The Sin Offering

In one paragraph

Week three of the Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves series landed in Leviticus 3, the fellowship offering. Brian walked the congregation through the blood sacrifice not as a picture of an angry God demanding payment, but as something God himself designed so that people could draw close to him. The whole conversation kept circling back to the same idea: the blood is not what we might think it is. Brian...

Read together

1. Leviticus 3:1-17 read aloud by congregation members as the main teaching text on the fellowship offering
2. Leviticus 17:11 quoted to show that the life of the body is in the blood and that God gave the blood on the altar to purify and make right with him
3. Psalm 15 read in full to show who may enter God's presence, paralleling the requirement for a blameless animal
4. Numbers 27:18-20 cited to explain the laying on of hands as the transmission of essence and appointment of a representative, as Moses commissioned Joshua
5. 1 John 4:9-10 read to show that God sent his son as a sacrifice out of love, not because man sought God first
6. Psalm 139 referenced during the offering prayer, inviting people to pray that God would search their heart and point out anything that offends him

What was said

• Read Leviticus chapters 3 and 16 this week with the frame Brian gave you: this is God's blueprint for intimacy, not a record of a bloodthirsty god demanding payment.
• Bring a meal to the young adult Tuesday gathering, sign up on the sheet in the kitchen, and ask Brian for the details.
• Show up at Town Square at 5pm today to stand with the Jewish community and pray for the hostages still not home.
• Pick one spot to serve in the Tribe family this week, whether that is signing up for a snack or coffee week or talking to Lanisha about helping with the older elementary kids.
• Sit with the question Brian kept asking: is Jesus actually the leader of your life, or are you doing him a favor by showing up on Sundays?

Talk about it

1. Brian said that for a life-giving relationship with God, something has to die, and that you can have a casual, distant, fear-based, or rule-based relationship without that exchange happening. Where would you honestly place your own relationship with God on that spectrum right now?
2. Brian described the common picture of God as angry and bloodthirsty, needing to be appeased, and said that framing is brought straight from the pagan world into how many people read the Bible. Where did your own picture of God come from, and how has it changed or stayed the same over time?
3. The laying on of hands on the animal was described not as transferring sin but as appointing a representative, transmitting your essence onto a blameless animal so that your life, symbolically in the blood, could ascend to the altar and come near to God. What does it do to how you think about Jesus when you see his role through that lens?
4. Psalm 15 asks who may enter the presence of God, and the answer is only the blameless. Brian connected that directly to why the sacrificial animal had to be without defect. How does that standard land on you personally, and what does it make you feel about what Jesus did?
5. Someone in the room pointed out that God asking Israel to burn the lobe of the liver, a detail that sounds arbitrary, was actually pulling them away from a pagan divination practice, and that every strange detail in Leviticus had a purpose for their good. Is there something God has asked of you that has not made sense yet, and what would it look like to trust him with it the way Israel was asked to trust him with the liver?