The Guilt Offering

“That’s not fair!” We have all said it. We have heard others say it. If we have kids we certainly have heard it.
There is no doubt that as humans we all have an innate sense of justice.
God is a God of justice and He has built into his image bearers this sense of justice.
But this sense of justice that we all have is distorted. It is not in alignment with God’s view of justice.
That is where the guilt offering comes in.

The guilt offering is similar to the sin offering. As we saw last week, the sin offering deals with the corruption and defilement caused by our sin. The Sin offering provides a means to purify the sinner and reestablish that vertical relationship with God.

The guilt offering deals with the injustice of sin. It is the provision that God put in place to provide a remedy for the injustice. It provides a means of compensation and restitution for sin both in the vertical relations (with God) and the horizontal relationship (with our neighbor).

This text relates to guilt or injustice found in three situations:

First we see in verse 14-16 a sin related to the “Holy things of the Lord” - This is a reference to withholding of tithes and offering as well as property dedicated to God. We see “compensation” is offered to the Lord in the sacrifice of a Ram (vertical dimension) and (in verse 16 we see) restitution is made on the (horizontal dimension).

Second in verse 17-19 deals with what we would call a guilty conscience.

The third situation (6:1-7) is an offense against a neighbor. Deceit, robbery, oppression.