Say Something

See, I I think that Leviticus would probably disagree with JT and tell us that oftentimes, the greatest way to say something is to actually say something. That I believe when it comes to our spirit, our soul, that sin seeks silence. The quiet is where your sin thrives and it grows. Avoidance keeps the wounds and fractures open. Healing begins when we say something, when truth is revealed. And this is important for your spiritual life, but it's also important for everyday life. I mean, for example, this is a true story. The other day, [00:33:58] (38 seconds)  #SilenceLetsSinGrow

Each of those three offerings were all about building and maturing relationship with God. But sin and disobedience breaks that relationship. And so these last two offerings, the sin offering and the guilt offering everybody say sin. Sin. Everybody say guilt. Guilt. The sin and the guilt offering are both offerings that say, I'm sorry. [00:37:50] (24 seconds)  #SinAndGuiltOfferings

And so someone stepped out of the crowd to try and comfort him saying, stop stop crying. Look. Look. They loved it. You were you were spectacular, but he continued to weep. Stop weeping. Don't you see? They've they've given you a standing ovation. Everyone in here is on their feet. But the violinist said, not everybody. There's one man in the front row who's not standing. That's one man in this ocean of people. Who cares about one person? Said, I know it's one man, but that man is my teacher. And if he's not pleased, I'm not pleased. [00:40:16] (45 seconds)  #OneJudgeMatters

Sin is so much more than breaking the rules. Sin is being out of sync with the master. It's playing for the crowd. It may be even getting their applause, but completely missing the heart of the one who taught you how to play, who created you to play. That's what God is doing in Leviticus is giving giving the the rules. He's setting the rhythm to let us know when we step out, whenever we get out of sync, when we go out of rhythm of God, don't ignore it. Don't pretend that the applause is enough. Get back into God's rhythm. [00:41:01] (46 seconds)  #StayInGodsRhythm

I was trying to describe somebody this week why Leviticus is so hard to read, and I'm I'm not really a car person. And whenever I've, like, looked in, like, the manual on the car, and it's like, screw l one should go into bracket c four in order to attach the carburetor to the and it just get I'm like, what is all this? Like, I I have no idea. And that's for something I drive today. The Leviticus is the instruction manual for how God used to interface with his people, which means it's an archaic instruction manual on how to worship God. [00:43:26] (30 seconds)  #LeviticusInstructionManual

I think that this is addressing what the Bible calls our sinful nature, that we naturally drift towards what we prefer over what God commands, that we kind of wanna do something right. I mean, we do. We wanna do the right thing, but we also kind of like to do what we like. And there's a struggle between the two. The the struggle with our with our sinful nature is described in Romans verse seventeen fifteen. The author says this, I don't understand what I do. For what I wanna do, I don't do. But what I hate, I do. [00:45:42] (35 seconds)  #WarBetweenFleshAndSpirit

If that's the case, I'm gonna eat the Oreos. Alright? They're clearly healthier apparently. And so I did that. I read that, and I was like, this is this is insane. I I have new information now. But I didn't know. I was just going based off the pictures. The pictures look healthy. It says cliff. It doesn't say, like, sweet or anything like that. Like, this seems like this is a healthy choice. But when I read the ingredients, I had new information. It gave me clarity on the actions of my life. And it left me with a decision. [00:51:11] (27 seconds)  #RestitutionMatters

See, God God knows that we're gonna drift. And we know this because Leviticus four verse two, it doesn't say, if the people of Israel sin. It says when the people of Israel sin. He assumes you're gonna drift. He's watching to see how you'll respond to it. Repentance, obedience, it's not about perfection. It's about responsiveness. And the way God told them Old Testament to respond was with the sin offering. The sin offering was the way to return to God when we wander in our own spiritual nature, our own sinful nature that we drift towards our selfishness. [00:52:27] (46 seconds)  #JesusBridgesTheGap

It starts off it seems kind. I mean, hey, my bad. Here's a little bit of money. That seems thoughtful until you see the damage. And if that's the kind of damage you create on my car, you don't need to leave a note. I don't care about your empty apology. I want the problem to be fixed. Saying sorry is all fine and good. Repair is better. How many of you are carrying hurt and trauma and pain and loss because someone else did not bother to try and repair the damage they caused? It's probably true of every single one of us in here. [00:56:13] (40 seconds)  #NotJustForgivenRestored

But how many of us have caused trauma and pain and damage and loss and not worked to repair it? The answer is every single one of us. Because the Bible says in Genesis six six, in Ezekiel six nine, in Isaiah fifty three five, in Ephesians four thirty, each time it describes our sin as grieving and wounding God. And sure, there's times in my life where it's been unintentional, where it's been my natural sin, my my inclination towards myself that I've wandered from him. But there have certainly been times in my life where I have deliberately and purposefully rejected the command of God, where I have brazenly disobeyed him. [00:56:54] (57 seconds)  #JesusWillMakeAllNew

And Numbers fifteen thirty tells us something distressing about our purposeful sin. It says, but those who brazenly violate the Lord's will, whether native born Israelites or foreigners, have blasphemed the Lord, and they must be cut off from the community. There's no sacrifice here. There's nothing to make it right. When we have deliberately sinned and disobeyed the command of God, the recipe God gave was for those people to be cut off and rejected. They could not be in his community. They could not be in his presence, which means for each one of us that have wounded and grieved God, what hope do we have? [00:57:51] (45 seconds)  #ReturnAndRepair

That's the same question that King David in the Old Testament, this man who was clearly described as such a godly man that he yearned, he chased after the heart of God. But David himself, he deliberately rebelled against God. If you read his story, there's a time where he has an affair with his friend's wife, and she becomes pregnant. And so he tries to cover it up, but his plan falls apart in the cover up because his friend is too loyal to him, because his friend was too godly. And in David's frustration, he solved the problem by having his friend murdered. It doesn't get much more brazen than that. [00:58:37] (35 seconds)  #LetJesusFixIt

What we've learned to this point in Leviticus from from the sin and the guilt offering is that sin must be dealt with and damage must be repaired. But the offerings and the laws of God, they worked for wanderers, but there's nothing that could be done for the rebels. Nothing that could be done for us. And so if God's laws and God's sacrifices and God's commands couldn't reach us, someone else had to, and that's where Jesus stepped in. Second Corinthians five twenty one says, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. [01:00:23] (50 seconds)

Romans eight describes the fallout of sin, that it's more than just relational or between humanity, that our sin even infected creation itself. It says that all of creation groans for the return of Christ, not because creation needs forgiveness, but because it needs healing. And we feel that groaning too. We feel the pain and fallout of sin, sin that we've done and sin that other people have done to us, that we're groaning and we feel the severity. We feel the overwhelming pervasiveness and brokenness of sin in our world, which is why Jesus didn't just forgive. He he will return, and every single thing that sin has touched, he will make new. [01:04:57] (48 seconds)

He won't just patch. He won't just cover. He restores it all. Some of you today are still carrying the guilt that Jesus forgave. What Jesus did on the on the cross, the price was paid. You have been forgiven, but so many continue to live in the wreckage, the cycle of your selfish sin. And you know it. You know there's something off between you and God. There's some some conflict between you and somebody else. There's something inside of you that is wrong. Don't ignore that. Say something. Do something. Come back to God. Make it right. Ask for Jesus to repair what has been broken. [01:05:45] (66 seconds)

Go and apologize. Reach out. Give your life to God. Don't stay silent. Say something. Because Jesus, he paid the price both to fix you and fix what you have broken. Jesus doesn't just say, I forgive you. He says, come here. Let me fix it. Let me pray for you. [01:06:51] (39 seconds)

I think we so often stop short at Jesus forgiving us, That we recognize that, well, if the Bible says that Jesus has forgiven my sin and that he will forgive everything I've done, why don't I just keep doing? But this is what the guilt offering gives such clarification for. It's not just enough to say sorry. Repair is so much better. That God, we have damaged ourselves. We have damaged our relationship with you. We have damaged other people. And to continue to sin, continues to drive that hurt and brokenness and trauma further without ever working to repair. So, God, I pray that you make it clear that you give us the nutritional guide to our spirit so we can see with profound clarity how our choices are affecting and damaging our soul and people around us. [01:07:36] (47 seconds)