Yesterday we focused on the sin offering, which dealt with the fact that people are sinful at their core. The more influence the sinner had in the community, the more stringent the requirements were to atone for his sins. The sin offering paid the penalty for a person’s sinful nature.

Today we’re going to talk about guilt offerings. Guilt offerings atoned for the sinful things people do, and paid the penalty for conscious or unconscious sinful actions. There are two categories of guilt; one addressed sinful actions against other people and the other addressed sinful actions against God.

Restitution

The following information about guilt offerings and restitution is from Leviticus 5:14 – 6:7.

Unlike sin offerings, guilt offerings included restitution to the offended party. If someone stole, lost, or failed to care for property entrusted to them, they had to atone for their sin. The same was true if they lied about what became of property they found, or if they obtained something valuable through force or threats.

When the atonement sacrifice was brought to the altar, the priest would listen to the case and make a ruling on the value of the lost or stolen property. The offender then had to pay back the full value and add twenty percent as restitution to the person from whom the property was taken.

When a sinner offended God by tampering with something holy – touching part of the tabernacle and making it unclean, taking food that was meant for the priests, or any other sinful behavior at the tabernacle – they had to make restitution directly to the Lord. They brought an unblemished ram to sacrifice and paid the priests its full value plus twenty percent in shekels.

Restitution was not as much about restoring the value of the property, as it was about respecting the offended party from whom it was taken.

The Priests’ Portion

The priests received the unburned portions of sacrifices as food for themselves and their families. That included meat from certain sin offerings, guilt offerings, fellowship offerings, grain offerings, and the bread from the table in the Holy Place.

The meat of the fellowship offering had to be eaten on the day it was offered. Meat brought as a freewill or vow offering, could be eaten the following day, but any meat left over after that had to be burned up. (The specifics for the meat shared with the priest are listed in Leviticus 7:28-38.)

If a meat offering that became unclean due to mishandling or contact with an unclean person, it had to destroyed by fire. Anyone who was also ceremonially clean could eat the food offerings at the priests’ invitation.

But if someone who was ceremonially unclean ate the clean meat, they were to be cut off from their people.

Ceremonially Clean or Unclean

Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology says: “In Old Testament times the ordinary state of most things was ‘cleanness,’ but a person or thing could contract ritual ‘uncleanness’ in a variety of ways: by skin diseases, discharges of bodily fluids, touching something dead (Numbers 5:2), or eating unclean foods (Leviticus 11; Deuteronomy14).”

 People who violated the laws concerning cleanness were in danger of being “cut off from their people.” This may have meant that they were excommunicated from the community, or died an early death, or died childless. It may also have meant that instead of being “gathered to their people” in eternity, they were cut off from heaven.

I couldn’t find any specific remedy for being cut off from one’s people, but I believe the unclean sinner could seek atonement at the altar just as any other sinner could. In both the Old and New Testaments, it appears that the only unforgivable sin was hardening one’s heart and refusing to come to God for forgiveness.

The Blood and Fat Prohibition

The people of Israel were forbidden to eat the blood and the fat of any animal. These parts of an animal belonged to God exclusively. The blood represented atonement for sin and life that only God could give to his creatures.

The fat represented the blessing of God upon the animal, showing that it had been healthy and vigorous. It was part of the unblemished animal, healthy inside and out. The fat was always given back to God by being burned up on the altar and becoming a pleasing aroma to the Lord.

Ordaining the Priests

In Leviticus 8:1-36 the priests were finally ordained to service in the tabernacle. The ceremony included bringing the priests and their new garments to the entrance of the tent of meeting. Moses furnished a bull for the sin offering, and two rams and a basket of bread made without yeast for the burnt offering and fellowship offering.

All of Israel stood in front of the tent of meeting to watch this historic ordination. It was the first time the nation of Israel had their own priests and place of worship.

Washing and Dressing the Priests

First Moses washed the priests with water, and then he dressed Aaron in the garments of the high priest, including the turban with the gold emblem that said, “Holy to the Lord”. He consecrated the tabernacle and everything in it with the anointing oil, then poured some of it over Aaron’s head. Then he brought Aaron’s sons forward and dressed them in their tunics and caps.

Sin Offering

Now the priests were consecrated for service to God, but they still needed to be cleansed from their sins. Moses brought the bull for the sin offering and slaughtered it. He used his finger to put blood on the horns of the altar to purify it and he poured out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar to atone for it. The altar was made unclean by the sins of the people as their guilt sacrifices were burned on it. The blood on its horns and at its base atoned for that uncleanness.

Moses put the fat from the bull, the long lobe of its liver and the kidneys on the altar to burn as a fragrant offering to God. Then he finished the ritual of sin offering by sending the bull’s body outside the camp to be burned.

Burnt Offering and Fellowship Offering

Next Moses offered one of the rams as a burnt offering to please the Lord.“It was a burnt offering, a pleasing aroma, a food offering presented to the Lord, as the Lord commanded Moses.” Leviticus 8:21b

The second ram became a fellowship offering. Moses applied some of its blood to the right ear lobe, right thumb and right big toe of Aaron and each of his sons. There is no explanation in Scripture for this, but it seemed to symbolize that the priests belonged to God from head to toe. It may also have consecrated their ears to hear the Word, their hands to serve God, and their feet to walk in holiness.

Aaron and his sons waved the ram’s fat, the long lobe of its liver, both kidneys, the right thigh, and loaves of unleavened bread before the Lord. They had not provided these offerings, but they claimed them by holding them in their hands. Then the offerings became another burnt sacrifice, pleasing to the Lord.

The Final Ceremony

Moses took some of the anointing oil and some of the blood from the altar and sprinkled them on Aaron and his sons to consecrate them and their priestly garments.

The rest of the fellowship offering was given to the priests and Moses, and prepared as a meal for them. Whatever wasn’t eaten that day was burned.

The priests remained at the entrance of the tabernacle for the next seven days and nights and then their ordination was complete.

The Greatest High Priest

When Jesus became our high priest he didn’t have to do any of these rituals. He was already clean and pure, he was in perfect fellowship with the Father and he was fully qualified to make sacrifices on behalf of the people. He didn’t need a period of ordination; he had already been ordained by God the Father who said in Matthew 3:17:

“This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.”

Here is what Hebrews 9:11-14 says about Jesus (from The Message).

“But when the Messiah arrived, high priest of the superior things of this new covenant, he bypassed the old tent and its trappings in this created world and went straight into heaven’s ‘tent’—the true Holy Place—once and for all. He also bypassed the sacrifices consisting of goat and calf blood, instead using his own blood as the price to set us free once and for all. If that animal blood and the other rituals of purification were effective in cleaning up certain matters of our religion and behavior, think how much more the blood of Christ cleans up our whole lives, inside and out. Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.”

 Thank God for Jesus, our high priest, our sacrifice, and our savior!