U-turn (Day 7) The sin offering, as commanded by God in the Old Testament | Eld Ang Peng Hoe

Hello everyone, and welcome to day seven of uten twenty twenty four daily devotion.

My name is Pingho, and I have been tasked to share on the

sin of ring, as commanded by God in the Old Testament. To This

portion of scripture is taken from Leviticus, chapter sixteen, verses six to ten,

and it reads as follows, verse six. Eron shall offer the bull

as a sin offering which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and

for his house. He shall take the two goats and present them before the

Lord at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Then aaron shall cast lords

for the two goats, one lord for the Lord and the other lord for

the escapegoat. And Arran shall bring the goad on which the lord's lord fell

and offer it as a sin of ring. But the God on which the

Lord fell, to be the escape good, shall be presented alive before the

Lord, to make atonement upon it and to let it go as the scapegoat

into the wilderness. I want to start this devotion by sharing that Levetticus derives

its name from the tribe of Levi, one of the tribes of Israel.

The priests of Israel were a group of qualified men from within the tribe of

the Levis. Now, what is the task of a high priest? What's

his job? Since we don't have them, we have got to think a

bit about this and ask what he was there for. And the answer is

very simple. The high priest was there to get men and God together.

It is as simple as that. He was a man who had to go

to God as a representative of the people. He had to relate the people

to God, and he had to get them near to God. He was

the vital link between God and men. They couldn't do without him, because

ordinary men could not approach God. They had to have a priests who would

do this for them. In the Book of Leviticus, the focus is very

narrow, concentrating on just one place, which is Mount Sinai, where the

law and regulations were given. Leveticus only covers one month, while Numbers covers

forty years, and Deuteronomy looks forward through the centuries to the future history of

Israel. When we read the Old Testament, it can be helpful to imagine

that we are Jewish. For a Jewish person, the reason for reading Leveticus

is clear it is quite literally a matter of life and death. To the

Jews, there is only one God, and that is the God of Israel.

All other so called gods are figments of human imagination. Since there was

only one God and they were his only people on earth, there was a

special relationship between them. On God's side, he promised to do many things

for them, to be their government and protect and provide for them them.

God would be everything they needed, their king. In return, he expected

them to live right and to do things right. The Biblical word is righteous.

Righteousness means living right. The key text in the whole of Loveticus is

one that is frequently alluded to in the New Testament. Be holy for I

am holy, which past the Jack should have shared about a couple of days

ago. God therefore expects the people he sets free to be like him and

not like those around them. Many of the things which seem puzzling in Veticus

are explained by this fact. It is the key that unlocks the whole book.

When God tells them that they must not do something, it is because

the people around them are doing it, but they are to be different,

to be holy because God is holy. The first few chapters of Leveticus deal

with rules for offerings. They were gratitude offerings, which basically our offerings to

say thank you, and guilt offerings, which are offerings for sin and trespass.

These are offerings that are presented to God by the priests on behalf of

the people. Therefore, to put it simply, sin offering is to atone

for sin. The people offered God compensation for what they had done wrong.

The sin offering is a compensation offering to God involving blood, and as a

compensation for the bad life the offerer has lived, they offer to God a

good life in the form of animals that has no blemish. In other words,

the sin offering tells us about the substitution of an innocent life for the

guilty. Therefore, on the day of Atonement, the escapegoat was pushed out

of the camp with all the sins of the people on its head. We

cannot talk about sin offering in the Old Testament without referring to the Lord Jesus

Christ, whom the New tes German Book of Hebrews calls our High Priest.

You and I would have no right whatever to go direct to God. We

have got to go through a priest. Everybody has to because we are just

not fit as sinners to approach a holy God. To show us that sinners

need to keep their distance, God has taught us clearly that we must have

a priest who will be the intermediary. The link between man and God is

if the intermediary is going to fulfill his function, well, he must know

God very well and he must know Man very well. He must have an

understanding of the divine nature and he must have an understanding of human nature.

The problem with most priests is they are lacking in one or the other.

Neither understanding is perfect in any human priest. But Jesus is the perfect high

priest because he was the son of God and understood God perfectly, and because

he became the son of man and understands human nature perfectly. That is why

we don't need any priest but one. We come to God through Jesus Christ,

our Lord. Every prayer we pray is pray through our priest, through

Jesus Christ, the one who perfectly understands God and the one who perfectly understands

us. How can the son of God understand me? How can this person

who live in eternal glory right next to God. Who is God, who

shed everything that God had, who created the world. We've God understand me.

This is a question that many of us may ask. Well. The

answer is because Jesus can sympathize with us. Is also because Jesus has offered

sacrifice on our behalf and has suffered on the cross for us, making himself

the perfect atonement. If Jesus is to get people true to God, he

must offer a sacrifice for sin. He must make some compence, and it

must be the compensation of blood of life and innocent life for a guilty one.

All through the Old Testament they sacrifice the lives of innocent animals, little

lambs without blemish. Nobody dared offered a sacrifice to God unless God appointed them

to do so. They have no authority, no right. So let us

now look at the first high priests, Erin. There are three ways in

which Erin and Jesus are alike and three ways in which they are different,

corresponding to the same tree things. First of all, both were selected by

God. Both received divine appointment. But here is the difference. Erin was

appointed as a servant. Jesus is the son second similarity and difference is this

both offered sacrifices for sins. But Aaron had to offer a sacrifice for his

own sin before he could offer it for anyone else. Jesus never had to

do that. When he died on the cross, he offered a sacrifice for

everyone else's sin. And the third difference is that Aaron was sympathetic with human

nature because he himself sin. That tends to make you unbalanced. It is

a difficult thing to strike the balance in your attitude to sinners. Aaron had

the problem that he had sinned himself, and therefore his sympathy tended to be

towards the sentimental and to excuse another sin as what he had done himself.

But Jesus had all the sympathy yet none of the sins. You see the

difference there. We humans tend to get this out of balance. Similarly,

here's another example of parents with their children. You see, parents tend to

be a little more lenient to your own children, especially to their wrongdoings,

and especially when those wrongs and those sins are the sins that we ourselves as

parents have committed. Of course, when you have children, they inherit all

our weaknesses, don't they You see coming out in them the very things that

you don't like in yourselves. So it is very difficult to be balanced in

your discipline towards your own children. You will probably excuse the things you know

that you are guilty of as well, And so to get the right balance

between sympathy and sternness is in reality very difficult. Jesus gets it, but

Aaron couldn't always remember that Aaron himself made some awful mistakes, including a golden

calf, whereas Jesus didn't make any mistakes. And so let us keep our

eyes on Jesus, our high priests, as well as the pioneer and the

perfector of our faith. Because of Jesus we have been set free from the

past penalty of sin. Let us pray, Lord Jesus, we thank you

for your ones and for all atoning sacrifice on the Cross of Calvary that have

since given all of us who believe in you another chance to be redeemed completely

in and through your holy name. Your kingdom Come, and your will be

done in heaven as it is on earth. In Jesus' name we ask and pray Amn