BROADCASTS.com

Welcome to Day 2401 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom \u2013 Theology Thursday \u2013 Is There Really a Sin Offering? \u2013 I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible Wisdom-Trek Podcast Script - Day 2401 Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! I am Guthrie Chamberlain, and we are on Day 2401 of our Trek. The Purpose of Wisdom-Trek is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. \xa0 Today is the tenth lesson in our segment, Theology Thursday. Utilizing excerpts from a book titled: I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible written by Hebrew Bible scholar and professor the late Dr. Michael S Heiser, we will invest a couple of years going through the entire Bible, exploring short Biblical lessons that you may not have received in Bible classes or Church. The Bible is a wonderful book. Its pages reveal the epic story of God\u2019s redemption of humankind and the long, bitter conflict against evil. Yet it\u2019s also a book that seems strange to us. While God\u2019s Word was written for us, it wasn\u2019t written to us. Today, our lesson is, Is There Really a Sin Offering? Hebrews 10:4 asserts, For it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins, but Leviticus seems to tell a different story. Even casually reading the book, we notice that Israelites who bring proper sacrifices \u201cshall be forgiven\u201d (e.g., Lev 4:20, 26, 31, 35: 5:10, 13, 16, 18). Have we reached an impasse? Rather than labeling this a contradiction, we might examine our own perceptions of Old Testament sacrifices\u2014specifically, the sin offering. \u201cSin-offering\u201d is a translation of the Hebrew term chatta\u2019 t, which has the basic meaning of \u201cto miss the mark\u201d or \u201cto fall short.\u201d In using a traditional, familiar rendering, many English Bible translations cause us to misunderstand this sacrifice. The Goal of the Sin Offering The label \u201csin offering\u201d assumes that the goal of this sacrifice was forgiveness for moral failures or violations\u2014sins as we think of them. Leviticus reveals this is not the case. The sin offering was used in cases where people suffered from a bodily discharge (Lev 15), at the dedication of a new altar (Lev 8), or when a Nazirite completes a vow of abstinence (Lev 12). The fundamental goal of the sin offering was ritual purification. It was designed to guard sacred space\u2014territory sanctified by God\u2019s presence\u2014from infection by impurity. By definition, every person or object \u201cfalls short\u201d of divine perfection and must be ritually marked (set apart) as acceptable for holy ground. The sin offering\u2014better rendered as a \u201cpurification offering\u201d\u2014was therefore applied to people and inanimate objects to mark them as acceptable before God. These people (and objects) were not unacceptable because they had done evil, but because they were imperfect\u2014they \u201cfell short\u201d of the holy perfection that God\u2019s presence required. The ritual reinforced the idea of the complete otherness of God. Depending on the individual\u2019s status in the community\u2014whether priest or commoner\u2014the blood of the offering was either used outside or inside the sanctuary. The blood was brought inside the sanctuary when the sin