Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace

The Unblemished Offering

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Lesson: 54

Track: 54

Dictation Name: RR172AC54

Date: Early 70s

Our help is in the name of the Lord who made Heaven and earth. The hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, we give thanks unto Thee that Thy wisdom governs all things. Thy wisdom which is seen in all Thy works covers all things great and small, and there is nothing too small nor too great to be outside Thy government and Thy providential care. Therefore, our Father we come to Thee with thanksgiving, knowing that Thou art mindful of us, that all the days of our life, the very hairs of our head are numbered, that all things come from Thee oh Lord and shall serve Thy purpose and shall be a blessing to us throughout all eternity. Our God, we thank Thee, in Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is Leviticus 22:17-25; our subject, “The Unblemished Offering.” “The Unblemished Offering,” Leviticus 22:17-25.

“17 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

18 Speak unto Aaron, and to his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them, Whatsoever he be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers in Israel, that will offer his oblation for all his vows, and for all his freewill offerings, which they will offer unto the Lord for a burnt offering;

19 Ye shall offer at your own will a male without blemish, of the beeves, of the sheep, or of the goats.

20 But whatsoever hath a blemish, that shall ye not offer: for it shall not be acceptable for you.

21 And whosoever offereth a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the Lord to accomplish his vow, or a freewill offering in beeves or sheep, it shall be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no blemish therein.

22 Blind, or broken, or maimed, or having a wen, or scurvy, or scabbed, ye shall not offer these unto the Lord, nor make an offering by fire of them upon the altar unto the Lord.

23 Either a bullock or a lamb that hath anything superfluous or lacking in his parts, that mayest thou offer for a freewill offering; but for a vow it shall not be accepted.

24 Ye shall not offer unto the Lord that which is bruised, or crushed, or broken, or cut; neither shall ye make any offering thereof in your land.

25 Neither from a stranger's hand shall ye offer the bread of your God of any of these; because their corruption is in them, and blemishes be in them: they shall not be accepted for you.”

This is a very familiar text because it is so often referred to in the New Testament. We are told that we ourselves are to be living sacrifices, unblemished offering unto God.

In verse 22, the clean animals are specified. Those which cannot be sacrificed are those which are blind, disabled, mutilated, with a running sore, with a scab, or an eruption. Permission is given in verse 23 to give animals that are overgrown or stunted as a free-will offering only. The unblemished offering required must be perfect. It must be as Exodus 22:30 point out, “no animal younger than eight days,” and third, as Deuteronomy 20:6 following and Exodus 22:30 point out, no bird and her young, a cow and a calf, a ewe and a lamb, a goat and a kid could be offered together.

The requirement of an unblemished offering, as I indicated, is repeated in the New Testament, more than once, and especially with respect to believers as a living sacrifice. Thus, we read in Philippians 2:14-15, “14 Do all things without murmurings and disputings: 15 that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world.” Now this tells us what an unblemished offering of ourselves means. That we serve God without murmuring and disputing, that we don’t complain endlessly about the portion, the lot God has given us, that we may thereby be blameless and harmless.

Again, we read in II Peter 3:14, which in verse 13 says the things looked for are a new Heaven and a new earth, “14 wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.” In other words, Peter tells us, the goal of all creation is an unblemished, a perfect creation; morally and physically, and therefore we ourselves are to work to present ourselves to God without spot and blameless.

Then again, in II Peter 2:12, 13, we have a reference to the ungodly within the church, the unjust and the blemished. And we read, “12 But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption; 13 And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you.” In other words, those within the church who are thoroughly blemished and are rotten (because he uses that term more than once), are not of the Christ. They are blemished offerings and rejected. Of course, the Church is full of such people, especially in our day.

One of the terms that Lorri Ek used the last two days while visiting here and talking with me was of the consumer-oriented church that plagues us today. That’s a very telling phrase, because this is precisely our problem. The Church today has become consumer-oriented. The pulpit is not governed by God but by the congregation. It orients itself not to please God but to please the people. And as a result, you have people who are totally blemished offerings and both they and the Church therefore will be rejected of God.

Now it is routinely noted, and correctly so, that the unblemished sacrifice represents the sinless and perfect Christ. Now, this is true, but it is not the whole story, as these verses make clear to us from Peter and Paul. The blemished offering very clearly refers also to the believer, so that the offering represents Christ, of whom we are members and us in Christ. It represents what our gifts, our services must be. We cannot offer ourselves, or anything that we do, as a blemished gift to God. In other words, we cannot give the left-over of our lives and of our time and of our being to God. This is an insult to him. But blemished offerings are routine, and Christians expect to be blessed by them. They do things that are fifth- and tenth-rate at best. And then they feel it’s alright, because it’s for the Lord, I’m doing it for him—that automatically makes it good and blessed. It makes it accursed.

Moreover, we are to be the unblemished offering. This, Paul tells us, is our reasonable service; not the extraordinary service, but the reasonable, the logical one. He declares in Romans 12:1, 2, “1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

Now in verse 24, we have a statement that is the subject of a great deal of interpretation and uncertainty with some. In Robert Young’s Literal Translation, it is rendered ‘as to a bruised or beaten or enlarged or cut thing, ye do not bring it near to Jehovah; even in your own land, ye do not do it.’ Now this definitely includes with crushed or broken or cut, any animal that has been castrated. Now some commentators and many ancient rabbis as well as present Orthodox Jews have seen this as a prohibition of all emasculation of animals. No steers, in other words. According to Rabbi Hertz, the Hebrew can bear two interpretations. It can mean ‘ye shall not offer such mutilated animals,’ or it may be taken according to the rabbis as a general prohibition of emasculation in men and animals. Some evangelical writers, some very fine ones have taken a like interpretation of this text. But the context does not give any ground for it. It is very true, as Deuteronomy 23:1 makes clear, that the Law does not permit those men who have been castrated to have entrance or membership in the congregation of the Lord. Membership meant “eldership.” And only men who were heads of houses could be elders. Not even whole men who were bachelors. It meant also that as elders over families, they could be elected over families of tens or hundreds or thousands. In other words, that they could rule, and only whole men could qualify. The Bible is clear that castration was not a bar to worship, nor to salvation. It was simply a bar to a position of rule.

Moreover, scripture gives us dietary laws. And if we have been banned, if these animals were banned and we could not eat them, but Bible would very clearly tell us so. So that this kind of extension of interpretation is clearly unwise and wrong.

It is, unfortunately, all-too prevalent. People like to be holier than God, to go one step further than scripture, as though this made for greater holiness. Instead, it is to be regarded as a sin.

Calvin noted with respect to unblemished offerings, “We perceive then that all defective sacrifices were rejected, that the Israelites might learn sincerely and seriously to consecrate themselves entirely to God and not to play childishly with Him as is often the case. Elsewhere, we have seen that all uncleanness is repudiated by God. But we must remember that two things are required for legitimate worship.

1.      That he who approaches God should be purged from every stain

2.      That he should offer nothing except what is pure and free from all imperfection.

What Solomon says, that the sacrifice if the wicked is an abomination to the Lord is true, although it be fat and splendid. But in order that the things which are offered by the good should be pleasing to God, another point also must be attended to: that the offer must not be poor and stingy and deficient. And again, by this symbol as I’ve already said, they were directed to Christ, besides whom no integrity will anywhere be found which will satisfy God.” Calvin is right in noting that the requirement has to do with worship and with what the worshiper brings to worship, in himself and in his life and work.

It is a fallacy to abstract worship from the routines of life. Worship must be the culmination of everyday life. We bring to worship the character of our everyday life—what we are, blemished or unblemished. We do not bring ourselves abstracted from our work, our family, or our character. We do not leave what we have done all week long and what we have thought outside the doors of the place of worship. When worship is abstracted from everyday life, both in what we bring to worship and in what we take from worship into the routines of life, worship becomes sterile and offensive to God. It is a blemished worship. And this is why the prophets railed even against the thoroughly correct worship of the temple: it was empty in the sight of God. Even more, it was offensive. Because however correct, the people were not.

An important aspect moreover, of this entire section of Leviticus, these verses, is verse 18. “Speak unto Aaron, and to his sons, and unto all the children of Israel…” The guardians of the purity of worship are the clergy, and they are first of all addressed. There must be a vigilance against blemished offerings. A very necessary part of this is the teaching of the whole of God’s Law and an insistence on a faithfulness to it on God-centered living. But we have had a consumer-oriented Church. One of the interesting things that I have seen over the years is that very often pastors will take over a class in their Christian School, perhaps the class in Bible. And it’s very commonly in the majority of cases, a disaster. It’s a disaster for some time. Why? Because they have been so used to a consumer-oriented ministry, to pleasing the people. So they start off by trying to get the children to cooperate, instead of laying down the law to them. And it’s only after sometimes the class is reduced to anarchy that the minister/teacher begins to lose his temper and lay down the law and suddenly finds that now he has a class that he can control, that he can begin to teach, because he has ceased to be consumer-oriented in his teaching, and begins to teach with authority. And this is what we need in the Church. It is a word from God, to Aaron and his sons and through them to all the people.

We have a reference to David’s concern for this law in II Samuel 24:24 and for him a costless offering to God was a blemished one. In Malachi, we see God’s indictment of all who show Him contempt by coming to the Lord with their blemished offerings. We read in Malachi 1:6-8 and 13-15[14],

“6 A son honoureth his father and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? And if I be a master, where is my fear? Saith the Lord of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, wherein have we despised thy name?

7 Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, the table of the Lord is contemptible.” (In other words, we can bring the left-overs to God.)

“8 And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? Saith the Lord of hosts.”

“13 ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! And ye have snuffed at it, saith the Lord of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? Saith the Lord.

14 But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the Lord of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.”

God’s point is very clear. We will not offend a human authority by giving him a defective or damaged gift. How can we expect God to be grateful for what men find insulting? The Lord’s work and kingdom require only our best from us, nothing second-best or second-rate is acceptable to him.

One more point: Paul makes clear that an unblemished gift or a service to God means that it is given without complaint and even though required of us, is given in thanksgiving, not because of necessity. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver.

Let us pray.

Lord, freely we have received from Thy hand. Give us grace freely to give unto Thee. Grant that we present ourselves continually as unblemished offerings that at heart, mind, and being we seek Thy face, obey Thy Word and rejoice in the privilege of being Thy people, of obeying Thee and of serving Thee. Teach us to be mindful of one another in Christ, members one of another so that all the days of our life we may grow in grace, grow in understanding, in fellowship and in service to Thee. In Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes

[Audience] {?} comments about the relationship between worship and everyday life, two questions. Uh, which of those two should be a model for the other…?

[Rushdoony] Should be modeled?

[Audience] Modeled, for the other, worship and everyday life. Secondly, from a practical standpoint, what activities should be included in corporate worship? What are the elements of worship?

[Rushdoony] First of all, the relationship of our everyday life and worship should be like the relationship of our head to our body. It’s one life. Worship becomes dead when it has no relationship to our everyday life. So instead of seeing them as two separate things that we try to bring together, we see them as one thing. If the one is dead in relationship to God, the other is dead. It’s one organic unity.

Then with respect to the elements of worship, basically, it is the heart that seeks to worship, to obey, and to love God with all his heart, mind and being. That’s why Calvin chose as his emblem, the heart offered to God. This was to him the essence of life and worship. The heart standing for the core of our life, so that in all that we are and all that we do, we are the Lord’s. Then, our work becomes worship. Every part of our life is a way of serving and of glorifying God.

Now that was what distinguished the work of Calvin and made the impact of his work as long as its integrity was retained, so powerful in Western Civilization. It was when Calvinism was reduced to certain articles, like the five points of Calvinism that it began to be sterile. Now it was not that the five points of Calvinism were wrong, but they were reducing it to agreement with certain premises, certain doctrines, when it was exactly what Calvin’s emblem set it forth as being, the total unity of life in the service of God. And when those who profess to be Reformed go back to that emphasis, then they will have the same vitality that Calvinism had in its early years.

Now the significant thing about those men was that unlike the Counter-Reformation and the Reformation Churches, other than the Reformed, they had no powerful rulers to promote and to further what they were doing. It was rulers who instituted the Reformation or Counter-Reformation, utilizing of course, some prominent men, thinkers, within their fold. But Reformed faith had to buck all rulers, in Church and State alike. But it was effectual precisely because of that unity, symbolized in Calvin’s emblem.

Yes, Otto?

[Otto] I think you’re talking about image and reality.

[Rushdoony] Um-hm.

[Otto] The image involves abstracting—putting down abstract principles, and also elevating opinion-holder behavior.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, and that has been a problem in our time. Uh, one of the consequences of the modern movement in philosophy was that its rationalism divided man, and problems were ostensibly soluble through pure reason. It culminated in Hagel, the rational is the real. So that, ah, what was conceived to be as perfectly rational was ipso-facto real. Well, you can believe the five points of Calvinism very seriously, literally, but that doesn’t make you Reformed! Because it can be merely an intellectual ascent. So this is the bifurcation that the kind of rationalism that Hagel epitomizes has led to. It doesn’t mean—let me repeat—that the formulation (like the five points) are wrong, it means that the separation and the limitations of things to a small arena destroys what those things represent.

[Otto] Well, we see this in politics. Certain assumptions in Liberal politics determine whether or not you’re a good guy.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Otto] But results do not interfere with these assumptions. The assumptions are held despite results.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and one of the most common arguments used by some recently in the, uh Hart withdrawal from candidacy was that the withdrawal was (some went so far as to say), morally unsound because what he did sexually had no connection with his character as a politician. And perhaps some would go so far as to say that if he held up somebody it had no relationship to his character as a politician. Being a homosexual, voters have said more than once, has no relationship to his performance as a congressman, and so on and so forth.

Yes.

[Audience] In that regard, {?} that Mr. Studds was forgiven, but Mr. Hart was not forgiven, as one was a homosexual relationship and the other was heterosexual.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

Yes.

[Audience] Getting back to worship, were you saying that there is no need for what we have come to know as a formal worship service?

[Rushdoony] There is emphatically a necessity for it. “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.” But what I am saying is that in the modern world it has as a result of rationalism, been separated too much from life. Worship is something that colors our everyday life. Worship and work cannot be separated one from the other. We rest from our labors to worship God. We do that because of a faith that our work is not in vain in the Lord, and that it is not our doing, because it’s God’s doing, and therefore, it doesn’t depend on us. We can rest 52 days a year and countless number of other days in the medieval calendar, and with the Reformation which maintained those, and as you saw in Sweden, they still have those days. And many of the Reformed Churches maintained such a Christian calendar for a long time. The modern temper has destroyed it. But the feeling was that it was not in our endless working, around the clock, that we were going to change things. The World was not going to get better by our work. But only in the Lord, then our labor and our worship in the Lord were effectual. Just as our work is not in vain in the Lord, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. You see, there is a unity and we just as we don’t abandon formal work, we don’t’ abandon formal worship. But both have to be a unity.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Lord and our God, we thank Thee that all of life is a seamless garment, and that where Christ is, all things are made new, that the very ground beneath our feet groans and travails waiting for that glorious liberty of the Sons of God, for the totality of the New Creation. We thank Thee therefore, that Thy grace and Thy work in us, and our service unto Thee has its repercussions throughout all creation, that our labor is not in vain, that Thy Word never returns unto Thee void, but accomplishes Thine appointed purpose, that we live in a world of total meaning, and that meaning is the one Thou has established. How great Thou art, oh Lord! And we praise Thee. And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.