Alright, so hopefully you guys had some time to look through these passages and I'm sure you've noticed there's a lot of similarities to the sin offering. We talked about how, what the sin offering meant last week and one of the key factors of the sin offering is to detail how God views sin and that not all sins were treated equally.

So we had the sin of the high priest, the sin of the community, sin of a leader or sin of a regular congregation member and how the offering in each one of them were different and there was a distinction between an intentional and an unintentional. And intentional we looked at last week where it was a willful rebellion against God.

Even something as small as breaking the Sabbath in our view may not seem like a big deal but in God's view it was very clearly stated how important Sabbath was and for someone to break that was basically a willful rebellion against God. And so sin offering kind of revealed all of that, it went through the intricate details.

This week's offering, the guilt offering, again in many ways it is very similar. It's going to give us another aspect and detail of how God views sin and how again the penalty of sin and how God in their repentance would restore whatever it was that was broken. So as we jump right into it, guilt offering in other places or oftentimes it would be called trespass offering or reparation offering and so there's about four or five different names and all of them basically means the same thing.

It is a different aspect of the sin offering but it specifically deals with trespass, when something was done against something or someone, that this was not a private sin, this was not a sin simply your rebellion against God but it affected other people, other people's property or something that you've done and so that's why it's called a trespass offering, you trespass against somebody else or a reparation offering because it required a reparation, a pay of whatever it was that was broken.

A ram or male lamb without defect was the exclusive animals required for this offering. All other offerings had different options for the type of animals used but this offering was limited to these two particular animals, at least that's what we see. Why do you think that's the case? If you had some time to look through these passages and you try to understand what he required in this offering, why do you think that God didn't give them any options?

Think about the intention of this offering. You don't have to say anything, I just want you to think about it. You know maybe some of you guys already asked that question before you came. Why in every other offering God gave different offerings that they could give, right, to give this one or that one and based upon you know your wealth and what you couldn't or could or couldn't afford, you know, male lamb or female lamb but this one is very specific, it was just this animal and that was it.

It doesn't spell out why but we can understand why God wouldn't give them all these options because the point of this offering wasn't the lamb itself. The point of this offering was reparation, is to pay back. You understand? So the goal of this offering was to repay back whatever it was that you defiled, whatever you did against somebody else and to add on top of that.

So even though the offering was given, the main point of this was reparation. So that's probably the main reason why there wasn't all these different alternatives in giving the offering. There was a specific monetary compensation involved in this offering for the restitution of damage committed by the sinner. And just to kind of give you, again I want to go over this, after making the guilt offering with the ram or lamb, it was required from the offender to add a fifth of the value to give to the priest first.

So that's why, again, the idea is trespassing, reparation, and to pay back whatever it was that you defiled and then on top of that, add 20%. And the reason why it's 20%, at that particular time, 20% was a typical interest rate on all loans. So there was, today, you know, we have different interest rates, like we have home loans, right now I think it's about 4.3, so if you happen to live in California, that's about what you would pay, everybody would pay.

Car loans are different, you know, student loans are different, but at that particular time it was well understood that if you gave a loan to somebody, that you would, they would have an understanding that 20% would be given back. So this 20% basically represented that whatever it was that you took, that you were kind of giving back with interest, right?

Almost as if you took it for a loan and then you're paying them back. So this offering is unique in that there was, there's no other animals that was, choices that was given, it was specifically those particular animals and there was a compensation involved. There was actually money being exchanged in this offering.

So like all the other offerings, you would bring the animal to the priest and they would see if it was acceptable, then after they received that it was acceptable, the priest would take it and then the restitution would be made to the offended party. It's not spelled out here, but numbers 5, 5 through 10, it says if the offended party wasn't available to receive the property or money, the nearest relative who was available was paid instead.

So these are some of the unique qualities of this particular offering. So some of it is very similar to the sin offering, right? And then there's like two or three things that are very unique to them, but the most unique part of this particular offering was the compensation, right?

And so what this offering, and we're going to talk about this later, what this offering basically taught was that when your sin caused damage to someone else's property, God required that not only that you come before God and say, "Oh, I'm sorry," and then, "Well, me and God, we're okay," but it was required to pay back, right?

To pay reparation and restore whatever damage that you've committed. And that was the teaching on this. So remember last week's, the sin offering taught that there's different degrees of sin, right? And so that was the main teaching on that sin offering. This one, that even though you may have sinned against God, damage that was done had to be paid back, okay?

That's the main point of this particular offering. The reason given that is required for this offering is twofold, okay? So we have the large category one, and the second one I'll get to in a minute, but the first category is when the sinner breached the holy things of God.

Breached, defiled, depending on what translation that you have, made impure, whatever was committed to God, and you somehow breached it, you defiled it by touching it or whatever it is that you did, you said this guilt offering was required. Holy things that are described as anything dedicated by men to God, right?

So again, the first category of the things that was required for this offering is anything that was dedicated to God, right? It could have been an animal, it could have been a particular offering, it could have been a house or land, anything that was dedicated to God, and somehow you either made it impure or you took it or you defiled it in some way where that could no longer be used.

So they had to go through a purification ceremony in order for that to be pure again, right? And that costs money, and it would require an animal sacrifice because the one who caused the defilement was the one who was required to pay that amount, and on top of that, add a fifth.

Okay, does that make sense? So this is just logistics, this is just what was required of them, right? So anything related to the Lord was considered holy, right? So it wasn't just the animals, it wasn't just a few things he said, anything that belonged to the Lord, it was set apart.

So the word holy itself means that anything that was set apart and said, "This is the Lord," it was holy. So the Bible talks about various things that was considered holy or set apart for the Lord. One of the top things that the Jews were constantly concerned about was his name, who he is, his reputation.

The Lord's name was to be holy, so we are commanded not to misuse it and take it in vain, swearing falsely by the name of the Lord violates and brings dishonor to the Lord in the Lord's prayer. We pray for the sanctity of the Lord's name, right? And we talked about this before, how the Israelites were so concerned that they would use the Lord's name in vain, and by defiling his name by using it just frivolously, that they wouldn't even call his name out, right?

They wouldn't ever use his name, Yahweh. So that's part of the reason why we don't know if Yahweh is pronounced Yahweh or Yehoah, because they didn't pronounce it for so long, and the Hebrew didn't have vowels, and so later on, we look at it, and so in the Greek translation, they pronounce it one way, and the Hebrew, some people think it should be pronounced Yahweh, but that's because the Israelites refused to pronounce his name.

So the thing that they were concerned about, the top thing, one of the top things that they were concerned about was disrespecting God. Now, I'm going to stop right there for a minute, because again, you and I live in a culture where reverence, it's almost kind of like cruel to be irreverent, you know?

And when it comes to things of God, sometimes Christians are more insensitive to the things of God than non-Christians. Because non-Christians, even if they don't believe God, when they step into the church, they have this innate understanding that they're entering into something sacred, right? Christians who've been Christians for so long, it's kind of like, well, you know, what's the big deal?

We don't have this, again, a lot of Christians, especially the ones who have been raised in the church, don't have this sense of reverence toward the things of God. The Jews were so concerned about being irreverent toward God. And I'm going to say something that, you know, that you may disagree with me, but I see this a lot happening today.

When I was growing up, nobody ever said, "Oh my God." Nobody ever said that, because the previous generation told us that was irreverent, that was using the Lord's name frivolously. And I know that that's not the way people mean it when they say it, right? I know that that's not.

I mean, in fact, I don't know too many people who don't use that term today. But I'm just telling you that the previous generation, and for many generations prior to that, that using the Lord's name, "Oh my God," was considered frivolous. It was kind of like using God's name without any thought and kind of a joke and just like, it was just used in a phrase.

And so when I first started hearing that and started seeing that online, yeah, it did kind of poke me the wrong way, right? And so I'm not here tonight saying like, you know, it's irreverent or you shouldn't be saying that. But generally speaking, the idea of being reverent toward the things of God is a problem in our generation.

So I don't want to get, again, legalistic and say, "Well, this is reverent or this is irreverent. So when you come to church, you need to wear a suit." And I'm not saying that at all. But the concept of being reverent, because this particular sin is about taking something that is sacred and defiling it by being irreverent toward it.

And so when you recognize that you are irreverent toward something that God considered sacred and you realize that, that's when this offering was required, to come before the Lord and recognize that and pay reparation on top of that. So the first thing that the Israelites considered sacred among all things was his name.

And they would never even pronounce his name because they were always afraid that it would be taken frivolously. So I think that's something that we need to consider and think about, that we don't use the Lord's name frivolously. Sabbath was kept holy. It was kept to be reverent. Unintentional Sabbath violation would be one of the things that required a guilt offering.

And this is, again, unintentional. Remember what happened to somebody who intentionally violated the Sabbath? We talked about that last week. Well, capital punishment. It was to take him out, outside the gate, and there was capital punishment for him because a willful sin. Right? And again, we talked about that last week, how we define something that is deserving of capital punishment is the way it affects us.

The way God sees it is a person who looks at God and willfully says, "No, I'm going to do it my way." So the willful sin against God was a much more serious offense. And so the second thing that they were constantly concerned about is keeping the Sabbath holy.

And the reason why is because it's spelled out in his commandments. If you look at the laws in Deuteronomy, a huge chunk of the law is about keeping the Sabbath holy. It's part of the Ten Commandments. All the laws in the Ten Commandments are the weightiest of all the commandments in Deuteronomy, and keeping the Sabbath holy was one of them.

So the Israelites understood how weighty this particular commandment was, whether they understood it or not. But the Sabbath was a day that was set apart to revere God. So to break the Sabbath is to basically willfully say, "We're not going to set this day apart." Again, it was a form of rebellion against God to break the Sabbath.

So Sabbath was one of those things. So if you inadvertently did something that you weren't supposed to do on the Sabbath, that was a requirement that they needed to bring the guilt offering to God. The offerings in the temple rites were considered holy. Anything that was set apart and that was dedicated to the temple that belonged to God became more sacred.

So if there was an article, it was a particular animal, it could be even the priests. Remember King David, how he wouldn't touch Saul because he said he was the anointed of God, even though he was trying to kill him and he refused to lay any harm on him because he realized that because he was a king set apart for God's use, even though he may have been rebellion, he said he wouldn't touch that because he understood that he was sacred for that purpose.

So anything that was set apart for God's use was considered sacred. So if you've damaged that, if you touched it or if you defiled it in any way through speech or through action, it would require the guilt offering before God. The nation of Israel was considered holy. The Israelites were to be holy just as the Lord God was holy, not maintaining purity in their worship of one true God and by their intermarrying, they violated the Lord's holy things.

So again, God wanted to keep the nation of Israel holy so he forbid them to intermarry with the Canaanites because he considered the nation of Israel as a whole holy and by bringing non-Israelites or pagan worshipers into the nation of Israel, it would defile the nation as a whole.

So that was considered sacred. And then finally, failing to fulfill a dedicatory vow or to present a tithe. A tithe again was something that was meant to be set apart for God's use so that tithe every month belonged to God. So anytime you touched that, it was considered a violation of what was sacred.

So anything that was dedicated to the Lord and you somehow take back or you don't do what you intended to do, you're supposed to do, it was considered a violation. Again that's all spelled out in Leviticus chapter 22. When we get there, we'll talk a little bit more about that.

So this is not comprehensive but these are the major things that required Israel to give this offering. Now every one of these things has a reflection in the New Testament. It may not be letter by letter specifically but every one of these things have some sort of reflection in the New Testament which we'll get to when we get there.

The second category was a direct sin against the neighbor. So the first one was a defiling of anything that was set apart that belonged to God, whether it was his name, whether it was the Sabbath, whether it was a particular offering or articles or a person, whether it was the nation as a whole or anything that was dedicated, right?

So anything that belonged to God that was defiled, that was the first category. The second category was anything that violated or when you sinned against a particular neighbor and then he kind of spells out and makes a list of things, right? Deceiving a neighbor in a matter of deposit or security, in other words that you're kind of in this business transaction and then you end up deceiving them or robbery.

We're going to stop here for a minute before we go on. Now remember, in the first case concerning God, defiling God, what was the requirement? Intentional or unintentional? Unintentional, right? It was not a deliberate breaking of the Sabbath. It wasn't deliberately defiling the name of the Lord, right? It wasn't a direct sin against God.

It was a mistake, right? But the second category is robbery unintentional? Robbery is intentional. Lying, right? You found something and you lied about it. How can that be unintentional? So if you look at the sins listed here, it's very intentional. So the distinction that he's making here are intentional sins that you voluntarily confess.

Does that make sense? Because if you look at Exodus chapter 22, 1 through 4, he describes a penalty for an involuntary sin. Let me rephrase that. A sin that you don't voluntarily expose. You get caught doing that, right? So this guilt offering that he makes a reparation for are sins that he recognized that he did and he's confessing and he wants to make things right, right?

And in that case, he says to give whatever you took and then you add a fifth as a compensation, kind of like added interest on top of that. But if you go to Exodus chapter 22, which let me get there real quick, right? He says, "If a man steals an ox or a sheep and kills or sells it, he shall repay," how many times?

"Five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep." And then all the way down to verse 4, "If the stolen beast is found alive in his possession, whether it is an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he shall pay double." So much more than that. 200%, 400%, 500%.

So this is a description of somebody who gets caught doing this. He's not voluntarily confessing. He got caught, right? So what we're dealing with here is somebody who commits these crimes, commits these sins, but he feels guilt. That's why we call it guilt offering. So the way he deals with the guilt is to confess it before God and make things right.

You following? So this is not just talking about, well, you went out and robbed somebody and then you got caught and you say, okay, now you got to pay whatever you robbed and the fifth. This is only in the case that you voluntarily are dealing with your guilt. Otherwise the reparation would have been much more severe.

And let me just expand on this just a little bit. The reason why this is called a guilt offering is because of this. Not simply because you're guilty, because all sins make you guilty. This is a guilt offering because there's a guilt on your conscience. Because you did something and you violated God's law and then you've taken something that didn't belong to you and so you deal with this guilt by confessing and then you're making things right.

We have a, again, I think I mentioned this last Sunday, I think in the first service, where there's this confusion in the church that any guilt is not from God. And if you feel guilty, it's legalism. It is not, because Paul in 1 Corinthians spells out the sins of the Corinthians.

In fact, he's so angry with these people, he says, "Shall I come to you with a whip or in love?" I mean, he's talking as a father who's disciplining his kids and he uses the harshest language that he can possibly use. And then when he writes the 2 Corinthians, he begins by saying that, "I regretted it a little bit because I was so harsh with you, but I did not regret it because your guilt led to repentance." In other words, he brought guilt on them on purpose to reveal their sin.

And he says, "Godly sorrow leads to repentance. Worldly sorrow leads to condemnation." So the issue wasn't the guilt. So if you take that guilt and whatever you do with that guilt will either lead to salvation or it will lead to greater condemnation. So we make the mistake to think that when there is guilt and we don't want to deal with the sin that is causing the guilt because the way that God told the nation of Israel to deal with that guilt is to repent and make things right.

But the way that people want to make it, when guilt is upon us, we can't live with that guilt for a long time. Because guilt is, I mean, it'll ruin your appetite. It ruins relationships. And there is deep-seated heaviness upon us when there's guilt that the sin that we're not dealing with.

So that will either lead us to repentance and make things right or you change your theology to make your sin okay. And you start calling sin not sin. So you start to change your theology to accommodate the sin that you want in your life. But the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do that.

The Holy Spirit that is dwelling in us will bring the guilt upon us to bring us to repentance. So guilt in itself is necessary to bring us to repentance. How do you repent if there is no guilt? How do you repent? Remember when Peter preached the gospel? How did they respond?

They were what? Cut to the heart. What did it mean to be cut to the heart? They recognized their own sin. And they said, "What do we do? Repent and be baptized." That's the gospel message, to repent and be baptized, right? So the reason why this particular offering is called the guilt offering is how do you deal with guilt of sin?

And this is what he's saying. He says sin of oppression of the neighbors. If someone found something that somebody lost and they kept it and lied about it, and then the guilt weighs heavy on his heart, and then he wants to make things right and he wants to repent, so this guilt offering was given.

So whatever he took, right? He didn't just give it back. He said, "You need to give it back and then you add 20% as if it was loaned to you." Because if that's the money that he would have gotten, if he lent it to somebody else, he would have gotten 20% back.

So basically if you're going to restore, you have to restore like you borrowed it from him, right? What did this sacrifice particularly teach? Things that are considered sacred or holy in the New Testament. The Lord's name, right? Remember what Jesus says in the Lord's prayer, "Thy kingdom come," or he begins by saying, "Hallowed be thy name," right?

That's the first part of the Lord's prayer. And that was the first thing that the Jews were concerned about in the Old Testament. They would never say his name in vain because it was considered so sacred. It revered him, anything that was attached to him. So the first thing in the New Testament, again we see the reflection in the New Testament, is that his name, anything that is attached to God, there ought to be among Christians a reverence.

And there is nothing more sacred than the gathering of his people for the purpose of corporate worship. So our corporate worship shouldn't be casual, right? It shouldn't be casual. Again, I'm not going to spell out what that means. I'm not going to say, "Therefore, you need to buy a tie," or any of this.

I'm not saying all of that because I read somewhere that more than 70% of the people in the United States, like 7% of the men don't own a suit. So it doesn't make sense to go buy a suit just to attend church, right? So I am not saying that at all.

But in our hearts, when we approach that, this is not, you're not coming to a theater. And that's why we say on Sunday morning not to come in here with boba, okay? And it's not because we're concerned about the chairs. As you can see, the chairs are vinyl. So even if you spill things, we can clean it up.

We're not concerned about cleanliness. That's not why. It's not because it distracts me when I see you drinking something. That's not why. It's to teach you that the time that we're coming here is a sacred time. It is not. You didn't come to watch a movie, right? You didn't come here and just sip in your sip.

It's like, "Okay, let me see what you're going to do today," right? We're asking you to come with a sense of reverence when you come approach the throne of God. That's why another reason why we're asking you to come a bit early, right, and ready your hearts. Instead of just casually walking in, come and prepare your hearts, okay?

Some of you guys are thinking, "Egalism, egalism," right? They all have a reason. Again, I didn't understand that when I was younger either. When my dad would tell me to do certain things or not do certain things in the church when I was younger, I said, "Man, what does that have to do with worshipping God?" What he told me was so much more stricter than even what I'm saying to you.

But I didn't understand that when I was younger. I don't necessarily agree with all of the things that I was taught, but I understand it now. I understand it now because the more I study the Scriptures, the more I understand why he wants us to have reverence and to revere the things of God because it reveals the attitude of our hearts.

And when our attitude of our hearts toward God is nonchalant, his word is going to be taken nonchalantly. You understand what I'm saying? If somebody you revere tells you something, you're going to pay attention to it a lot more closely than somebody that you're just really casual about, right?

And ultimately, it really isn't even about you. It's about him. If honoring and glorifying him is the primary purpose of my life, that's something that we should consider and think about, think through, right, whenever it has to deal with God. His name, the gospel itself, right? The gospel itself is the foundation upon which everything rises and falls.

So if there's anything that we need to consider sacred, it's the gospel, that we are not to turn from it to the left or to the right, that we don't tweak it, we don't change it, we don't emphasize one over the other. When we talk about grace and not holiness, right, we talk about holiness but not grace, we need to preach the full gospel, like all of it, and we need to pay very close attention to it because all of the false doctrines and heresies are a small, tiny tweak of the gospel, right?

It is not an outright, like we don't believe that he, you know, he wasn't resurrected, I mean, there are some outright heresies but most of the stuff that affects the church and divides the church are a slight tweak of the gospel. And that's why Paul says, right, in Galatians 1, 8 and 9, if anybody preaches a different gospel, now, when he says anybody preaches a different gospel, let him be anathema, let him be accursed, understand a different gospel that he was dealing with.

The Judaizers, they recognized Jesus' resurrection, they recognized his lordship, right? So the core doctrines of the gospel, they believe, they just wanted to add circumcision, they wanted to add these other things. And so when Paul says anathema, he's not talking to people who are saying that Jesus Christ isn't God, that he wasn't resurrected from the dead, that his blood didn't atone for our sins, he's talking about people who accepted that and then they added more things.

And he said that perversion causes the gospel to no longer be the gospel and he said, "Let him be anathema." That's how important the gospel is. So if there's anything that you and I, that we need to study and know front and back, right? Not about Lakers and the statistics and not about, you know, like where's the best to travel and the best Yelp, I mean, all of that stuff are things that we have privilege to know.

But if you know more about the Lakers than the gospel, you have priority issues, right? If you know more about the politics than you do the gospel, you know, we have to take a step back and ask ourselves, like, what is it that we're doing? What are we doing with our time?

And when I say know the gospel, I'm not just talking about, you know, like what you heard when you first started, right? You know, it surprises me, I can sit down and ask a Christian who's been a Christian for 10 plus years and explain if a non-Christian came to you and asked you, right, why was Jesus' blood necessary?

How few people can answer that question? Why didn't he just forgive us? Why go through all that trauma of going to the cross, right? When we're in our insulated bubble, when nobody is challenging us, we just accept it. We don't think about it. So when you go witnessing and talk to non-Christians or a liberal Christian, they start asking you these questions, you realize you really don't know the gospel, right?

Or you know the very elementary aspects of the gospel. So if there's anything that you need to master is the gospel. If you've been a Christian for more than a couple years, if somebody asks you a question about the gospel, you shouldn't say, "Go talk to my pastor," right?

I'm not saying I don't want to talk to them, but Christians should be able to, any Christian should be able to answer those questions, right? At least, and if you don't know, ask, right? Ask a pastor, take a class, read a book, right, because the information is more than readily available.

So again, second thing, if there's anything that we need to get right and we need to consider sacred is the gospel itself, right? The church. The gospel is sacred, the church is sacred because the avenue in which the gospel, what God designed the gospel to be spread, is the church.

So if anybody who is divisive in the church, or undermines the church, right, is also guilty of this sin, was divisive in the church, right? In 1 Timothy 3.15, it said the church is the foundation, the pillar and foundation of the truth. And then, you know this passage, 1 Corinthians 3.16, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and it is used in the plural form, you, referring to the church, and that God's spirit dwells in you?" The church is a sacred place that replaced the sacred temple of the Old Testament.

So when you come into the temple and you take the things that are sacred and you defile it, he said it's no different than in the church in the New Testament. The church is the temple of God, right? So all these things that they were tolerating in the church, they were defiling the church.

So a Jew would have understood exactly what Paul was saying, right? You need to take this sin seriously. You need to take the church seriously because this is God's design. So going against the church, and again, we're not talking about like whatever the leaders say, everybody needs to submit, but undermining and defiling the church and dividing the church is a very, very serious offense, right?

Because this is set apart for God's use. Our bodies itself. The scripture says that we have been purchased by Christ, so we belong to him. So for us to use our bodies to do whatever we want with it is a violation of that, again, sacred command. Every single Christian has been set apart for God's use.

It is no longer us who lives, but Christ who lives in us, right? That's why again, Romans 12.1, which says to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice for God's use. Again, so therefore, Paul calls our individual bodies also as a temple of God. Again, 1 Corinthians 6, 19 to 20.

It's almost verbatim, the same passage in 1 Corinthians 3, 16, except there it's used in the singular, and he's referring to sexual immorality, right? Where in 1 Corinthians 3, 16, he warns the church in the context of being divisive. You know, I prefer this guy, and I follow Paul, and this divisiveness was causing all this chaos in the church, and he's saying, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God?" So he's talking to the church and people who are being divisive.

Here in 1 Corinthians 6, 19, he's talking about sexual immorality, how they're using their bodies in a way that defiles what belongs to God. It is not your body to use the way you want, okay? So that's the fourth thing. And then the last thing is the sacrament, right?

The Lord's Supper, and why this is so sacred. First Corinthians 10, 14 to 21, and for the sake of time, I'm not going to read it. I don't think I have the passage. I don't. In the end, basically, he talks about the Lord's Supper as being most holy, right?

And it is a replacement of the offerings in Leviticus. And that's why in chapter 11, he said those people who weren't taking the Lord's Supper seriously, what was happening to them? What was happening to people who were not taking the Lord's Supper seriously? They were dying. They said, well, they called it they fell asleep, but fell asleep basically means that they were dying, right?

And this is the New Testament, the new covenant, right? So it's not like we come, well, in the New Testament, so God doesn't care. Actually, right, the first sin where they lie to the Holy Spirit, remember we talked about that? It was them. They died. They took what was sacred to God.

They were lying to the Holy Spirit, lying to the church, and as a result of that, the consequence was very severe. And the people who are not taking the Lord's Supper seriously, the consequence was very severe. Now, it doesn't mean that God says, well, if you break this commandment, you do it in irreverence that everybody's going to die.

But it does teach us how God views these things, how God views the church, right? How God views the sacrament. That's why it says not to participate in an unworthy manner. So every time we take communion, it's an opportunity for us to take a deep look at where we are.

If we have deliberate, unconfessed sin, that you can't come up and participate in the communion table, right? And then some people think that, well, then I'm not going to participate. I'll be safe and not participate. To not participate in the communion table means that you are outside the church, right?

So it's a lose-lose situation. Well, then what do we do? Well, what do you think I want you to do? Repent, right? Confess your sins. Get right with God. That's what the communion table was meant to do, is for the church to realize that to participate in this sacred event, that you needed to continually confess your sins and recognize that the only redemption you have is in His blood.

So it's an opportunity for us to celebrate. It is an opportunity for us to repent. It is an opportunity for the church to be restored. And it's an opportunity for us to look forward for the consummation of what He started at the cross, right? So it's sacred. That's why the communion is so important to the church, right?

And some people say, well, then why don't we do it every week? It is symbolic. We don't believe that there is a real presence of Christ, meaning that there's some dynamic presence of Christ that's there physically, like the Catholics or the Lutherans. It is symbolic. But just because it's symbolic doesn't mean it's not sacred, because the Lord said it was sacred, right?

The trespass offering illustrates the costs of sin that are committed. That's not just something you say, oh, I feel bad, Lord, forgive me, and then you just move on, right? This particular offering reminds us that there is, in any sin, there's always consequences. We confess it, just like a broken arm, it can be healed, but that arm may not always be the same.

There are consequences for breaking. So this commandment, this particular offering, reminds us of that. So though forgiveness is given through atonement, there always is a price to pay for sins that bring damage to someone or something else. True repentance requires restoration, as John told the Pharisees to bear fruit in accordance with repentance.

And let me look at some passages here. So in Matthew 5, 23 to 24, it says, so if you are offering your gift at the altar and there, remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.

So again, in restoration, that this is not just like, I confess before God, and forgive me, and then you're done. He said, whatever it is that you wronged with your brother, he says to deal with that before you come to the altar. If you remember Zacchaeus, Luke 19, 8, Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, behold, Lord, the half of my goods I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone, anything, I restore it fourfold.

Now why is he saying fourfold? Because he was a Jew, he understood the Jewish law. He understood. Now, was it required for him to be fourfold? No, it said 20%. Why is he doing a fourfold? He recognizes his sin. It's just like Peter saying, how many times do you want me to forgive?

Seven times? He wasn't required to give it seven times. He was trying to say he's going to be more righteous than the average person. So Zacchaeus, when he says I'm going to give fourfold, is basically saying this is how much I'm repenting. Because he knew what the Jewish law said.

And then God gives provision for restoration when we volunteer in repentance. There's a big difference between a sin that gets exposed versus a sin that you expose. And God gives restoration when we volunteer that. And so Isaiah 53.10 says, "Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him, and he has put him into grief.

When his soul makes an offering for sin, he shall see his offering, he shall prolong his days, the Lord shall prosper in his hand." So the word for here for offering, I think it's the NASB and maybe the NIV also says guilt offering. It's the same word that is used in this passage in Leviticus 5.16, guilt offering.

So I'm not sure why the ESV just translated offering. My guess is they're assuming that you don't know the difference. So just like, well, offering is an offering. And it's part of the reason why I'm not a big fan of the ESV, even though I use the ESV. I think they did too much of this kind of stuff to make it a little bit easier to read, but I think this is important enough that they should have put it in there.

But in the Hebrew, it actually has the word guilt offering on there. Same word that is being used here in Leviticus 5. So basically what is it saying? It's saying that Christ fulfilled this. He was our guilt offering. And then finally 1 John 1, 8-9, it says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." And that's the first part of deception, when we don't recognize our sin or we don't see the gravity of our sin.

And so all these five offerings, the purpose of all these five offerings is to recognize the depravity of sin, how God sees sin. And it's very detailed. How can a holy God be in the midst of sinful people? And so every one of these things, that the offering that was given from morning and nighttime, the blood that was shed, the sprinkling of the blood, and the money, the compensation, the fifth of it, and then if you were a leader versus a layperson versus a priest.

And so every one of these offerings was God was detailing. He was detailing. Like if you're going to build a house, you have an architect. I don't know if you've ever seen the architect's blueprint. I was surprised how many pages of drawings go into a church like this. Maybe about 200, 300 pages.

Because when I first found out how much it cost to hire an architect, as high as 10% of whatever your project is. So if a project is a million dollars, they project about $100,000 for the architect. And I said, what? That's what they project. Now we didn't pay that, but that's what they project.

And I said, why would they do that? Until I saw what they actually did. Because every little thing, even the nail that you use, like on these walls, the nails that we use, it had to be a certain kind of galvanized nail, a certain length, and that you can only get in a certain width and certain head that was used only for concrete.

And so when the inspector came, he made us go up and pull these nails out because he wanted to see if we used the right nail. It's that detailed. So imagine if they were that detailed about the nail, how crazy it was around the building. We had to take out a certain part of the entrance because the grade on the entrance was 1.2%.

And he said, 2% or something, but it had to fall in line with like 1% to 2%. If anything above that, we had to take the whole thing out and repave the whole thing for ADA access. Now I share all of this because we don't realize all the little details and the things that they made us do, and all for the purpose of making the building safe.

And especially in Irvine, they don't cut corners. They don't cut corners at all. And everybody's afraid to come to Irvine for that reason, but they're doing it because they want to make sure that all the buildings in Irvine are safe. So when you look at the offerings that God is giving, all the little intricate details, like an architect building a house.

And every one of these things that we may not understand, why do you have to have that nail? Why does it have to be that long? Why does it have to be galvanized? Why does it have to be three inches? And there has to be six inches. There has to be two of them.

And so all these little things that you and I may not understand, but the architect knows, the engineer knows, right? Because he's building a house that maybe you and I don't fully understand. And every single one of these things that he did in these offerings, it built toward the coming of Christ.

It built toward pointing to what Jesus was going to do on the cross. So when you look at the intricate details of these offerings, what did it teach us? Like, generally, structurally, what did it teach us? Sin is very serious in the eyes of God. And if we don't recognize sin as utterly sinful, we don't really understand what Christ came to do.

We can sing about his love and his grace, but it just doesn't have the same impact as somebody who really understands what sin is. So he said all of this was given to us for what purpose? To make sin orderly sinful. Orderly sinful, not just sinful, but orderly sinful, as sinful as you can possibly understand it.

Because until you recognize it as orderly sinful, the grace of God doesn't change you, right? Until you realize that you are on the verge of death or you were dead in your trespasses. Of course, he died for us. But it doesn't change your life. It doesn't change the way you use your money.

It doesn't change where you have fun. It's just precious, but just not as precious. Again, so I want you guys to really think through what you guys are studying. This is God's architectural design, and every single one of these things are there for a reason. Even if you don't understand now, file it away somewhere, and it may trigger it at some point.

Yeah. Often, would one particular family give this offering? You wouldn't have enough animals to do that. Yeah. It was done on a daily basis at the tabernacle, but this doesn't mean that every family was doing it on a daily basis. I have a feeling, again, that's a good question, but I have a feeling that there was a long line.

Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, so my guess is that the Israelites probably were not very faithful with it either. Israelites, even while they're in the desert, they were going after idols, constantly grumbling and complaining. So do you think that they were faithful in giving in their sacrifices that cost them this money?

So my guess is that a lot of them did the minimum, and then there were periods of revival when the temple was established and there was more giving and more of that being established, but even then, they were just doing that like the rich people were doing that. Remember, like if you look at Isaiah and Jeremiah, there's a rebuke, and they say, "You're coming to the temple, but it's a trampling of my court," and he said that the fast that he desire is to look after the orphans and the oppressed, and who is he rebuking?

The rich people, right? The rich people who had the money and the sacrifice, they're coming to the temple and giving all of these things, and so because they were able to do that, they thought that they were right with God, right? But he says, "They're a burden to him," right?

So people who didn't have money may have made that as an excuse and not come to God because they didn't have money for these animals, and the rich people were just kind of giving meaningless offerings, and so God says, "No, that's not what I wanted either," right? So I don't know how frequent, I mean, even if it's just a small portion of them came, I would think that it would have been a really bloody scene, and it was done all the time, morning and night constantly, but again, it doesn't mean that, you know, like every time they sinned, they brought an animal.

My guess is they probably waited once a year, or it was something that kind of rose up to that point, and maybe a few faithful, really faithful Jews did it on a regular basis. That's my guess. But again, remember, Israelites were not faithful, right? All right. So the discussion questions, other than feeling of guilt, how does sin damage the sinner?

Give specific examples. Okay, number two, in what way does our private sins affect the church as a whole? Sometimes we don't realize that if we're the temple of God, we're the body of Christ, and if your arm gets hurt, right, we all hurt, the scripture says, but we don't necessarily sometimes think that, right?

And so how does our private sins affect the whole church? So that's, again, you understand that. Number three, how do you balance between overcoming sin through accountability and discipleship while creating an atmosphere of transparency and grace? Okay, so this is the constant challenge, and even when you're raising kids, like you want to disciple them and discipline them when they're wrong, but then you don't want to discipline to the point where they're afraid of you, and they'll never come to you, and they're always hiding from you, right?

And so that balance is a challenge even in the church where you kind of like, well, we want to be gracious, and we want people to feel safe where they can confess their sins, and the next thing you know, everybody's like, well, you're a sinner, I'm a sinner, and then you create an environment where sin is okay because everybody's sinning together, right?

Or you go to the other extreme where you put fear and trembling that we're watching, we're constantly asking each other, are you sinning, are you doing this, are you doing that, and you're almost afraid to come to church, and we don't want that either, right? So how do we balance them?

That's a constant challenge because we always tend to err one way or the other, or you kind of gravitate one toward the other, right? But you can't ignore either, right? Because God is holy and God is love at the same time all the time. There's not a time when, okay, we're not going to talk about holiness now because we want to focus on God's love, or we're going to focus on His holiness, not His love.

There's never a time when His holiness and His love shouldn't be present at all times in everything that we do, right? So the question is, how do we balance that, right, without neglecting the other? Four, do you have a tendency to keep sin private or do you regularly confess your sins to others asking for accountability?

And again, you know, we can easily hold things back, right, and just keep it to ourselves, but when we do that, the sin tends to fester and it becomes bigger, right, as we saw. And so God always gives opportunity for us to, that's why the scripture says in James to confess your sins to one another, right, to bring it out.

So if we bring it out, it has a lesser impact, but if we are waiting for it to get exposed, we get humiliated and the damage is much bigger, right? So again, that question is, is there a pattern in your life where you're willing to confess, you know, when there is sin in your life?

So that's, again, question number four, okay? So let me pray for us and then I'll have you guys get into your groups. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would anoint a time with a small group. Lord, as we continue to wrestle, Lord God, of what it means to be holy and at the same time being gracious and loving, help us, Lord, to be obedient and faithful to you in all aspects.

If we are overly harsh, reveal that to us. If we have accepted sin, Lord God, and just been in the habit of making light of holiness, I pray that you would reveal that to us as well. I pray that you would be with us in our discussion, that it would lead to greater sanctification and honoring of your name.

We thank you in Jesus' name we pray, amen.