"I Didn’t Mean To…"

A Sermon from Leviticus 4 by Jim Hammond

Series Title: Life Lessons from Leviticus? (For More In This Series )

As parents we’ve all heard the common excuses, “I didn’t mean to…honest”, or “I forgot…”, or how about, “I couldn’t help it.”

We become practiced at excuses don’t we? Sometimes excuses catch up to you. Consider this absurd scene.

     A woman was working one night in a Honeybaked Ham store. The store was equipped with security cameras, and she was watching the small, black-and-white monitors when she saw a woman come in the store, walk down the handicapped ramp, and go between two shelves. To the clerk's amazement, this woman grabbed a ham off the shelf and stuffed it up her dress. With the ham wedged between her thighs, the woman waddled toward the door.
     The clerk was stunned and wondered what she should do. Should she yell out? Follow the woman?
     Just then, the ham dropped out from between the woman's legs. It hit the metal handicapped ramp with a loud bang, and then rolled down it to the bottom.
     The shoplifter didn't miss a beat. She quickly turned her head and yelled out, "Who threw that ham at me? Who threw that ham at me?" Then she ran out of the store.[i]

Does truth ever catch up to you? What do you when it does? Has it ever caught up to you on a Sunday morning at church?

Following the Sunday morning service, the pastor stood at the back of the church, shaking hands with the worshipers as they left. As one man shook hands, he looked intently at the pastor and said, "Powerful sermons, Pastor. Thoughtful, well researched. I can always see myself in them…and I want you to knock it off."[ii]

Focus: The Leviticus 4 & 5 purification (sin) offering teaches us our need for cleansing and forgiveness even when we unintentionally sin so that we might be able to continue to draw near to God.

The good news is that God provides a means by which we might be purified even when we have failed. God’s not looking for the excuse; he’s looking for a willingness to embrace his holiness and want to please him. That’s what its all about. Do you want to please the holy God that loves you? That’s the issue.

So far we have looked at

v Leviticus 1: This is the principal Atoning Sacrifice for Israel. It is the sacrifice that reconciled the sinner with his holy creator. It is the most costly sacrifice. The total substitution (burnt offering) representing the substitution of Christ, his total life of righteousness in exchange for our life of sin, a sacrifice that atones. Chapter 1: My sins have been covered!

v Leviticus 2: I’ve committed my life to God. In chapter 2, comes the tribute offering, representing our commitment to offer ourselves. Because of this atonement, and connection with this atonement, the worshipper then is able to offer himself to God in total commitment.

v Leviticus 3: Then the celebration. No Peace, No Party. It is because of the peace treaty offered through the covenant and the first two chapters, that the chapter 3 celebration of peace is possible.

v Leviticus 4 & 5: In this chapter, we are dealing with individual sins that occur after one is in covenant. With all those, “I didn’t mean to” sins, or “I forgot” sins, or “I didn’t know”. What does one do when one sins unintentionally? This is what chapters 4 & 5 deal with.

All of the above chapters give us Life Lessons by way of the Old Testament, shadow pictures of the New Testament reality found in Christ (Hebrews 10).

How many of you have discovered that even after your sins are covered in Christ, and even after you have committed your life to Christ, you still mess up? How many of you have had the experience of discovering that you messed up some time ago and never knew it until someone brought it up? This kind of thing is what Leviticus 4 & 5 helps us to understand.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

There are two things I want you to do while we read these chapters. Every time the word “blood” is read, raise your hand, then lower it. The second thing I want you to do is to look for new elements that the purification (sin) offering introduces that were not previously introduced in the other 3 offerings we’ve studied so far.

READ LEVITICUS 4 & 5

Similarities: The worshipper brings the animal to the entrance of the tent of meeting, laid his hands on the head, confesses his sin (stating why he brought his sacrifice), then kills it as a sacrifice by substitution.

New feature: Sprinkling blood on the curtain of the holy place(7 times; 4:6), and then on the horns of the altar of incense in the holy place (only priests allowed here).

5 LIFE LESSONS from the Purification (Sin) Offering

1. Even if I didn’t Mean to, Sin Leaves a Stain

a. God Defines Sin

What Can I Say?

Jon Mutchler relates his story,

     While a seminary student at Regent College I had an assignment to attend and report on churches in various worship traditions outside my own. One evening I attended mass in a nearby and unfamiliar town.
     After leaving St. Joseph's Catholic church, I pulled out of a side street onto what looked like a county road. I managed to reach 40 miles per hour before being pulled over and ticketed for going 15 miles per hour over the city limit.
     Since I was new to the town and because of my chosen route, I had not seen the 25 miles per hour limit. Therefore I decided to plead my case before a judge.
     The court date came and I had my arguments and justification all worked out. I had rehearsed my little speech over and over in my head.
     Finally, the court clerk read out my name with the charges. The judge, dressed in a black robe—representing his designated authority and power—said, "Mr. Mutchler, do you have anything you wish to say?"
     Here it was, my chance to speak! Surely the judge would understand and side with me. But to my surprise, it hit me at that moment that I was, in fact, guilty, and my excuses would do nothing to change that. All I could say to his question was "No, sir."
     That moment brought to life what Scriptures say to those who think they're going to argue their case before God.[iii]

Talking about sin and guilt is a tricky thing these days. People quickly react, or misunderstand. It is easier talking about hypocrisy. Everybody hates hypocrisy. Let me speak of guilt from this standpoint. Jesus never came down harshly upon those sinners who knew they were guilty. His attitude was always gentle, with the attitude of forgiveness extended to those who felt guilty. Do you know with whom Jesus was harsh? Those who did not believe they were guilty, the self-righteous. The reason he comes down hard on them is that he knows one cannot be forgiven if they don’t think they have done anything wrong.

The religious self-righteous are easy to spot on our radar screen. They define their righteousness through their religious practices and don’t feel guilty. The irreligious self-righteous are not so easy to spot, until you know what to look for. They simply don’t believe they have anything that needs to be forgiven. Why? They feel just as good as anybody else. Why should they need forgiveness? We don’t normally stop to consider the non-religious self-righteous people. But there are many. If you don’t know much about God, then you don’t know much about God’s definition of sin. God is Holy, and we are not. That was one of the first lessons we learned from Leviticus. We must keep this in mind as we consider the subject of sin, and guilt. The truth is we are guilty, even if we haven’t discovered it yet. Leviticus begins to give answers to the question what do I do with my guilt now that I’ve discovered it.

Ogden Nash said, “There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, And that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.”[iv]

What is Guilt?

I think the best way to answer this question is with a story.

     In The New Yorker, (5/15/95) Sara Mosle recounts that on March 18, 1937, a spark ignited a cloud of natural gas that had accumulated in the basement of the London, Texas, school. The blast killed 293 people, most of them children.
     The explosion happened because the local school board wanted to cut heating costs. Natural gas, the by-product of petroleum extraction, was siphoned from a neighboring oil company's pipeline to fuel the building's furnace free of charge.
     London never recovered from the blast that turned the phrase "boom town" into a bitter joke. The one positive effect of this disastrous event was government regulation requiring companies to add an odorant to natural gas. The distinctive aroma is now so familiar that we often forget natural gas is naturally odorless. [v]

GUILT is the broken connection leaking imminent danger whether we know it or not. The FEELING of guilt is the "odorant" alerting us to the danger. There is a tendency these days to classify all feelings of guilt as hazardous to our self-esteem. In reality, the feelings of guilt can be valuable. If we never have the feelings of guilt, we might never know we have real guilt before God.

b. Sin Puts us in Harms Way

c. The danger springs from God’s Holiness

Leviticus teaches us something surprising.

v To have God dwelling in our midst is both a great blessing and a great danger.

The seriousness of the pollution of sin varied. That is why there are different instructions based on differences in status of the sinner. If a private citizen sinned, his action polluted the sanctuary only to a limited extent. So the blood was smeared on the horns of the altar of burnt sacrifice only, which is outside the holy place. If the whole nation, or the high priest sinned, the blood was smeared on the altar of incense in the holy place, and the curtain to the most holy place. On the Day of Atonement, for the accumulation of all the sins of the nation, blood was smeared on the mercy seat, which is in the holy of holies, the most holy place, where God’s presence dwelt.

Why was this done?

d. Sin Pollutes God’s Dwelling Place

Let me give you some key words to look for in the rest of the book of Leviticus. One of those key words is “unclean”, another is “then she/he will be clean” Here are two examples:

Leviticus 15:31 (NIV) ³¹“‘You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them.’”

Leviticus 16:19 (NIV) ¹⁹He shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times to cleanse it and to consecrate it from the uncleanness of the Israelites.

v The Purification (Sin) Offering was for House Cleaning

Something that is difficult for our Western minds to get a hold of is how sin pollutes. The Biblical perspective is this. A sinful act committed does more than leave a memory. It also pollutes. It pollutes the person. But even stranger to our understanding is this. The Bible says a sinful act committed can pollute the place where it was committed. The concern here is this. The sinful acts committed can pollute God’s dwelling place.

v The Purification (Sin) Offering allowed God to dwell with His covenant People

God dwells within his Temple. We already learned that there were 3 temple systems, the Old Testament temple system, Jesus who claimed to be the temple while he was here with us, then the New Testament temple, which is the Body of Christ, the Church where God’s spirit dwells because of what Christ did.

In the Old Testament this was the concern. Sin was a defilement that defiled God’s dwelling place. This concern is not gone now that we are in the New Covenant. We need to learn how God views sins as terrible spiritual pollution. Sin leaves a trail we can’t even see, but that trail remains until we go through the purification process under the blood of Christ. Again, for us, actions committed are just memories, but the Bible tells us they are more than that. They have enduring aftereffects. In particular, sins pollute the place where they are committed. The guilt of murder rests on an area where the murder takes place. (Deut. 21:1-9). The sins of the Canaanites polluted the land to such an extent that it vomited them out (Leviticus 18:24-28).

2. We must Keep God’s Dwelling Place Clean

Whereas in the Old Covenant laws, it was the place of worship that was purified, in the New Covenant, it is the worshipper himself who must be purified. Why? Because the New Covenant Temple is the Church. Remember the church is the people. We have become the dwelling place for God.

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (NIV) ¹⁶Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? ¹⁷If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.

3. Sin drives away God’s blessings

When Israel sinned, the nation found that many benefits enjoyed from God’s presence were removed (Exodus 32; Lev. 10, Numbers 14, etc.). In the same way, Christians are warned that when we sin, we “grieve the Holy Spirit” (Eph 4:30). There still remains for any Church today the threat that sin can drive away the covenant blessings that come from the presence of God.

Ephesians 2:22 (NIV) ²²And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

4. A leader’s sin has greater consequences

Leviticus teaches us that a leader’s sin has greater consequences than the sins of ordinary people. This principle still holds true in the New Covenant as well (cf. Luke 12:48 & James 3:1).

5. Purification Still Comes by Sacrifice—His Sacrifice, & My Confession

Jesus Christ is the true high priest. The whole Old Testament system is a shadow picture of the reality. The Old Testament system was merely an imitation of the reality. Do you remember how often you raised you hand at the mention of the word blood in Leviticus 4. Listen to a passage out of the New Testament.

Hebrews 9:12-14 (NIV) ¹²He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. ¹³The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. ¹⁴How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

Hebrews 9:22 (NIV) ²²In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Christ’s actions have made the purification (Sin) offering obsolete. It is Christ’s death that has purified us from the pollutions of sin. But this does not mean we have nothing to learn from Leviticus 4. Leviticus 4 teaches us how God views sin. It still defiles his sanctuary, but now we know that once we became Christians, we are that sanctuary; we are God’s temple that we defile when we sin. The only way for that defilement to be cleansed is through the gift of life Christ offered us through his sacrificial death conquering life.

The centrality of Christ’s shed blood is a prominent feature in the gospel (cf. 1 Peter 1:2; 1 John 1:7; Revelation 7:14)

The Parable of the Sacks

There is an old legend about three men and their sacks. Each man had two sacks, one tied in front of his neck and the other tied on his back. When the first man was asked what was in his sacks, he said, "In the sack on my back are all the good things friends and family have done. That way they're hidden from view. In the front sack are all the bad things that have happened to me. Every now and then I stop, open the front sack, take the things out, examine them, and think about them." Because he stopped so much to concentrate on all the bad stuff, he really didn't make much progress in life.
     The second man was asked about his sacks. He replied, "In the front sack are all the good things I've done. I like to see them, so quite often I take them out to show them off to people. The sack in the back? I keep all my mistakes in there and carry them all the time. Sure they're heavy. They slow me down, but you know, for some reason I can't put them down."
     When the third man was asked about his sacks, he answered, "The sack in front is great. There I keep all the positive thoughts I have about people, all the blessings I've experienced, all the great things other people have done for me. The weight isn't a problem. The sack is like the sail of a ship. It keeps me going forward.
     "The sack on my back is empty. There's nothing in it. I cut a big hole in its bottom. In there I put all the bad things that I can think about myself or hear about others. They go in one end and out the other, so I'm not carrying around any extra weight at all."
     What are you carrying in your sacks?[vi]

We may go one step further to make this parable Christian in content. The empty sack in the back is not just a positive thinking mechanism. It can be a spiritual reality. Through Christ’s sacrifice he can literally cut the hole in the sack of sins. You get instead a full sack of Christ’s righteousness up front, and all your sins are taken away, cleansed, purified, gone!

It’s only because of what Christ has done that confession to God through Christ works to put a hole in the bad sack. It isn’t just a word picture; it can be a spiritual reality. Isn’t that what we all want, freedom to walk with God, unhindered by our past failures and present failures?

Here is what God wants from us. He wants us to confess our sin, viewing our sin from His perspective, and confess our faith in Christ’s purifying sacrifice, accepting the purification for sins that HE offered. Until we do so, our bad sacks keep getting full, and our good sacks keep dropping stuff out a hole that needs to be repaired.

Romans 7:15-25 ¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me…For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing…²¹So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²²For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. ²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Confession To God Through Christ (Our High Priest) Is The Answer

1 John 1:9 (NIV) ⁹If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

[i] Submitted by Kevin A. Miller, vice president, Christianity Today International, to www.preachingtoday.com

[ii] From a cartoon by Lee Johnson, The Best Cartoons from Leadership Journal, Volume 1

[iii] Jon Mutchler, Ferndale, Washington submitted this to www.preachingtoday.com

[iv] Ogden Nash, Leadership Journal, Vol. 8, no. 2.

[v] Leadership, Vol. 17, no. 1.

[vi] H. Norman Wright, The Perfect Catch (Bethany House, 2000), pp.28-29