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I had to tell you this morning, it was funny. I went to the restroom. It was before like all this was starting, the 9:30 huddle thing. I go in the restroom and there's two boys in the restroom at the sink and they're not washing their hands, they're not using the restroom, but they're fixing their hair. And one kid turns to the other and he's like, man, you take too long to do your hair. And like he was kind of like jeering at him and stuff. And I, you know, being a dad and being old, I'm like trying to, you know, don't. Maybe he feels discouraged about it. So I'm like, dude, you're doing great, man. Cherish your hair while you have it. You know, for some of us it starts going. And I thought I was like trying to ease his pain. And he looked at me straight faced, he's like, well at your point I would just buy hats. And he turned around and walked out of the bathroom. And if that was your kid, I love you in Christ. And I have an unspoken, I have an unspoken prayer request. We're going to continue on in the series and I feel bad because I, I'm in the way of the screen so I'm going to try to move out of the way maybe, I don't know if that helps. We have the five offerings, these great sacrifices in the Old Testament. If you were to ask 100 Christians, how many offerings did God give in the law, what are the offerings? I bet you maybe one out of 100 would say five. But there are only five. There are five offerings. These are the five. They're in the law. They're represented in Leviticus and they start in the wrong order, but they do that on purpose. So the first one that's mentioned is the burnt offering. And just like the songs we just sang, the burnt offering is every breath I breathe for you, I belong to you. You want me completely. You don't want part of me, you want all of me. And the reason why God starts with the burnt offering, even though chronologically we have to start with the sin offering, is because he's send a message to his people. What I really want is to dwell with you. If you read Exodus and they're out of bondage and they're out of slavery and he gives the ten commandments and then he gives the tabernacle, the whole idea is that a holy infinite God wants to be with us. He loves you. He loves us. Even though they were sinful and complaining and idolatrous. In every way. If God couldn't work with that, he'd have nothing to work with. All of us are sinners, all of us are broken. And yet he demonstrates his love toward us in this way. And so he begins. Leviticus. The thirteenth month of their forty year wandering in the wilderness. I want to be with you. They get the law in the third month of their wandering. They spend the next nine months ish around there building the tabernacle, receiving the law, building the tabernacle. And then after the first year, they want to inaugurate it. They inaugurate the tabernacle, Sorry, not temple, but the tabernacle. The people come together and God speaks from the tabernacle. This is where I dwell and I want you to be with me. He starts in Leviticus, but he starts with the burnt offering. I want you to know what I truly desire is you. I want all of you. I want to be with you. Jesus, when he was talking to the Pharisees, was like they were messing up some stuff and he tells them, go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. Don't you realize that? I don't need animals, I don't need blood. You do in order to be with me. And I want to be with you. And so it starts with the burnt offering. God wants all of us. Then you have the grain offering, the gratitude offering. You could think of gratitude for God providing. This goes back to the command of seek first the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added to you. God will provide our daily bread. And so when you're in the desert and you're thinking about how are we going to survive, how are we going to live? Give thanks to the Lord. He is the one providing for our daily needs. All these things will be added to you. Seek first the kingdom of heaven, all these things will be added to you. And then we have the peace offering. That's really the last offering. And it's the last offering on purpose. After you've gone through the sin offering, the guilt offering, the burnt offering, grain offering, then you get to the peace offering. Now that we're done with the first four offerings, we're completing the fifth. We now have peace shalom with God and we thank God for his deliverance, his salvation. He has saved us. We have peace between us and God. I mentioned a book yesterday when Helping Hurts and I didn't finish the thought. In that book they talk about what really promotes peace between people and God. And it's four ways. When you go into A poverty stricken area. What they do not need is money. They don't need a great white horse coming in and showing you that affluence is the answer to all your problems. That actually hurts communities. If you go into a community and you build a house and you do construction, which 90% of the people in that poor community can build stuff, they've been doing it before you got there. All you're doing is showing them how. Are you better than them? Are you better than them at building or are you better at them at providing stuff? We need money. We need money. And so, you know, he's a graduate, I think, from Yale, super brilliant guy. They write this book because they're Christians. You can hurt missions by coming in and making the answer seem like it's money. And so God wants to bring peace between people and him first, then between people and each other, like other people, relational peace, then between people and stuff, materialism, wealth, food. We need peace between us and stuff. And then we need inner peace. Some of us do not have inner peace. And Jesus came to bring us all four of those dynamics of peace. The peace offering represents all of that. And so last night we went through the peace offering, one offering. But there's three reasons that the offering is given. When you give the peace offering, you're thanking God for the peace between us and him. You're making a peace offering part of a vow. And so you're vowing, I'm going to keep this vow so that I have peace with my brothers. And then there's a freewill offering. God has given us peace. Because I have inner peace and have peace with God and have peace with others, I am now able to reach out to my community and I have peace with my neighbors. I am coming to be a peace bearer, a peacemaker and bringing peace. And so you have the peace offering. That's really the last offering. Technically, when you go in order, God doesn't start with the first one though. And that's what we're going to cover today, the sin offering, truly, in Leviticus chapter four, it goes through chapter five. It picks back up again in chapter six. Those are the verse references that go back. Of course, the sin offering is referenced again later, later. And so, but with the sin offering this morning, I want to give you three takeaways. When you analyze the sin offering and what it means, of course all the offerings point to Jesus. But what are three takeaways from the sin offering that teach us right now, today, New Testament Christians, what does the sin offering teach Us now. So you have the sin offering. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, tell the Israelites, when someone sins unintentionally against any of the Lord's commands and does anything prohibited by them. If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, that phrase is important. If the priest sins and he brings guilt not just on himself, but the people, and it's a sin that's unintentional, that's the basis for this particular section in chapter two. If he does that, he is to present to the Lord a young unblemished bull as a sin offering for the sin he has committed. The Hebrew word for sin offering, Hatta' at is what it sounds like. It's from hatta, meaning to miss the mark. That's where we get the idea of sin. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We've fallen short of his glory. We've missed the mark, the bullseye of holiness. What really we were created for. We were made in God's image to reflect his image. We're made to reflect that to others. Because we're made in his image, we're made to obey Him. Sinning is when we fall short of that. So you have missing the mark. And even in the Word, the idea is that God sets the mark. God is the one who decides what is sin and what is good, what is righteous and what is evil. God as the creator, our Creator, he decides what is right and wrong. We live in a day where the enemy is trying to work through unknowing people. For the most part, the enemy is trying to trick humans that we need to do what we want to do, what we feel like doing. We need to do what looks good. It goes all the way back to Genesis 3. This snake brings to the woman this idea. Did God really say, and I want you to look at that fruit. I want you to see how it's good to the eyes. It looks good, it's going to taste good. And guess what? It's going to make you good. It's going to make you wise. You're going to become like God. You're going to become what you really want to become. Deep down inside. Even though no person wants to admit this, all of us want to be God. All of us. And you might think, I don't want to be God. Well, that's a little bit you trying to be God in that moment. Actually, all of us want to be worshiped. I'll give you some examples. When you get married, what do you want from your spouse. You want them to love you in all the ways you feel loved. You want them to serve you, encourage you. You want them to be there for you. You want from them for yourself. That's natural. You want your kids to listen to you and obey you. You want your kids to turn out like how you would like them to turn out and make decisions that you would make. You want, naturally, without even knowing it, you want to sit on the throne of your life. You want to be on the throne. That is a natural temptation within us. And the enemy tries to pick on that and tries to draw that out in secretive ways, in deceptive ways and manipulative ways. God is the one who sets what's right and wrong. And that's the first half of the gospel. We have a creator, God, who made us in his image to reflect him and to obey him. And the first part of the gospel is we miss the mark. We do not measure up. We are not righteous. Not one of us deserves heaven. Not one of us deserves to be worshiped. Not one of us deserves what Jesus has bought for us, what he sacrificed for us. None of us deserve that. And we can even do this unintentionally. We can sin unintentionally. That word unintentionally. Tell the Israelites. Cause God knows some of you are gonna sin and you didn't even know you were doing it. Now, I'll just admit right now, I sin and I do it. And sometimes I know it. I know I was sinning before I did it, during I did it, after I did it. I feel horrible. I knew it even before. But God starts with this, you know, Even when someone sins without meaning to, you know, mistakenly, you didn't mean to. That's unintentional. However, even if it's unintentional, it brings guilt on the people. Do you see that? It brings guilt on the people. Even when it's unintentional, even in an unintentional sin, it requires an unblemished bull as a sin offering for the sin he has committed. Notice this. He didn't even mean to do it, but it was still sin. Ignorance is not innocence. The first takeaway we learn from the sin offering from God is ignorance does not equal innocence. Right? Oh, I didn't know that was wrong, you know. Oh, well, that's great. I realize you didn't know that that was a mistake, that that was a sin. But guess what? It still counts, right? You can't use the argument. Well, you know, like I think of you know, if you've ever been driving with someone else and they get pulled over, cop comes to the window, knocks on the window, they roll it down. Hello, officer. And he says, do you know why I've stopped you today? And you're like, I have no idea. I just follow all the rules. So I'm like, I'm as surprised as you are. Why are you here? And they're like, well, this is a four way stop. And you didn't stop, you just kind of slowed down and you're like, oh, there was no one else coming, so I realized I could go. And you're like, oh, that's really sweet of you that you looked around, but a stop sign means you stop. And they're like, oh, I didn't know that. I thought at a four way stop that if no one's there, you could just go. Now would the police officer go, oh, you didn't know. I'm so. Am I bothering you? Are you on your way to work? Listen, I'm so here's $20, right? Grab yourself some lunch. I didn't realize you didn't know that was the rule. You just go on ahead. No, that's never going to happen in it, ever. Because ignorance doesn't mean you still break the law, even if you didn't know it was breaking the law. David wrote about this in one of his Psalms, Psalm 19:12. Who perceives his unintentional sins. And David's referring back to this in Leviticus, this word, this idea of unintentional. Who perceives his unintentional sins. Cleanse me from my hidden faults. Would David have to say, cleanse me if he wasn't dirty? Would he have to ask for forgiveness if he wasn't guilty? You're still guilty even if you don't know it's wrong. And God is teaching the Israelites, you need to know something about my character and about the rules, the law, the way this works. You can't use innocence, you can't use ignorance as an excuse. When Paul writes to the Romans, he says, therefore they are without excuse. That people in their unrighteousness try to suppress the truth. They are without excuse, even if in their mind they're confident I'm right and this should be right. And I feel like this should be justified. God is graciously, mercifully telling people, that doesn't make you right. And that's not going to count. You're not going to get at the gates of heaven and me say, you know what? This guy didn't mean it. He didn't know. That doesn't matter. That's not how it works. Sin grievous. And it divides us from God. The wages of sin is death. It produces death. Isaiah 59:2. But your sins have separated you from your God. But your sins have made a separation between you and your God. And your iniquity has hidden his face from you. There is a dividing factor that happens because of our sin. And God is honest about it. Telling us. Now that's the first idea and that's throughout the whole offering. But I want to show you the progression that God shares in the offering. So in verses three to 12, when the highest leader sins, and if you're looking at your Bible, it's sectioned off maybe, or it's not sectioned like this possibly. If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people. So the first one that God mentions is the highest leader of the people, the anointed priest, the high priest, that is meant to be a representative. So during this moment, technically it's Aaron in this particular day, but it ends up being the high priest later. And then in the book of Hebrews, we learn about Jesus being better than a high priest and what he does. But if the highest leader sins, it's got to be a young bull. A young bull, A one year old unblemished male. All bulls are male. But a male bull, that is the most valuable animal. That is like the most expensive, most valuable animal for them. This is the highest one, that's the highest leader. Then if you go to verse 13, when the whole community sins, you still offer a young bull. So you still offer the highest. When the whole community. Now if the whole community of Israel errs meaning sins, you do the wrong thing. Even though this is unintentional and the matter escapes the notice of the assembly, they're like, dude, we didn't even know, right? If you were one of the seven churches in Revelation chapters two and three, and God comes to you and he sends a message to your messenger, your Angelos of that church, and he sends it to the messenger, you know, John the apostle, he writes it, he gives it to them and he tells them, listen, I know you do some great stuff, but there's some things that God has against you. There's some things that need to be taken care of. Even if the whole community errs and it escapes their notice, they didn't even realize they were doing it so that they violate any of the Lord's commands and incur guilt by doing what is prohibited, the elders of the community are to lay their hands on the bull's head. So the leaders of the community, not the highest leader anymore, but now the leaders of the family, of the whole community, sorry. The elders of the community are to lay their hands on the bull's head before the Lord and it is to be slaughtered before the Lord. The elders are responsible for the community. Just like in the New Testament, the elders are responsible for the local church. The elders of that local church, they are responsible. They're going to be held to a higher account. And so Leviticus 4:15 makes that obvious that they're responsible. Leviticus 4:20, once you read a little bit down, atonement is made on their behalf, on the behalf of the elders, and they are forgiven. So both the people and the elders need to be forgiven. Then you keep going in verse 22, 2226. This is the section. When a leader sins. Now, he is to give a male goat as a sin offering. So when a leader sins and unintentionally violates any of the commands, doing what is prohibited, incurs guilt, or someone informs him about the sin he has committed, he is to bring an unblemished male goat as his offering. Now, a male goat is just a little cheaper than a young bull. It's a little step down because this is only a leader of the people. This is a leader of the people differentiated from the elders. A leader is someone who's a leader of a family. So think of like this home. Imagine like this is a three generational home. The leader of that home, which is almost always the oldest male in that home, that is the leader of the home in this context. And so the leader of a home, or a leader of a tribe or part a section of a tribe, if there's a leader amongst you that sins and it's only affecting a portion of the people, it needs a male goat. Then if you keep reading, you get to verse 27 and this sounds repetition. If you're just reading this through your, like I'm going to read through the Bible in a year, you might miss this. These are different people on purpose. Now if any of the common people, that's like me and you, we're just common folks. If just any individual, they're not a leader of a home, they're not a leader of a group, they're not an elder in the community, they're not the home anointed high priest. If any single person, it could be a boy, a girl, it could be anybody. If any of the common people sins unintentionally by violating one of the Lord's commands, does what is prohibited and incurs guilt. Or if someone informs him about this, about the sin he has committed, then he is to bring an unblemished female goat as his offering for the sin that he has committed. So, so the individual, you can bring a female goat which is just a little bit cheaper than the male goat. Cause remember, males can have lots of babies and women can, you know, females can only have so many babies at one time. And so that's the design for that. So a female goat or lamb is cheaper and you get the pattern. God required different animals for our sin offerings, for their sin offerings, the Israelites, he required different animals based on the position of the sinner, based on the responsibility of the sinner. And here's the main idea. Our sin affects others. Second takeaway from the sin offering, as you analyze it, our sin affects others. It's not true. This statement is not true completely. You make your bed, you sleep in it. That is partially true. But guess what? You make your bed, your kids are going to sleep in it too. You make your bed, your wife's going to sleep in it. You make your bed, your neighbor's going to have to deal with it. You make your bed. The people you influence and disciple your choices are going to influence the people that look up to you when rely on you. Not one person in this room is meant to be isolated as an island where you think, oh, I've got to take care of me and myself and I just need to think about me. And as long as I do, no, life is not that easy. Every decision you make is likely going to affect others. And the older you get, it's going to affect more people. The higher you are in position of responsibility, it's going to affect even more people. So in the sin offering, God is teaching us that our sins affect others. It's not just us. We have an influence. And you get the pattern. Recognize your influence and consider your impact. Think for a moment. Who do you impact in your life right now based on your decisions? Right. Me willing or unwilling to give up a game doesn't just affect me. It affects my wife, it affects my children, it affects how distracted I am, it affects my attention because I'm a leader in a church, it affects my entire church. My walk with God affects a lot of people. That's scary. There's moments where I think I don't even want this position because I realize I'm going to be held At a higher count. But it's not just because I'm a pastor. I'm a father. My decisions affect my kids and can affect them forever for the rest of their lives. Our decisions affect others. Ask the Holy Spirit, who am I impacting right now? And what are you wanting to draw out? What are you wanting to tell me about my decisions right now? After you get through this section where chapter four is talking about the sin offering, giving the different things, then, interestingly enough, you get to Leviticus, chapter 6. There were no chapters back then, but as you keep reading then, there seems to be this interesting commentary based on the sin offering in chapter five. But I want you to notice the pattern of what God is doing as he's telling this. So Leviticus 5:1, God begins telling the people about sins of omission. That means passive sins that, like, God tells you to do something and you don't do it. That's sins of omission, right? It's not like I'm selling crack on the street. That's a sin of commission. I'm doing something. Sins of omission is I'm just not doing something that God wants me to do. Leviticus 5:1. When someone sins in any of these ways, well, that's interesting, God, you're giving us some unique application here. If he has seen, heard, or known about something he has witnessed and did not respond to a public call to testify, he will bear his iniquity. Whoo. Even passivity is not permissible in God's standard. Passivity is not permissible. Passivity is a sin. You can never say, I'll just do nothing. Doing nothing is something in God's economy. Then you get to verse two, sins of uncleanness. So you have the sins of omission. Sin can be passive. You have the sins of uncleanness. Sin is contagious. Or if someone touches anything unclean. Now, technically, if you're reading this, you're like, oh, but we haven't gotten to Leviticus later, like in chapter 11. We haven't gotten to the unclean stuff. Well, he's spoken to Moses earlier. You have a little bit in Exodus, starting in chapter 20, it goes through to chapter 24. You have some of these things. But he says if anyone touches anything unclean. What's unclean? A carcass of an unclean wild animal or unclean livestock or unclean swarming creature. Without being aware of it, even if you didn't realize it, he is unclean and incurs guilt. Uh oh, it still counts. You didn't mean to. Or if he touches human uncleanness. Any uncleanness by which one can become defiled. That term for defiled means you are unclean and you're spreading uncleanness without being aware of it, but later recognizes it, you're guilty. Uncleanness. The idea of being defiled and being unclean is because it spreads. Sin is contagious. Your sin spreads to others. It's going to affect others based on your position. But even there's this idea that your sin other people around you, when they see you sin and give into things, they're going to think, this is great, I'll do this too. And your defilement spreads. That's the whole idea of uncleanness. The cleanliness laws represent the infectious nature of sin. The cleanliness laws represent the infectious nature of sin. Then verse four, you have sins of arrogance. And who not to a surprise to no one. God hits on pride. Almost every book of the Bible, I think, has pride in there that God hits on. You have sins of arrogance. And this is teaching us that sin is irrational. Sin is not rational. It's not right in its way, in its thinking. Or if someone swears rashly to do what is good or evil concerning anything, a person may speak rationally in an oath. It could be anything. You're just rash, you're not thinking clearly, you're not prepared. You're not practiced without being aware of it, but later recognizes it. He incurs guilt in such an instance. So why mention these three in Leviticus 5, 1:4? Because these are the harder sins to admit. These are the easier sins to overlook or hide. You know, you have the passive sins. I can pretend I didn't know. Like closing your eyes. Imagine an off duty cop hears a call, but he doesn't want to be a part of it and he turns away. He's technically guilty in God's eyes. If you know the right thing to do and you don't do it to you, that is a sin. If God presents an opportunity for you to help someone, you can't just walk on the other side of the road and say, not my problem. God brings someone along your path. There's a responsibility that God's giving us. It becomes a sin. Unclean. You could think in your mind, hey, no one saw it. This is in the quiet of the dark. This is in the middle of the night. This is anonymous. No one sees what's on my computer screen. No one knows what's really happening. This means nothing. You can think that no one Sees it. But sickness, sin spreads. It will affect you. There is a supernatural part of you that you can't get rid of that when you sin, it leaves a mark. There's an uncleanness there. And then speaking rationally, I don't want to go back on my word as a dad. Dealt with this probably more than anything else with children. Being a father is not the easiest thing I've ever done. Something happens and I discipline my kids and I say, hey, you know, this is the way it goes. And you da, da, da. I don't want to hear it. And the kids are like, oh. And I think they're defending themselves and making excuses, blah, blah, blah. You do this, okay? You go to your room and you do this. And this is going to be the rule. Then I find out later I was wrong. I should have listened to them. Do you know what it's like to be the head of your home and have to go to the littlest one in your home and say, I was wrong, dad was wrong. That's humiliating. There's a temptation where it's like, oh, I shouldn't tell them because then they're not going to respect me. Then no matter what I say, I'm not going to be able to be the leader in my home. I can't be the leader and be wrong, you know, which is pride. That's not going to help you. I remember one time, man, one time I yelled at my son Samuel. He's 15 now. Such a great kid. Like, such a wonderful kid. Such a wonderful young man. Anyway, he was real young. This was. Well, maybe this was only about eight years ago. This is about eight years ago. So 15 minus 8. I don't know. He was 3. Whatever the numbers. I'm not a math magician. So anyway, so he's like, maybe he's seven or six or something. We had just moved to Kansas and I yelled at him and I lost my temper and I told him to. It was something about a shirt taking it on or off or doing something. I just lost my cool. And I felt bad about it for the whole day. But I didn't want to tell him because technically he did do something wrong. So I didn't want to go and apologize and make him think what he did was right because what he did was wrong. Well, anyway, I dealt with that for a little bit, and I felt the Holy Spirit convicted me. And I said, I'm going to write a note. So I write a note and it's like, samuel, I'm sorry that I wasn't patient with you. In my anger, I sinned against you. I did the wrong thing and I sinned, and it's not right. And I shouldn't be impatient with you. Will you please forgive me? And so I sit him down, I give him the letter. You know, he's a kid. He's small, but he's fun and cute. And he reads the letter and he looks up to me and he goes, dad, who made you write this? I almost had to write another letter. I was like, dude, no one made me write this. I. You know, it is tempting to be passive, unclean, and rash and make excuses for it. That's why I think that's why I should clarify. I think it makes sense. As I study the laws, I study God's character and his nature and his word. I think that's probably one of the reasons he interrupts this particular offering, giving this example. And the examples he gives make sense. These are going to be the things, like, right, if someone goes out and they commit a big sin, it's not like you need a jury to figure out, are they wrong. But these kind of things, these are the things that grown men and leaders struggle with. So God mentions these because sin is sin. He wants to start at the top. And you leaders, you leaders of your homes and your communities, you influencers, you're first. You're responsible first. And you should know that these are going to be an issue. Sin also must be confessed. You should say what you did. Leviticus 5, 5, chapter 5, verse 5. If someone incurs guilt in one of these cases, he is to confess he has committed that sin. Right? Just clear black and white. Simple, simple, simple. If you sin, you must confess it. You have to say it. There is a spiritual dimension to this. There is a connection to this. You cannot hide it. You cannot be in your closet and say, God, I'm apologizing to you, but no one else is going to know about this. No, that is not the way Christians ought to live. What is it? James 5, first John 1. Like, confess your sins, you've got to confess them. Admit what you did. James 5, 16. So confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great effectiveness. Confess your sins to one another. First John 1, 9, 10. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. Well, I memorize it in a different translation. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all Unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, or later if we say we have no sin, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. We are treating God as if he's the wrong one and he's not. And that in itself is a sin. God's heart has always been pointed toward forgiveness. But God cannot forgive what is not confessed. God has to be able to deal with this in our sins. Now, I said that, and I know I need to qualify that in a sense, right? There's going to be sins you don't realize you do. If you don't confess those and you die, do you go to hell? No. We'll actually get to that in the next offering. And with this offering, it's connected. You read this later. In Leviticus, chapter 16, the reason for the day of atonement is because the people were going to miss stuff, and they needed an annual cleansing, a day of atonement, a covering, so that all of their sins would be forgiven, even the ones they missed and there were no sacrifices for. That's the reason for the day of atonement. But just like as God tells us, you cannot have unaddressed sin. You cannot have unaddressed sin. You have to confess your sin, deal with your sin. Don't have pet sins. Don't have unaddressed sins. There's lots of verses around that. God's heart, though, is forgiveness. God desires to forgive. So as you Continue reading, Leviticus 5, 7. But if he cannot afford an animal from the flock. Now I want you to notice when you get to verse seven, it almost seems like a continuation back to chapter four, when he's talking about the young bull and the young goat and the female. When he gets to that, you would almost fast forward to this verse, but he gives that little insert for leaders, and then he continues on. But if he cannot afford an animal from the flock, if you don't have a bull, guess what? I still want to forgive you. I still want to address your sin. Let's say you don't have what it requires. I want you to know, if you can't afford it, then he may bring to the Lord two turtledoves or two young pigeons as a penalty for guilt for his sin. You know, in the New Testament, when Jesus says, if a sparrow fall, if even one bird falls to the ground, does the Father not notice? And he's talking about how you're more important than the birds of the air and the flowers in the field and all that. And he speaks of one Bird. Do you know that one black bird is worth zero? It's not even worth one penny. One bird is worth nothing. It points back to, actually Leviticus, where you need two birds as an offering. Points back to this. So when Jesus is teaching this to his Jewish audience, he's telling them, listen, even one sparrow that falls to the ground is noticed by God. How much more valuable are you? He's saying, if you can't afford the animals, you can get two birds. You can figure out. Get a shoebox, a string, a stick, some manna. Pour some manna in there, put some peanut butter in there. You know, just be ready. You'll get birds. You can have birds. One as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering. Again, he points back to the first offering. Why? What is the point of the burnt offering? What does God want you? He doesn't care about bulls and goats and birds and animals. He doesn't need blood. If he was hungry, he wouldn't even tell you he owns the cattle on a thousand heels. God created everything without doing anything. He could have both hands tied behind his back and he spoke everything into existence. He doesn't care about the animals. He doesn't even care about the temple. This is just a for, this is a blueprint of what's in heaven. What he really cares about is you. He wants you to be forgiven of your sin. So one of these birds, I'll take a bird that means nothing to you. And the other one you can use as a burnt offering. Because what do I really want? I want all of you. So I'll make an exception. And then verse 11. But if he cannot afford two turtle doves or two young pigeons, he may bring two quarts of fine flour as an offering for his sin, but he must not put olive oil or frankincense on it, for it is a sin offering. Anybody know what the olive oil and frankincense points back to? The grain offering that was offering the second one that we went through. I don't want you to think this is the grain offering. This is not a thanksgiving offering. This is a sin offering. It's not a pleasing aroma. Ain't gonna smell good like frankincense. No, no, no. This is going to be a burnt offering. And if you can't afford animals, everybody has flour. Anybody can go out there and pick the grains and they can bring the grain in. They can make fine flour and offer to the Lord. You can have flour even if you don't have a single animal there, buddy must not bring Olive oil and frankincense on it. Now, this is what I love about chapter 5, verse 11. This stuns Jewish scholars in this sense. What is required for sin atonement? What is one word that starts with B, L, O, O, D that is required for sin atonement? Blood. Because the life is in the blood. Now you read about this more throughout Leviticus. You finish reading Leviticus, you finish read Hebrews, even talks about this. There's got to be blood. This is so weird. God, why are you saying we can offer flour and we could be forgiven of our sin? No blood. How come this makes no sense? This seems to be an error. Maybe this wasn't meant to be in Leviticus. Maybe this isn't meant to be in the Bible because this seems to go against what God has already said. Whenever there's an ambiguity or there's something that doesn't make sense in the scripture. The reason why God is doing that is he wants you to pause and stop and think. He is trying to make a statement. He is intentionally disrupting and going like you're thinking, wait, what are you talking about? Why did you do it like that? He's intentionally doing that. If you go to Hebrews chapter nine, the book of Hebrews is like a commentary of Leviticus. By the way, if you ever study throughout Leviticus, which you should, you're going to need to study Hebrews too. Neither book is the easiest one to study because it requires a lot of your time. You cannot just speed read through it. You have to take note of the details. They will end up making sense. Facts, equal meaning, and God didn't waste a single word. Take your time to read through Leviticus and Hebrews together. It will make more sense. But after doing that, you start realizing these connections. So Hebrews 9, 22, according to the law, almost everything is purified with blood. Almost. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. There is no forgiveness. There has to be the shedding of blood because it requires life. The life is in the blood. It has to require blood. Therefore, it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be purified with these sacrifices. So there's something in the spiritual realm, the spiritual dimension in what we call heaven, where God is. There's something there where God tells Moses back in Exodus, I want you to create a tabernacle. Eventually. The temple tabernacle is portable. Temple is permanent. I want you to create a tabernacle. And it's gonna be my dwelling place. I'm gonna be with you. But it's gotta be exactly this measurement. It's gotta be exactly these colors, and it's got to be exactly these materials. Every single detail is important because it reflects a truth, a reality in heaven, not because we have tents in heaven. This is symbolic. It's pointing toward a spiritual truth that we don't have spiritual materials. And so it uses physical realities to point to a spiritual truth. That's just what a parable is. A parable is an earthly, simple physical reality that points to a bigger spiritual truth. The tabernacle does that in a way. So anyway, I'm not trying to preach on the tabernacle, that would be a study through Exodus, but therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves to be purified with better sacrifices than these. The author of Hebrews is telling these Jewish believers that are struggling with Judaism and Christianity because you don't have to be Jewish to be a Christian. And that just blew the minds of everybody because up until that point, for 1500 years, that wasn't the case. So they're like struggling with a 1500 year old tradition that really is hard to let go of. I mean, some of us have 10 year old traditions we can't get rid of. You know, sacred cows. You know, this is 1500 years. This is an identity of a people. So the Hebrew author is telling them, listen, there had to be something better than the blood of bulls and goats for Christ, that's Jesus Christ is a word that is meaning messiah. It's the Greek word for messiah. The Hebrew word for messiah is mashiach. It means the anointed one. In the New Testament they spoke Koine Greek, that was the common language of the day. And that's just Christ. So Christ and Messiah are the exact same words just in two different languages, like cat and gato and evil. Those are all the same thing. So I'm joking. I mean, cat and gato really are the same thing, but for Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with hands only a model of the true one, but into heaven itself, so that he might now appear in the presence of God for us. He did not do this to offer himself many times. As the high priest enters the sanctuary yearly with the beloved, another. Now verse 25 is speaking of the day of atonement in Leviticus 6. I can't teach that. But the idea is all your sins, the sins you've missed, the blood has to cover, otherwise he would have had to suffer many times. Since the foundation of the world, if the tabernacle was the point, and this was the true requirement, even in heaven, Jesus would have to die all the time, because that's the law. The blood has to be spilled all the time. You keep committing more sins, more sacrifices have to be given. But now he has appeared one time at the end of the ages for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for people to die once, and after this, the judgment, which is the last half of or the first half of the gospel still, so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, but not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are awaiting him. So the Hebrew author saying, Jesus only had to die once to cover sin. But he is coming back, but he's not coming back to die again. By the way, just a side note, because I just love Bible. I just love the Bible. Do you know when Moses strikes the rock the first time, and it's cool, and God's cool with it, and water comes from the rock, a spring of water coming. What do people dwelling in the desert need more than anything? What's the number one need of living in a desert? Water. After that, you have food and shelter, but water's number one. And if you have 2 million people in the desert, you need a lot of water. Not just for drinking, but for cleaning, for washing, for all kinds of stuff. You need water. God provides water. Living water is what it's called. Actually, the term living water kind of means running water. And out of a spring comes this. Out of a rock comes a spring, which is unique and weird and miraculous. So Moses strikes the rock, everything's great. The second time they come around, God tells Moses, I want you to speak to the rock. But Moses is angry. He's upset. He's like me after 8pm, he's frustrated. The people are just not paying attention. They're just the worst, right? Taking care of a group of Israelites in the desert, just not fun. And so instead of speaking to it, he goes back to his old brain. He goes back to his own ways and he hits the rock. And that is the reason why Moses can't go into the promised land. Now, if you've read Exodus and Numbers, you're thinking, what Moses actually committed Word, he murdered a dude, right? But that didn't keep him out of the promised land. He argued with God, broke his plaques. That didn't do anything. He was disobedient. You have Exodus, the end of Chapter two and three, I think, where he gives the five excuses of Moses, right? So many things Moses did. And you look at that and you go, dude, man, God, you forbid Moses from going into the promised land because he struck the rock, which he technically already did. I mean, what's the big deal? It's because the rock is a type or a foreshadow of Jesus. The first time Jesus came, he was struck. The second time he comes, he ain't coming to be sacrificed again. And whenever you read something that is shocking in the Bible and you think, whoa, why did this happen? It's probably having something to do with Jesus and his sacrifice, his life, death, burial and resurrection. Almost every time, if you read anything, whether it's the servant has to go at the gates of the city and his ear has to be pierced and his right hand and his foot and all that stuff. And you're like, strange weirdo. The right thigh thing, that's super weird. Almost every time it points right back to Jesus. Life, death, burial and resurrection, it comes back to his return that Jesus is returning. That's the Moses deal. Jesus, the rock was meant to be a foreshadowing of Jesus. Jesus told him, I am the living water. You know, your ancestors, they received bread from heaven. Guess what? I'm the bread that comes down out of heaven. You need me. I'm the living bread. I'm the living water. So anyway, Jesus is coming back and he's not coming back a second time to die. Second time he's coming back to reign. There's going to be no second chances. Hebrews, chapter 10. Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the reality itself of those things, God just tells us clearly, listen, what it looks like in heaven, it doesn't look exactly the same. These are a shadow, right? If you saw my shadow on the ground, you would know very little about me, right? You might know that I should get a membership to the YMCA again. But you're not going to know much else. You're not going to know what I look at, look like, the color of my eyes. You're not going to know much about me. You just know a very, very little bit about me. Surface level, superficial stuff. That's a shadow. The reality of those things is in heaven. The real truth is there. So the law has only a shadow of those things. It's not the reality itself of those things. It can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year. Otherwise, if it were true that we could be forgiven by just giving sacrifices, right? Jesus says, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. Why? Because your sacrifices could never measure up. And I knew that before. And I want to come here to give you mercy. I want to forgive you. I know that you can't fix you. I know that you can't fix your problem. I know that you can't measure up. I already know that. And I love you. And out of my love for you, I'm going to demonstrate my love for you. That while you are yet sinners, while you're my enemies, while you realize you cannot make it, I'm going to die for you. And I'm going to show you my love for you. I'm going to demonstrate kindness, extravagant kindness. I'm going to show you what mercy really looks like. It's not in the sacrifices because those are a shadow of the real true sacrifice, which is Jesus the Christ. He is the real sacrifice that was given all these sacrifices, burnt grain, peace offering, sin offering, guilt offering. All of these are meant to point people to Jesus the Christ, the real one who was sacrificed. God is the one who really sacrifices and gives it up and he calls you into a relationship with him through Jesus, the real sacrifice. Otherwise they wouldn't have stopped being offered since the worshippers, purified once and for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sins. But in the sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins year after year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. It is impossible for animal blood to. To truly cover your sins. And so why, when you go back to Leviticus chapter 5, is there this strange instruction that no blood is offered for a sin offering, but you can use two quarts of fine flour? It's meant to get people to stop and think and realize there's something that's really going to pay for it. And it's not this bread, it's not this goat, it's not this bull. Jesus is the one that we need. All of the Old Testament is preparing the world to realize every nation. You need Jesus. You're never going to make it without Jesus. Even God's elected people that had all the law and all the promises and all the, the blessings, guess what? They couldn't make it either, right? Don't celebrate that. Your father is Abraham. I'm telling you right now, these rocks will cry out if they don't. And if it doesn't make you a child of God just because of your bloodline or your lineage. That is a promise through what's really a Curse. That's the curse that Jesus had to endure. Study the book of Galatians. That's not going to save you. The law never saved anybody. What really needs to happen is for Jesus to come down and be our sacrifice. The sin offering teaches us that's what we need. And this is the second half of the gospel, the good news. You could teach the whole Gospel in this one verse. The wages of sin is death. But the gift, the gift being a free gift, the gift being something you cannot earn, you don't deserve. It is a free, free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. He desires mercy and not sacrifice. But the sin offering does teach us about sin. It teaches us that our innocence doesn't excuse or our ignorance doesn't excuse us. It teaches us about our commitments and our passivity and about how deep sin is and how the penalty is so deep. And it requires this sacrifice and then switches at the end with this flower to say, listen. But this is not really going to be it, because blood ain't even required in this. This is pointing to something greater. And that greater is Jesus. Undoubtedly, in this room, there has got to be someone that is not a Christian. And I just want to plead with you. If the Holy Spirit is speaking to you and speaking to your heart and you know that you're a sinner, hey, listen, I'm your brother. I know what it's like to be a sinner who does not deserve forgiveness. I know what it's like to require all the mercy that God has to give. I know what it's like to be broken and realize that I have missed the mark and I am perverted and distorted and I have to relearn the lesson over and over. If God is teaching you and telling you you have sinned and you are not complete and whole yet, I just plead with you. You need the free gift of God. We've all sinned. And if you would turn to Jesus and say, God, I am the sinner. Repent. Agree with God about your sin. Say, listen, I am a sinner. I am broken. I am not full. I'm not whole. I'm not God, I should not be on the throne. If you turn to him in faith, you will receive what God calls eternal life, which is life forever. With him, you will have peace. Shalom. With him, you will belong to him and your sins will be covered. Jesus promised those that if you turn to him, all your sins would be covered. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of all of our sins and to cleanse us of unrighteousness. God is willing to give that to you. He wants to give that to you. And I would encourage you. Repent and believe. Let me pray. Father, I thank you for this time. And I thank you for the offerings. I thank you for how they teach us lessons of our sin and our need for you, your desire for us. They teach us about your character and the lack of our own. And we thank you for Jesus, who is greater than any high priest who ever lived, who's greater than any king, who's greater than any prophet. He is the one that we needed to come. Your son, your sinless son that came to this Earth 2000 years ago to live a perfect life. He followed the law, he fulfilled the law and he became a curse on a tree. Our sins were nailed on the cross and taken away as far as the east is from the west because of your love, your. Your forgiveness, your mercy, your compassion. We thank you for that. We praise your name for that. I pray that you would continue to draw our hearts to you. We just celebrate your goodness to us. We thank you for your kindness to us. And we pray for our family and our friends, our neighbors. For those that don't know you, whose sins are not forgiven, those that have no peace and no hope. Would you use us to. To be your image bearers, to be like you, to share the good news with them that they could have their sins forgiven. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.