The primary source of wealth in Moshe’s day were one’s animals, so offering an animal to the Lord was a financial inconvenience, a sacrifice. Romans 12 tells us what sacrifice we are called to make now that there’s no Temple. We give our lives to God. That is more expensive and more precious than a turtledove, goat or a bull.
God can redeem anyone He wants. When He redeems you, you give Him a peace offering and your life.
Yom haKippurim (literally, Day of Coverings) is a day that wears many people out, because we’re focused on, When are we going to eat? Yet, we are to supposed to focus upon what the Son of God — the ultimate High Priest and fulfillment of the two goats of the day — did for us. He went through a tremendous affliction for us. The Day of Atonement is not about us and what we do but about the High Priest and what He does. It’s all about how God brings us to Himself. We are only drawn to God if He draws us to Himself.
Leviticus 5 sounds very similar to Leviticus 4 in a lot of ways. Both passages discuss unintentional violations of God’s commandments and sin offerings, but the “guilt offering” we’re looking at today is different.
When you pray to God earnestly, you feel relieved that you can release those things that only God can hear, release them to Him and find relief. We don’t approach our High Priest with animals. We are God’s Temple. When we come to God with our sins, the High Priest brings His sacrifice and our repentance to God and we received God’s forgiveness. Without God’s Spirit increasing in us, we will not grow.
The entire book of Leviticus is about the function of Israel’s high priest. Yeshua (Jesus) is our High Priest, and as we study Leviticus, we learn more about what Yeshua is doing for us in God’s presence.
Leviticus 1-3 starts with instructions about how to give free will offerings to God. These are not offerings of punishment but offerings of gratitude and love of God. We also learn how the High Priest prepares and gives these offerings to God. We can see the New Testament fulfillment in Yeshua as we read through Hebrews 5.
The book of Leviticus is not written in chronological order but in thematic order. God may also repeat a point several times as an emphasis on that particular point.
The topic of these two chapters is God’s anger: the just anger that comes when His people do not follow the way He has laid out for them. God reveals the blessings He will give them if they obey Him and give their hearts to Him and the curses that will come upon them they disobey Him by running towards other gods.
Keeping the jubilee year with both crops and servants were an act of faith on the part of the people of Israel. It is difficult to live in freedom of liberty and it is so easy to fall into bondage and slavery. God set up a safety net to protect the people from permanent bondage and slavery and to protect the land from being over consumed and dried up.