Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: When blood is applied to people in
[00:00:01] Speaker B: the Torah, it marks a transition, one realm to another, in the direction of greater holiness, greater access, greater intimacy with God.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Blood at the covenant inauguration bonds God and people. Blood at Aaron's ordination transforms the blood of the Tzarat. It purifies from the realm of death to life. No sin, no substitution. None of them involve punishment. The blood from a sin offering is not used on people. Never. These rituals, these things cannot have anything to do with substituting for someone else's
[00:00:41] Speaker B: death or deserved penalty.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: And yet blood remains the most powerful substance in the sacrificial system.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: When blood touches people, it changes their status, gives them access, restores relationship.
Blood equals access.
That is the pattern.
A few questions, a few people that were somewhat confused by last week. It was a message to think on for a lot of people.
Basically what we talked about is that the Passover lamb was not a sin sacrifice. It was not penal substitution.
The blood on the doorpost was a sign of protection and identity.
It was not a payment for punishment.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: The Passover, even after it was brought
[00:01:44] Speaker B: into the temple system, was classified.
As a peace offering, a shelamim, a well being offering, a communion offering, not a sin offering, not an atoning sacrifice. And someone will say and has said, But Exodus 12:27, which is happening right
[00:02:15] Speaker A: around the Passover scene, calls the Passover a sacrifice. It calls it a Zevach Pesach.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: And the context of that statement, if you read the context, is a child
[00:02:31] Speaker B: asking, what does this ceremony mean to you?
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Looking back on it and the Torah
[00:02:36] Speaker B: answers the parent saying to the child,
[00:02:39] Speaker A: it's the Passover sacrifice who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, our homes, he spared.
By the time. It was a Zevach Pesach, a sacrifice,
[00:02:52] Speaker B: it was a memorial.
Now, once the tabernacle was built, yes, the priesthood was established.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: The Passover entered the sacrificial system.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: That is very real, that it was a sacrifice.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: But the question that I kind of
[00:03:09] Speaker B: left on the table was what kind of sacrifice and for what purpose?
[00:03:17] Speaker A: So if we establish that the Passover lamb was not a sacrifice, but after the fact, in all memorial looking back, it was a sacrifice in the temple, great we why? What does it do?
What's it about?
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Because the modern Bible reader hears the word sacrifice. And here's one thing. Usually someone died so that sin can be forgiven. Death as a payment. That's the instinct, that's the lens.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: But if that is the lens through which you look at everything sacrifice related,
[00:03:57] Speaker B: then you're looking Wrong, sin and blood
[00:04:01] Speaker A: and substitution and atonement.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: And all of these big words, they
[00:04:05] Speaker A: all get collapsed into one single category, death.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: And so today, the lenses, specifically, as we work through this series, we take off these lenses of psa, penal, substitutionary atonement. And what we find is that sacrifice in the Torah is much, much, much more varied, far more beautiful, far more relational than most people in the world have ever been taught. And the Torah describes multiple categories of offerings, most of them having nothing to do with sin.
And even those things that do have to do with sin, that word needs some expansion to understand it. We'll do that later.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: The ones that do involve blood are
[00:04:57] Speaker B: doing things with that blood, which should fundamentally change how we understand Yeshua's blood.
And I want to be clear that
[00:05:09] Speaker A: this is not an exhaustive study on
[00:05:11] Speaker B: the sacrifices in Leviticus.
That's not really. There are many, many resources that are beyond detailed about those specifics. That's another kind of.
For the next few segments in this series, let's focus on what sacrifice actually is as we bring it ultimately all
[00:05:32] Speaker A: back around, eventually to the sacrifice of
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Jesus and how we should biblically understand that.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: Now, I will recommend you should take
[00:05:43] Speaker B: some notes because we are going deep
[00:05:48] Speaker A: and I do this once a year
[00:05:50] Speaker B: in a long series. This one's not as long as others, but you will not remember what I say.
You can go back and read it and listen to it, but notes are helpful when we get into these kinds of studies.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: So let's start with the most foundational offering in the entire system. It is called the Tamid.
The Tamid. The daily burnt offering. It is an offering, Olah, Olah. An elevation offering offered every single morning in the temple morning and every single evening. Exodus 29, Numbers 28. The text of your Bible calls these pleasing aromas. Fire offerings of pleasing aromas to me.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: God speaking at their appointed times.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Pleasing aroma to me. Holah.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: It means to ascend.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: The offering goes up, the aroma ascends. And in some supernatural way, it attracts
[00:06:56] Speaker B: God to the altar. He meets with the Israelites there.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: That is the purpose, not payment, not penalty.
Presence.
The Tamid is an invitation.
An invitation, a daily summons of God's presence to dwell among his people. Twice a day, every day, year after year after year. And again. Hear me clearly, it has nothing to do with sin.
However, last week I read you a quote from gotquestions.org, one of the go to websites in all of the world for people who have Bible questions. And it read every morning and evening a lamb was sacrificed in the temple for the sins of the people.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: That is not true.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: And the most widely read Christian apologetics
[00:08:01] Speaker B: answer site says that to the entire
[00:08:05] Speaker A: world that is a problem.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: It is not what the text says.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: It's not what the offering is for. This is a sacrifice that God delighted in. It was relational. It was about nearness. It was not about any kind of debt.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: And it matters because if the most
[00:08:29] Speaker A: frequent sacrifice in the system that comes twice a day every day was not about sin and the assumption that sacrifices are about sin, it's already on a very, very unstable footing by looking at one thing.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Most of the bleeding burning altar work in the tabernacle was never about atonement.
This is a word that needs its own week.
We'll come back to it. That's not this week.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: It was about God wanting to be near his people. Have we gotten that established?
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Now I want to transition from that
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Olah the Tamid to what the category that we said Passover actually belongs to. The sacrifice that Passover belongs to, which we learned about last week, the Shalomim.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: I mentioned it.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: The well being offering, the peace offering, sometimes translated the communion offering, fellowship offer, offering. Every one of those names is telling you what the sacrifice is about.
Relationship, community, celebration, communion.
This is the Torah of the sacrifice of well being. It says that anyone may offer to God.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Numbers 15 as well tells us that there were three kinds of a vow
[00:10:04] Speaker A: offering, a freewill offering, a thanksgiving offering, and it's eaten together with family. Remember Passover, Pesach, the sacrifice, Shel Amim, Eaten with people. This makes sense, right? And here's something really also important that you may never have noticed. Something that accompanies them. You bring grain and wine with these offerings. In other words, we've got a complete meal, a protein, a carb and some booze.
God's eating is of course metaphorical, but the concept is really interesting when you think about this. When you bring a peace offering, you're sharing a meal with God.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Bread, wine, meat. A table set for human and divine to sit down together.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Deuteronomy 27 says, you shall sacrifice peace offerings and eat them there. Rejoicing before the Lord.
Rejoicing before the Lord. Not trembling, not cowering, not begging for mercy. Rejoicing, eating together. Now, if you grew up or currently exist in a version of Christianity where the primary emotional posture that we bring before God is one of guilt, where the whole point of worship is reminding yourself how unworthy you are and how angry God is at you, until Jesus stepped in
[00:11:48] Speaker B: that's not what's happening here.
The most communal, most participatory sacrifice in the Torah is defined by joy.
The people eat in God's presence and the Torah uses the word rejoice. There's a rabbinic commentary on Leviticus called Sifra that says.
It says one who brings a Shelamim, One who brings. One brings peace to the world.
One who brings peace offerings brings peace to the world. And when you realize that Passover was a memorial thanksgiving offering and Yeshua is
[00:12:38] Speaker A: referenced as our Passover, that actually takes
[00:12:41] Speaker B: on quite an enormous weight.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Will come back. But in the sacrificial system. I want you to remember something important.
The laity can eat from a non atoning sacrifice.
You and I can eat from a non atoning sacrifice.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Ordinary people sharing, they cannot eat from an atoning sacrifice.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: The priests can eat from atoning sacrifices on behalf of others, but not on themselves.
People themselves.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Listen to me.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: People themselves.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: Never ever eat a sin offering.
I just want these little things. This is why a notepad is helpful.
So here's your rule of thumb.
If the people eat from it, it's not about sin.
And the Passover lamb always eaten by everybody. That's kind of the whole point of Passover. This family meal, a table, shared shalomim. One more thing.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: The thanksgiving of the Shel Amim has a memorial component.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: You can see it throughout the Bible.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: It commemorates a past event of God's saving significance. Look in 1 Samuel 10, 1 Samuel 11, 1st Kings 3, 2 Kings 16, Judges 20. These are offerings of remembrance and gratitude. They are not transactions of guilt. And you will keep this in mind, I beg you, as we work our way towards the Lord's Supper.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: But another thing, and this is a biggie, one of the most important scenes in the entire Bible is in Exodus 24, when we come to the ratification of the covenant at Mount Sinai.
And starting in verse four, you'll remember it. We read it not too long ago.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Moses wrote down all the words.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: He rose early.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: He built an altar at the base of the mountain. He sent young men, they offered olot burning offerings and shelamim burning peace offerings to the Lord.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: Now listen and pay attention to the sequence.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: First an olah.
First an invitation. The ascending aroma that draws God near. And then the peace offering, the shel amim in the presence of God. The shared meal, the communion. That's the pattern. You invite God and then you eat with him. And the olah comes before the shel amim invitation, communion. That's how you set the table with God. And then the blood.
Moses took half the blood, he put it in bowls. The other half he sprinkled on the altar.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: You remember this.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: Then he took the book of the covenant and he read it aloud to the people. And they replied, all the Lord has spoken. We shall do, we shall hear. And Moses took the remaining blood and sprinkled it on the people.
This is the blood of the covenant of the Lord that the Lord is making with you regarding all these words. He took the blood and sprinkled it on the people. And then in verse nine through eleven, Moses went up with Aaron, his sons, the seventy elders of Israel. And the text says they looked upon God. They ate and they drank.
That's a big scene.
They ate and drank in the presence of God, after the blood had been applied and the covenant was ratified.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: And if you look at what's present
[00:16:31] Speaker A: in this scene, we have sacrifices, burnt, offering to bring God peace, offering for the meal, blood on the altar, God's side, blood on the people, their side.
The covenant read and agreed to.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: Then the feast.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Now, what is not here?
There is no confession of sin. There's no language of guilt. There's no language of punishment. There's no transfer of penalty. The blood is not paying for anything.
It's bonding.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Two parties together, blood bonding, bringing.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: It is a covenant inauguration, a marriage
[00:17:17] Speaker B: ceremony, if you will.
And the meal that follows is the wedding feast. Now picture it, because this is a
[00:17:23] Speaker A: really important moment between God and humans.
They eat, there's a celebration. There's no satisfaction of wrath, and there's no blood absorbing penalties. That blood, however, made the relationship official.
That is the Bible's picture of what
[00:17:45] Speaker B: blood between God and people looks like.
In the Torah, sin offerings follow very specific blood protocols. The blood goes on the altar, the
[00:17:59] Speaker A: horns of the altar.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: Sometimes it's carried into the deeper places of the temple.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: But there is a rule that holds without exception. Blood of a sin offering is never applied to people.
Just like people don't eat sin offerings, the blood is never applied to people. Never.
In Exodus 24, blood is sprinkled directly on the people. Right away, we know this is not a sin offering. It's not an atoning ritual. The blood is connective, sealing, making the relationship physical and real.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: And many Old Testament scholars, Tanakh scholars,
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Hebrew Bible, they understand this.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: The blood is relational.
It binds God and people.
And every layer, every layer of the system is going to point us in the same direction toward relationship, toward closeness. And this pattern, we see also this pattern of blood bonding, covenant, not just here. Joshua 8 We have a renewal of the covenant. King Asa, 2nd Chronicles 15, the entering into covenant, repairing the altar, gathering Judah,
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Benjamin, Hezekiah, later, even King Manasseh, the evil dude. The covenant is inaugurated and renewed.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: And in every case, blood is relational, not penal, punitive.
Now, Exodus 24 is unique because the blood is being sprinkled on these people. That does not repeat in these renewals. But the function is what I want you to see.
Blood in this context is not a penalty. It is a seal.
So when you hear later at the table Yeshua saying, this is the blood of my covenant, think about where that phrase comes from. It is a connector back to Exodus 24, carrying the meaning of bonding and inauguration. A new thing being sealed between God and his people.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: And here it's not any blood, he says, it's my blood. But what's in that blood?
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Not a punishment being absorbed, not wrath being satisfied. It's covenant.
Now, blood in the Torah does not just bond, it also transforms.
It changes the very status of people. And we can look in Exodus 29 at the ordination of Aaron. This is where we have another unique
[00:21:00] Speaker A: instance of blood being applied to people.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Do you remember the inauguration of the priesthood?
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Blood dabbed on Aaron's right ear, his
[00:21:10] Speaker B: right thumb, his big toe.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Blood goes on the altar. Then blood from the altar is sprinkled
[00:21:15] Speaker B: on Aaron and his garments and his sons.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: What do we know about that blood? It has nothing to do with sin. It's not a sin sacrifice.
It's not an atoning sacrifice. It's an ordination sacrifice. And what it accomplishes.
Big, nice scholarly word. A metaphysical transition.
Blood, a metaphysical transition. Aaron was
[00:21:49] Speaker B: common and now holy.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Aaron was an ordinary man. After this blood ritual, he is an ordained priest. He can now enter sacred space. He can stand before God in the tabernacle. Nothing about the blood has anything to do with sin, but it's changed him into something else.
It elevated him. It made him fit for the role he was being called to. From common to consecrated.
Not punishment, not even substitution elevation. He's now the guy who can walk into the holy of holies. And why?
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Because the blood made the difference.
Another amazing example of a status change. You may have never really paid that much attention to this.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: It's not everyone's favorite topic to study Tzarat and the idea of biblical leprosy. But in Leviticus 14, we have the purification of the person healed from Tzarat.
Remember this, a person, they have this skin, this condition. They undergo a purification process. And in that process, remember what happened with Aaron. In the process of the person with Tzarat, blood is placed on their right ear, their right thumb, their right big toe. Same locations. You have the same pattern, same thing as Aaron. Why?
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Because there is a transformation occurring here.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: The rabbis look at those with Sirot and say, that is as close to dead as one can get without being dead.
And through the blood and the application
[00:23:35] Speaker B: of the blood to the person, there
[00:23:38] Speaker A: is a metaphysical transition that occurs that brings this person from as close to death as can be to alive again
[00:23:49] Speaker B: and reconnected with God.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: How?
[00:23:52] Speaker B: Blood.
But I want you to notice something really interesting about this.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: By the time this occurs, this person
[00:24:04] Speaker B: no longer is afflicted with Tzarat.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Have you ever paid attention to this?
The purification has occurred before the sacrifice even took place.
The blood is not a cure.
The healing has already happened.
The blood restores, transforms, change of category, not medical intervention. And so what do we see?
[00:24:36] Speaker B: What do we see when we lay it out?
[00:24:39] Speaker A: When blood is applied to people in
[00:24:40] Speaker B: the Torah, it marks a transition, one realm to another, in the direction of greater holiness, greater access, greater intimacy with God.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: Blood at the covenant inauguration bonds God and people. Blood at Aaron's ordination transforms the blood of the Tzerat. It purifies from the realm of death to life.
No sin, no substitution. None of them involve punishment. The blood from a sin offering is not used on people. Never.
These rituals, these things cannot have anything to do with substituting for someone else's
[00:25:21] Speaker B: death or deserved penalty.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: And yet blood remains the most powerful substance in the sacrificial system.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: When blood touches people, it changes their status, gives them access, restores relationship.
Blood equals access.
That is the pattern.
And I want you to notice how radically different that is from a story that many people hold to in penal substitutionary atonement. Blood is the price of sin.
It is the currency of divine wrath.
It represents death, and specifically the death of a substitute.
But in the actual Bible that we read and are supposed to study and
[00:26:21] Speaker A: understand, blood represents life.
Life. Leviticus 17:11 tells us that explicitly, the life of the flesh is in the blood. Blood bonds, it brings life, it transforms, it restores, not toward death and payment.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: But if you've been with me these last few weeks, you should see some pointers down the road that I'm laying down here.
This is a roadmap that takes us eventually to the cross and to the tomb and beyond.
If sacrifice in the Torah includes invitation, communion, bonding, covenant, metaphysical transformation, if Passover was always this well being, offering, memorial,
[00:27:18] Speaker A: thanksgiving, eaten by the people, if that's all the case, then you think about what the disciples would have heard when Yeshua said, this is my blood of the covenant.
They would not have heard God is about to punish me in your place.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: They would have heard Exodus 24.
They would have heard covenant, inauguration, bonding, blood sealing a new thing between God and his people.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: They would have heard peace offering, a shared meal in God's presence, where the tzaddik, the one with the divine favor, the cheyn we've been tracing is now going to offer us into eat with the Father. They would have heard Siphrah, the one who brings a peace offering brings peace to the world. Think about that in the frame of Jesus.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: And if blood on people means transformation
[00:28:23] Speaker A: from holy common to holy, death to life, then what does it mean to be, as the early believers would say, touched by the blood of Jesus?
As a young disciple like new in the faith coming out of Judaism, and people would always ask me, have you been washed in the blood of Jesus? I'd be like, what?
What?
What does that even mean?
[00:28:53] Speaker B: I can show you what it means.
We're learning what it means.
Slave to free, death, to life outside the covenant, to into it.
And we go there. Not today, but I want you carrying this framework as we move forward, because
[00:29:18] Speaker A: the lens, the lens, the lens you
[00:29:20] Speaker B: bring to the table.
These disciples that he's talking to, they knew these things when they heard covenant, they heard Sinai. When they heard blood, they heard bonding.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: When he broke bread, they heard Shelamim. These were not foreign things. This was their Bible.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: And so we see that that sacrifice in the Torah is not one thing. It's many, many, many things. Invitation, communion, bonding, transformation, memorial, thanksgiving. Most of it has nothing to do with sin.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: The daily offerings about God's presence, the peace offerings about sharing a table. The blood of the covenant is about relationship. The blood of the ordination is about access. The blood of the purification is about restoration.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: But some of the system does deal with sin, so we'll need to classify that term. There are sin offerings, there are guilt offerings, there are Yom Kippur ceremonies where
[00:30:24] Speaker A: the high priest enters the holy of
[00:30:25] Speaker B: holies once a year.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: He makes atonement for an entire nation. And there's a verse that sits in the middle of all of this in Leviticus 17, which I reference, which says, for the life of the flesh is in the blood. I've given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood by reason
[00:30:42] Speaker B: of the life that makes atonement that
[00:30:45] Speaker A: is actually cited as the proof text for substitutionary atonement.
The animal dies in your place. Its blood pays your debt. Its life is exchanged for yours. But read it again.
It makes atonement by reason of. Of life, not death.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: The blood is powerful because it carries life, not because it represents a killing. And the word kipper in Hebrew, atonement itself does not mean what most people think it means. It doesn't mean punishment absorbed. Meaning is far, far, far richer, more demanding than that. And so we'll go into the heart of it.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: What is atonement? What does kipper actually do? What are sin offerings actually for? What is the difference between ritual purity and moral purity? And why does it matter?
And what does Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, actually look like when you read it intentionally, without the glasses of penal substitutionary atonement?
Because if we don't get it right, everything, Everything downstream.
Everything downstream. The cross, the blood, the resurrection, the life of discipleship, all of it is wrong.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: So stay with me.
Shabbat Shalom.
[00:32:20] Speaker C: I'm Darren with Shalom Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step.
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