PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Leviticus 4:1–3
The Lord said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites: ‘When anyone sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands—
“‘If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, he must bring to the Lord a young bull without defect as a sin offering for the sin he has committed.’”
CONSIDER THIS
How many of us have uttered the word oops when we’ve done something we didn’t mean to do? The history of this exclamation can be traced back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when it used to mean “lift up from a day of sorrow or regret.” The mistakes of our past often drag us down and we need a lift.
This week, our offering passage in Leviticus teaches us about the sin offering. I know it seems like all offerings address sin, but this particular offering was used to seek atonement for a specific category of sins and we’ll see how God uses the fourth type of offering to meet us in the mistakes of the burdens from our past that we carry into the present. This week we will see how the lessons from the sin offering help us respond and find freedom from our brokenness and regret, our thoughts, excuses, and shame.
The sin offering, or the chattath, was sometimes referred to as the purification offering and was different from the other offerings we’ve read about. First, chattath focused more on the sin than the sacrifice. Second, contrary to what you might assume given its name, this particular offering was given to seek purification for inadvertent sins and not deliberate ones. It was also given for sins where restitution was not possible. What does that mean? Think back to the very beginning of this Lenten season when we reflected on the fact that the world is not as it was designed. “On earth as it is in heaven” is what we long for because our fallen nature has spoiled God’s original creation and by ourselves, we cannot experience the presence of a Holy God.
Sin isn’t just a label we put on the choices we make, but it is the condition we find ourselves in because of the original sin in the garden. In short, we are sinners in need of a Savior and it is only through the provision of atonement we find forgiveness. Before Jesus came to earth, God provided a temporary atonement for the sins of the people and there was a division of inadvertent sins and deliberate sins. The sin offering was the way to receive purification for inadvertent sins like, Oops! I worked on the Sabbath. Or Oops! I forgot to participate in a cleansing ritual. It also provided purification at festivals or when a woman had become unclean due to childbirth.
The most important element in the sacrifice was the blood, but for us to understand, we need to reverse the way we look at blood. For us, when we see blood we think of something that is unclean, but for the Israelites, blood was like bleach. It was only through the blood that they could be made clean. What could wash away my sin and what can make me whole again? Anyone humming the great old hymn, “Nothing but the Blood” right now? This week, let’s continue to prepare our hearts and create intentional space to encounter God as we surrender the sins of the past for the freedom He promises.
THE PRAYER
Lord, thank You for making a way for us to have the gift of Your presence even though we don’t deserve it. We are stained with our sins, but You have made us clean again. Amen.
THE QUESTIONS
When you realize that you have made a mistake and sinned inadvertently, how does that change the way you pray for forgiveness? What are some sins you have committed that you have not brought to God and confessed?
For the Awakening,
Susan Kent
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One Response
As today’s post says: “We are sinners in need of a Savior.”
Everybody needs a Savior because “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Because of our inclination to sin all people make varying degrees of a mess in their life, in their relationships, and in the world we inhabit. Then we search for a savior. We look for a politician to be our savior, for the government to save us, for education to be our savior, for a career to save us, for a love interest to be our savior, for a therapist to save us, for money to be our savior, and on and on.
With the mess we’re in, we definitely need a Savior but there’s only One! His name is Jesus. He’s the Creator of all that exists who became a man, shed His blood on the Cross to pay the penalties for our sins, rose from the dead, returned to the right hand of the Father, and sent the Holy Spirit so that whoever is willing can now be filled with His presence and be personally guided and directed from within by Him moment-by-moment. (I wrote this last paragraph when I first woke up this morning before coming to and reading today’s Wake-Up Call.)