replace them with man's ways because it better fit with their evolving philosophies of life and fairness and justice and their need to get rid of that guilt they ignored that God had a purpose for this system of laws and sacrifices that did not have a way to atone for every type of sin and that the prophets told them that a remedy for their predicament was on the way just hang in there and it was going to be provided by God himself in the person of Messiah help was coming see it helps us to understand why the more educated and Israelite was in biblical terms higher education by the way only meant religious education the higher and more educated in Israelite was the more strict he was generally speaking in demanding that those around him follow the law as well as how scrupulous he was at least in his own view of following the law himself because better than most that very educated Hebrew understood the limit the limited ability of the sacrificial system to atone for his sins that is what it could have toned for what it couldn't atone for but also look at the burden that every Israelite carried one careless or rash moment carried with it the possibility not certainty necessarily of an eternal death sentence commit a sin that the sacrificial sacrificial system wasn't built to atone for and beyond the criminal punishment you might receive from the law you're not war with God forever since the only way in God's system God's justice system to atone and be forgiven was an animal sacrifice within the context of that of all the sacrificial system protocols but what happens when what you did wasn't covered by the system well you're done for I mean are you getting the picture of this this of course was the world that Paul all the Jews in Christ they lived in this was the world the Hebrews of the Old Testament beginning with Moses lived in Paul as a highly positioned Pharisee all he understood the realities of God's justice system to a degree that most the common folk didn't it was his profession to contemplate this difficult reality day and night imagine the mental energy necessary to try to control your will so thoroughly as to never in your lifetime commit a deliberate sin the effort must have been exhausting but the failure to avoid such a sin was so terrible that not to work yourself to exhaustion to avoid it I was unthinkable the common folk understood their situation but you know what they had mouths defeat they had allies to live most of them didn't go to bed at night and then wake up in the morning and reexamine their position with God first thing for Paul has with all the other Pharisees that was the center of all their thoughts because that's what they did for a living you see when Paul and the other fellows Pharisees went around Strama strong-arming fellow Jews it wasn't only followers of Jesus who they were accusing of crimes and arresting it was everyday traditional Jews because primarily what Paul's job was or at least he seemed to take the greatest delight in it was to look for Jews who had committed an intentional sin because that person was now going to be dealt with harshly that person was now under the curses of the law I mean how many times have you heard that expression the curses of the law they were under the curses of the law instead of being under the sacrificial system that person was now out of fellowship with God and he was subject to punishment my men this was the system Judaism operated under in biblical times now with that as a perspective it is no wonder that the saved Paul came to use such harsh words when describing the Levitical sacrificial system and the law in comparison to Christ for in fact what made Christ blood so precious to Paul was that it did cover sins that were intentional you see even though Christ is often described as our high priest he is not the type of high priest that Aaron was he is more than the high priest of the high priesthood started by Aaron he is actually closer to the type that Moses was the Bible tells us that Messiah is not going to be a Levitical priest he's going to be after the order of Melchizedek he would be both King and high priest and even though you schewe provided the once-and-for-all sacrifice that had formerly been the purpose of the Levitical sacrificial system he was more than what that system could provide he was greater than that system he also provided what the Passover provided that was the key let me explain the Passover sacrifice was not really part of the law per se for of the general sacrificial system it actually came before all that remember Passover was before the receiving of the law the biblical feasts even though they're contained within the body of Scripture that we loosely called the law generally functions somewhat separately and it had different purposes in the laws of do's and dont's the Passover sacrifice is a case in point it was not about atoning for sins the Passover sacrifice was originally established as a means of being protected from death lambs blood was smeared on the doorpost in Egypt so that God's wrath his hand of death wouldn't come to the homes of his people and kill all the firstborn sons when the Israelites celebrated Passover it was for them a remembrance it was a Memorial holiday to recall God freeing them from Egypt and protecting them from death it was not about atonement for sin of course it had a lot deeper significance that they didn't comprehend at the time that it was the foreshadowing of Christ's death on the cross but the sacrifice of the Passover lamb as it was originally had nothing to do with the sacrificial system whose job it was to make peace with God by means of atonement when Yeshua died on the cross at least two things were accomplished that directly affects us one he paid the price with his blood for our sins he atoned for our sins intentional unintentional and two is the Passover lamb his blood marked us to be passed over for the eternal death spiritual death which the Bible describes as first and foremost eternal separation from God further what had infuriated the Jewish religious authorities about Yeshua even beyond his claim to be messiah was that during the time of his ministry follow me he was running around giving divine forgiveness to those who had committed intentional sins do you see this unintentional sins were no problem for anybody Jesus was pronouncing that the person who put their trust in him could achieve reconciliation with God even after committing an intentional sin my gosh even the sacrificial system the holiest most blessed gracious powerful part of the entire Hebrew justice system could not do that so as we move along through Leviticus keep that perspective in mind nothing in the sacrificial system that we're about to study will atone for an intentional sin and as you have occasion to read Paul's books in the New Testament try to grasp just how inferior the sacrificial part of the law must have seemed to him once he comprehended what Yeshua's death had accomplished Paul never says the law is obsolete or dead he only says that compared to Christ the law is as nothing amen brother that by faith in Christ you are now subject to Christ's grace when you intentionally sin instead of being subject to the curses of the law when you intentionally sin oh this is too wonderful for words you can be sure that while Paul is awestruck and how you schewe can provide for forgiveness of sins that what he was thinking about what was absolutely at the forefront of his mind was intentional sins because Paul took it for granted that unintentional sins could be forgiven I mean what was he thinking that Christ just made things a whole lot more convenient oh boy now I don't have to go up there and do all those sacrifices anymore hotdogs sure glad he died up there that wasn't it so Paul never compared the ability of Christ to forgive against the laws failure in that same area the law never failed in forgiveness but guess what the sacrificial system did provide a means of forgiveness but it was on but it was limited to the unintentional sell as an analogy of the law when compared the incredible flying ability of needles are elephants failures of course not elephants don't fail to fly because they were never built to fly the law portion of God's justice system was not designed to atone or forgive but to draw a line between obedience to God and disobedience to God the law established moral choices for humankind in doing so so it showed us what sin is the sacrificial system on the other hand was designed to achieve forgiveness by means of atonement but the sacrificial system had its limits it could only deal with a certain class of sin and only on a case-by-case basis basis both system both parts of God's justice system did exactly what they were designed to do with perfection now using all that that I just told you use it as the lens through which to view Leviticus so next week we're gonna take a look at the first type of sacrifice addressed in Leviticus chapter 1 the burnt offering and we're gonna find out just exactly what it was intended to accomplish okay have a great week [Music] [Music] [Music] issues mission you

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Length: 50min 7sec (3007 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 14 2018