We are often like a fish in an aquarium. It lived there for many years, it knows every inch of the box, when to turn, when to swim. It can swim innumerable times, even with its eyes closed for days, without a collision. This conviction made it feel very secure and confident, as if it knew everything in the world. Then, one day, the owner decided to leave the fish in an ocean. Imagine the shock when it jumped into the vast ocean. It caught a glimpse of the limitless, infinite, horizonless Atlantic Ocean, and it realized how foolish and ignorant it was to think it knew everything in the world.
Like that fish, each of us is living in our own aquarium. We think we have a handle on our sin, we know our sins, this and that, and how to navigate in life so we don’t collide with it. Leviticus throws us into the ocean and opens our eyes to see the depth of our own sin and the height of God’s holiness.
I was imagining what it would be like to worship and come to God in the Old Testament. You cannot come to a holy God without these offerings. Without a sacrifice, without the shedding of blood, it was impossible to come into the presence of God. All these five offerings show us how to come to God. We saw the burnt offering first, as the foundational offering for us to be approached, welcomed, and accepted by God. Then, we saw the grain offering, the peace offering, and the sin offering. It amazes us to realize that all the sins mentioned in the sin offering were sins of ignorance. Those sins we don’t even know—a number no computer can compute—even those sins defile us and need cleansing. Atonement should be given for that. It shows our great need as depraved sinners. We have to be regularly humble and make confession of sins a regular part of our prayer.
You offer these four—burnt, grain, peace, and sin offering—daily. You will see progress in your relationship with God. Our deepest spiritual needs are met—love, joy, peace, and forgiveness are met. Next, he talks about our relationship with other men. Primarily, this offering is about how we sin against one another in society, break relationships, and cause conflicts, and how to restore those relationships.
This is called the guilt offering. To feel guilty, then, means to be conscious of your liability to repay. It is knowing you are in a state of debt. We all worry about physical debt, which doesn’t even allow us to sleep. It is such a burden. Spiritual debt is much more burdensome. It is the main reason for a restless conscience and a sleepless burden. What do you do with your guilt? This section outlines the procedure for atoning for or obliterating guilt.
There are five categories of sins mentioned under the guilt offering. We saw three last time. Now two other classes of trespass sins are brought before us. The fourth is found in Verses 14-19, at the end of chapter 5, and then the fifth one. I told you this guilt offering goes on to 6:1-7. Let us look at the fourth guilt offering. It consists of sin against the holy things of God. This may not be directly against God, but against His temple, holy things, and ministers, priests, or pastors.
Verse 14, “Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 15 ‘If a person commits a trespass, and sins unintentionally in regard to the holy things of the Lord.'” This offense involved something done in “the holy things of the LORD.” The word means things that are to be devoted to God. This means they were related to God and His tabernacle. Even in our lives, there are things God says are His, and He has rights. It could be sinning against temple rules, keeping the Sabbath, maybe a failure to attend a holy assembly as a covenanted Israelite, not following the rules of sacrifices, a failure to give sacrifices, or a failure to give tithes and sinning against priests. Part of God’s holy things might be the tithes or sacrifices. Or you might be late in bringing your offering. You might take one of the utensils of the temple, one of the spoons, take it home, and you might have used it at home inadvertently, and then realized that this is a holy utensil, it belongs in the temple.
They had different kinds of tithes and offerings. There was a tithe offering during the harvest. Maybe he did not offer what he was supposed to give. Maybe he gave a 10% tithe of the harvest, ten bags, when he counted that he got a harvest of 100 bags. Later, the count was wrong; it was 130 bags. He didn’t know, but later he realized. Maybe we saw the fat, liver, and kidney were to go to the Lord, and the thigh and breast to the priest. Maybe without knowing, his family participated in something which was holy to the Lord. Or maybe he has eaten some fat which should all be given to God.
Again, notice sins of ignorance. The person didn’t understand that what he was doing was wrong at the time. But when he learned about it, he was not merely to pass it off and say, “Well, I didn’t understand that at the time.” Blinded by the deceitfulness of sin, we may just ignore it and may not store that in our minds, but it all gets stored in the conscience and causes guilt and hardens our heart.
No, no. It is a terrible guilt to sin against the holy things of God. This is seen in the kind of sacrifice. Notice that if such a thing happens, the sacrifice is a man was to take a ram without defect (Verse 15). Now we notice with other sacrifices there was a gradation downward. If you were a poor man, you wouldn’t have to bring a cow or a ram, maybe a pigeon or a turtledove, or even flour. But here, there is no gradation downward because of poverty. In the guilt offering, there is stiff regulation. In fact, the ram that is brought can’t just be any ram. It has to be a ram of adequate size, weighed according to, it says in Verse 15, “the shekel of the sanctuary.” Not just man’s weights and measures, but God’s weights and measures of God’s temple. The priest functioned as the representative of God, for something had been stolen from God.
God strictly demands an offering of adequate payment to cover the cost for man’s heavy sin of having stolen God’s property. As stealing from God incurs guilt and requires a guilt offering, it must be adequately paid for with not a low-quality ram, but a high-caliber ram before the Lord.
So we’ve seen the incident and the sacrifice. It doesn’t stop with atonement. There is also restitution. We notice not only does God require atonement by way of an expensive ram slain at the altar, but also we find the priests need compensation. Not only has God been violated in heaven, but the priests have been violated on earth. For who was the one who was to receive that firstborn cow? It was the priests and their family. Who was it who rightly should have gotten those five measures of grain? It was the priests and their family. So it needs to be paid back.
But we notice in Verse 16, restitution must be made for that which was sinned against the holy thing and you shall add to it the fifth part of it. So a Jew failed to pay 10 kg of barley as a tithe. Because of his sin, he now has to pay with 1/5th interest, meaning 20% extra, 12 kg of barley. A 20% extra surcharge is paid back as restitution. Even the idea of time loss was paid.
But Pastor, this is so harsh and strict. Yes, for us living in carelessness of guilt, hardened by so many unknown sins, this all seems very strange and foreign to reckless Christianity. But it shows how just God is, how holy God is. Remember, God is worshipped not only for his grace and love, but also for how admirably, exactly, and justly He is, and how precise He is. The beauty of God is He is just in all things, with the exact inflexible justice of our God, which is so foreign to the recklessness of our day. God is a God of precision. Yes, for us wallowing in sins and guilt, it may seem harsh and unattractive, but this is a very attractive nature of God.
And we ought to have this educate our consciences, because one of the primary reasons for this guilt offering is to educate the consciences of His people and not allow the deceitfulness of sin to harden our consciences saying, “Oh, well, I’ll just plead ignorance.” If we think God is harsh, see the conclusion at the end of Verse 16, which says, even though a man sinned against God’s holy things and even though a man has robbed from God, it shall be forgiven him. So, that is the occasion of sinning against the Lord’s property.
Under the same category of sins against holy things, notice the second occasion, and that is the occasion of encountering a bad conscience. This is found in 5:17-19. We notice in these verses that the sharpening and honing of the consciences of His people continues.
Notice Verse 17: “If a person sins, and commits any of these things which are forbidden to be done by the commandments of the Lord, though he does not know it, yet he is guilty and shall bear his iniquity.” This is difficult. Whatever the sin was, it was a sin that the man was unaware of; it was done unintentionally, and it says he didn’t know it. Maybe this is a person who suspects that he has sinned because he has a disturbed and a bad conscience. But he doesn’t know why his conscience is disturbed and bad. Maybe some sin against the holy things of God, but he doesn’t know what. Maybe he has eaten something that should be given to God, like fat, or broken some rules of sacrifices or tithing, but he doesn’t know. And therefore, because he has this hankering that he can’t really explain, then what should he do?
You might say to yourself, “Why is this such an important thing? Surely God will be lenient at this point. I mean, there are some things that ought to be overlooked.” But we find in the Word of God here that there is no lenient forbearance at this point. There is no winking. God does not say, in such a circumstance, “Don’t let it bother you.” Instead, look what it says in 19B: “It is a guilt offering. He was certainly guilty…” It presses the word “certainly.”
What should he do, just ignore and go on? No. The text says, in such a condition, that man is indeed guilty. Verse 18: “And he shall bring to the priest a ram without blemish from the flock.” “So the priest shall make atonement for him regarding his ignorance in which he erred and did not know it, and it shall be forgiven him.” Now, we do notice that there is no call for restitution by way of a requirement here. Because he doesn’t know how much or what kind of sin he has committed. Restitution is not required.
Though he doesn’t know, but he feels guilt, he has fallen into debt before the living God, and therefore he should bring a sacrifice to cleanse his conscience. He needs to pay off his guilt and his debt to the living God. Whether this man considered it a big sin or not, God considered in the heavenly accounting books there had been a debt incurred, and the man needs a blood sacrifice to make reparation and restitution in heaven.
Now, brethren, we see here in this that, once again, the door is sprung open on our limited fish tank conception of our sin. We have this native idea of our sin that sin is only that which is flagrant and deliberate and known. But that is not the conception that God has of sin. When we have that concept of sin, we think that we can control our lives and our morality, just like our fish tank friend in the beginning. He was so familiar with every cubic foot of his tank; he knew every crack, every nook, every cranny. And brethren, what we find in this passage is that our sin is of oceanic proportion. We find in this passage, like the psalm writer says, “My sin, O Lord, when I understand Your idea of it, my sin goes over my head. Yea, my sin is as many as the hairs on my head, uncountable in number.” Because sin, brethren, is not only openly flagrant, deliberate, and known, but sin is subtle. Sin is at times unknown. So, that is the occasion of encountering a bad conscience. The fourth category we see under the guilt offering is sins against the holy things of God.
Finally, the fifth sin under this category of guilt offering is deceiving a neighbor by false swearing. In all cases, he swears falsely. Notice with me how all of these scenarios that are given here. There are four examples: deposit, cheating, robbery, extortion, and lying.
The first scenario, Verse 2, is a person who gives something to another to keep safely, such as money, things, or animals. The other person deceives his companion in regard to a deposit or security entrusted to him. Imagine a man comes in the ancient world and he says, let us use the name Cain, “My wife and I are going up to Mount Hermon for a week. Would you please take this bull and allow him to graze on your land? Keep an eye on him.” There’s a security that’s been given there, a deposit. We find then when the man returns back from Mount Hermon and says, “Cain, where is my bull?” Cain says, “Boy, sorry man. I was busy. I haven’t seen him; he must have escaped.” But Cain knows that three days earlier he had an urgent need, so he sold that bull to a man for his own profit. And when the man says, “Cain, come on, don’t you know where it is?” He says, “I swear before God that I do not know where that bull is. He must have escaped unbeknownst to me.” See, not only is it cheating the deposit, but it is also false swearing.
The next scenario is called deception by robbery. You know, in ancient days, people didn’t put their money in a bank, but they would put their money oftentimes in a corner of their field, buried like hidden treasure. Now, it may be that one day a man named Achan spied his neighbor’s treasure location and by the dark of night went and stole it and hid it for himself. When his neighbor confronted him the next morning, saying, “Achan, did you see anybody digging in my field last night?” And the man says, “No, I swear I don’t know anything about it.” This is sinning against a neighbor by robbery.
The third scenario we find here is the case of extortion. Extortion means to wrongly take something from someone, either by taking advantage of their ignorance, naive nature, or even by threats or force. Like Laban did to Jacob or Jezebel did to Naboth, taking his field. Let’s say there is a woman, Sarah, whose husband just died. Sarah is a poor widow, very ignorant of the world and things. A relative named Jacob takes advantage of this and says, “You are my daughter. What will you do to live now on? I can take care of you and your kids, but the world will say something. So sell your husband’s field to me. I’m going to give you a tremendous price for it.” He pays only 25% of its worth and so he extorts the widow, taking advantage of her difficult situation and ignorance, twisting her arm with his persuasion. Then you go and try to sell that for the full price. Someone comes and says, “Sir, did you give this small amount to this widow for the vast field?” He says, “I swear I gave her a much larger amount than that.” So that is extortion.
Verse 3: We find the fourth scenario is “or found what was lost and lied about it.” You imagine if a man says, “David, have you seen my lamb? My lamb, he was in your field only a few hours ago, someone told me. So I came running to take him, but now he is gone.” And the man says, “I swear I haven’t seen that lamb,” even though that very afternoon he knows that he ate mutton.
In all cases, we find wrong against a neighbor and then taking an oath that was untrue. On all of these occasions, when a person was suspected and confronted, they took an oath in Jehovah’s name claiming, “I am innocent.” He is guilty.
But he has cheated, and no one can find out. He can continue. But something happens to the man. Verse 4 says, he is guilty. His guilt burdens his conscience. “I not only cheated, but I also promised in God’s name.” No one catches the man, but the man realizes in his own conscience he has done wrong. Conscience is stricken with a sense of his guilt. He wants to correct it.
Let’s take our man Cain. He knows that he sold that bull for a handsome price. And we find that Jacob’s conscience begins to eat away at him and it chews him up from the inside out. He cannot sleep. And though there is no more evidence to be found against Cain, because he sold to some Midianite who went on to Egypt and they’d never find out about it. Cain, without any kind of evidence being brought against him, no further prosecution, but he comes by his own volition and confesses his sin. And Cain says, “I have sinned. I turned myself in. It was a great crime.” This is the typical scenario of the occasion of sinning and swearing an oath in vain. The same way with all these people: Cain cheating with a deposit, Achan with robbery, Jacob with extortion, David with lying, without any evidence, but because of the guilt of conscience, they want to set this right.
Now what should they do to atone for their guilt? Notice with me the required procedures. Cain, Achan, Jacob, and David have both horizontal responsibility, that is, man to man, and vertical responsibility, that is, man to God.
Look with me, first of all, at the importance of manward restitution. For the guilt, the man is to return to the victim the stolen goods, the property, the payment, whatever it was, all of the funds, plus one-fifth. Look at Verse 5: “He shall make restitution for it in full and add to it one-fifth more.” We see here that God’s justice makes sure that even though the man has confessed sin, there is to be no advantage to him by way of his possessing the property for a period of time. To man, a full restitution plus a surcharge.
So you took my books and forgot to give them back. You should pay 20% of the cost of the book and give back my book. You can pay with PhonePe, no problem. Or someone takes a vessel from our house and never returns it. One person took my umbrella and never returned it. Or I take something of someone in my house. They come to my house and say, “Hey, that is mine.” “Ah, no no, my uncle gave me that for Christmas.” You’ve transgressed, and you need to make a guilt offering.
Now, we might think this is harsh, adding 20% more, but brethren, this is really great mercy. When we think of Exodus chapter 22, which speaks of a man being convicted in court of theft, if he stole a sheep, we find he was always forced to pay back fourfold, 400%. Or if it was an ox that was stolen, he had to pay back five oxen. You see, brethren, since the person was driven to confession solely on the basis of his conscience, he only has to pay back 20% plus the full amount. And this is clearly an incentive provided by the living God that His people would maintain clear consciences.
But man not only had to pay back man, man also had to pay back God. There is Godward restoration and restitution provided here for his guilt. There is more than violating a fellow man that is taking place. In these crimes I have described, the man has violated God. The eighth commandment: stealing. The ninth commandment: taking His name in vain. And therefore, what do you think the man has to bring to God? A prime, unblemished ram before the Lord. Once again, there is exact counting. A man needs to pay it to the last farthing, to the last cent, according to the shekel valuation of the tabernacle. To the last farthing.
What is Verse 7b? The blessed outcome of all this. “The priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord, and he shall be forgiven for any one of the things which he may have done to incur guilt.” See, this was not a sin of ignorance. This was a deliberate sin. This was a cunning sin. But you see, this man had a conscience that was smitten by the law of God. And this man did not violate his conscience, but he honored his conscience and he repented. He was forgiven. Healing was brought when proper restitution and sacrifice was made.
So we see the fourth and fifth situations for the guilt offering: sins against the holy things of God and sins of deceiving a neighbor by false swearing.
Now, all that’s very interesting, but what has that got to do with me? What are the lessons for us today? Oh, this is all the Old Testament, the oldest Old Testament, the 3rd book. Yes, true, all may not apply, but we can learn many principles for us today in the New Testament.
Firstly, the book enters every secret nook and corner of our lives and uncovers sins that we would never think about. They uncover sins that we would dismiss in a heartbeat, and it shows all sins are sins, whether known or unknown. Every single sin renders you guilty.
The Book of Leviticus is a holiness code. It is in this book that God calls, “Be ye holy for I am holy.” I said holiness is meaning wholeness. All parts of our body function as God created us to be full like God in joy, peace, love, and holiness. It’s a book pre-eminently that teaches us what true holiness is, about the parameters of holiness, and about the structure of holiness.
I believe God is teaching that true sanctification or holiness is not just an outward show, but to maintain a clean conscience without guilt. Did you notice that all throughout this passage? In all five categories of sins, the man who committed these sins was not caught or didn’t face any consequences or punishment for sins. But what moved him was his own guilty conscience. It made him realize that the things he did were sins later and made him guilty. That is why this is called the guilt offering. All provisions in this offering are designed to impress the conscience with the sense of responsibility to God and to keep alive in the hearts of His people a wholesome fear of doing any secret wrong.
The reason for all terrible internal struggles, peacelessness, struggles, fears, and psychological problems is the terrible burden of guilt. He is training people in those old times about the importance of cultivating a clean conscience. God is training His people to maintain a sensitive conscience. If in that old time, God is training sensitive consciences in His people, how much more important this is in the New Testament. As a New Testament believer, this passage teaches us there is no more important task in the life of a Christian than the maintenance of a clean and sensitive conscience. We should reject a just outward religion that is satisfied with a clean outward moral, merely in the eyes of men. You just want to be clean before the court of men. We should strive to be clean before our own consciences!
Think. When you gave 100 Rs, the shopkeeper thought you gave 500 and gave you things for 50 Rs and gave you change for 450 Rs. You say it is providence. No, you can never take that with a good conscience. Or other small secret, small crimes. You cheat or twist rules, do some things and get a benefit, but there’s no paper trail whatsoever. No man knows anything about this. You’re never going to be charged in the eyes of man. No court, police, or IT department can punish you for it. It is not a scandalous sin; it is a small, secret sin. The church would never discipline you for that particular private sin. So you’re a member in good standing. No one knows your crime. Is that kind of religion adequate for you? Is that the kind of religion that God calls you to experience? Is that true holiness? Can God be satisfied with that kind of superficial holiness?
The guilt offering shows, no. You have to be clean before the court of your conscience. You don’t live a clean life only before the government or human courts, but before the court of your own conscience and before God.
But there is a private scandal that goes on maybe inside the doors of your heart that only you know about. But you are whitewashed clean in the eyes of men, but not in the eyes of God with a good conscience. Didn’t our Lord repeatedly rebuke the Pharisees for this kind of religion? “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.” Luke 16:15.
In this old offering, God shows the court of the conscience is the most crucial tribunal in this life. And we need to labor hard to be blameless at that tribunal. I mean the court of conscience that is enlightened by the law of God. Who cares what the courts of the world, IT, or government say? We know how low and many times wrong they are. Are we going to think we are holy saints because no one catches us and the government doesn’t accuse? The issue is, what does God know? Oh, the importance of cultivating a tenderness of conscience.
Our eternal hope of should make us live such a life.
Paul says in Acts 24:15-16, “Having a hope in God, which these men cherish themselves, that there shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. In view of this, I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men.” He may have written that the day after he had his daily devotions in Leviticus 5 and 6. This issue of conscience was so important. We should be cultivating a good conscience before the living God. Our progress in the path of sanctification is directly related to how much we maintain a good and a clear conscience. It is not easy. Oh, what a terrible feeling. We’ve got to consider our deeds, our thoughts, our emotions, our attitudes, even our ignorance, and how much sin we have in our lives.
Sit and think of your sins from this perspective. You will realize the shock that fish felt jumping from a small aquarium to the ocean. We see the oceanic character of our sin. This guilt offering not only shows the importance of a clean conscience, but how we can have a clean conscience. We can maintain a clean conscience when we atone for our sins against our neighbor and God.
First, how, before men. If we have done anything wrong to people, it is not enough to just say sorry. To have a clean conscience, as much as possible, set things right with men. Do restitution.
We must understand when God gave a law. The eighth commandment says, “Thou shalt not steal.” God is a serious God. God is not only the protector of his own property, but He is also the protector of every man’s property. If we have cheated anyone in any way, try to set that right. That is why Zacchaeus, in Luke 19, received the gospel. What is the first fruit of his receiving the gospel? Zacchaeus says in Luke 19:8-9, “If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give it back four times as much,” according to Levitical law, Exodus law. And what was Jesus’ response when He heard that? “Today, salvation has visited this home.” Why? Because this man is bringing forth the fruits of salvation in keeping with righteousness. Not only did Zacchaeus confess his sin to God and ask forgiveness from God, but he also made himself right with man horizontally. John the Baptist taught the genuineness of that repentance is seen by the act of restitution. It wasn’t a cheap repentance.
If we have emotionally done harm to anyone, as we saw in conflicts, we should always set that right to have a clean conscience. Matthew 5:23, “Here’s a man who’s trying to make himself right with God, but he finds out he has a debt he owes to a man. Look what he does. Jesus says, ‘If therefore you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.'”
That’s why we must teach our children. “Alright? You hit your brother. And now you’ve got a spanking. And now, you must pray to God, ‘Dear Lord, please forgive me of my sin.'” Is she done? No, she’s got to go to her brother and tell her brother, “I’m sorry, Robert, that I struck you. Please forgive me.” Forgiveness does not allow us to forget the damage done, but requires us in repentance and with confession to make the wrong right as far as possible. We cannot think that heavenly confession and forgiveness absolves us of earthly obligation.
The second thing is not only a clean conscience before men. “Okay, I have restored to man all wrongs I have done.” Is that adequate for a clean conscience? No. Even if Zacchaeus pays fourfold, it’s inadequate to make him right with God. The only way we can be restored before God is He needs a ram. Verse 15, “a ram without defect.”
In this book, we again look at the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ from multiple angles or multiple pictures. Consider how in the burnt offering we have a personal picture. We see that the animal in the burnt offering personally absorbs the fatal blow which is really deserved by the worshipper, and that bull is really the Lord Jesus Christ who is the substitute taking the lethal blow that we sinners deserve. That’s one angle of the burnt offering. It makes our person acceptable and loved by God.
Then we have the sin offering giving us another angle. It is not a personal picture, but a medical picture of infection. Remember how in that sin offering we saw how sin contaminates the sinner, making him unfit for the presence of God. He is defiled by sin. How can he be atoned for? God banishes him from the camp with the sacrifices. He takes the whole animal outside the camp and burns it. He is defiled and infected, but the blood of the lamb sprinkled disinfects him from his sin so that now after the sin offering, the sinner can draw nigh to God and He draws nigh to us.
But here we find a third picture, a third angle in this guilt offering. It’s not a personal picture or a medical picture, it’s an economic picture. An economic picture where we see in this, the guilt offering, that sin is a deep debt that man incurs before God and owes to God. A deep debt! The guilt offering required financial compensation according to the shekel of the sanctuary, the particular form of money that was employed and utilized in the sanctuary. And some kind of financial payment or fine was imposed for an act of sacrilege. It was a total satisfaction of every claim that sin might exercise upon the sinner.
Oh, do we see the debt of our sins? We may think it was in crores. We are not hearing about these unknown sins or conscience-defiling sins. Our debt of sins is not billions, not trillions, but infinitillion of dollars we owe to the living God. And consider God’s exact justice. God would deal with our sins according to His exact justice. Every penny will be collected. The eternal enslavement in hell with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that would be ours. We shall not be released until we pay the last farthing. What do we have in our pockets to pay off the living God? Nothing. We have a negative balance. It will never pay off even a penny of what we owe Godward. It’s all worthless in our trying to repay the theft that we have given toward dishonoring and robbing God of His honor and of His name. So, brethren, we are destined to an eternal agony of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the quarry of hell. What a debt that is ours.
It is this desperate situation for us. Isaiah 53 says, “Christ, he became our guilt offering.” What did the Lord do? “The Lord was pleased to crush him.” “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” Christ is the ram who can pay off that debt in full. Whatever it is that is owed to God because of our sin that renders us guilty, Jesus bore it. In fact, He’s paid it off in red. Paid in full, it says in the heavenly accounting books, according to heaven’s shekel weight.
But brethren, behold the Lamb of God who paid for the sins of the world, paid for the sins of every tribe and tongue and kindred and nation. You behold His payment, brethren. Consider how in the garden of Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha, abandoned by the Father and shouting out, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” And then we see Him breathing out His last breath and saying, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head because, brethren, He paid it to the last farthing. What you and I owe, an infinitillion more dollars, we owe to the living God. Blessed be God. He paid it to the last farthing. Remember Isaiah, because he offered himself as a guilt offering, all the blessings of justification, adoption, and eternal life came to him. Praise his name.
Hebrews 10:22 says, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”
Oh, it’s at the heart of the gospel, my friends! The substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf.
“Jesus paid it all; all to Him I owe.”
For a clean conscience now, we don’t bring rams or goats. We come with the blood of Jesus and look to that, to the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ shed for me. He gave Himself up for me, in my place, in my stead. There is forgiveness. No matter what the sin, my friend, no matter how great the sin, you go to Jesus, there is forgiveness for you, a clean conscience before God, my friend. Praise God, there is. Praise God, there is.
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 