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- What attributes of God’s character does this passage reveal?
- How does the passage point to Jesus?
- How should the truth of this passage change me?
- How do the events of today’s reading help you better understand the grand narrative of Scripture?
Lev. 4-5
In addition to the burnt, grain and firstfruits, and fellowship offerings, there were sin and guilt offerings. I don’t really know what to think about these, so I will simply make a few observations about them.
- The guilt offering looks to be essentially the same as the sin offering. The difference is that this was for sins regarding any of the LORD’s holy things.
- The sin and guilt offerings were different from other offerings in that they required different sacrifice animals based on who committed the sin. If the sin affected the entire community, either because of the people or because of the anointed priest, they were to sacrifice a bull. Leaders required a male goat, and the common people a female goat or sheep, or birds or grain if they were too poor. Perhaps the different sacrifices represented the level of responsibility or scope of the offenders.
- Only the fatty parts from these sacrifices were offered to God on the altar, similar to the fellowship offering. If the sin involved the entire community, though, part of the blood was sprinkled on the altar of incense and the rest of the animal was burned outside the camp. Nobody ate any portion of those offerings.
- These offerings covered sins committed “unintentionally”. Other translations are “by mistake” or “in ignorance”. This makes me think that they have to do with restoring an already established but broken fellowship with God. Like in 1 John, which makes a distinction between slipping up as a Christian and outright defiance against God.
Lev. 6
I have commented before on how holy things become defiled when they make contact with anything or anyone unclean. The unclean defiles what was clean, not the other way around. I have also noted that Jesus seemed to be the one exception to that. Those who touched Jesus in faith often became clean and whole. Well I see now that Jesus isn’t actually the only exception. God said of the grain and sin offerings, “Anything that touches the offerings will become holy.” (Lev. 6:18b). Also, back in Exodus 30, He said the same of the tent of meeting and its furnishings. “Consecrate them and they will be especially holy. Whatever touches them will be consecrated.” (Ex. 30:29). This makes sense to me, as all of these things represent Jesus.