Leviticus 4:3

If the priest that is anointed do sin.

The eminent sinfulness of error in the priest

I. From the superior position he occupied.

II. From the superior privileges he enjoyed. Exempt from many secular anxieties and temptations. Constantly in contact with sacred influences.

III. From the superior knowledge he possessed. Intimately acquainted with requirements of law. Possessing ample means and opportunities for ascertaining purpose of precepts enjoined.

IV. From the superior influence he exerted. Looked up to as an example. (F. W. Brown.)

Defiled sanctities

1. Christians occupying exalted positions, enjoying elevated privileges, rendering distinguished service for God, may fall into sin.

2. They know that the dishonour done to God is commensurate with the dignity of their position and the holiness of their profession.

3. So acutely is their guilt felt by them when thus brought under consciousness of sin, that its burden and bitterness would overwhelm them were there not adequate grace in the sin-offering for even such sin as theirs. Here, therefore, it is clearly shown--

I. That however far sin may have penetrated, and whatever solemn and sacred things it may have defiled, thither the atoning blood follows, carrying full expiation where sin has carried defilement.

II. That the dishonour done to God, to the sanctities of a godly life, and to the solemnities of sanctuary ministries, was compensated for in offering upon the altar of incense the symbols of the inherent and intrinsic excellency of christ. (W. H. Jellie.)

Sin in the priesthood

I. A holy office does not ensure infallibility.

II. Occupants of a holy office are specially called to sanctity.

III. Eminently privileged and enlightened, they who minister before God should be most vigilant lest they sin.

IV. Sin in God’s priests had to be purged by a great sacrificial expiation. Expressing--

1. The peculiar magnitude of sin in them.

2. The boundless sufficiency of redemption, even for them. (W. H. Jellie.)

The priest’s sin

This man is a priest; the holy anointing oil of the Lord his God is upon him, and therefore, of course, he cannot sin! The fact of the matter is that none of us are beyond the reach of temptation, beyond the possibility of a fall. Well, what then? I know what the mocking world will say: “If the priest that is anointed do sin,” I will have nothing to do with religion at all; it is all hypocrisy; he is no better than other men. I know quite well what uncharitable professors will say: Turn him out; he is a hypocrite. “If the priest that is anointed do sin,” he has disgraced himself. I know what your own heart will say: It is no good; I have tried; I have fallen; I may as well give it all up, there is no hope at all. But what does God say? “If the priest that is anointed do sin,” let him bring his sacrifice; “let him bring. .. a young bullock without blemish. .. for a sin-offering.” Is it not marvellous! I do not so much wonder at the 27th verse where God says: “If any one of the common people sin,” but “if the priest that is anointed do sin,” let him bring his sacrifice. And yet, if you read that verse carefully all through, you will see that there is no minimising of the priest’s sin. God, in the terms that He uses, says that it is a very heinous thing for a priest to sin. If one of His own children goes astray it is a very serious thing. He has been anointed; that anointing not only implies separation to God, but enduing with power. That anointing of the Holy Spirit is upon him, he ought not to have sinned. No temptation came upon him more than he was able to bear. And if you read on you will see, in the Revised Version, “If the priest that is anointed do sin, so as to cause the people to sin.” Yes, if the priest sin, he causes the people to sin, and if the Christian sin he is a stumblingblock to others, therefore an ungodly man will go still further into the depths of sin. And yet, “if the priest that is anointed do sin, let him bring his sacrifice.” What does he do when he sacrifices? There are seven points you ought to consider. The first thing he has to do (Leviticus 4:4), “He shall bring the bullock unto the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord, and shall lay his hand upon the bullock’s head.” The bullock is to be without spot or blemish. The priest comes there conscious of his own sin, and lays his hand upon the bullock’s head. And that is the first thing you must do. You must find a spotless victim. The Lord Jesus Christ is that Lamb without sin, without spot. The first thing to do is to put our hand upon the victim. And the moment the man laid his hand upon the victim that moment a transference took place. All the sinner’s sin was placed upon the victim. The victim was slain and east outside the camp, and the sinner goes into the Temple of God and takes his place in the Holy Place of Jehovah. And directly you lay the hand of faith upon Christ, directly you grasp Christ as your great Substitute, the same thing takes place. And if you arc a child of God, you have felt that the burden of sin is intolerable, it has weighed you down, and all that sin has been made to meet upon Him. Another reason why he was to lay his hand hard, was to show that all his trust was in that victim alone. He was to lean hard with all his weight upon him. If the victim did not support him the man fell prostrate to the ground. So we must lean entirely upon Christ, all our confidence must be in Him and Him alone. The second point is this--He shall kill the bullock before the Lord. There is no doubt about it, “the wages of sin is death.” Look at it! look priest! and see what your sin has brought about--the death of that pure and spotless victim. Now there were three things to be done with the blood of the bullock. The blood of the bullock was to be taken and sprinkled in three different places. First of all you read in Leviticus 4:6, the priest was to take the blood and sprinkle it seven times before the Lord, before the veil of the sanctuary. Seven times he was to sprinkle it there at the Holy of Holies. Why? Because within that Holy of Holies dwell the Shechinah glory of God. Christian, is this not the first result of your sin? You lose your communion with God. The first thing to be done is to restore that communion with God. The next thing to be done is this--he was to take some of the blood (Leviticus 4:7) and put it upon the altar of sweet incense. What was that? The place where the priest prayed for the people. When the people were praying outside the priest went into the Holy Place, and his offering went up as incense before God. Is not this the second result of sin--you lose the power of prayer; you say your prayers but you no longer pray; you lose all that joy and spontaneity of service; there is no fragrance about your prayers, it is mere routine, and there is no reality about them at all. If you want to have communion with God in prayer, and to be able to pray as you ought to pray, there must be the sprinkling of the blood there. The third thing to be done was to take the rest of the blood and pour it out on the altar of burnt-offering. What was that? The place where the daily burnt-offering was offered up. God will not accept your burnt-offering if there is sin in the heart. There is a controversy between me and God, and though I may try and bring Him offerings, God will not accept them. There was another thing to be done. “And the skin of the bullock, and all his flesh, with his head, and with his legs, and his inwards, and his dung, even the whole bullock shall he carry forth without the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire: where the ashes are poured out shall he be burnt.” Now we have never had that word for burnt before. That word means to thoroughly consume with burning. Very different to another word for burning I shall notice presently. It is no use your saying you cannot get peace and joy as long as you are keeping your bullock within the camp. You must take it out and burn it. There will be no peace until you do. Inside the camp a very different scene was taking place. There, upon the altar, we read in the eighth and following verses, all the fat of the bullock, all the inwards of the bullock, he is to offer it up upon the altar of the burnt-offering for a sweet savour to God. That is a very different word from burnt--the word in Leviticus 4:10, is k’tour; it means to burn as fragrance--not with consuming burning, but as sweet incense to God. And there is a sweet incense ascending from that altar. The priest may almost hear that whisper from the open heavens, and it is forgiven him. It is all forgiven; the sacrifice is accepted, and the sin is blotted out. (E. A. Stuart, M. A.)

Sin in ministers

The high priest, although a single individual, if he sin, must bring as large and valuable an offering as is required from the whole congregation. For this law there are two evident reasons. The first is found in the fact that in Israel the high priest represented before God the entire nation. When he sinned it was as if the whole nation sinned in him. So it is said that by his sin he “brings guilt on the people”--a very weighty matter. And this suggests a second reason for the costly offering that was required from him. The consequences of the sin of one in such a high position of religious authority must, in the nature of the case, be much more serious and far-reaching than in the case of any other person. And here we have a lesson as pertinent to our time as to those days. ,As the high priest, so, in modern time, the bishop, minister, or elder, is ordained as an officer in matters of religion, to act for and with men in the things of God. For the proper administration of this high trust, how indispensable that such a one shall take heed to maintain unbroken fellowship with God! Any shortcoming here is sure to impair by so much the spiritual value of his own ministrations for the people to whom he ministers. And this evil consequence of any unfaithfulness of his is the more certain to follow, because, of all the members of the community, his example has the widest and most effective influence; in whatever that example be bad or defective, it is sure to do mischief in exact proportion to his exalted station. If, then, such a one sin, the case is very grave, and his guilt proportionately heavy. (S. H. Kellogg, D. D.)

Sin not excused by ignorance

One would wonder whether it is possible that sin can be committed in ignorance--that is to say, whether the ignorance does not do away with the sinful character of the deed. Is not sin a wilful action? Is not its wilfulness the very essence of its guilt? So we would think; yet again and again in the ritual we find that ignorance is never made into a sufficient excuse for sin. The sense of mystery which we may feel in regard to this matter can only be relieved by looking for analogous instances in the field of nature. There is no law written on all the dominion of nature with a broader and clearer hated than that all sin is followed by penalty. Exclude the air, and you exclude vitality; shut out the light, and you impoverish the life; doom yourself to solitude, and you doom yourself by the same fiat to extinction. It is in vain to plead that we did not know the nature of air, or the utility of light, or the influence of high things upon things that are low; we must be taught the depth of our ignorance and its guilt by the intensity and continuance of our personal suffering. Leaving the region of nature and coming into the region of civilisation, we find that even in legal affairs violations of law are not excused on the ground of ignorance. The judge upon the bench does not hesitate to inform the trespasser that he ought to have known the law of which he pleaded ignorance. Turning from purely legal criticism of this kind, we find the same law in operation in social affairs. A man is not excused from the consequences of ill-behaviour on the ground that he did not know the customs of society or the technicalities of etiquette. He may be pitied, he may be held in a kind of mild contempt, his name may be used to point a moral; but at the root of all this criticism lies the law that the man is a trespasser, and that ignorance cannot be pleaded as a complete excuse. This canon of judgment has a very wide bearing upon human affairs. Were it to be justly and completely applied, it would alter many arrangements and relations of life. There are many things which we ought to know, and which we ought to be; and instead of excusing ourselves by our ignorance, we should be stimulated by its effects to keener inquiry and more diligent culture. That sense of ignorance will possibly show us in what critical conditions our life is being spent. What watchfulness is imposed upon us by the fact that it is possible to sin through ignorance! If sin were a mere act of violence, we could easily become aware of it, and with comparatively little difficulty we might avoid its repetition. But it is more and other than this. It is committed when we little think of its commission; we inflict wounds when we think our hands are free of all weapons and instruments; we dishonour God when we suppose we are merely silent about Him. Neglect may be sin as well as violence. There is a negative criminality as well as a positive blasphemy. All this makes life most critical and most profoundly solemn. The commandment of God is exceeding broad. Being a Divine commandment it comes of continual and minute exactions covering all life with the spirit and obligation of discipline. The mercy is shown that a special offering was provided for the sin of ignorance Let every soul, then, boldly say, as if in solemn monologue, Whatever my sin may be, it is provided for in the great Offering established as the way of access to the Father; I will invent no excuses; I wilt seek for no new methods of payment or compensation; I will bring no price in my hand, no excuse on my tongue, nor will I hide even in the depths of my consciousness any hope that I can vindicate my position before God; I will simply fall into the hands of the Living One, and look upon the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. In that spirit I will go forward to judgment, and in that spirit I will encounter the mysteries of destiny. (J. Parker, D. D.)