Sunday, April 5, 2015

Sunday, April 5th: Leviticus 4-5, Hebrews 7 ~ Tammy

Today's passage from the Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Leviticus 4-5; Hebrews 7

The sin offering was a required sacrifice and it's purposes was to make payment for unintentional sins of uncleanness, neglect, or thoughtlessness.  Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to sin.  Even unintentional sin separates us from our holy God.  This sacrifice restored the sinner to fellowship with God and showed the seriousness of all sin.  It again points to the sacrifice of Jesus, which is the only sacrifice that can fully restores our fellowship with God.

The guilt offering was also a required sacrifice and it's purpose was to make payment for sins against God and others, and included providing compensation for the injured parties.  Again, Christ's death is the only death that truly takes away the deadly consequences of sin.

The most important part of the sacrifice is the attitude with which it is given.  They had to then, and we have to now, have an attitude of repentance and a willingness to confess or sin in order to be restored to right relationship with God.

There were many different sacrifices and many different specific rules about which sacrifices were to be done for which reason and how they were to be performed.  This helped to prevent the sacrifices from simply becoming a ritual, because it forced the people to consider what they needed to do in order to be restored into fellowship with God.

When we come to our Hebrews passage we see that Jesus is the only priest we need.  Aaron was the high priest of Israel, but Melchizedek was the priest of all men.  Jesus' priesthood is in the order of Melchizedek because He is the priest of all men, but Jesus is our perfect high priest.

Jesus is also a permanent high priest.  All of the other high priests that had gone before eventually died only to replaced by another priest who eventually died.  But Jesus is our high priest who lives forever.  He always lives to intercede perfectly on our behalf.

Jesus is holy. He is blameless. He is pure. He is exalted above the heavens. He remained completely untouched by the evil He encountered while on earth. And because of this, He did not need to first offer a sacrifice for His owns sins before He could atone for ours. He had no sin of His own to atone for.

And He didn't need to repeat the sacrifice over and over again either.

He was a perfect priest.

He was a perfect sacrifice.

He was a perfect priest offering Himself as the perfect sacrifice.

In order to save us to the uttermost, completely and forever redeeming us and granting us full access to God. Forever. Amen.



 Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: Leviticus 6-7; Hebrews 8

2 comments:

Pamela said...

Unintentional sin is still sin and there are always consequences for sin. Last fall, I was driving home down a very familiar route. However, on this particular day, this particular route had some construction pylons. The speed limit is usually 80 but due to previous construction restrictions the new limit was 60. A recent crackdown on safety in construction zones increased a fine in construction zones by double. Even though I was clocked at 79 km/hour thinking I was doing the right thing, my unintentional sin meant a fine of over $500. Just because we don't know we are sinning, doesn't mean that we are not sinning and that we may have to face consequences.

Conrad said...

The scripture on the unintentional sin stood out for me too. How often do we use the excuse that we never knew. When it comes to sin, there are no excuses.