Introduction: Come and study the Holy Scriptures with us as Fr. Stephen De Young teaches verse by verse on the podcast, The Whole Counsel of God.

Fr. Stephen holds a PhD in biblical studies and is an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Fr. Stephen De Young: Verse 17: "Again the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, 'Now this is the law of the sin-offering. The place where the whole burnt offering is killed they shall kill the sin-offering before the Lord. It is most holy.'"

So this is the one thing, remember, that we've been told about killing. Not how, but we've been told where: that there's a particular place. But other than that...

"'The priest who offers it shall eat it. In a holy place it shall be eaten, in the court of the Tabernacle of Testimony.

"'Everyone who touches its flesh shall be sanctified. And if some of its blood might have been sprinkled on any garment, you shall wash that on which it was sprinkled in a holy place.

"'But the earthen vessel in which it is boiled shall be broken. And if it is boiled in a bronze pot, it shall be both scoured and rinsed in water.

"'Every male among the priests shall eat it. It is most holy. But no sin-offering whose blood may have been brought into the tabernacle of testimony to make atonement in the holy place shall be eaten. It shall be burned in the fire.'"

We'll get to that a little later, to those offerings. We haven't been told a lot about those offerings yet, but this is predicting chapter 16.

So this is now talking about— from the priest's perspective, the sin-offering comes, they get a portion of that. It's not a whole-burnt offering, so they get a portion of that to eat.

That's meat. Obviously, you cook it; you don't eat it raw. And the way they cooked it at that time was by boiling.

So they're boiling it in a pot, and they're making the point that that meat, because it's part of the sacrifice, is holy.

And so the pot that you cook it in, if it's an earthen pot, you cook it in it, then you break it.

Pottery was kind of disposable in the ancient world. If you ever watch footage from an archaeological expedition—just potsherds everywhere. Potsherds everywhere.

And in cities in the ancient world, there were potsherds everywhere.

When you get to, the Greeks, the Greeks used shards of pottery like scratch paper.

We have— because we found them, we found all these notes. If somebody needed to write down a note, they'd just grab some piece of broken pottery lying around and scratch into it or write on it, with paint to make a note.

And when they voted during the brief period of democracy, which wasn't democracy the way we think of it, but in Athens, that's what they used: they used potsherds.

In fact—here's a fun fact, so you'll learn at least one thing tonight—the Greek word for a potsherd is ostraka, and that's where we get the word ostracize.

So to originally to ostracize someone was effectively to vote them off the island, like to vote them out of the city-state, to banish them. And they would take the vote on potsherds, on ostraka.

So to ostracize somebody—that's where it comes from—was to— everybody writes their name on the potsherd. And then if you get too many votes, you're chucked out.

But so, yeah, the idea of breaking an earthen— like, they were basically disposable. You could make them pretty quickly. They dried pretty quickly in most cases.

Now, there's there's separate categories of pottery that are more or less ornate, some that are set aside for sacred use, but usually the stuff that was for sacred usage would be made out of metal.

Earthenware vessels were your everyday stuff, not your fine china, in modern terms, but they're very, very disposable and all that kind of thing.

So this isn't like: "Oh, no! You have to break the pot!" This is, you know— This is like: "Oh, if you use a paper plate for that, you have to burn it." It's at sort of more that level.

Or the way we burn certain things made of paper that are sacred things when we dispose of them. It's more like that.

Obviously, metal vessel, you can't just smash it. You can't just dispose of it. So it gets cleaned very thoroughly; it gets scrubbed out.

And this is still what we do. I know you don't see it, but after I consume what's left of the Eucharist, the whole chalice gets rinsed, washed out, cleaned out, scrubbed out, after the fact.

There's also the note here about incidental contact with blood that it has to be washed and let dry, and let dry in a holy place.

This is also something we still practice. So something, for example, if there's a towel at a baptism that gets holy water on it—baptismal water is holy—that gets washed and then hung out to dry over a place where people don't step and walk and that kind of thing. The water goes back into the ground.

If I get— Well, when I wash my vestments in general, the way to wash vestments or to wash the communion cloth—because it can and probably does have blood on it—is it gets washed, it gets hung out over the ground in a place where people don't walk, that same kind of thing. Yeah. For that same reason. That's the same procedure that we're following from back in the Torah.

Let's forge on into chapter seven: chapter seven, verse one:

"Now this is the law of the trespass offering of the ram. It is most holy.

"In the place where they kill the whole-burnt offering, they shall kill the ram of the trespass offering before the Lord. Its blood he shall pour all around the base of the altar.

"He shall then offer from it all its fat. The fat tail, the fat that covers the entrails, and all the fat above the entrails, the two kidneys and the fat on them by the flanks and the fatty lobe attached to the liver above the kidneys, he shall remove.

"Then the priest shall offer them on the altar of burnt offering to the Lord. It is a trespass offering."

So that's repeat of what we heard before. Now we're going to get some more specific priestly instructions like we've been getting.

"Every male among the priests may eat these things. It shall be eaten in a holy place. It is most holy. The trespass offering is like the sin-offering. There is one law for them both. The priest who makes atonement with it shall have it."

Meaning, if you're the priest who's called upon to offer it, sort of you get first pick. Notice it said may eat it, so he can share it, etc., but this is sort of dealing, within the priesthood, the distribution.

"Now the priest who offers a man's whole-burnt offering shall have for himself the skin of the whole-burnt offering he offered."

That's for a trespass offering. So if it's a whole-burnt offering, he gets the skin. Yay!

But that's actually obviously useful because the Levites don't just need food. You've got to make tents out of something, got to make clothing out of something. And vellum as a writing medium, right? So this is actually very practical.

"Also, every grain offering made in the oven and all that is made on the grate or in a frying pan shall be the priest's who offers it."

Notice these are grain offerings that are trespass offerings.

"Every grain offering, whether prepared with or without oil, shall belong to all the sons of Aaron, to one as much as the other."

So those are shared.

Verse 11: "This is the law of the sacrifice of the peace offering, which he shall offer to the Lord.

"If he should offer it for a thanksgiving, he shall offer with the sacrifice of thanksgiving loaves of fine flour mixed with oil and unleavened cakes smeared with oil and fine flour kneaded with oil."

So remember, there are a couple different kinds of peace offerings.

The one that's offered for a thanksgiving is offered after the fact. So sort of relationships have been restored, restitution has been made, and so now we make an offer of thanksgiving.

This is the type of offering that Christ is most likely referring to when he talks about if you're on the way to the Temple to make an offering, and you realize your brother has something against you, you need to go and reconcile with your brother, and go and offer it, first.

The key thing there being, the way they were approaching it was: "Okay, if I did something, then I need to repent and make restitution before I go, and then offer it as thanksgiving."

Christ says if your brother has something against you, not— so it's not about whether I feel like I did something wrong. [Laughter] He's saying if there's someone out there with a grievance against you, doesn't matter if you think it's legitimate, doesn't matter if you think you did what they think you did or whatever, you still need to go deal with it before you can offer it.

And this is significant because notice what this kind of offering is called here: a thanksgiving. What is that in Greek? A Eucharist.

That's why what Christ said there is still relevant. We can't just go: "Oh, well, see, we don't have a Temple anymore, so I guess I can just ignore that passage!"

Christ is there talking to us. Before we come and offer, if we're going to come and receive the Eucharist, we need to be—much as we can be. You can't make a person reconcile with you, but insofar as we're able, we need to be at peace with everyone, knowing that we can't force anyone else to be at peace with us if they don't want it—because then it is a mercy of peace.

"Besides the unleavened loaves, he shall offer with his gift leavened bread with the sacrifice of thanksgiving of his peace offering."

What? The Eucharist with leavened bread? Anyway.

"Then from all his gifts, he shall offer one choice portion to the Lord. It shall belong to the priest who pours out the blood of the peace offering.

The flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offering for thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day it is offered. He shall not leave any of it until morning."

Yeah, so he brings with the animal, if he's bringing an animal, also brings the bread offerings. The bread offerings just go to the priest, and then the meat—there's a portion that's offered. The best portion is given to God, and the other part goes to the priest. And the meat portion of it has to be eaten immediately, is what that's saying.

"Now, if the sacrifice of his offering is a vow or a voluntary offering—" because this is another reason you can go and offer a peace offering. One is just to celebrate the fact that we're all still at peace! Things are going great. That's kind of thank offering still, but it's— And also because he made a vow:

If such happens, I will— Right? Yeah.

"—vow or voluntary offering, it shall be eaten the same day he offers his sacrifice, and on the next day, the remainder of it may also be eaten. But the remainder of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day shall be burned with fire."

"Burned with fire" there does not mean as an offering. That means you dispose of it as a holy thing, whatever's left.

"But if some of the flesh should be eaten on the third day, it shall not be accepted for him who offered it, nor shall it be imputed to him. It is a defilement, and the soul who eats from it shall bear guilt."

Meaning, this is again pointing back to what we were talking about before.

He comes; he makes his offering in good faith. Now the priests—because remember this is addressed to the priests— The priests have their portion of the meat; the priests have their portion of it. They're supposed to eat it all the same day or maybe finish it up the next day.

So if the priest doesn't follow this, and the priest does the wrong thing with the gifts that man has given, there's—

That's not the guy who brought the offering's fault; that's not connected to him at all. That's on the priest who ate what he wasn't supposed to eat, did what he wasn't supposed to do.

So, as I said, this is related to what we were talking about before. If you come and you give to the church, or you give to the church more broadly, you are giving money to God.

And if the people—the humans involved in receiving that—if they do something wrong with it, that's no fault, no blame on you. You brought your offering to God and gave it to God, and that— You'll be rewarded by God for what you did.

And the people who then mismanaged it will also be rewarded by God for what they did. That's what this is saying.

So the person bringing the offering does not have to worry about policing what happens to it after they give it. They have given to God. They have done the right thing, the good thing. The rest is between those other people and God.

Verse 19: "The flesh that should touch any unclean thing shall not be eaten; it shall be burned with fire. But all clean flesh may be eaten."

So if it gets dropped, if it gets… You're not allowed, you know, you don't eat it. You're not allowed to mix it with other food and another meat, etc., etc.

Verse 20: "But the soul who eats the flesh of the sacrifice of the peace offering which is the Lord's while he is unclean, that soul shall be utterly destroyed from among his people."

So this means because the priest is eating these holy things, he needs to maintain this level of holiness. So this is talking about the priest in his whole life, really, being held to a higher standard by God than the regular people.

"Moreover, the soul who touches any unclean thing, or some human uncleanness, or an unclean animal, or any abominable unclean thing, and who eats some of the flesh or the sacrifice of the peace offering which is the Lord's, that soul should be utterly destroyed from among his people."

So that's talking about people who bring offerings.

So the priest has to maintain this level of holiness all the time, because all his food is coming from the offerings to God, so he's held to this higher standard.

But the person who brings an offering, when they're bringing the offering, when they're eating the offering, when they're participating in it, needs to come and present themselves clean before the Lord. That doesn't mean they've maintained any kind of perfection.

This is one of the importance of ceremonial uncleanness, because we can delude ourselves into thinking, "Oh, I went X amount of time without committing a sin, without breaking one of the rules." We're deluding ourselves, but we're capable of that.

But ceremonial uncleanness included, like, going to the bathroom. Good luck going a week without doing that—and living.

You have to bury your father, right? You have to— There's a hundred unclean things you have to do.

So what that reinforces is: it's not realistic for me to just be completely clean all the time, so I'm going to have to prepare when I come to approach the Lord, and I'm going to have to clean myself.

That, then, is the object lesson for sin. God knows we're not going to go very long without sinning, so it's not talking about: Oh, if you've committed a sin, you can't bring sacrifices anymore. Obviously, that's not true, because a lot of these sacrifices are specifically for sins, you know. They take into account the fact that you've sinned! That's why they're there.

But we have to present ourselves repentant. We have to present ourselves repentant of those sins, seeking forgiveness and cleanness. And a sacrificial offering is part of that process.

But we don't come and present ourselves, sort of in our uncleanness, in unrepentant sin, because if you do that, what does that do? That defiles the offering you're making.

Remember when— I believe it was St. Peter. It's late, and I'm not sure if it's St. John or St. Peter. His epistle talks about false teachers—I think it's St. Peter—and says that they're— by letting these false teachers into their community, that those false teachers are "stains on their love feasts," talking about the Eucharist.

That's what he's talking about. He's getting that from here.

You're allowing these people who are unclean and unrepentant in your midst, and so when you come to offer things before God, they're offering them in this unrepentance, and that's sort of defiling your offer.

So they need to be brought to repentance or they need to be put out, one of the two. Those are the two options.

Verse 22: "Again the Lord spoke to Moses saying: Speak to the children of Israel saying, 'You shall not eat any fat of oxen, sheep, or goats. Also the fat of an animal that dies naturally and the fat of what is torn by wild beasts may be used in any other way, but you shall by no means eat it.'"

So why can't they eat the fat of oxen, sheep, or goats? That's the part you offer to God.

And they're not supposed to eat anything from animals that they find dead, we're going to find out when we get to the food rules, including the fat, but you can use it for other things, for oil—that's where you get oils: from fat, blubber. There's all kinds of different— tallow, other things you could use that for, but you can't eat it.

"For whoever eats the fat from the cattle, which someone is going to offer to the Lord as a burnt offering, that soul shall be utterly destroyed from among his people.

"Moreover, you shall not eat any blood in any of your dwellings, whether of birds or cattle. Any soul who eats blood, that soul shall be utterly destroyed from among his people."

So the parts that go to God, go to God, and the blood goes into the ground. You don't take what's God's.

"Furthermore, the Lord spoke to Moses saying: Speak to the children of Israel saying, 'He who offers the sacrifice of the peace offering to the Lord shall bring his gift to the Lord from the sacrifice of his peace offering.

"'His own hands shall offer the burnt offerings to the Lord, the lobe of the liver and the fat upon the breast: these he shall offer, place his gifts before the Lord.

"'Then the priest shall offer the fat on the altar, but the breast shall be Aaron's and his sons'. Also the right thigh you shall give to the priest as a choice portion from the sacrifices of your peace offerings.

"'He among the sons of Aaron who offers the blood of the peace offering and the fat shall have the right thigh for his portion.'"

So he gets that piece, the priest who does that.

"'For the breast from which the fat was offered and the thigh of the choice portion I took from the children of Israel, from the sacrifices of your peace offerings, and I gave them to Aaron the priest and to his sons from the children of Israel by an ordinance forever.'"

So how is this—? We've entered kind of a new section of the passage, even though there's not a section break, but this is God saying, "Okay, these pieces are mine; these parts are mine. These parts belong to the priests." So if you're not a priest, you don't be eating those.

Verse 35: "This is the consecrated portion for Aaron and his sons from the burnt offerings of the Lord on the day he presented them to minister to the Lord as priests.

"The Lord commanded this to be given to them by the children of Israel on the day he anointed them by an ordinance forever throughout their generations.

"This is the law of the whole-burnt offerings, the grain offering, the sin-offering, the trespass offering, the consecrations, and the sacrifice of the peace offering, in the manner that the Lord commanded Moses on Mount Sinai, on the day he commanded the children of Israel to offer their gifts before the Lord in the Sinai desert."

Okay, so that's sort of a summary statement, because that's the end of a chunk of Leviticus, not just the end of a chapter. We talked about the chapter and verse things come in later and sometimes somewhat arbitrarily, but when we get into chapter eight that's coming up, chapter eight is a narrative section.

We talked about how there are a couple of narrative sections and then there's sections of other material.

So we just finished this whole big section, several chapters talking about sacrifices. That was the summation at the end there.

Now we're going to have a narrative portion that's going to be followed by some more stuff about sacrifices. Then that's going to culminate, just to give you the rest of the book of Leviticus.

Then chapter 16, that's going to culminate in the Day of Atonement ritual.

And then from chapter 17 on, we're going to get into—and we'll talk about this more when we get there—what's called the holiness code. That's going to have the food laws, the laws about sexual morality, a whole bunch of other things, all those commandments there, and that'll go through the end of Leviticus.

But that's it for now. So thank you, everybody.

Announcer: Listen next time as Fr. Stephen De Young continues his study of the Scriptures on The Whole Counsel of God.

Fr. Stephen's email address is wholecounsel at ancientfaith.com. That's wholecounsel at ancientfaith.com.