The Mercy of a Holy God

Bible Passage: Leviticus 5:1–13

1. Introduction

Hi everyone! Last time I spoke with you guys, I shared about my family, my favorite football club (Liverpool) and my favorite pop artist (Taylor Swift). Today I thought I’d share some stuff that I really dislike. | I hate pickles. Yucks, just not a fan. | I hate pineapples, gross. You know what I hate even more than pickles and pineapples? | When there are pickles and pineapples in food that I love - like my double cheeseburgers and | my Hawaiian pizzas. | I have to spend the first few minutes of my meal carefully extracting just the pickles and pineapples from my cheeseburger or pizza before I can enjoy them. So basically - I love my cheeseburger but I hate my pickles. I love my pizza but I hate my pineapples. |

In similar fashion, God loves His people | but He hates their sin.

2. Context

Our Scripture Passage for today comes from a time when God’s people, the Israelites, have been led by Moses out of Egypt into the wilderness. So up until the end of exodus, the Israelites are following the presence of God, displayed powerfully by this | awesome pillar of cloud - by day - and | fire - by night. So this is the presence of God going in front of them, leading them step by step out of captivity, through the wilderness and to the promised land. But the people can only follow from afar. Why can’t they get near to God? Well, here we need to know something about God’s holiness. |

[Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9vn5UvsHvM&t=178s until 2:55 mark]

So we know that because of God’s holiness, people can’t just anyhow go near God. In fact, it would be dangerous for them. But in Exodus 25, | God reveals His plan for the Israelites to build a tabernacle for Him. The Hebrew Word for tabernacle is mishkan, meaning “dwelling place” or “residence”. We see that God wants a closer relationship with His people - He wants to dwell in their midst, so that they can know Him and meet with Him. | But Exodus 40:35 writes, “Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” | In Leviticus 1:1, God calls to Moses from the Tent of Meeting, but Moses couldn’t go in - because the people were sinful. Now, if we were to fast-forward the story 99x speed (typical gen-alpha style) and jump to the beginning of Numbers, | it says that the LORD spoke to Moses IN the tent of meeting (Num 1:1). See, Moses got in, but how did it happen? That question can be answered by the book that lies between the end of Exodus and the start of Numbers - the book of Leviticus. |

3. BIG QUESTION

And so our big question for this morning is this: How do sinful people (aka. you and me and Moses and all the Israelites) live in the presence of a holy God?

Lets Pray.

4. ACTIVITY

In Leviticus, God provides His people almost like a ‘step-by-step tutorial’ on how they are to live in the presence of a holy God. Now the passage we’re given today, Leviticus 5:1-13, deals specifically with instructions for the people when sin is committed in the community. | Sin, in case you’re unsure - means going against God’s design; violating God’s law, undermining the relationships that God wants us to have with Him, with creation and with other people, entering into a state of uncleanness or impurity.

Activity:

I’d like all of us to form groups of 2 or 3. All the groups on the left side of the room, read through the passage. Help me identify the three of four different types of sin highlighted through the verses. All the groups on the right side of the room, read through the passage. Help me describe God’s instructed solution for that sin. Take about 5 minutes, and try not to use ChatGPT - if you want, you can consult AI to confirm your findings.

This should be your findings:

Sin Highlighted

Not testifying when required

Not speaking up as a witness when required, even after hearing or seeing something important in a legal case.

Touching unclean animal/human, later realized

Touching the carcass of an unclean animal, or touching any source of human uncleanness (bodily fluids, disease, etc.) then becoming aware of the contamination

Making a rash vow/oath and realizing later

Making a vow (good/bad) impulsively, without due thought, and becoming aware of it later.

Remedy (Offering)

Confess; offer female lamb/goat/doves/flour based on means

Looking at this table, does anyone want to make any interesting observations?

Sin can be unintentional, made out of ignorance

Confession is necessary (to God and to person wronged)

Animal cruelty!! (It’s true that through our modern day eyes, it can be deemed as animal cruelty. But important for us to remember that in those days, this was how humans in general would express their worship to their gods. So the God of Israel was designing a system of worship that was understandable and meaningful for humans in that time)

Different offerings based on means - catered to the poor

I want to share just three main points that we can draw from this passage. |

MP #1: God’s people are called to have a NO-CAP attitude towards holiness.

Leviticus 5:1-4

Y’all know what’s no-cap right? A no-nonsense approach to His holiness. The three sins highlighted in the passage are | indifferent silence (5:1), prolonged impurity (5:2-3) and unfulfilled promises (5:4). Now I don’t know about you, but when I first read this passage, I thought to myself, “whoa these are super minor offences lor.. I was expecting bigger offences like murder, stealing..” In highlighting these seemingly small offences, I think God is pointing to a deeper, more serious offence - a casual attitude towards holiness. See, in not speaking up when required, we’re actually revealing a casual attitude towards God’s way of justice and truth. For the second offence, the keyword is “prolonged”. Becoming impure accidentally wasn’t necessarily a sin, but God’s offense was against people who were “meh” about it, they were ok with staying in a state of impurity for a while and didn’t quickly find a way to make themselves pure. So we see here a casual attitude towards God’s purity. The third offense is impulsively making promises that you can’t fulfill and this reflects our casual attitude towards God’s integrity.

But why is this casual attitude towards holiness and sin so serious? I think we need to understand why God hates sin so much. Because sin - even small, unintentional slip-ups, cause real harm to the good and perfect design God has created for us.

So back in April, I had an encounter with the police. I was leading a team of ten youths on a mission trip to Thailand. This was a youth mission team sent by my church, in partnership with a church in Thailand, and we were going there to run a kids camp, do some home visits and help out with sunday service, I’m the youth staff leading this trip. Anyway we’re at Changi Airport Terminal 1 and we’re queuing up at the counter to check in our luggages and get our boarding passes. And so, everyone’s chattering excitedly, parents are waiting to send off their youths and one by one we’re bringing our luggages up to the counter staff. Now the counter staff is required to ask every single passenger, “do you have any prohibited items in the bag?” - to which, unless you’re a terrorist, answer should be no. Anyway, the turn comes to one of my boys, who when asked the question, jokingly says to his friend, “aye i got gun leh!” At that point, I only remember that the counter staff looks at him in alarm, whips out her walkie talkie and says a few words across the line that we can’t make out. From then on, nothing we can say can undo the process. She tells my youth to wait in a corner, refuses to talk to me, just says that airport police are on the way. I’ll summarize the rest of the story because the whole episode takes place over the whole day - it was the most eventful first day of mission trip I’ve ever had.

So police arrive and haul my youth off for a few hours of questioning. They need to pull all our luggages from the plane to check that there’s no gun. So at least half of the team will miss the flight, the rest will have to find a way to go one night ‘survivor-style’, without their checked in luggage. I need to communicate a cool and composed front to the parents who are at this point wondering what on earth is going on. I need to inform my church leaders as well as the church in Thailand, in case the situation blows up any further. I also need to give a rousing pep talk to the rest of my youth, who are looking pretty shaken at that point.

So half the team flew up first with a couple of my adult leaders. I stayed behind to see things through with that youth and airport security, arranging to fly up the next day to join up with the rest of the team. A few hours later, the police released my youth from questioning and that’s actually the first time when I could sit down with him. He was very apologetic, said that he didn’t intend for his words to cause so much trouble, said sorry sorry sorry. I told him, “as a team leader, I accept your apology. Do you know the cost of your mistake?” “ehh, we missed our flight..” I looked at him, “your teammates are going to have to go one night without their belongings in a foreign environment, we’re going to have to support-raise extra for the rescheduled flights, the churches we represent are now at risk if police choose to take the matter further.” That’s when he went, “oh…”

We must realize the full picture of our sin, only then can you understand why God hates it so much. Sin makes us guilty before God. God has a set of laws that govern the well-being of the whole universe and sin goes against that. But sin is more than broken law; it also damages relationships, which if left unchecked, destroys them completely. Sin is also deeper than broken relationships, it’s also a polluting of God’s divine image in us. |

A writer put it like this, “we sin not because we are human, but because we are less than human.” It’s a corruption of how God intended humanity to be.

That’s why sin’s so serious - | and God requires us to have a NO-CAP (not a casual) attitude towards His holiness.

How do we take sin seriously? | Scripture is clear - once we realize we’ve sinned, confess our sin. Sometimes we think this just means “say sorry to God” - but the Hebrew word for “confess” (yadah) actually means to bring hidden wrongdoing into the open rather than keep it concealed and to admit guilt. Why? Guys, sin is really like a cockroach. It thrives and multiplies in darkness. That’s why the first step is always to confess - bring it out into the open - this comes even before the sacrificial offering was made. So in addition to expressing sorrow and remorse, confessing may also require you to apologize to the person you've hurt or share openly about a sin you’re struggling with in a trusted community so you have people to journey with you out of that sin.

MP#2: Submit to God’s Way of Restoring the Harm Caused by Human Sin

Leviticus 5:5-9

Point two, God made a way to restore the harm caused by human sin. I want you guys to understand why this is so BIG. It’s so important because if God didn’t make a way, there are only two outcomes for us: either we live an eternity separated from God (that’s really how the Bible describes hell btw) or we try to approach God’s presence and get utterly wrecked for it. God, in his mercy and love for His creation, made a safe way for His people to come into His holy presence. But we do need to submit ourselves to this way. |

In the passage, it writes that the offender needs to “bring to the LORD as his compensation for the sin that he has committed..” and the priest shall “make atonement for him for his sin”. | Now one way to understand ATONEMENT is to break up the word - AT-ONE MENT; meaning that the sinner is brought back into a state of AT-ONE ness with God. You’re fully reconciled with God. | But could anyone tell me why “compensation” is required? (Is God being petty here? You hurt me so I must hurt you back. Or is it like a priestly fee for their services?) Compensation is actually necessary for God to maintain his justice. See - whether we intend it or not - sin causes real harm - some of it, we can see. Some of it may be invisible to us. And so, someone or something needs to bear the cost of our mistake in terms of making things right again.

So let's pick up the story about my youth at the airport. I finished having a long talk with my youth at Terminal 1 toastbox. He broke down in tears, I can see that he’s really remorseful. But at that point, our church leaders felt it’s safer that he stayed behind, rather than rejoining the team. Needless to say, my youth was very disappointed, I think he wanted to make things right by redeeming himself during the trip - and I wanted to give him the space to do so. But God’s way was different. I think God wanted the space to work on my youth’s heart. I am proud of my youth because in the end, he didn’t run away from church despite feeling very ashamed about his mistake. He owned his mistake by formally apologising to the team and the church leaders when we returned, he offered to raise the additional funds; he continued supporting our team from Singapore while we were finishing the mission.

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God hates sin, but He loves His people enough to make a way for things to be made right. Often the way God gives will still require our faithful obedience - like when we need to make efforts to heal a broken trust, seek forgiveness or reconcile with those we’ve hurt or wronged. Other times it may require us to take practical steps to repair the harm caused - like offering to shoulder the financial cost or putting in the time required to fix the slip-up. Will we submit ourselves to God’s way of restoring the harm caused by our human sin? |

MP#3: Receive God’s Forgiveness

Leviticus 5:10-13

Our final point. Receive God’s forgiveness. The scripture says that “in this way the priest will make atonement for them for any of these sins they have committed, and they will be forgiven”. After we confess our sins and atonement is made, God forgives us. | 1 John 1:9 says that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” When you begin to imagine how revolting and repulsive sin is (like picture how I dislike pickles and pineapples and multiply that by 1000) - you begin to see how amazing, mind-blowing God's forgiveness is. See - the sacrificial system in Leviticus was ultimately an invitation from God - for even sinners to come into the presence of a holy God to worship Him. It was how Moses made it into the tent of meeting to meet with God face to face. Today, our invitation comes not in a set of laws, | but in a person. Scripture says that God has given Jesus Christ as the ultimate sacrifice for sin; He is not only the sacrificial offering but also the high priest making atonement for us with God. |

5. BIG IDEA

Returning to our big question: How do sinful people live in the presence of a holy God? Only because - | God’s mercy opens the door for sinners to stand in His holiness.

6. Call to Action

Let me close with where this scripture meets us in our stage of life. Today, we live in a sin-tolerant culture. We don't hate sin as much as we should. | I'm not sure how many of you caught this over the news. At a Coldplay concert, the jumbotron unexpectedly captured a famous CEO of a multi-million dollar company in an extra-marital relationship with his HR officer. In fact, the word cold-played now refers to the act of being unintentionally exposed while cheating, especially in public”. I know there are many media sources trying to make fun of the whole thing - which I don't agree is right either - because laughing at a person’s sin is not much different from glorifying it. But I remember stumbling across a reflection, criticizing not so much the two of them, but the friends around them, stating something like what are the friends around them doing cheering and laughing like that, when they should have been confronting them/calling them out, “dude, what are you doing?” We find ourselves in a culture that's tolerant - making little of, even making fun of - sin. That's really where God's word meets us today: | will you hate sin enough to confront it within your life and lovingly call it out within the community? Will you, when facing off with sin, run to a Holy God that has shown mercy by making a way for us to make things right and come to Him?

As we go into a time of responding God, I want to leave you with these words from John Wesley, | “Give me one hundred men who love only God with all their heart and hate only sin with all their heart and we will shake the gates of hell and bring in the kingdom of God in one generation” – Will you be part of this generation?

Let us respond to the LORD.