Leviticus 4:22-35 Bible Study | Episode 661

April 22, 2024

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Leviticus 4:22-35  Bible Study | Episode #661

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Alive, Applying God's Word to Your Daily Life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now, that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day.

Especially today. In Jesus name. Welcome to Lake Community Church's Merlin Barber study. We are in Leviticus chapter three. And today we're going to end the chapter and look at the sacrifice for unintentional sin. And One of the things that has really struck me as I've been studying through this and teaching through this is that I remember thinking as I was reading through the Bible that Leviticus is a place where you can definitely get off that train.

Meaning if you're trying to read straight through the Bible and you get to the book of Leviticus, a lot of people that's when they don't make it through. And that explains to me when they give you a a year long Bible, you have these Bibles that are broken into 365 chunks of Scripture, and if you read each day's worth, you'll read through the Bible in a year.

And there add Evan we'll give you a passage from the Old Testament. Then they'll give 'em a passage from the poetry of the Old Testament, and that's Sams and Proverbs so of Solomon, things like that. And then they'll review the little testament. And if you, those three up that's generally in thirds, those are the themes of the Bible.

And the reason that's done is and I really build this, the reason that's done is so that you have to read Leviticus for 10 days or 12 days. and stop reading Madaba. It's just because it is it's about sacrifice and it's a sacrificial system and it's about the things that nobody wants to tap into, nobody wants to do it with.

And as. The reason that is the case is, first of all, we don't do we do not do the sacrificial system. We don't live by the sacrificial system. We don't live by the dietary laws, and we don't live by the sacrificial system in the New Testament, even though our life is from the sacrificial system, meaning that our life that we have the eternal life we have is from Jesus being the culmination of that whole system.

That little said. In the New Testament, we are living by a sacrificial system. And oftentimes, Christians don't understand that's what's going on. That's what's actually happening. A lot of times, Christians they figure out that And maybe it's because of our modern American church culture. They don't figure out that this is not just Jesus died for my sins.

This is that I give my life to him. Also this is a. This is a covenant relationship. And as an attorney I say this all the time, and I often sometimes will even say it in a wording. A covenant relationship requires you to live something. You have to have something in the game. And in order for there to be a contract and a covenant is an eternal contract.

It's not a temporal contract that, that lasts for Emily, a snap here. Tell him a covenant is an eternal contract that lasts into eternity. Once you, when you had that, you, each person has to have each person has to have something that they give them through it, there has to be. Consideration. And that's what that something is called when the contract is called consideration, you have to have consideration on your side of the contract in order for there to be a given of something for something.

And that's the best way for me to describe it. It was more, there was a more in depth way to describe it, but just for purposes this morning, you got to give something for something. And in, in in our relationship with God he gave. We know what he gave. We give our lives. We we give our lives to him.

We turn over control of how we live to God's will, not our will. And that requires, first a logical assumption. You have to rationally do that, decide that you're going to chase after God. And then second of all, It requires that you you set aside the things that you control in your life, which is the scientific process.

And so it's not just going down for it and receiving the free gift that God has given us in Jesus Christ. That is. That's the that's the thing that happens after we're justified, after God gives us the new birth, after we're regenerated that's that's the conversion experience where you go down and most churches today, you go down front, announce that Jesus is your Lord, and then later on we're baptized, some churches you'd be baptized that day, there's all kinds of culture and ways we do that, but you However that works out in your context, each one of those things is showing us a pattern.

And that pattern is God paid for it. God gave it to us. Once we've received it, we realize we received it because the Holy Spirit reveals it to us. And then. And when we have that experience of coming to that realization and being converted, meaning changing from living our lives on our own to living our lives according to God's will and His way.

And then the salvific process begins. And the salvific process is a sanctification. It is us. Give him up our way of doing things for God. And that's requires a sacrifice. And so each one of these sacrifices in the Book of Leviticus, each point to Christ sacrifice for us Earth out of giving of our lives to him, our sacrifice of our will to his will.

And that's what Leviticus is all about. That's what Leviticus means. That's a, he's given us over and over different pictures of either Christ's sacrifice for us, or us being saved, meaning giving over our will to God's will. And that's what salvation is. Sanctification is God changing our hearts to his heart.

And that's what the sacrificial system is about. And it points to that system, or it points to Christ. One or the other. Each one of them sacrifices, each one of them's lives is giving us a, it's just a giant sign pointing, hey, here's, there's Jesus coming down the road, or hey you've got to, you've got to turn yourself over.

And especially in Leviticus chapter three, things are dealing with unintentional sin, which means that When you enter this contact with God, when you enter this covenant relationship with God, when that happens, you have to you have to come to that realization of the position you actually were in.

You know it, but once you really realize the depth and depravity of your sin then you're in a very terrible situation and you've got to figure out how to get out of it. How to place myself in the center of God's will. In his light, in his understanding. And when I do that, I have I have his best, I have better than I could ever imagine for myself.

And so when you're steading through that and thinking through that, you have to come to that realization on your own. You gotta figure that out and say, Hey I get it. I get what's going on. And as far as unintentional sin, we've already covered, the unintentional sin of the priest.

Then we've covered the unintentional sin of the whole congregation and all the unintentional sins that that either us as. Each individual being a priest in the kingdom of first yeah, there is. Is there any potential sin that the whole congregation has? Sure, things that we didn't even know about being at the right way.

We thought we were doing it the right way. But we weren't doing it the right way. And then you have rulers, the people who are actually out in society is the things that, that they boo that they don't know that they should be doing. Absolutely. And so that's what you have in verse 23rd. When they sin, they've done something unintentionally against any of the commandments of the Lord.

He says. Anything that should not be done is guilty. Now they're just because they're just not because they're they're not guilty because they knew it and they do it. They're guilty because sin is not God's rule and the rages or the penalty for that sin is. Is good and death and so it's required that something we die about it now in the other two they sacrifice a bird in this one.

They sacrifice a goat and the difference is birds represent the thresh and goats tend to represent individual things that are going on. We're going to come across the scapegoat down the road where a sin is placed down that go and that go to send out into the wilderness to perish.

It tells to put to single individual acts and we have to wrestle against iron flesh and sometimes we have to wrestle against just individual things that we didn't really realize that it was gonna have that consequence. And we did it. For my granddaughter, when something new happens that was unexpected, even if it's a good thing, sometimes she'll say and with the universe, we haven't seen that happen.

That was unexpected. Now, it might be, something fair, something that, you know, the man that we'll think of, but it could be any Anything's anything is a lot. Oh we're talking about our days with the guy. A lot of times the things that we're dealing in our lives they're things that that we go I didn't realize that was having that effect.

And I'm not telling them you read with God that's going to happen all the time. You're looking around and you And remember, the Hellish Spirits haven't had time to bring this stuff to us. He's revealing God's will. He's revealing our lives. He's revealing the world around us. And you're gonna learn other things every time that you see the white little blue things.

Maybe you grew up with them. Maybe your parents knew them. Maybe that's what you were taught in school. Maybe that's what all your friends did and seemed like it worked. There's all kinds of ways to get to that end. Maybe you just decided this ain't the only way like it. And then, oh. And then, all of a sudden, you realize But that has been messing with everything's up.

That has not been, that's not God's will. That's not the way God does it. And in the midst of figuring that out, in the midst of you, you getting that in your own head figured out, all of a sudden, you're being saved. That's salvation. And if you figure that out as a leader of God's people, right?

You better go. And notice, in each one of the sacrifices in the sin or in the place of the unintentional sin, they break the sacrifice. Why? Because it's a symptom for something, the, or this eternal life, this covenant relationship. And I am willing my life to give to God. And my life is just, totally thorough of unintentional sin.

It's full of intentional sin too, but it sure is full of a whole lot of unintentional sin. Unintentional sin that I may not even realize. And then as I go through life, all of a sudden it was there. There it is. And so that's what he says for the rulers. 27, he says, if any of the common people sins unintentionally.

Notice God's been through a whole group. He's going through groups of people, the priest, the whole congregation, a leader, just a regular person. If they'll sin, will they do? They can bring, they bring a kid of the globe. They bring a female without blemish for his sin, which he has committed.

Now notice they ruin as a rule through it, you're bringing value. How much it would cost you less and less. And is there a cost to salvation? And the answer is Yes. Yes. Is there a cost to justification? Yes, but it wasn't even a cost. I didn't pay for that. Jesus paid it all whom I owe. Now, is there a cost to me being sanctified because I'm joining God in his life?

Yeah. Our lives are living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. That's our reasonable service. Our service is to write for ourselves as reason to make sacrifices. Now, what are the costs? From that satisfaction, the cost is higher when it's a someone who is working with God and providing leadership, the priest, and hopefully that's all believers eventually.

And yeah, the cost is greater. Is it a ruler out in the road? Yeah, that's not as much of a cost because, generally speaking, they're not turned into God. The, a priest or the way a the whole congregation would be tuned into God. And then if you got a common F person, they can bring a in verse 32, we'll see if he brings a lamb as a sin offering.

So you could actually bring a lamb and that, and so that's point to Christ, but it's also pointing to us as as. We'll sheep and so you could actually bring just yourself and notice in our Arvin's opportunities, the sheep, the goat the willow, the common folk, and all those situations, they come in, they put their hand on it and and the sun is passed to that animal and then boom, all of a sudden the blood is shed and that pays for the sin and it's placed on the altar and it's holding and prison.

And then the rest of it is taken out of the camp and burned because God gets rid of that flesh. And pledges his will in place of our flesh whenever we're in the midst of sin. And I understand that studying through the book of Leviticus can be tedious for us, but you think it's very insightful if we're going to spend some time considering, okay, is this Jesus's sacrifice?

Is this our sacrifice? What is God trying to tell us in each one of these situations? How is he teaching me how I am being saved? And remember, Paul uses salvation as a past, present, and future tense when he's talking about his own salvation in the New Testament. He says in places in the New Testament, I was saved.

And then he says, I'm being saved. And then later on they'll say, and shall be saved. And he uses that salvation. And in the brand context of everyone, he uses that, that idea of salvation. When he's talking about his own salvation, he uses in past, present and future tense, which indicate that it's a process indicate that salvation is a process that we go through and for the life.

Yeah, a lot of Christians struggle with that too, because we're willing to just show up to church and get our Jesus fix and then everything be good for at least a week until next Sunday get us some new Jesus. You'd have some double Jesus and Jesus to the second pile. And maybe it'll last for two or three weeks and we don't have to come to church as much.

Okay. That does not work. That's not how this works, but this is not a Jesus fix. That's not how, that's not how the Christian life works. We don't get a Jesus fix. We get Jesus and we need to learn to be, have Jesus all the time. And in order to have Jesus all the time, we got to wrap with him daily.

And it takes some getting used to living that Christian life. Coming and being a part of the congregation, meeting together, being a part of a small group, studying God's word each day. Dealing with the issues of life as they go as we go through life, all these things are the process of becoming like Christ and they take some effort.

In fact, they take all effort, God's effort. We got to do it. And listen to me, if you've never really been consistent in chasing after God, you can be, in fact, if you've never been consistent about doing anything well, you can be. God has given you the power to do it. He's given you his Holy Spirit. That's the our pro NFL best, greatest all American champion, he's got it all.

He's the top. He he's got it. He's God's power. And in presence with you. And so when you've got the Holy spirit, you can be consistent and you can have God's best and you can learn to walk with him, but you got to engage and that costs you something. Do you hear me by definition? That cost you something, and as it cost you something you begin to have your life opened up to all that cost God to get you, which is Jesus.

As it cost you something, all of a sudden God opens up all that he paid for you, and so you begin to get more and more of Jesus. I pray that as you go today you'll soothe us and you'll look good in your life.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.