But some of our sins are personal and private, others of our sins affect our friends, our neighbors, and some of our sins affect the whole of the church.
And when we sin against God we confess our sin to God, when we sin against our fellow Christian believer then we confess our sin to God, and we confess our faults one to another. And when we have sinned against the whole of the church then we confess our sin to God and we confess our sin before the church.
It is possible, you see, for all of these things to transpire. It would be my duty to confess that sin to you. Now, he says here and deceives his companion. So what we have here then are direct breaches of the second table of the law. Remember the first table of the Ten Commandments has to do primarily with the Lord; the second table of the law has to do with our fellow man.
In one we shall love the Lord our God with all our heart with all our soul with our mind and the other we shall love thy neighbor our neighbor as ourselves which is a kind of summary of that second table. So here when a person sins and acts unfaithfully against the Lord and deceives his companion. And, I think, that these sins are sins in their antitype that affect our relationships to our fellow Christians and to our fellow men.
I would imagine that something like borrowing a book and not returning it would be a trespass. Now, none of you have ever done anything like that I know but I have. I have one or two books in my library that it is impossible for me to return.
Individuals are no longer here and those were trespasses of a simple matter like that. It might be a business wrong. Christians do commit sins in business and they often commit sins in business against fellow Christians. So there are business wrongs and often those business wrongs affect the testimony of a local church. Occasionally, there are people who are very active members of Christian churches such as this one who do things in their business that bring reproach on the whole body of Jesus Christ.
That is something that often happens, and so it is a matter that, I think, is similar to that which we find here in the trespass offering. Over in 1 Kings chapter 19, I want to try to expound the chapter. Then Jezebel set a messenger to Elijah saying. Now, this was a sin on the part of Ahab because he well knew the Israelite law that they were not to sell their property.
Remember in Israel all of the land belonged to the Lord. It never belonged to anyone. So when Ahab suggested this, he was suggesting that Naboth do something wrong. So Naboth replied to Ahab of course Naboth may have just liked the place he may not really have not been so anxious to obey the law but we get the impression that he really was.
So what does the great king do? What a small soul this man has. So you know the story of how she accused him of blasphemy and if you commit blasphemy you do lose your property. And the result is that a trespass, a great trespass, has been committed in Israel by the king himself and Jezreel. And you know the story that, ultimately, they had to pay with their lives because of the sin that they had committed.
The ideal would have been for them to realize their sin, confessed it, and brought the proper trespass offerings. Well, now, in the case of trespasses against the neighbor we have the same thing. You might have some money entrusted to yourself and you might spend it yourself. There have been people actually who were treasurers of evangelical churches who took the money for themselves.
I know of some instances like that in the city of Dallas where the treasurers took the money that was entrusted to them in evangelical churches in Dallas and applied it to their own expenses, and the result was that they trespassed against the Lord and against the body of believers. He shall restore what he took by robbery.
Now, evidently, in sins in which they were not specifically sins of money then the priest would make an estimate of the proper restitution and the addition of the fifth part but they also had to render reparations. Reparations was a good word with which we people who walk around with gray hair know about because we remember after World War I, Germany was required not only to make restitution for the wrongs that they had done, but they were required to pay to the United States a vast amount in reparations, thirty-three billion dollars in reparations which, of course, ruined the German economy and may have contributed to the World War II that followed.
Here we have reparations in the Bible. It is a biblical term. There is restitution and there is reparations. He does not offer us psychological release from our guilt as a cheap substitute for making right the damage and hurt we have caused. Every resource on our site was made possible through the financial support of people like you. Based on a work at www. You are free to share to copy, distribute and transmit the work , and remix to adapt the work for non-commercial use only, under the condition that you must attribute the work to the Theology of Work Project, Inc.
All rights reserved. Here we see that these meal offerings with which the priest served eventually became his to enjoy for the priesthood. This signifies that the one who ministers Christ as the suffering One partakes of and enjoys such a Christ. As long as we serve Christ to others, we will have as our enjoyment the very Christ whom we serve. This signifies that all those who minister Christ mingled with the Spirit or in Himself alike partake of and enjoy such a Christ.
What we have in these verses is the law of the trespass offering. If we minister Christ to others, we will enjoy Him. This is a law, a regulation, made by God. Living Stream Ministry publishes the works of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, providing the authoritative and definitive collections of treasures from these two servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. The writings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee focus on the enjoyment of the divine life, which all the believers possess, and on the building up of the church, the goal of God's work with man in this age.
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. It must also be pointed out that not only are we instructed to confess our sin, make restitution and seek forgiveness from whom we have wronged, but we are also instructed to forgive those who seek forgiveness from us. To see this, let us prayerfully consider the following teaching of our Lord. Mark Up to seven times?
As a side note, I do not believe that Jesus told Peter and now us that we are only to forgive our brother or sister up to times. To see this let us consider the following passage of Scripture,. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. Secondly, in the Old Testament, once restitution has been achieved or all the actions were performed to bring about restitution, then the guilty party was to offer,.
In the case of the born again believer, this is not an unblemished ram. We, the born again believer, has already had the perfect sacrifice made for our sins, which was the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To refresh our memories, let us begin by reading the testimony John the Baptist gave with respect to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This occurred the day after John baptized Jesus. To read what John said we go to,. John The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. In other word, these sacrifices, such as the ram of the trespass or guilt offering, could never take away sin or its guilt. This is clearly recorded in,. Hebrews With the above background in mind, let us now return to the Scriptures of Hebrews and read from,.
I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. The Bible teaches us that this new covenant was brought about for our benefit through the sacrifice, which is the death and resurrection, of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To see this, let us consider what Jesus said to His apostles at the close of His last Passover supper. It is noted that the above Passover supper was held just before Jesus was arrested and subsequently crucified. As we have found in earlier studies, after Jesus was in the tomb for three days, He bodily rose from the dead and later ascended back into Heaven to be with God the Father.
It is there that He is now constantly making intercession for you and me to God the Father. This now brings us to the third and last element of the foreshadowing of the Old Testament trespass offering which is,. The atonement or amends made between God the Father and the guilty party.
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