Hebrews Lesson 129
NKJ Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my
feet And a light to my path.
Open your Bibles to Leviticus
5 - Leviticus 5. We’re going to continue
our study on the Tabernacle. Now we’re
in a study on Hebrews - just in case somebody happens to tune in and go, “Well,
wait a minute. I think we’re studying
Hebrews on Thursday night. We’re not
studying Leviticus.” But, we are
studying Hebrews.
In Hebrews 9 the focus is on
the Tabernacle. (There we go. See during all that time my computer had to
rebound. So I was just waiting for it to
go through the whole process of getting cleansed of its sins. Now it works.) So we’ve been studying the Tabernacle and the
furniture in the Tabernacle. We started
off looking at the outer courtyard and the curtains around the outer courtyard,
looking at the spiritual principles that are exemplified in the construction of
the Tabernacle, the materials that are used.
Everything (just about) within the Tabernacle is designed to teach something
about the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ through various visual
aids.
It’s interesting to just stop
and think about - why in the world did God do this? Why didn’t God come along and just spell
things out for people? Why didn’t He
send the Lord Jesus Christ sometime back in the Old Testament period? Why did He wait at least 4000 years from the
fall of Adam until the time when Christ finally came? What are the implications of Galatians 4:4 that
it was in the fullness of time that God sent His Son?
So there’s a plan. God is doing something in that process of
time in order to prepare the human race and in order to teach certain things about
who He is, about the basic problem that man has (which is sin) and about how
that affects man’s relationship with God.
We see exemplified throughout the Levitical offerings (sacrifices and
offerings), this whole principle of the creator-creature distinction. As we’re looking at Leviticus and we’re
looking at Leviticus because Leviticus describes all of the procedures and
protocols for entering into ceremonial fellowship with God. I stress that because there’s a difference
and we’ll see a little bit of that in one passage that we’re looking at tonight.
There’s a difference between the experiential fellowship of the everyday
believer in the Old Testament on the one hand and his ceremonial approach to
God on the other hand.
I think most Christians when
we read through the Old Testament get the impression that you can’t have fellowship
with God unless you bring a sacrifice to the Tabernacle or to the
So it helps us to understand the
difference between what we might call real fellowship or experiential
fellowship and ceremonial fellowship. In
the ceremony or the ritual of the Old Testament and the Mosaic Law, we see depicted
in the sacrifices and offerings the reason for having to confess sin in the
spiritual life and how sin is dealt with because God is of such a nature that
He is completely distinct from man. He
is holy.
So the key word in the book
of Leviticus is the word holiness or holy based on the Hebrew word qadash which means – it’s usually translated holy, but
that’s such a jargoned religious word that’s used by so many people and they
don’t know what it means that it loses its real impact. The word holy really means something that is
set apart to God. When it is applied to
God it has this idea that God is Himself set apart. He is distinct or unique. He is totally apart from the creation. So this is one of the reasons we emphasize
the doctrine of the creator-creature distinction – that God as the creator is totally
distinct, totally apart from everything in creation. He is the God who made the heavens and earth
and all that is in them.
So this is exemplified in the
very structure of the tabernacle that there is a distance and a separateness
between God and man. In order to come
into the presence of God, in order to have fellowship with God, there must be a
cleansing from sin. The sacrifices
depict not only the work of Christ on the cross as it provides a positional
cleansing, but also the ongoing cleansing that must take place in the life of the
believer.
Often when we’ve studied this
and maybe in the past when you’ve studied the sacrifices and offerings in
Leviticus, you think that certain sacrifices or certain offerings were
salvation related or depicted specifically what Christ did on the cross and
then there were other sacrifices that had to do with the post salvation
spiritual life – confession and growth.
But in reality all of the sacrifices depict both. What we see when we look at it that way is
that the foundation for all cleansing, the foundation for dealing with sin, is
the work of Christ on the cross and that actual judgment that takes place. This is why in I John 1:7 John says:
NKJ 1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light as He is
in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus
Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
That term means the death of
Christ.
Present tense so it is a
continuous action there.
That’s the positional. So we can call that positional cleansing that
takes place at the instant we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ. This is why Paul can talk about – we have
redemption, the forgiveness of sin. This
is a positional forgiveness because of our place in Christ. We are positionally sanctified, set apart to
God. That whole word group (sanctified,
saint, sanctification), all of those words come out of that same word group for
holy. So they all have to do with being set
apart for the service of God. As you
approach the Tabernacle, we see that there’s only one way into the presence of
God. What this tells us is God as the
one who’s at the center is the one who defines who He is and how the creature
can come into His presence and what the problem is.
The problem is not defined by
the worshipper. The worshipper doesn’t
come in and say, “Well, I feel good today so I can come in and worship God.” Or
“Isn’t it a wonderful day and I’m just so filled with enthusiasm for God that
isn’t He blessed for me to be able to come in and sing praises for Him today!”
I’m being facetious because
that’s a dominant attitude that we find today among many Christians - is as
though God is somehow privileged to have us come and worship Him. Isn’t it wonderful! There’s no understanding of the underlying
dynamics related to sin and cleansing and the basic doctrines of justification,
reconciliation, atonement - all of these things get lost in terms of being able
to experience a wonderful warm relationship with Jesus based on how we feel
about things on Sunday mornings.
So the Tabernacle is a great
illustration of the fact that God has to be approached on the basis of set
rules that He establishes.
And that’s not legalism. Some people would say, “Well, that’s legalism.”
No legalism is saying that
God blesses me on the basis of what I do.
This is the grace of God saying that God has provided a way whereby
despite sin, we can come into His presence and we can have fellowship with Him
and we can worship Him and He’s the one who does all of the work. We simply follow His directions so that we can
avail ourselves of the work that He has done.
So we started looking at the
Tabernacle because this becomes the foundation – the Tabernacle, the furniture
in the Tabernacle, the things that go on in the Tabernacle in terms of the
sacrifices and offerings, the priesthood – become the foundation for what the writer
of Hebrews is going to develop in this section that we’re in in Hebrews 9 and 10.
So without a familiarity with the ritual and with the function of the
Levitical priesthood in the Old Testament, we’re going to get lost when we go
through Hebrews 9 and 10. So we’re
taking time to go back and look at these things.
The first piece of furniture
that we see when we go into the Tabernacle is the brazen altar. So right now we’re looking at what takes
place at the brazen altar. The altar
itself is the place of judgment. That’s
what an altar represented - something is being sacrificed there. Something is being judged there. In the burnt offering which is the first
offering that’s mentioned in Leviticus 1, the entire sacrifice is being
consumed by fire. So the altar has to
be of bronze so that it can withstand the heat of the judgment. I pointed out that that is a picture of the
Lord Jesus Christ that He is able to withstand the judgment of sin because of
who He is in His person – that He is the God Man. So the brazen altar represents the fact that
as God in His deity He is able - in His perfection He is able to handle the
judgment that is placed upon Him.
The second offering that we
looked at is the meal offering sometimes called the gift or tribute offering
that’s described in Leviticus 2. This is
a bloodless offering where raw grain was offered - that had been mixed with oil
was one form of that. Another form was
that they would mix it with oil. They
would grill it or pan fry it. No leaven
or honey was to be used. It was to be
from the first fruits of the harvest. It
was to be seasoned with salt as a reminder of the permanence of God’s covenant
with
I commented that if you look
carefully at you text, it indicates that God at least has southern tastes.
Somebody from up in
God likes grits. So that’s in the New American Standard. I’m not sure how some of the other
translations translate that, but it must have been a southerner who translated
that on terms of the roast.
So the meal offering is a memorial to God’s
grace. It is a fellowship offering
because the meal itself is then shared between the offeror and the priest. Sometimes there would even be a number of
people who would eat together. So it is
a fellowship offering.
Then you have the peace
offering which is described in chapter 3 that’s also known as the fellowship
offering where – excuse me I was getting ahead of myself. This is the offering where the believer
shares a meal with others in the Tabernacle to celebrate the peace with God
that was made possible by the death of a sacrifice. The previous offering which I mentioned was
in the meal offering. A portion was
given to the priests which indicated the sufficiency of God’s grace for
all. The peace or fellowship offering - then
there is a meal that is shared with others emphasizing the celebration of God’s
peace that is the believers because the sin problem has been solved.
The key word that is used in
the peace offering is the word
Then the fourth offering which
we looked at during the last lesson is the sin offering. The emphasis here is on the word hatah which is the Hebrew word for sin which
means to miss a mark. It is used in a
literal sense in the book of Judges to describe the accuracy of the archers or
the slingers (I guess you would say) in among Benjamin that they would not miss
their target. They were extremely
accurate.
Now these last two offerings
both focus on the whole doctrine of cleansing from sin after salvation. So they depict in the Old Testament the same
principle that is taught in the New Testament in I John 1:9. At the offering, when the offering is made,
there is a confession of sin. There’s
also in the description of the text that when someone sins, they confess their
sin and then they bring the offering.
So the confession of sin can
take place with the sin offering at the time of the offering; but with the
guilt offering there’s a separation in time which indicates what I was pointing
out in the introduction - is that the individual believer… For example if David
was out with his sheep in the fields of Bethlehem and he commits some sin; then
he can confess that sin and be restored to fellowship in terms of his personal spiritual
life. But then the next time he goes to
the temple in
Now we looked at the sin
offering that’s described in chapter 4.
This goes from 4:1 down through
The sin that is in focus in
the sin offering is the sin of unintentionality where someone commits a sin
according to verse 2....
NKJ Leviticus 4:2 "Speak to the children of
NKJ Leviticus 4:3 'if the anointed priest sins,
bringing guilt on the people, then let him offer to the LORD for his sin which
he has sinned a young bull without blemish as a sin offering.
This is from verses 3 through
12 talks about what happens if you are a priest; verses 13 through 21 if your congregation
as a whole; verses 22 to 26 the sin offering in relationship to the ruler; and
verses 27-35 if you’re just an everyday believer in the nation
In the process of those
sacrifices with the exception of the one with the pigeons or turtle doves where
the priests would be the one to break the neck of the bird, then what you see
is the individual. Or, in the case of
the congregational sin, the elders laying hands on the head of the animal
indicating an identification with that animal.
With that animal, the sin is transferred from the person to the animal
and the animal becomes the substitute payment for the sin of the individual so
that they are forgiven on the basis of that sacrifice. Now that forgiveness is ultimately based on what
that sacrifice represents and that’s the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
So we covered that last time
in chapter 4 and now we’re in chapter 5.
Chapter 5 is sometimes - if you look for example in my New King James
translation, the heading above the first verse is the trespass offering. Actually, the trespass offering is not
defined until verse 14. Verses 1-13 continue
to talk about the sin offering. If you
look at verse 1 we read:
NKJ Leviticus 5:1 'If a person sins in hearing the
utterance of an oath, and is a witness, whether he has seen or known of
the matter -- if he does not tell it, he bears guilt.
This is the sin of someone
who maintains their silence rather than speaking up. So it’s a sin of omission rather than a sin
of commission. The person then bears
guilt. So you look at that word
guilt.
See the trespass offering
actually should be called the guilt offering or the sin offering or the guilt
offering. The word that’s translated
trespass offering is really the Greek or the Hebrew word asham. That has the idea of someone who is guilty, someone
who has violated the law. That is a
different word than the word that is translated guilt in verse 1 in probably
the King James as well as the New King James.
The word that is translated
guilt at the end of verse 1 is the Hebrew word avon
which means iniquity or transgression. So,
that should be translated:
If a person sins (that’s the Hebrew word hatah) in hearing the utterance of an oath and is a
witness
So this is dealing with the
commandment not to bear false witness. This
person could witness of something that he knew, but he keeps silence rather
than speaking up.
of
something he has seen or knows about and he doesn’t speak up he is a
transgressor.
Literally, avon.
He has committed iniquity. He has transgressed the Law.
So just because he hasn’t
overtly committed false witness, by not speaking up he has. So he is therefore guilty of violating the
law.
What we see in these first 13
verses here of Leviticus 5 is other forms of sin, of inadvertent sins, sins of
omission that all fall under the category of the sin offering. So under the first point (trying to summarize
this in a couple of points), the guilt here is described by the Hebrew word avon meaning iniquity, punishment of sin or
transgressions. So the focal point is on
the fact that the law has been violated - once again the standard of God.
Then you have various
examples given beginning in verse 2 going down through verse 13 of different
ways in which this may take place. You
have a description in the first verse of someone who commits a false witness by
maintaining silence. They don’t speak up.
Then in verse 2, the act of a
person who touches any unclean thing. Now
there’s a difference between a sin which is violation of God’s character in the
first verse where you don’t speak up and you’re committing an infraction of the
law or committing a sin and someone who’s committing an infraction of the law
by touching an unclean thing. Touching
an unclean animal, the carcass of a dead body, any of these things are not in
and of themselves sins. There is nothing
moral or immoral about touching a dead body or touching a carcass or touching
an unclean animal. But, usually the
animal is related to something dead. You
have a dead carcass. Where does death
come from? Physical death is a
consequence of sin. You have…unclean
animals are usually animals that eat carrion. So you have shrimp, lobster, or
you have swine that who knows what they eat, different things of this nature. So because the animal is associated with
death (eats things that have already died), that renders them unclean. So the purpose of this is to demonstrate once
again that God can’t have anything to do with sin. It’s a reinforcement for the Jew that
anything that is touched by sin causes him to be separated from God.
Now I know sometimes I’ve
heard people say over the years, “Why do I need to confess all of my sins? I spend all of my time focusing on all the
sin in my life. I just get totally absorbed
with that.”
Well, some people can carry
it too far. Now we’ve all known people
who’ve done that. They sit around all
day trying to figure out all the sins they’ve committed. The principle in I John 1:9 “if we confess
our sins” - whatever we’re aware of at the time; then God is faithful and just
to forgive us our sins - that is those 5
or 6 or 3 or 4 or that we remembered; then He cleanses us from all other
unrighteousness. So you don’t have to
sit around and keep a grocery list running and become obsessive about trying to
name every single sin that you can possibly think of that you have committed
over the last 15 minutes since the last time you confessed your sin.
But the point here is it’s a
constant reminder to people that sin is pervasive. That’s why you have these images like leaven. Leaven is a picture of sin because it just
takes a little bit of leaven and then it permeates. When it’s spread into the flour, it permeates
everything. So it’s a reminder to the people of the
sinfulness of sin and the distinctiveness of God and that if there’s even the
least little bit of sin on the part of the worshipper; then they are prohibited
from coming into the presence of God. This
gets reinforced in some pretty strong ways in the Old Testament in the early
stages.
I think it’s interesting that
when you have a dispensational shift that takes place there are some extreme
ways in which God reinforces the principles in the new dispensation. For example when Ananias and Sapphira lie
about the money that they’re going to give to the church...Barnabas has sold a
bunch of property and Barnabas gave money to the church. Everybody was probably talking about how
wonderful and gracious Barnabas was because he gave so much money to the church.
So Ananias and Sapphira thought,
“Wouldn’t that be nice to have all of that adulation and praise? So we’ll sell our property, and then we’ll
tell everybody that we gave it all to the church.”
But they didn’t give it
all. They held some back. So God the Holy Spirit killed them instantly
for lying to the Holy Spirit. Now why
doesn’t that happen all the time? That’s
not normative. If that were normative,
we would probably have very empty churches around the world.
So God was reinforcing a principle
of not lying – reinforcing the principle of sanctity at the beginning of the
dispensation. You have a similar example
that I’ll go to to illustrate this in the Old
Testament - that God makes it clear that sin has an effect not just on us, but
it permeates everything around us.
So in verse 2 one of the
examples of the need for a sin offering is the touching of anything thing unclean,
touching an unclean thing whether it’s the carcass of an unclean beast, the
carcass of unclean livestock, the carcass of unclean creeping things and he is
unaware of it. .
NKJ Leviticus 5:2 'Or if a person touches any unclean
thing, whether it is the carcass of an unclean beast, or the carcass of
unclean livestock, or the carcass of unclean creeping things, and he is unaware
of it, he also shall be unclean and guilty.
So this deals with a sin that
you may not even be aware of yet nevertheless it still renders you unclean and
guilty. The same word in the Greek is
found there. That’s the word avon meaning transgressed the law.
Under verse 3:
NKJ Leviticus 5:3 'Or if he touches human uncleanness
-- whatever uncleanness with which a man may be defiled, and he is unaware of
it -- when he realizes it, then he shall be guilty.
This is later spelled out in
other portions of the Mosaic Law, different ways in which a human is rendered
ritually unclean - a woman when she gives birth to a child, other things that
take place render people ceremonially unclean.
NKJ Leviticus 5:4 'Or if a person swears,
This is not using profanity. This is the swearing of an oath in any kind
of judicial setting whether it’s the signing of a contract, entering into a
legal relationship.
speaking
thoughtlessly with his lips to do evil or to do good,
It’s whether you’re going to
take a certain course of action – whether it’s going to buy a house, buy a car,
buy a camel, whatever it might be.
Then if you enter into this
contract and you say, “Yes, I will do something.” and then you didn’t think it
through and you realize…You go home and you think about it. “Oh, I really can’t do that.” So now you’re not going to keep your word,
keep your contract. That would be a
violation of this particular situation.
I
whatever it
is that a man may pronounce by an oath, and he is unaware of it -- when he
realizes it, then he shall be guilty in any of these matters.
So the idea here is that we
need to be people of our word. Our word
is our bond. That used to be true in
this country 40 or 50 years ago. Now
it’s not true anymore. Even if it is true
of you, it’s not true of anybody else so you can get into a lot of trouble if
you think that you’re word is your bond and that’s good enough to go by. So the emphasis here is that each person
should not make a commitment, say they’re going to do something, promise
something, indicate a course of action unless they’re going to go through with
it.
In the New Testament in
James, James says:
NKJ James
The point is to make sure
that when you say you will do something that you will carry it out.
NKJ Leviticus 5:5 'And it shall be, when he is guilty
in any of these matters, that he shall confess that he has sinned in
that thing;
So here’s the point of
confession. When there’s a realization
of this sin, then you confess it and verse 6 follows after that.
NKJ Leviticus 5:6 'and he shall bring his trespass
offering to the LORD for his sin which he has committed, a female from the
flock, a lamb or a kid of the goats
This offering could be a
female lamb or a kid of the goats.
as a sin
offering. So the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin.
So it primarily focuses on that,
but there’s always a grace provision for those who are poor and those who can’t
afford to bring the lamb or the kid.
They are to bring either two turtle doves or two young pigeons. This is described in verses 7 and 8.
NKJ Leviticus 5:7 ' If he is not able to bring a
lamb, then he shall bring to the LORD, for his trespass which he has committed,
two turtledoves or two young pigeons: one as a sin offering and the other as a
burnt offering.
NKJ Leviticus 5:8 'And he shall bring them to the priest,
who shall offer that which is for the sin offering first, and
wring off its head from its neck, but shall not divide it completely.
So one goes as a sin
offering; the other goes as a burnt offering.
Then when you get down to verse 11, if you’re still so poor that you
can’t bring two turtle doves or two young pigeons which means you are extremely
impoverished then:
NKJ Leviticus 5:11 ' But if he is not able to bring
two turtledoves or two young pigeons, then he who sinned shall bring for his
offering one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour as a sin offering.
An ephah is generally
described as a bushel and a half. Other
sources say it’s approximately 5 gallons.
There’s a certain amount of uncertainty that we have as to exactly how
some of these dry measurements equate to our English measurements. But if he couldn’t afford that, then he is to
bring fine flour as a sin offering. The
fine flour emphasizes the value of the flour.
It is more valuable than your everyday flour.
He shall
put no oil on it, nor shall he put frankincense on it, for it is a sin
offering.
NKJ Leviticus 5:12 'Then he shall bring it to the
priest, and the priest shall take his handful of it as a memorial portion, and
burn it on the altar according to the offerings made by fire to the
LORD. It is a sin offering.
NKJ Leviticus
Now this word “atonement” is
one that we have almost been trained to think of in terms of a soteriological
term. We often refer to the death of
Christ on the cross as atonement. There’s
a big debate theologically in history over limited or unlimited atonement. But, there is no comparable word for
atonement in the New Testament in any of Paul’s literature, in any New
Testament literature describing the cross.
Atonement was an Old
Testament concept and the Hebrew word is kaphar. The English word atonement is an invented
word that was coined in the 9th or 10th century AD indicating
the concept of bringing two things together so that they are at-one-ment. That is where
the word atonement comes from – this English concept. So for a lot of time that you have heard
atonement taught, you’ll hear it compared to covering – that kaphar
means covering. Look it up in some of
the older Hebrew dictionaries. It will
list the term kaphar as covering. There is a use of the word kph (It’s a p actually, but it’s usually a soft p.) that is used in Genesis 6 and 7 when it describes
Noah putting pitch to cover the ark to waterproof it.
So we got that idea of
covering. But it appears now that there were two homonyms, two different words
in Hebrew - kaphar meaning to cover which is what we have in Genesis;
then a second word spelled the same way which has the idea of cleansing. In fact when you go to the Septuagint which
is the Jewish translation of the Old Testament that was translated in the 2nd
century BC by the Jews in
So the emphasis on atonement
has to do with cleansing whether it’s positional cleansing when a person first
becomes a believer or whether it’s post salvation cleansing dealing with sins
that are committed after salvation.
Now at verse 13 is where we
have the end of the discussion on the sin offering. Verse 14 – we go into the next section on the
trespass offering. This is covered in
Leviticus 5 verses 15 down through 19. Then in the first part of Leviticus
7:1-7 we have the procedure given for the priest as to how he is to carry out
this particular sacrifice.
The trespass offering is also
called a guilt offering or a reparation offering - a guilt offering or a
reparation offering. Sometimes people
get confused. Well if the fourth
offering is a sin offering, how does that differ from a trespass offering? Aren’t sin and trespass synonyms? They are. So the word here in the Hebrew is asham. It has
to do with guilt, restitution, or expiation.
So it is sometimes translated as a reparation or a restitution offering. The main idea of asham
centers on the reality of guilt. But it
is more than just the act of doing something wrong, it emphasizes the condition
of guilt that exists from violation of law.
So it indicates a status of being under guilt. This is a condition of every human being
because of Adam’s original sin. Because
of Adam’s sin, because that is imputed to every human being we are all legally
guilty and violators of God’s character.
So we’re all under sin and under the guilt of sin. So that guilt not guilt feelings, not emotion
but the reality of being legally guilty has to be dealt with. So this is dealt with of course permanently
on the cross.
The sin offering itself focuses
on two things - sins against God and sins against …well the sin offering as we
dealt with it before deals with sins against God whereas the guilt offering
deals with sins against God and mankind.
In
NKJ Leviticus
So it also deals with
unintentional sins.
in regard
to the holy things of the LORD, then he shall bring to the LORD as his trespass
offering a ram without blemish from the flocks, with your valuation in shekels
of silver according to the shekel of the sanctuary, as a trespass offering.
So this could involve any
aspect of the Mosaic Law dealing with an unintentional sin. So there is the presence of guilt.
Other examples that are given
also relate to sins against other individuals. In chapter 6:1-7 we have further development
of the guilt offering. In 6:2:
NKJ Leviticus 6:2 "If a person sins and commits
a trespass against the LORD by lying to his neighbor about what was delivered
to him for safekeeping, or about a pledge, or about a robbery, or if he has
extorted from his neighbor,
So again this is a principle
related to the commandment about false witness.
You have given your word about something and you violate that - a pledge
in relation to something financial. It
also relates to the sanctity of private property which is at the foundation of
all freedom.
Recently I was talking with a
pastor friend of mine and he was relating to me a conversation he had with
someone we both knew.
This person said, “Well, who
should I vote for in the election? I’m not
sure who I should vote for.”
His response was, “Well, I’m
not going to tell you who to vote for, but always remember that the key to
freedom is private ownership of property.
Whoever is going to allow you to keep the most of your property, what
you have worked for, is the person you should vote for.”
You have got to keep your eye
on the ball – private ownership of property.
So the Bible reinforces
that. I don’t think you can say that the
Bible is a handbook on capitalism; but, the Bible teaches the principles of
private ownership of property and that is the foundation of the system that we
have that is known - the modern system is known as capitalism or free
enterprise.
The Bible also emphasizes the
fact that people have a right to have what they should have and unfortunately
when government comes along God in two great passages (I Samuel 7 and a couple
of other passages in Judges) emphasize the fact that when you have a large
government, then government takes away from people and increases taxes and
raises taxes and people have less property and therefore they have less freedom. This is what our founding fathers
understood. As we are approaching the
season of the 4th of July and Independence Day, our founding fathers
understood this principle. That’s why
they made such an issue out of taxation without representation.
Yet the level of taxation
that they were subject to by the British Empire was miniscule compared to the
level of taxation that the average citizen of the United States is faced with
on a day-to-day basis. We need to go
back and apologize to George III for our little tax revolt because today we
really don’t care. We want to give up
all of our freedoms and let the government decide how to spend everything.
Somebody was telling me today
that they had heard on the news that the latest legislative agenda is to pass
legislation against drive through windows.
You can’t have drive through windows at Starbucks or Burger King or Whataburger or any place like that because all these people
who are just sitting there and idling their cars and waiting in line are
putting all of this exhaust into the atmosphere. That’s causing global warming. So you see it’s all you people who are
getting your morning coffee at Starbucks and going through the drive
through. That’s your fault!
See we are manufacturing
problems and once again we expect the government to dictate everything. We laugh because we have knowledge of truth
and so we realize how absolutely ridiculous it is. But the sad thing is the
huge number of people who listen to this and go, “Oh yeah. Well, that must be right.”
So let’s just all give up our
freedoms and let the government take care of everything. I’m getting off the subject.
Private ownership of property
though is clearly recognized in the Scripture as something that needs to be
protected and when it’s not and an individual lies about or breaks the pledge or
extorts money; there is to be a trespass offering.
NKJ Leviticus 6:4 "then it shall be, because he
has sinned and is guilty, that he shall restore what he has stolen, or the
thing which he has extorted, or what was delivered to him for safekeeping, or
the lost thing which he found,
I want you to notice that in
the penalties in the Mosaic Law (We could spend a lot of time on this and I
won’t.) you don’t have imprisonment as a penalty. I think imprisonment is probably a pretty inhumane
type of punishment. What you have in the
Mosaic Law is restitution. So if
somebody steals or defrauds or destroys property, then they have to restore
what they have stolen plus 20%. If they
have committed murder or rape or some other kinds of violent crime, then they
forfeit their life. So you have capital
punishment, restitution; but you don’t have imprisonment. That is not part of the Mosaic Law. They had other forms of punishment. The punishment was swift and certain or was intended
to be.
So as you go through the
guilt offering you emphasize the fact that these are perhaps unintentional
sins. In other cases they are sins of
culpability and the solution is restitution plus 20% along with the payment of
a guilt offering, a ram without defect. They don’t get the alternative
here. It’s a more expensive form of
payment. The offering is a ram without
defect or the financial equivalent plus one-fifth, another 20%, for the
priest.
So these offerings,
especially the last two, the sin offering and the guilt offering, emphasize the
fact that there is restitution with our fellowship with God even when there is
sin. Sin has an affect on that
relationship with God.
Now let’s stop a minute and
think about
I want you to turn with me to
the book of Joshua - three or four books over – to Joshua 7. Now this is after the victory at
NKJ Joshua
19 "But all the silver and
gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are consecrated to the LORD; they
shall come into the treasury of the LORD."
So all that which is valuable (the valuable plunder that you take that)
gets set apart for the Lord for the treasury of the Lord. And everything else was under the ban.
KJV Joshua
Everything was supposed to be
slaughtered because God wasn’t going to have them survive and live off that
which was produced by the pagan culture.
So this is the command. They are
to destroy everything. But, they don’t
do that.
NKJ Joshua 7:1 But the children of
Notice, the children of
took of the
accursed things; so the anger of the LORD burned against the children of
The result was when they go
out to the next battle at Ai, they go into battle and they completely
fail. They sent up 2 or 3 thousand men
to go up and attack and because of sin in the camp they fail and they are
completely defeated.
NKJ Joshua 7:5 And the men of Ai struck down about
thirty-six men, for they chased them from before the gate as far as Shebarim, and struck them down on the descent; therefore
the hearts of the people melted and became like water.
So now they’ve had this great
victory in
NKJ Joshua 7:7 And Joshua said, "Alas, Lord
GOD, why have You brought this people over the
Joshua tears his
clothes. He falls to the ground before
the ark and he is completely at a loss.
So God responds to him in verse 10.
NKJ Joshua
Joshua ought to know better
so God is reprimanding him.
NKJ Joshua
Now the only one who has done
this is Achan. But it shows that the sin
of one affects and permeates everyone so that we often try to convince
ourselves at times that “my sin is my sin and it really doesn’t have any impact
on anybody else”. The principle that
this is showing is that the sin of the individual does have impact on
others. Adam’s sin had an impact on the
entire human race. So there’s a
solution.
NKJ Joshua
That means they have to go
through a process of cleansing because of this sin. Otherwise they can’t go forward in the
conquest of the land.
This is the command that
Joshua was to give them.
'Sanctify
yourselves for tomorrow, because thus says the LORD God of
So there has to be – the sin
has to be dealt with. There has to be an
admission of the guilt and cleansing that takes place. So the next morning they come out and they go
through this whole process of elimination.
They gather all of the tribes before Joshua and in some way God
communicates which tribe it’s going to be.
The tribe of
NKJ Joshua 7:19 Now Joshua said to Achan, "My
son, I beg you, give glory to the LORD God of Israel, and make confession to
Him, and tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me."
So Achan answers Joshua and
says:
NKJ Joshua
That’s his confession of
sin.
and this is
what I have done:
Then he explains in verse 21
what he has done. But the divine
discipline (the judgment) is not going to be removed. There is forgiveness. Sometimes when we confess our sin God
forgives us and removes the punishment.
Sometimes God just lightens the punishment. Other times we can commit a sin and we can
receive divine forgiveness, but because of the nature of the sin there still
must be the carrying out of the penalty.
This happens in cases where
you have a criminal who has committed murder, mass murder, or any number of
horrendous crimes and they receive the death penalty. I remember there was a case about 10 years
ago Carla Faye Tucker and she became a believer after she was in prison. So you had all of these pastors who came out
and said, “Oh! We need to let her
live. Don’t give her the death penalty.” But the Scripture says she committed a
crime. Just because she changed her
spiritual status doesn’t mean that the legal penalty goes away.
There’s a difference between
personal forgiveness, divine forgiveness and legal or criminal forgiveness. In this case there could be personal
forgiveness. There could be divine forgiveness,
but a legal penalty still had to be paid.
That’s the case of Achan. The
legal penalty still had to be paid. So
the penalty as defined by God was that (back in verse 15):
NKJ Joshua
See that’s the picture of
cleansing and purification.
he and all
that he has, because he has transgressed the covenant of the LORD, and because
he has done a disgraceful thing in
So in verse 24:
NKJ Joshua 7:24 Then Joshua, and all Israel with
him, took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, the
garment, the wedge of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his
sheep, his tent, and all that he had,
This includes his family.
and they
brought them to the
NKJ Joshua
Now that’s a good double
punishment. First they stone him, and
then they burn him with fire. The
burning with fire though is the depiction of purification from the sin.
NKJ Joshua
So the writer adds that point
that those – that rock cairn is still there that set over his grave so if you
doubt the story you can go down there and you can find that pile of rocks
marking his grave.
So the LORD
turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place has
been called the
So the point is that God
takes sin a lot more seriously than we do.
When we have sin in the life, it hinders our forward advance
spiritually. This why the Israelites couldn’t go forward with their military campaign
and their sin has to be dealt with. Cleansing
has to be dealt with. Once that’s done,
then we can move forward.
So even though this is an Old
Testament illustration in the sin offering and the trespass offering and it’s
an illustration from Achor, the same principle continues into the New
Testament. You have various commands
such as I Corinthians 11 where the Corinthians are coming to the Lord’s
Table. They’re out of fellowship. They are abusing the Lord’s Table – getting
drunk and they’re over eating at the Lord’s Table. Paul says:
NKJ 1 Corinthians
…indicating spiritual
weakness.
and sick
among you,
…indicating a physical weakness.
and many
sleep.
…indicating sin unto death.
Then Paul said:
NKJ 1 Corinthians
So that is another synonym
for confession of sin. Of course there
is I John 1:9 and other passages in the New Testament that emphasize the
importance of this cleansing so that the believer is experientially sanctified
before he comes into the presence of God.
So next time we’ll come back
and see the illustration and the next piece of furniture which is the
laver. We’ll get into that next
week.