A Fragrant Sacrifice - Brother Tim Banna

This evening we'll be reading from Leviticus chapter nine, and then we'll be reading verses one through seven. On the eighth day, Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel, and he said to Aaron, take for yourself a bull calf for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering, both without blemish, and offer them before the Lord. And say to the people of Israel, take a male goat for a sin offering, and a calf and a lamb, both a year old, without blemish, for a burnt offering, and an ox and a ram for peace offerings to sacrifice before the Lord, and a grain offering mixed with oil. For today the Lord will appear to you. And they brought what Moses commanded in front of the tent of meeting, and all the congregation drew near and stood before the Lord.

And Moses said, this is the thing that the Lord commanded you to do, that the glory of the Lord may appear to you. Then Moses said to Aaron, draw near to the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering, and make atonement for yourself and for the people, and bring the offering of the people and make atonement for them as the Lord has commanded. This is God's holy and inspired words. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you.

Thank you that we have your word. What a gift it is that we can come here together, open up your scriptures that you have delivered to us over thousands of years of being recorded. Lord, we want to recognize that people around the world, Christians, don't have the Word. They haven't always had the Word, and yet we do. And we can freely come open them, study them, meditate on them, worship you through them, and come here to study together.

So Lord, we are here, not to study man's ideas, not to, take away man's thoughts, but to hear from your word, and hear how your word directly applies to our life. And so I pray that you would speak your word through me clearly, that you would sanctify your word in my heart and every single person's heart that is here. That you would be glorified in this time, that you would receive the honor, and that Christ Jesus, who is the word, would be lifted high. Lord, that is our prayer. And we pray in his name.

Amen. The book of Leviticus. Now I'm curious, how many of you guys go to the book of Leviticus when you're in need of encouragement or some great insight for life? You can just raise your hands. Anybody?

Got one? I'm impressed. So Leviticus, it can be kind of a scary book to read. Right? There's a lot of blood, a lot of sacrifices, offerings, rules, something that seems sort of irrelevant to our lives today.

Right? Yet, this book is in the Scriptures. It's the third book of the Torah, and therefore, it's in our Bible, and we as Christians take all of the Bible. But what what is this book all about? The Mishnah, which was the earliest rabbinical oral tradition, calls Leviticus, Torah Kohanim, or the priest's law.

They also call it the seper Kohanim, the priest's book, and Torah Hakor Banim. Now, those of you that speak Hebrew, dad, including you, I may have butchered the the pronunciation, but you guys can extend grace. So we have the priest law, priest book, law of offerings. So this book is primarily about laws. Set in Israel's residence at the desert at Sinai, where their tabernacle was in place.

So that is our context. That that's what this book is doing. You read it, and it is a ancient set of laws, moral laws. It has, it it's basically ritual worship, ceremonial, and civil laws for the actual people in an actual place, in an actual history. And that place that they dwelt in was what we call the ancient Near East.

Now I wanna make a quick distinction for us as we're talking about the tabernacle, which should be up there. So that is the tabernacle, this is the interior, and this is the exterior. It's a depiction of what it may have looked like according to the instructions that we have. So this gives you a bit of a picture, if you didn't know. Now, the temple and the the tabernacle for Old Testament Israelites, we need to get our categories straight.

So we, as Christians today, we go to what? We go to church. So the idea of temple and tabernacle in the Old Testament and church today is very different. So the the the tabernacle was not mainly a corporate place for worship, a gathering place for the people, like the churches. The church, of course, is not only a building that we meet at, but it is the people themselves.

We are the church. But we do meet in a gathering place together on a consistent basis. The tabernacle was a bit different. This was the place where the Israelites believed God dwelled. This was God's dwelling place on earth.

And what took place here were priestly rituals, and there was limited access because it was sacred space. So people might come to observe on occasion to bring sacrifices, but in general, it wasn't this place where we come, sing songs together and talk about Jesus. Obviously, Jesus hadn't come yet, but So there's a different system. So it's helpful to have sort of have those categories in our mind as we tackle this. So today, tonight, my goal is to convince you all to pick up Leviticus excitedly, to be overjoyed at the thought of reading Leviticus, and to offer you some helpful background context to the Israelites living in the ancient Near East, and then walk through together the scriptures and what they mean for us today.

So to begin, why should we read it? I mentioned earlier, it's part of scripture, second Timothy three sixteen. Right? All scripture, including Leviticus, is God breathed and profitable for teaching, for correction, reproof and training in righteousness. But there's more to it than that.

And I just wanna give you guys four reasons why you should read Leviticus. And it's I came up with this helpful acronym, Bush. So firstly, b for background. Now Leviticus, when you read it, it gives us huge insight on the to the background of all the different books in the Bible, especially books in the New Testament, which we often spend most of our time. So if we were to look at the the Leviticus and see what it covers, it helps us understand a whole host of things, from sacrificial offerings, ceremonies, institutions, the sabbatical year of Jubilee, and then some New Testament ideas, which I'm sure you are familiar with.

The idea of the aroma of Christ, sacrifices were a pleasing aroma, the the sprinkling of Jesus' blood in first Peter and in Hebrew, the atoning sacrifice, of course, of Jesus' death, offering our body as living sacrifices. And interestingly, even the idea of a stumbling block, not putting a stumbling block in the way of your brother, that comes back to Leviticus nineteen fourteen, don't put a stumbling block in front of the blind. So all these ideas as we're reading the New Testament, if we have familiarized ourselves with Leviticus, all these amazing things are gonna sprout up and it's gonna become so much more beautiful as we see how our God, from beginning to end, was recording this grand arc of history and it all connects and ties together. Okay. So b, and then u, understanding.

So it helps us understand the culture, the worldview, the laws of the Israelites, which is helpful in that they are the ancestors of Jesus. And then also for understanding Judaism and Jews today, because Leviticus is from where modern Jews, the Orthodox Jews, derive most of their laws, like their food laws. And so having been familiarized with this text, we can better understand why certain Jews live the way they do and where they get some of their ideas. Thirdly, the seriousness of sin. It is very clear, and this is paired with h, which is the holiness of God, that man is wicked and man is unclean, whereas God is perfectly holy and transcendent.

Just reading through this text, you can find how clearly God makes this point. So God is holy. You shall be holy for I am holy is mentioned five times along with many other references. And then the the the seriousness of sin, which results in often death, whether by stoning or fire for the Israelites or even God striking people down dead, like Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10. So let's let's move on to the word, and if we can look at verse one of chapter nine.

On the eighth day, Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel. So what is going on here? He says on the eighth day. What are these days? Well, as we look earlier in the text, we have several chapters which are outlining the process, the regulations, the ritual processes in the in the tabernacle, what the priests were to do, what the priests were to wear.

And this eighth day is the inauguration service. It is the grand opening of the tabernacle, and it is paired with an appearance of God. If if you look forward to first Kings eight to 10 through 11, you see a similar passage. Can someone read first Kings eight ten through 11? Whoever finds that first, Bible drill, and read that nice and loud.

Right. Exactly. So the glory comes and fills the house of the Lord, and as we're gonna see, this is Solomon, of course, with the temple, and this is a parallel inauguration ceremony for the opening of God's place. Okay. So we said seventh day was the initiation dedication ceremony was complete.

Eighth day is the inauguration of the tabernacle ritual system. As we move on to verse two, and he said to Aaron, take for yourself a bull calf for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering, both without blemish, and offer them before the Lord. So we have a sin offering, bull calf, burnt offering, ram without blemish. Now I want us to notice something very interesting here. Take a look at the text.

What is to be offered for Aaron as a sin offering? Someone shout it out. Not just a bull, but a bull. Calf. Okay.

So wrong with that, a calf. And this is interesting because this is the only time in the instructions for the offerings that a calf is mentioned. We have bulls, so it would be older animals, rams, sheep, grain as all part of the offerings, but there's no other mention of a calf. This is a unique offering. So why why is this the case?

Why is a calf supposed to be offered by Aaron during the ceremony? Well, can you guys think of any other incident with Israel in the recent past with a calf? Exactly. So I can I can see those light bulbs going off? What if these priests had to offer a calf for themselves and for the people of God because of the golden calf?

Now this has been an idea that preachers and teachers have seen for for hundreds, for centuries, that have seen that that God had made Aaron during this initiation into his priestly service, as at this opening time, to offer a calf to remind him of his own brokenness, of his own wickedness in the past, and his desperate need for God's grace. So what a good reminder for us, any of us who are thinking about going into ministry, gospel ministry, or really any work of our desperate need for God's sustaining grace and our our brokenness, and we need those reminders. So we have the sacrifices, animals slaughtered as offerings before God, but what what is all this stuff? Why? Why are we offering animals, slaughtering them?

It's all over the New Testament, but as I've seen, the churches I've gone to, I haven't seen any pastors taking up animals and slaughtering them in in front of the congregation with everybody nodding and and bowing with approval in worship. So what what was behind this this system, this sacrifice? It comes to the ancient Near East. This was a practice that was not only practiced by the Israelites, but this was what was happening around them. So what I want to introduce us to is this idea of cultural rivers.

We live in a cultural river, but for example, I'll I'll give you Jesus first. In Jesus' time, his cultural river would have included Jewish legalism, the Pharisees, empire, Romans and Greece, the Greco Roman ideals, and Jewish Samaritan division. Those are some ideas. So let's toss it out. What are some currents that our cultural river consists of?

What do we think are some common worldview things or things we have in our culture? I'll say materialism, individualism, things of this sort, social media, scientism, and so on. So this these are things in our cultural river, things that we just assume that are part of our life. In the ancient Near East, it was a very different cultural river. There was things like kingship, identity and community, divination and the centrality of the temple to society as a portal of the gods.

This was the idea that neighboring nations had. And most interesting was this, in whether it's Egypt or the Akkadians or the Mesopotamians, they they they all offered sacrifices and we have many sources now, which is really interesting. And for them, sacrifices were what? They were food of the gods. The people cared for the gods and needed to provide for the gods, and the temple was the place where the people brought gods the food in order to pamper them, to make them feel happy, in order that they might return them with provision and fertility.

And so literally, these peoples that were neighboring the Israelites, they literally were making their gods in their own image. We talk about that sort of in the church, but they were actually, well, we don't know much about the gods. They haven't given us anything. And so we're gonna do what we think they would need, namely food and care. And so we're gonna do that and hope that by doing that, the gods would care for us.

It's interesting if you read Psalm 50 verse eight through 13. It goes, not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you. The Lord is speaking. Your burnt offerings are continually before me. I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds, for every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? And so interestingly, this gives us a glimpse to the Israelites in their idolatry, in their failures, as we read about their their lives and their struggles. They were influenced, just like the church is today, by by the world.

They were influenced by the culture surrounding them. And so some of them would probably get this false idea that Yahweh, the holy transcendent God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, that he would need food, that he would need to be fed and taken care enough taken care of by his by his people. But of course, we know that this is not the case. Our God is not so petty. He's not a material God, and he is not dependent on us.

While we are fully dependent on God, he does not need us to take care of him. So that, you may this this idea, this understanding of the neighboring practices of Hittites, Babylonians, and the other peoples helps us get a glimpse into Israel's surrounding environment. And understanding this is similar to how understanding our techno technological age might help us see, into how our churches are run. Right? We have things like this.

We have electric instruments and things like that. And understanding the culture might help us understand a bit more the culture and the context that we're reading in the Old Testament as we're reading Leviticus. So this is the context of the ancient Israelites. Now coming back, we have different sacrifices. What is the difference between the sin offering, the burnt offering, between all these different offerings that we read?

Before we go through, and we're gonna list a few differences and explain that, I'm curious to ask you guys, what was the first sacrifice in the Bible? John? People's sacrifice, of life. Mhmm. So that would have been the first of the humans.

There's one before that. Anyone know? Right. God to clothe us. And then, of course, we've Canaan able.

What was the third? Noah. Noah. That's exactly right. When was the first altar built?

Another question. Any Bible buffs? Nobody knows these random facts. Right? Anybody?

First altar? Any guesses? Before Abraham? No. Before Abraham.

Abel? No. It was Noah. So Noah in Noah, we have the first reference of him building an altar and then offering a burnt offering on it. So just some interesting facts.

Okay. So in this text, we have four different sacrifices. So let's run down and see what they are. So we have burnt offering, and that was just a general gift to God. It was a a plea for a whole host of different things, whether it was a plea for victory, for worshiping him, or any any any sort of that.

And, then there was the sin offering, which was also termed the purification offering, and this purified officers of moral faults and sin and ritual uncleanness, and it was for unintentional sins and sins of omission. This offering also purged the sanctuary from the effects of offenses of the people and in that the blood that was put on the temple, on the tabernacle items and the the confines of the space, this blood was seen as purging, purifying the, the place in order to maintain God's sacred dwelling. In verse four, we have the peace offering, which is also the fellowship offering or the well-being offering, which often accompanied burnt offerings and expresses peace between the offerer and God. Interesting with the peace offering, it has the same root as shalom, the word for peace. And in Leviticus three seven eleven through 18, we can read more instructions on what the peace offering would look like.

It also involved an animal from the flock, male or female, and the officers of this offering would join in with a meal with God. They would feast with Yahweh in the peace offering. Then we have the grain offering, which rabbis have thought was the substitute for the burnt offering for those that were poor, essentially. It was without leaven In the ancient Near East, grain was a staple human diet and this word is this word used to describe it is is the same as gift or tribute for Thanksgiving. Say to the people of Israel, he goes on verse three, take a male goat for a sin offering and a calf and a lamb both a year old without blemish for a burnt offering, and an ox and a ram for peace offerings to sacrifice before the Lord, and a grain offering mixed with oil, for today the Lord will appear to you.

Guys, this is exciting. God is promising to bring his presence to his people. The Lord will appear to you, and this is the fulfillment of God's short promise that he would come and dwell with them in his sanctuary in Exodus twenty five eight. He says, and let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst. So this is the sanctuary.

This is the tabernacle where God was gonna come. And here he says, do these things that I may dwell with you. Then he goes on, and they brought what Moses commanded in front of the tent of meeting, and all the congregation drew near and stood before the Lord. This is huge. The people are called to bring offerings.

Aaron, the priest, brings, and the people join together. Imagine all these animals being brought to be sacrificed, to receive atonement and purity to restore the people back into relationship with God. This was a big deal. So the the people who were commanded to bring these sacrifices, four different types of sacrifices, that is what they brought as appropriate for their context to make them pure before God. What does this have to do with us as Christians today in the twenty first century here in the Midwest?

What is commanded of us to bring to make us right before God? What is commanded of us to bring to make us right before God? Well, ourselves. Right? We can't add anything.

The Bible says that without shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. And yet none of us, I see, are bringing animals. None of us are expecting for an animal to be slaughtered to pay for our sins. Why? You guys are all thinking, It's obvious, Tim.

Jesus! Absolutely. So Jesus came as a once for all sacrifice so that we don't have to go through this process anymore. It's amazing. We can just come and bring ourselves.

Why? Because Jesus was the perfect sacrifice and he paid it all. So us bringing animals isn't gonna do anything. We don't need to, thankfully. Now the Lamb of God who came like a sheep led out to be slaughtered, he had no moral flaw.

He was without blemish, just like these sacrifices, without any impurity. He was perfect and perfectly clean. Yet for us, we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Right? Romans three twenty three.

But there is an and. There is an and for us believers. Yes. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. Now, propitiation.

The word also means atoning sacrifice. It had an element of quenching sin and a satisfaction of wrath. You could also translate it appeasement. So like these sacrifices of old, it appeased God's wrath for sinful beings, and Christ comes as a propitiation. And he comes and he satisfies the wrath that God had against us as a just God who has created people who have rebelled against him and been wicked.

And because we are sinners and because God is holy and no sin is in him, there had to be something to satisfy his justice because he's not only just, but he's loving, and his justice is loving. And so through Jesus Christ, his perfect love and his perfect justice are harmonized. And that is what it means for Jesus to be the propitiation. He makes us right before God. We can't bring or add anything to the sacrifice that saved us, this gift that was given us.

The only thing we contribute to our salvation, as John Edwards said, is the sin that makes it necessary. It's profound. The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that makes it necessary. So we bring ourselves. Romans twelve one.

Right? I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you offer yourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. And if you we have trusted in Christ, then we have been brought from being dead corpses into being living sacrifices, dead people to being living saints in Christ. And like the tabernacle, we have become sacred space as temples of God's spirit here on earth. First Corinthians six nineteen through 20.

Do you not know that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. We are not our own. We are God's. If we are in Christ, we don't own ourselves.

We don't own our time. Every time, every minute, every hour is God's to be used as he would see fit, not as we think would be best for us. We are his, and we were bought with a price. What was his price? It's the blood of Jesus.

Right? The most precious blood, more precious than silver and gold like that of a lamb without blemish or spot, the apostle Peter writes. So we are living sacrifices called to glorify God in our bodies. What does that look like? How do we glorify God in our bodies?

How? How do we glorify God in our bodies? Obedience. Obedience. Yeah.

Definitely. Much much could be said. But it is a total surrender, a total commitment to obedience, a giving of ourselves to God. And, of course, as living sacrifices bought by the blood of grace, filled with the Holy Spirit, and sustained by his grace daily, we therefore have power from on high to live obediently, to live holy lives. We can't do this on our own.

And as as I've shared before, Calvin's quote on grace helps so much. Grace does not give us permission to live in the flesh. It grants us strength to live in the spirit. And so as we live in the spirit, as we live as living sacrifices, we smell. We smell.

Sacrifices offered a pleasing aroma. So they smelled good or bad, I guess, depending on who you were. But to God, he received it as a pleasing aroma. And we have that first mention in Noah's sacrifice after he builds the altar, and it's received as a pleasing aroma. So let's just go through the theme of the the pleasing aroma.

It it's so exciting. So in Genesis eight twenty one, as I mentioned, Noah's offering, pleasing aroma. Exodus twenty nine eighteen, the burnt offering had a pleasing aroma. All throughout Leviticus, burnt offerings were food offerings and you have this mention of burnt offerings, hidden offering. They were food offerings with a pleasing aroma.

Food offering with a pleasing aroma. It's also an interesting thing to think about again the neighboring peoples, for them what that would have meant, those ideas they actually thought they were feeding. But for us, God was receiving their worship. God was receiving the Israelites worship, and he did so through this anthropomorphic language of this pleasing aroma. Now, second Corinthians two fourteen through 16.

What does this passage say? Can someone find that? Second Corinthians two fourteen through 16. I wanna hear a big strong voice so we can all hear.

Now thanks be unto god, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ and make it manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto god a sweet savor of Christ in them that are saved and in them that perish. To the one, we are the savior of death unto death, and to the other, the savior of life unto life, and who is sufficient for these things. Okay.

So for we are the aroma of Christ to God, and then a fragrance to those around us. So my question to us is how do we smell? When people meet us or see us or talk to us, do they, oh, that's that's pretty good. Is that Calvin Klein? I want more.

Or, oh, that b o, I wanna back away. You stink. Right? Do we do we have this fragrance or do we have an odor to us? Are our lives fragrant or odorless?

That's a question we should ask ourselves as we walk and live our lives. We should be fragrant with our words. Right. We have the truth. That's exciting, guys.

We have the word of God. We have him who is truth, who is what the way, who is the life. But truth that is not undergirded with love makes the truth repulsive and the possessor of it obnoxious. Truth that is not undergirded with love makes the truth repulsive and the possessor of it obnoxious. That was Ravi Zacharias, not me.

So it's but it's true. How are we sharing the gospel or speaking the truth? Is it always in love? I a few months back, there's a a missionary from Tyre. His name was Mohammed Yamut who came to Wheaton College, And he shared his testimony about how God saved him from this business mind that he had.

He was a very successful man. And then he was taken to the depths and was, I think, eventually reached jail and had a really rough time until God showed him that what he was called to do was proclaim the gospel. Now he was saved, but he was resisting God's will, kinda like Jonah. But eventually, the Lord brought him to Tyre, which is a place, I believe you said, 95, 98% Muslim. And he started this ministry just by sharing the gospel and winning Muslims to Christ through his love.

And he says immediately people see and people wondering, what what is this man? This Arab with the name Mohammed. And he is talking about Jesus and he loves like no one we've ever met. His love is radical. He spends hours with us.

He takes us places. He helps us. And right now, he has spread his ministry to Egypt and Jordan, and and now there are countless Christians and thriving Christian communities that he's been able to build by the grace of Christ. Through his love and through his fragrance, people could smell. This is delightful.

We can have right intentions and still come off as odorous, and this is something that has really hit me recently with one of my roommates. And I try to be encouraging and I reach out. I like leaving notes and and and writing, you know, Bible verses, things of that sort. But when we come into the realm of encouragement or even any form of love, right, there are different love languages. You guys may have heard of the five different love languages.

It's interesting to to talk about. And that is really helpful for us to discern whom we're loving and how we're loving because even if we think we're helping someone, we might come off wrongly. My my roommate, for example, he had felt and we've been since far so far been reconciled and we've talked together and we've gained clarity and so he's asked me for forgiveness for judging me wrongly, but he thought I was trying to express my my knowledge, my biblical knowledge and superiority over him by giving these kind notes. And so I can be more sensitive. You would think it's harmless, but this is just a silly, you know, a small example of how we can be exercising discernment so that we don't come off odorous unintentionally.

And there's also a helpful story that I really think conveys this point. And this is the story of the monkey and the fish. So there was a monkey, and he was stranded on an island. A typhoon had brought him there. And he spent his days eating bananas, climbing trees, and having a ball.

One day as he was by the beach, he noticed that stuck in a current, swimming up current was a fish. And it was stuck between a couple rocks and it wasn't able to get out. And so this monkey, being kind of hard, decided to help this fish. And so he went out far on a limb, reached down and plucked the fish out of the water, and he ran quickly to shore and laid it to rest. Now this fish was really excited at first.

It was and the monkey monkey was was excited to see this excitement of the fish before it settled soon into a peaceful rest. And very quickly, this monkey, joy and satisfaction swelled up within him for he had helped a fellow creature. What is the moral of the story? Well, what the monkey thought was good for the fish surely wasn't good for the fish. It killed the fish.

And so we need to know whether we're helping a fish or whoever, because people are different. If we're talking to Christians, they're different. If we're talking to Muslims, if we're talking to atheists, let's be discerning with how we love and how our fragrance might be coming off. A couple last things with with this idea of odor versus fragrance. Certain fragrances.

Certain fragrances grow on us from exposure. So let's spend time with unbelievers so that they can smell you, so that your smell would gradually grow on them. If you have someone you deeply love in your life, likely you know their scent. You know the perfume or the cologne that they wear. And when you smell that, that just causes something to rise up within you, this emotion and desire.

In a similar way, I think if we are living with our witness intact, with gracious and loving speech, speaking the truth in love, if we are being discerning with whom we are with, then gradually people will sense something is different. And people will begin to ask. People will begin to question, what is this about you? I remember as a cross country runner in high school. After a while through our runs, most of the guys used profane speech running 10 miles, and so we're pretty tired at this point.

But I remember being stopped during one of our breaks and being like, Tim Tim, why don't why don't you curse? And so someone distinctly noticed that I didn't use swear language, a subtle thing, and yet it came off. And that gave me a door to say, well, you know, it's my conviction that, well, since Jesus Christ is my Lord and that he has purified me of my sins and I believe and trust in him, I believe that my grace or that my speech is called to be gracious and to be seasoned with salt so that it might give grace to those who hear, that there might be no corrupt corruption or filthiness in my talk because I want to please my God and live in a way that pleases him. So that opened that door. So even simple things like that can lead to doors to share the great news of Jesus, the gospel.

Back to the text, verse six. Moses said, this is the thing that the Lord commanded you to do, that the glory of God may appear to you. So the thing the Lord commanded, of course, was the purification, the cleansing, the offering, all this work of bringing these things. Moses tells the people here. First time it was to Aaron.

He promised Aaron that the Lord would appear to you. Now he's talking to the people, saying, this is the thing the Lord commanded, that the, that the Lord may appear to you. Verse seven. Then Moses said to Aaron, draw near to the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering and make atonement for yourself and for the people. And bring the offering of the people and make atonement for them, as the Lord has commanded.

So what is atonement? We hear this word around, but what does it really mean? Well, if we break that word down, what it actually means at one mint. At one mint. And so it's this idea of bringing those estranged into unity.

And who are those people? Of course, we're talking about sinners or the people of God and God himself. So the atonement in the Old Testament had this this sense, this carry, it carried this meaning of purification, of purgation, of disinfecting from impurity. In in Leviticus sixteen thirty three, they the priests make atonement for the holy sanctuary, for the tent of meeting, for the altar, and of course, the priests and the people. So it was not just something for people, but they made atonement for all sorts of different things in purifying and cleansing them and making them clean for a sacred and a holy god.

Leviticus seventeen eleven, it says that blood atones for the soul. Guys, this is the good news. Jesus atones for our souls. At the last supper, Jesus said as he passed the cup, this is my blood of the covenant, which is given for you, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Israel needed a human intermediary to make atonement for them, to draw near to God for them.

But us, we don't need a human inter intermediary. We have a high priest who unlike Aaron was not a sinner, so therefore did not have to make atonement for himself first. Jesus came as the high priest, lived that sinless life, and made atonement for us out of his perfection, so that we could be reconciled to God and personally draw near to his throne of grace as wretched sinners, as we are, so that we wouldn't be left as we are. Simply put, the truth of Jesus' atonement is this, his sacrificial death purified us of our sin and made us righteous before God. This is the gospel, my friends.

Hebrews ten one. I'm just gonna share a few scriptures that are speaking into this from Hebrews so you can join me there. Hebrews ten one. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Sacrifices can't.

Jesus can and has. Hebrews ten twenty two. Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. And then a few chapters earlier, Hebrews four twelve, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we might receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. And I don't know about you, but that is every day for me.

So I'll end with this. Let's turn back to Leviticus nine and read verses 22 through 24. Then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them, and he came down from offering the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings. And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, and when they came out, they blessed the people, and the glory of the Lord appeared to all of the people. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.

Something you have to know is that the altar was elevated, as you can see there. After Aaron finished offering the sacrifices upon the altar, having gone up, he went into the tent of meeting with Moses. So after he finishes the offerings upon the altar, he comes down, as you see down those steps from the sacrifices and went into the tent of meeting with Moses. Jesus, after offering his life for the full penalty of our sins upon the cross says, it is finished, and then was soon taken down from the cross after giving his last breath. Aaron and Moses came into the lamp lit sanctuary of the sacred tabernacle.

Jesus went into an empty dead man's tomb. When Aaron and Moses came out, they blessed the people, followed by an appearance of the glory of God. On the third day, Jesus too came out of the tomb, and he came with glorified body appearing to his people over forty days, blessing his people with the command, do not be afraid. After the blessing and appearance of glory, a consuming of the offerings occurred, which ensued worship, awe falling on their faces, this fear of God. Of course, Jesus, who was not consumed by death, but consumed our sins in his death, when he rose, and when he appeared in glory, and when he ascended with heavenly glory, he struck awe and amazement in all those who were watching.

They were stuck like this. Right? And the angel said, what? Why are you looking ahead? He's coming again.

So the good news guys, is that Jesus now, because he has paid for our sins, he has purified us, he has cleansed us, he has purged us from all unrighteousness by faith, through by grace, through faith in him. And therefore, he is now reigning. Reigning with the father in heaven, in his glory, and he is coming again. And so guys, we have hope. We are not without hope.

We have hope in Christ. We have hope that we are no longer seen as wicked or as evil in God's eyes. We are seen as perfectly righteous because of the righteousness of Christ, which has been given to us. And therefore, we are living sacrifices that live each day as living testimonies to this God, to this God who is willing to come down, to come and dwell amidst his people, to be a man, to live a sinless life, to be the high priest. Not only that, to be the offering, to be the sin offering, to be the atonement so that we too could draw near to the throne of grace and receive mercy and receive grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace.

So let's pray. Father, we are so thankful. Father, we are amazed and in awe of what you have done. God, and I thank you that you are willing to express the glorious truths about who you are and about what you've done through words that we can read and understand. And words that we can share and speak.

However, imperfectly, and so I pray that these words, Lord, that you have given me to everyone's hearts here as your words, as the truth, that each person here, if they've trusted in you, may that be everyone, that they are clean in their in your eyes. They are forgiven and that grace abounds for them because of what Christ has done and that we can all draw near. Lord, we worship you. And so we pray these things trusting in you, God, as the almighty, the transcendent king, to do these things for the glory of your name. For Jesus' sake, amen.