Do please take your Bibles in hand once again and turn with me now to the Old Testament, to the book of Leviticus chapter 5. Leviticus chapter 5, beginning at the fourteenth verse. If you have a church Bible, you can find that on page 84. We are working our way through the book of Leviticus here on Sunday mornings with various breaks, and today we are looking at a ritual called in our text, “The Guilt Offering.”
You’ll notice the passage has three obvious divisions. First, verses 14 through 16 in chapter 5, there’s provision for someone who has sinned by the misuse of some of the holy utensils or holy things involved in God’s worship. The procedure is, he is to bring a ram to the priest for sacrifice and along with it he is to bring the price, the value of that ram, plus an additional 20% surcharge to make restitution. Then secondly, verses 17 through 19 of chapter 5, there is the provision for someone who thinks they may have sinned but really isn’t sure. Their conscience is bothering them, they can’t quite put their finger on it. In this case there is no restitution required since we’re not sure against whom exactly they have sinned, but they do bring a ram for an atoning sacrifice nevertheless. And then thirdly, chapter 6:1-7, there is a sampling of various ways in which Israelites could sin not against God or against themselves but against one another. The provision here is almost identical to the provision made in that first section, so they bring a ram, they bring the price of the ram, and they bring the additional 20%, only this time the restitution price is paid to the offended neighbor rather than to the priest at the temple. That’s the pattern of the guilt offering.
But what does it all mean? What is its relevance for us? Well as we work through the text, I want you to notice three groups of three things with me. The passage tells us three things that sin does, it shows us three relationships that sin affects, and it gives us three steps for sin’s forgiveness. Three things that sin does, three relationships sin affects, and three steps for sin’s forgiveness. That’s where we’re going this morning. Before we read the passage, let’s bow our heads and cry to God that He would help us to understand, believe and obey His holy Word. Let us pray.
O Lord, sin darkens our understanding. We are so prone to twist the truth, to be selective in our commitment to and embrace of the truth, to listen only to what pleases us and to ignore the rest. Now as we gather before You with Your Word open in our hands, we ask You please to give us grace to hear all of it, to teach us by it, and to renew our hearts and lives. Sanctify us, O God, by the truth. Your Word is truth. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
Leviticus chapter 5, at the fourteenth verse. This is the Word of God:
“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘If anyone commits a breach of faith and sins unintentionally in any of the holy things of the Lord, he shall bring to the Lord as his compensation, a ram without blemish out of the flock, valued in silver shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, for a guilt offering. He shall also make restitution for what he has done amiss in the holy thing and shall add a fifth to it and give it to the priest. And the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering, and he shall be forgiven.
If anyone sins, doing any of the things that by the Lord’s commandments ought not to be done, though he did not know it, then realizes his guilt, he shall bear his iniquity. He shall bring to the priest a ram without blemish out of the flock, or its equivalent, for a guilt offering, and the priest shall make atonement for him for the mistake that he made unintentionally, and he shall be forgiven. It is a guilt offering; he has indeed incurred guilt before the Lord.’
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the Lord by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of deposit or security, or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbor or has found something lost and lied about it, swearing falsely—in any of all the things that people do and sin thereby—if he has sinned and has realized his guilt and will restore what he took by robbery or what he got by oppression or the deposit that was committed to him or the lost thing that he found or anything about which he has sworn falsely, he shall restore it in full and shall add a fifth to it, and give it to him to whom it belongs on the day he realizes his guilt. And he shall bring to the priest as his compensation to the Lord a ram without blemish out of the flock, or its equivalent, for a guilt offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord, and he shall be forgiven for any of the things that one may do and thereby become guilty.’”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy, inerrant Word.
Well let’s think first of all about three things this passage tells us sin does. First, sin brings guilt. Sin brings guilt. Ten times over the word for “guilt” or “guilty” or “guilt offering” is used in this passage. The word for “sin” is used in 5:15, 5:17, 6:2, 6:3, and 6:4. So the big idea of this section, much like the previous section actually, is about sin and its consequences in the sight of God. But importantly when it speaks about guilt here, it has both aspects of guilt in view. There is the objective state or condition of being guilty, found guilty in the judgment of God. That’s the primary issue that is being addressed in these verses – 5:16, 5:18, 6:7 – they all say the priest shall make atonement for the guilty sinner and he shall be forgiven. That’s not about dealing with guilty feelings; that’s about being actually guilty, whether you feel it or not, and having that objective condition of guilt removed. But the subjective sense of guilt is not ignored here. The passage speaks about feeling guilty as well as being guilty. Both in 5:17 and in 6:4, the passage speaks about realizing your guilt. And 5:17 also mentions bearing your iniquity.
Leviticus has in mind the person who has sinned, they stand under the condemnation of God, he is objectively guilty, but there is a moment when the reality of that objective guilt starts to land. It comes home to his conscience. And you know how that goes, I’m sure. You can’t sleep; you’re lying awake at two in the morning, replaying that moment from the day, earlier in the day. At the time, you didn’t think anything of it, but now as you lie there running back through who said what and who did what in your mind’s eye, a cold shiver runs down your spine. You have a horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. Your conscience stings as your guilt dawns upon you. You have sinned against God, perhaps also you have sinned against your neighbor and you need to make it right. It’s a horrible experience. It’s one, I’m sure, we’ve all had. And the problem is, in our culture and time we tend to focus very much on the latter of those two senses of guilt, on the subjective, the psychological experience of feeling guilty. And the danger is, when the subjective definition of guilt is primary in our culture, we can also begin to think that dealing with guilt is just as subjective. We can begin to think that addressing my sin is simply a matter of finding the best way to feel better about the situation or feel better about myself.
And that’s actually where this part of Leviticus is so immensely helpful because it acknowledges that in one sense guilt is subjective. We feel guilty. But those guilty feelings are designed by God to flag for us at least the possibility of an objective problem, not merely a subjective one. Our big issue is, my big issue is that by nature we are, I am under the condemnation of God for my sin. I only have a guilt problem because I have an enormous God problem. Right? We only have a guilt problem because we have a God problem. Sin is an offense against God. It doesn’t matter in one sense, at least it does matter that you feel guilty, but it matters much more that you recognize that because of sin you actually are guilty before God, whether you feel it or not. And so the first thing this passage is reminding us about is that sin brings guilt. Not just guilty feelings, but objectively it makes us guilty in the court of a holy God’s judgment.
And then the second thing sin does, it breaches covenant. It brings guilt. It breaches covenant. Look at chapter 5 verse 15 again. “If anyone commits a breach of faith and sins unintentionally in any of the holy things of the Lord.” Or chapter 6 verse 2, “If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the Lord.” The fundamental issue in the background here is that as God’s people we live in covenant with Him. We are bound to Him in a sacred relationship initiated by Him, governed by His grace, bringing with it sacred obligations. And when we sin, Leviticus says, we break faith with Him. We breach the covenant bond. We speak often, don’t we, of marriage as a kind of covenant. Each partner solemnly vows to the other that they will “forsake all others and cleave only unto thee.” And so when a husband or a wife has an affair, they break covenant. It’s a breach of faith. And that’s part of the agony of it. This covenant between them, you see, isn’t merely legal or contractual; it establishes the most intimate bond and union. And to break it is an awful, wounding offense.
And that’s what sin does in our relationship with God precisely. If you are a Christian, today you live in covenant with God, in the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. He is the bridegroom; we are the bride. We are bound to Him in intimate, loving, covenant fellowship. And our sin, all our sin, is an awful breach of faith. It tramples on the covenant of His love. Your sin, my sin, it’s not simply a failure to uphold some arbitrary code of conduct that’s been imposed upon us. It’s not just that we fall short of some contractual obligation expected of us. No, no, our sin, as R.C. Sproul famously puts it, “Our sin is cosmic treason.” Cosmic treason. It is deeply, tragically personal. You’ve turned against the bridegroom who loved you and gave Himself for you. Sin brings guilt. Sin breaches covenant.
The third thing sin does is it breaks God’s law. It breaks God’s law. Chapter 5 verse 17, “If anyone sins, doing any of the things that by the Lord’s commandments ought not to be done.” God’s law, let’s remember, is the transcript of his own moral character and glory. His commandments direct our steps in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. They tell us, “This is the life that pleases Him.” Love for God who first loved us and gave His Son for us, love keeps the law. So, when we break the Lord’s commandments and do what ought not to be done or fail to do what ought to be done, it’s not just a failure of willpower. It is a failure of love. In that moment, you found your sin more lovely than the smile of your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Sin brings guilt, sin breaches covenant, and sin breaks the law. That’s the first three things this passage teaches us.
There is a second set of three about the way sin works. Look again at the three sections we outlined in this passage right at the beginning of the message. The first section, 5:14 through 16, deals with guilt incurred in consequence of some misuse of any of the holy things. The temple required a whole array of utensils and furniture and paraphernalia involved in the worship of God; they are holy things. The meat of the sacrifices that were eaten in sacred meals were holy things. A Nazarite could take a holy vow. Priests were holy people. These were the holy things. And there were a thousand ways in which an ordinary Israelite could handle what was forbidden or eat what was not his or fail to give what should be given to the worship of God and misuse the holy things. The underlying message behind all of that is designed to reinforce the sanctity of the temple and of the worship of God whose glory was said to dwell in the temple. Handling holy utensils, eating holy food, dishonoring holy people was condemned here in order to drive home the point of the gravity, the solemnity that attended everything involved in the honor or God, in the glory of God, and the name of God, and the praise of God.
And so verses 14 through 16 are really ultimately Godward. They are about our relationship to Him. God is holy and everything involved in His service and praise is holy too. And we may not use them flippantly or irreverently or casually. And listen, that is as true today as it was when Moses wrote these words so long ago. The worship of God even now is not a trivial matter, is it? Not then, not today. A casual indifference to the praise of God in the congregation of His people, that is to mishandle holy things. A flippant disregard for the voice of God speaking in holy Scripture. A Bible that stays closed on your bookshelf rarely read. That is to mishandle holy things. Praising the name of God on the Lord’s Day and using His name as an explicative on Monday, that is to mishandle holy things. To take solemn vows of membership in the local church and then to let sport or leisure or laziness determine for you whether or not you can be bothered to fulfill your promises, that is to mishandle holy things. All of this, do you see, is really about the effects of sin on our relationship to God. Holy things are means of grace – that’s the language we would use – and our neglect of the means of grace risks the ruination of our fellowship with the living God.
And then skip down for a moment to the third section in chapter 6:1-7. The first section is about our relationship with God. The third section at the other end of the passage is about our relationship to our neighbors. Verse 2 gives us a sampling of the ways that sin can ruin our relationship to our neighbors. Look at verse 2. An Israelite might sin by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of a deposit or a security or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbor or found something lost and lied about it, swearing falsely. And don’t miss, by the way, that verse 2 says that even these sins against neighbor are still breaches of faith against the Lord. Do you see that language? So, whether our sins are overtly religious and Godward in their primary orientation or social and interpersonal, all sin in the end is ultimately an offense against a holy God.
You remember when David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then had her husband, Uriah, murdered? He sinned against Uriah and against Bathsheba, but in Psalm 51 when he came to confess his sin to God he said, “Against You, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight.” Sin is sin not because society says it’s wrong, not because graded on a curve, you know, we don’t meet some minimal standard of socially acceptable behavior. No, no, sin is sin because God is holy and we are not. It offends Him. Whether we are failing in our love for God or in our love for neighbor, whether we are breaching the first table of the law, commandments 1 to 4, love to God, or the second table, 5 through 10, love to neighbor, it is the law of God we have broken either way. And Leviticus 5:14-16 and 6:1-7 tell us that in both directions we stand before God under His censure. So, the first and the last sections of the passage are about the way sin breaches our fellowship with God and our relationship with our neighbors.
But what about the middle section, 5:17-19? That’s a little bit more tricky. It begins, you’ll notice, just as the other two sections do, “If anyone sins.” Do you see that language? That phrase is a marker, signaling that this is a new section dealing with a new topic. And here’s where it gets a bit more difficult. The consensus opinion of the commentators is that even though it doesn’t say it here and it looks like it’s beginning a new subject, the commentators still argue that it’s really just continuing what has been addressed in the previous section about the misuse of holy things. I have to tell you that I am not at all persuaded by that. The fact that all three sections begin with that same verbal marker, each begin, “If anyone sins,” and then give you the scenario, and then given the first and the third sections deal with very different issues, all of that suggests that the second section is also dealing with a new topic, a different issue. After all, if this was still merely about the mishandling of the sacred things, then why doesn’t the same ritual apply here as it did there – the making of restitution as well as the sacrifice of the ram?
And finally, the clincher for me is that the passage doesn’t actually say that that’s what it is about – the misuse of holy things. The topic under consideration here is stated for us very clearly in verse 17. Look at verse 17. “If anyone sins doing any of the things that by the Lord’s commandments ought not to be done, though he did not know it then realized his guilt, he shall bear his iniquity.” In other words, this person’s behavior affects neither the holy things nor his neighbor. It is, we might say, an inner matter, a personal matter. And what’s more, it seems the person involved isn’t entirely sure that he has actually sinned at all. But his conscience is bothering him. He is unsettled about his behavior. He can’t go to the priest to make atonement and restitution for mishandling holy things because he hasn’t done that. And he can’t go to his neighbor to make restitution with them because he hasn’t sinned against them. And that’s why restitution is required because those are the relationships that have been breached. But because this issue is about himself, he must deal with himself in the court of his own conscience and under the gaze of God.
And some of us actually know this scenario very well in our own experience and it can be paralyzing sometimes, can’t it? You have this sense of ill-defined angst, a feeling of guilt and disquiet in your conscience. You have a growing sense something is off, but you’re having a hard time putting your finger exactly on what. Perhaps you can isolate the general area of your life – your walk with God, your attitudes and your affections that are not as they ought to be, but it’s hard to sift through that stuff sometimes and difficult to get clarity. And something of that order is the subject under consideration in this middle section. So, for want of a better way of putting it, the first section is about our relationship to God, the third is about our relationship to others, and the central section our relationship with ourselves. Sin brings guilt, it breaches covenant, it breaks God’s law, it affects our communion with God, it affects our fellowship with our neighbor, and it affects our own inner equilibrium and quietness of conscience in the sight of God.
And look, here’s the point of all of that. This is why we’re taking our time with all of that. Leviticus wants you to know all sin is like a tiny drop of ink dropped into a glass of clear water. Just a little bit, it doesn’t take much, and the whole glass is polluted and undrinkable. Sin, to use Jesus’ famous image, is a little leaven. It’s yeast in a big batch of dough, and pretty soon it has spread to permeate the whole loaf. Sin is pernicious and perverse and it ruins everything. Sin shatters our fellowship with God, it ruins our relationship with one another, it destroys our own equilibrium and peace. And as part of the design of this part of the passage to teach us to fear our sin and hate our sin and turn from our sin, I think that’s especially the function of that 20% surcharge required of those who have to make restitution by the way. You have to bring the best ram in the flock and then you have to give along with it the full market value of the ram. And then on top of that 20% additional surcharge, if you’ve sinned by misusing the holy things, if you’ve defrauded your neighbor you have to make restitution of the total amount that you have defrauded plus 20% surcharge and then bring the ram before God. The whole point is to make you resent your sin that is so costly. If you resent taxes and the IRS, right, this is meant to make you resent your sin even more. It will bankrupt you. That’s the point. It will rob you. It’s costly.
I wonder if you feel any of that about your sin. Do you resent it? Maybe, maybe one reason you are here today hearing this passage, this unusual text being preached, is because the Lord wants to highlight some of the ways you’ve been domesticating your sin lately. Where have you grown casual in your walk with God, in your use especially of holy things, the means of grace, the Word, the sacraments, prayer, the worship of God, the fellowship of His people? Where have you relaxed the standards of integrity and purity and charity and generosity that ought to characterize every interaction between a Christian and his neighbor? And where have you shrugged off the alarm bells that have been sounding in your conscience in the quiet or your own soul, drowning them out? Have you been coddling your sin lately? This passage is meant to be a wakeup call, a summons to take sin seriously once again. It will rob you and cheat you and impoverish you if you do not deal with it.
What sin does – it brings guilt, breaches covenant, breaks God’s law. The relationship sin affects – with God, with our neighbors, even with ourselves. But praise God there’s a final three things to see here. Three steps to dealing with your sin. Three steps to sin’s forgiveness. We noticed last time we were in Leviticus each of these sections ends with the same note of wonderful assurance. Do you see it? It’s a note that began to sound in the previous section, in 4:20, and it repeats 4:26, 4:31, 4:35, 5:10, 5:13, and in our text 5:16, 5:18, and 6:7. What’s the refrain in the text over and over? “The priest shall make atonement for him and he shall be forgiven.” He shall be forgiven. Forgiveness. Forgiveness is on offer. Not just condemnation and rebuke for your sin, not just a reminder of its gravity and its weight, but pardon, the deliverance of your guilt and the lifting of its weight.
Well how do you get forgiveness? Three steps. Step number one, we must recognize our guilt. We must recognize our guilt – 5:17, “If anyone sins doing any of the things that by the Lord’s commandments ought not to be done, though he did not know it, then realizes his guilt,” or 6:4, “If he has sinned and realized his guilt,” before forgiveness there must be this. If you want your record wiped clean – maybe you didn’t know that was possible. It’s possible to have your record before God wiped clean. How do you get it? There must be this – Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” You must realize you are a sinner. You need to own your guilt. Conviction of sin always precedes true conversion. You need to know and own the sinfulness of your sin. Unless and until you stop blaming your wife for your anger problem, until you stop playing the victim card to justify your substance abuse, until you stop accusing others of unrealistic standards as a way to excuse your own laziness, until you own your sin, forgiveness from God is always going to elude you. I wonder if you have really realized that you’re a sinner, not in some vague, safe, polite, “Oh, we’re all sinners, aren’t we?” – that won’t do at all. Have you realized you are a sinner, come to own it in the unique particularities of your own breach of God’s holy law? That’s the first step on the path to pardon. And until you take it, pardon will elude you. Realize your guilt.
Step number two, restore what sin has ruined. Restore what sin has ruined. Realization. Restitution. We have said it over and again as we have read through the passage as we have considered it together, in 5:14-16 in sin against the holy things, restitution is made by bringing a ram and the total price of the ram plus 20%. In sin against neighbor, you must restore what you have defrauded, the total price of your breach of faith with your neighbor plus an additional 20%. You are meant to make restitution. Put it right. That’s the evidence and mark that your heart has changed and that your repentance is the real deal and not some quick attempt to get yourself off the hook.
We have a lovely picture of this, if you remember, in Luke 19 in the story of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a tax collector and so he made his wealth by skimming a little off the taxes, off the top of the taxes of the poor. So he was a hated figure. But when he met Jesus, everything changed for Zacchaeus. And what is the evidence of his changed heart? “Behold, Lord,” he said, “half my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it four fold.” He makes restitution way beyond the requirement of the law because his heart is changed, he’s come to find the pearl of great price, and so he lets goods and kindred go with a glad heart. He makes restitution. Making amends is a mark of true repentance. Wherever you can make it, it is an evidence that your repentance is real. Jesus actually refers to this passage in Leviticus 6:1-7 to reinforce the point in Matthew 5:23-24. It’s a sobering passage. He reminds us, “If your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar.” He’s talking about the sacrificial ram. “Leave your gift at the altar and go be reconciled to your brother.” Before there is forgiveness with God, there must be true repentance in your heart, and if your sin is interpersonal, the evidence of your repentance is interpersonal restitution, at least the effort to be reconciled. I wonder if you need to make restitution. Your conscience will never find peace until you do.
Realize your guilt. Restore what sin has ruined. And then step number three, receive what God has provided. I am so grateful this passage repeats over and over and over and over, “He shall be forgiven. He shall be forgiven. He shall be forgiven.” I’m grateful because I have a hard time believing it sometimes, don’t you, when you see the ugliness of your sin? I love how the Westminster Confession 15:4 responds to that very scenario. It says, “As there is no sin so small but it deserves damnation, so there is no sin so great that it can bring damnation upon any who truly repent.” There is no sin so great, if you repent, that the promise of this passage will not be spoken by God to you. You shall be forgiven. You have been, you are forgiven.
Here’s how you can know for sure – Isaiah 53:10, the famous passage about Jesus the suffering servant. The passage says, “When you make his soul an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring and prolong his days.” That word “offering for guilt” is the word “guilt offering” used in our passage. Jesus is the guilt offering! He is the guilt offering. These were just the types and the pictures and the shadows. He’s the real thing, and He makes restitution and satisfies the demands of God and secures for every sinner who believes full, complete, total pardon. Beloved in Christ, bring your guilt and shame to Him and hear Him say to you today, “You are forgiven.” Praise the Lord.
Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, we do now bring our guilt and our shame to You. We are such wayward people, prone to wander and to leave the God we love. Thank You that You died for us, for sinners like us. Teach us to believe Your promise, to repent of our sin, to make restitution, to seek reconciliation with our neighbors wherever we can, and to trust You that You mean what You say, that everyone who believes and repents is ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven. For we ask it in Your name, amen.