Leviticus 4:27

VERY much of interesting truth clusters around the sin-offering. The type is well worthy of the most careful consideration and I regret that we shall not have time, this morning, to enter into all its details. The reader of the chapter will perceive that it gives us four forms of the same sacrifice. These may be regarded as four views of the same thing, probably views taken by four classes of Believers according to their standing in the Divine life. Although all men who are saved have the same Savior, they have not the same apprehensions of Him.

VERY much of interesting truth clusters around the sin-offering. The type is well worthy of the most careful consideration and I regret that we shall not have time, this morning, to enter into all its details. The reader of the chapter will perceive that it gives us four forms of the same sacrifice. These may be regarded as four views of the same thing, probably views taken by four classes of Believers according to their standing in the Divine life. Although all men who are saved have the same Savior, they have not the same apprehensions of Him. We are all cleansed, if cleansed at all, by the same blood, but we have not all the same knowledge of the manner in which it is effectual for cleansing. The devout Hebrew had but one sin-offering, but that was set forth to him under varying symbols. The following remarks may aid you in understanding the type before us. The chapter begins with the sin-offering for the anointed priest, and describes it with the fullest detail. It then proceeds, in the 13th verse and onwards, to give the sin-offering for the whole congregation, and it is most notable that the sin-offering for the anointed priest is almost in every circumstance identical with the sin-offering for the whole congregation. Is not this designed to show to us that when Christ, our anointed Priest, took upon Himself the sin of all the congregation of God's chosen as His own there was demanded of Him the same expiation and atonement as would have been demanded of His people had they been reckoned with in their own persons? His Atonement for sins which were not His own, but which were laid upon Him by the Lord on our behalf, is equivalent to the penalty which would have been required of all the congregation of Believers for whom His blood was especially shed. This is a memorable lesson which ought not to be forgotten.

The common people - עם הארץ am haarets, the people of the land, that is, any individual who was not a priest, king, or ruler among the people; any of the poor or ordinary sort. Any of these, having transgressed through ignorance, was obliged to bring a lamb or a kid, the ceremonies being nearly the same as in the preceding cases. The original may denote the very lowest of the people, the laboring or agricultural classes. The law relative to the general cases of sins committed through ignorance, and the sacrifices to be offered on such occasions, so amply detailed in this chapter, may be thus recapitulated. For all sins and transgressions of this kind committed by the people, the prince, and the priest, they must offer expiatory offerings. The person so sinning must bring the sacrifice to the door of the tabernacle, and lay his hands upon its head, as in a case already referred to, acknowledging the sacrifice to be his, that he needed it for his transgression; and thus he was considered as confessing his sin, and the sin was considered as transferred to the animal, whose blood was then spilt to make an atonement. See Clarke on Lev 1:4 (note). Such institutions as these could not be considered as terminating in themselves, they necessarily had reference to something of infinitely higher moment; in a word, they typified Him whose soul was made an offering for sin, Isa 53:10. And taken out of this reference they seem both absurd and irrational. It is obviously in reference to these innocent creatures being brought as sin-offerings to God for the guilty that St. Paul alludes 2Co 5:21, where he says, He (God) made him to be sin (ἁμαρτιαν, a sin-offering) for us Who Knew No Sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God - holy and pure by the power and grace of God, in or through him. […]