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Set Apart — The Traditions That Shape God’s People
Lesson 2, Part 1 — What God Requires  ·  June 3, 2026  ·  ▶ Watch

Class Begins

Let’s turn to Leviticus 22. We are going to start at verse 17, and I want to hear what it says.

Reading: Leviticus 22:17-22

“And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons and all the people of Israel and say to them, When any one of the house of Israel or of the sojourners in Israel presents a burnt offering as his offering, for any of their vows or freewill offerings that they offer to the LORD, for you to be accepted it must be a male without blemish, of the bulls or the sheep or the goats. You shall not offer anything that has a blemish, for it will not be acceptable for you. And when anyone offers a sacrifice of peace offerings to the LORD to fulfill a vow or as a freewill offering from the herd or from the flock, to be accepted it must be perfect; there shall be no blemish in it. Animals blind or disabled or mutilated or having a discharge or an itch or scabs you shall not offer to the LORD or give them to the LORD as a food offering on the altar.”

So I think we need to consider a couple of things here. First, the standard. God sets a pretty strong standard here. Why do you think He set such a high standard?

Class member: Because He is holy.

Class member: He expects the best.

Yes. Something that really impresses itself on me is that God is only willing to accept the best. He is not willing to accept just anything. Isn’t that a humbling idea?

Class discussion: [A brief exchange follows about the wording of the text; parts of the response are unclear in the recording.]

The Difference Between the Offerings

Go to verse 23, particularly the last part. It says, “You may present a bull or a lamb that has a part too long or too short for a freewill offering, but for a vow offering it cannot be accepted.”

That is not exactly what I believe you said, but close enough. The question is: Is it good enough for some uses and not good enough for others?

Class member: No.

Right. There are specific rules for each kind of offering. For a burnt offering, and that is really what we are considering here first, this is the most common sacrifice they had. It was offered every morning and every evening. It had to be a male. It had to be taken from the bulls, from the sheep, or from the goats. No defects. The entire animal was to be put on the altar and burned.

Nothing was held back. Now imagine the kind of fire it would have taken to consume a bull. Imagine how long it would have taken. I grew up on a cattle farm, and I can tell you how long it takes to burn an animal. It takes a long time. It would have been a full-day process to deal with just one. And there were times when they offered hundreds, if not thousands. When Solomon dedicated the temple, there were literally thousands of animals sacrificed on top of everything else.

Why do you think God wanted them to sacrifice and burn the whole thing?

Class discussion: [Several people respond. One audible answer focuses on how we try to do the minimum and then dress it up enough to make it look acceptable.]

Class member: Just enough.

And what Kathy says here, I think, is a really powerful idea. What are we trying to hold back? What are we trying to keep? When God says this is what the most common sacrifice is, and this is what it has to be, it has to be perfect in every way, shape, and form, and it has to be the whole thing.

There were other offerings where they would take part of the meat and actually eat. There would be a feast between them and the priest. It became a communal meal, a celebration. But for the burnt offering, it had to be the whole thing.

The complete burning of the animal symbolizes complete devotion, one hundred percent. What you placed on the altar needed to match what you felt about God. One of my teachers made that point years ago. He said, “What you put on the altar is a symbol of how you feel about God.” He said that was true in the old covenant and it is true in the new covenant. What you put on the altar is a testimony to how you feel about God.

That is a humble, hard truth to hear.

Class discussion: [Class members offer several brief comments. Most are not clear enough in the recording to transcribe accurately.]

Jesus made that point. He said, “I wish you were one or the other, hot or cold.” He wants us to be in one hundred percent.

Giving God the Best

Why do you think He demanded the absolute best animal? This is not just a male. This is the prized animal, the very best you have. Under normal circumstances, this is the animal you would want to keep as the animal you are going to use to breed all the others, so you can get the very best possible.

Class member: Absolutely.

Class member: When there are no options, when you have to give the absolute best, it is the thing you would hold on to the most.

You ever wonder why God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on the altar? The same principle applies. Scripture makes it very clear that this was the son of promise. They had been waiting for this son forever, years and years and years. And then when he finally came, they absolutely adored him. He was their whole world. This was the prized possession they had, this son. What could they give up more?

Class member: Absolutely.

So when you think about what God is asking of us, you cannot give Him what you would normally just get rid of anyway. What does that really have value to you? You cannot just give Him what is left over.

And I am sure we have all heard that statement: You cannot give God the leftovers. That is, you sort through, pick out the very best you have, keep that for yourself, and then give God what is left over. In the same respect, when it came to a sacrifice, God demanded the best. You could not sort through your herd and pick the very best to keep for yourself. You had to pick the very best to give to Him. And He was not willing to accept anything less than that.

The Scriptures do not tell stories about it, but I would bet money that there were people who did that very thing. They picked out the lame, the blind, the weak, the one they would have let die anyway, and tried to give that to God. In fact, Malachi makes that argument after they came back from captivity. We will get to that a little bit later.

Class discussion: [A brief comment follows, partly obscured by overlapping speech.]

The burnt offering tells us something really important about us, not as much about God as it does about us. And I think that is what humbles me the most. When we look at what is acceptable, what is not, what God expects from us, it actually says more about me than it does Him. It says that God is perfect and He demands the perfect, but it also says a lot about me and what I am willing to give, how much I care about what I give to Him, and how fully in I am in this.

Most of you guys remember that Tony Tom used to use this analogy. He would say every Christian reaches a point where they have to draw their line in the sand. What he meant was that every one of us reaches a point where we say, “Okay, I am either all in or I am out.” And that is what God demanded of Israel: all in. You have to be all in or it is not acceptable.

The Peace Offering and Restored Fellowship

Now the peace offering had its own significance. Unlike the burnt offering, part of that sacrifice is eaten by the priests and by the worshipers. It was a shared meal, a picture of fellowship restored between God and the person, but also between person and person. The priesthood to the person and the person to God, that fellowship has been restored. Because of what it represented, it too had to be perfect.

If the burnt offering represented complete and whole devotion, complete surrender, then the peace offering represents the idea of restoration. Now you are at peace with God. Think about the significance of that, because the connections to the New Testament are just profound. We do not study enough what the Old Testament sacrifices were and how they symbolize the New Testament through the cross, how they find fulfillment in Him, because they all do.

Jesus said everything in the Old Testament pointed to Him. He said that in Luke 24, on the road to Emmaus. Those two disciples are leaving Jerusalem. They are upset. Jesus is dead. They expected Him to be the King. They expected Him to be the Messiah. They are disappointed. They are discouraged. They are leaving town, and Jesus is there walking with them. It says that He opened the Scriptures to them and explained the Law and the Prophets and everything, and how it all pointed to Him.

Well, if that is true, then what about the sacrifices? They all find their fulfillment in Christ. Not just the fact that He is a sacrifice, but what each sacrifice represented finds its fulfillment in Christ. But it also teaches us some really profound things.

Malachi’s Rebuke

So God goes on and lists what disqualifies an animal: blind, disabled, mutilated, diseased, anything less than perfect and whole. Here is the principle underneath it: what we offer often reflects the worshiper’s understanding of the One he is worshiping.

Before Moses, before any of this, God expected the best. I think that is why the Cain and Abel story plays out the way it does. I think Cain was bringing what he could, not his best, and Abel did bring his best. Before God even asked for it in the Law, they must have had some understanding that God expected the best, or it would be unfair for God to reject Cain’s offering. They had to have some understanding of what God expected, or it would be unfair.

Then centuries after Malachi talks about the same thing. Let’s go to Malachi 1, verses 6 through 9. I have a lot of PowerPoint slides here, and I completely forgot to mark my notes so I would know when to turn them. Who knows how many slides I am behind?

Class discussion: [Laughter and brief comments from the class.]

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ By saying that the LORD’s table may be despised. When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor; will he accept you or show you favor? says the LORD of hosts.”

Now the English Standard Version in verse 9 says, “And now entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious to us. With such a gift from your hand, will he show favor to any of you?” That is kind of paraphrased, but that is exactly what He is saying. With that kind of gift from you, why would you think He would be favorable? Why would you think He would show favor to you? If you are giving God your absolute least, why do you think He is going to give you His absolute best? That is a hard question.

He says, “Give that to your governor and see if he will accept it.” Consider that for a moment. The governor for them was a man with a really high political position. He had a lot of authority and power over them. The governor then could have issued life or death. He could have had you executed. If you made him unhappy, it could cost you your life. So when Malachi says, “Try offering that junk to your governor and see if he will take it,” they knew what that meant.

Class member: Or the IRS.

Exactly. See how that works out for you. My dad used to say that all the time. My grandpa too: “How’s that working out for you?” It still kind of gets under my skin, but I have said it to my own kids.

So consider this: you give your absolute best to the people you consider important. You do not give your best to people that you do not value. You reserve your absolute best for the people that matter the most to you. So what does a careless offering actually say?

Class member: “I do not respect you.”

Class member: “I am bored.”

That is what she says there at the end of the chapter. Did you guys hear that? “We are bored with this.”

Class discussion: [A brief response follows; the wording is unclear.]

Because the truth is, it says everything about what we believe, what we do not believe, and about the person we are actually worshiping. When you keep the best for yourself and give God what is left over, what does that really mean?

Class member: I am more important than God.

I mean, yes. And I think in this context it puts that passage in context even better: God does not look at the outward; God looks at the heart. God knows what you are actually saying when you say it. God looks at what you are actually doing when you do it. Again, a little bit of a law is not in the form; it is where the heart is.

When you give Him what you would not give to that person you say you love the most in your relationships here on earth, you would not give them the worst you have and expect them to feel valued and loved. Why do we expect that from God?

If God gave us His absolute worst, the leftovers, if He gave us what we try to give Him, would we feel loved? We would have nothing to do with Him. What motivates us to really love God?

Class member: Because He loved us first.

How do we know He loved us? He gave us His absolute best. That is how we know. As we used to say, the proof is in the pudding. God gave us His absolute best. We know that because He gave His Son, because He took on flesh and blood. He became like us and He died so that we do not have to. That is how we know He loved us.

Brokenness, Holiness, and the Cross

The same thing is true in our relationships. How do you know someone really cares about you? If they tell you every day, “I love you. You are valuable to me. You are important to me,” but their behavior says it is not true, you know they are lying. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure it out. But the same thing is true of God and what we offer to God.

The blemishes on those animals are not random either. They are all symptoms of a broken animal in a broken world, the kind of brokenness that sin introduced. Think about that for a moment. That unblemished animal pointed back to what God intended in the very beginning: a perfect world. What we give to God is actually a testimony of faith, saying, “I believe You can get us back there. I believe You can bring us back there.”

God’s purpose from the very beginning was the Garden of Eden. That is what God wanted for His creation: to live in perfect harmony and be with Him. Sin corrupted that, broke it, and everything since then has been God trying to bring us back to that place where we can have perfect fellowship with Him, like Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in the Garden. That is what God wants for us.

And heaven is going to be that in a very real way. When it says a new heavens and a new earth, I think that is figurative language for going back to Eden, going back to that garden, that place of perfection where we have this perfect relationship with God.

Class discussion: [Several minutes of discussion follow. Much of the audio is overlapped or too unclear to transcribe responsibly. The class continues discussing changed lives, brokenness, and what it means to give God the best.]

One of the things I value, and one of the things I hate, is that my kids knew me before Christianity. They knew what kind of person I was. They know the me before and the me after. On one hand, I like it because it is a testimony to them of what God can do. But I also hate that they had to know me that way.

When we give God our absolute best, what does it really say?

Class discussion: [A class member responds at length. The recorded wording is not clear enough to reconstruct accurately.]

Absolutely. So let me ask this question: Why did God need the very best animals?

Class member: He did not.

That is humbling. You need to let that sink in for a moment. Why did God ask for the absolute very best? Why did He need those animals? Who needs them? He really does not need us.

Class member: Absolutely.

So what did it symbolize? It symbolizes us, and it shapes us. It does not bring any value to God whatsoever. He does not need any of that stuff. Now, the Scriptures actually make that statement. There are times when God says, “Who asked you to do this? What makes you think it is okay to live this way and act this way?”

So the very best sacrifice is shaping me there, not God. It is reminding them every time that the One they are approaching is holy, that He loves, that He can completely free us from the brokenness that marks everything else in this world.

Do you think He set up an example?

I think so. I think all the sacrifices find their fulfillment in the cross, but that perfect, the very best, is only truly found in the cross. Even those animals could not fulfill the standard that God asked for, not really. So it always pointed forward to something better coming. Hebrews makes that point. That is why they had to offer the sacrifices every day, every month, every year, over and over again. It pointed out the fact that they just were not good enough. They needed something more: the sacrifice of the cross.

Class discussion: [A short discussion follows about the need for more than human effort; parts are unclear in the recording.]

Rightly Handling the Word

Somebody read or quote 2 Timothy 2:15. I want to pick up this phrase: “a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”

What does that really look like in practical terms? It is not simply, “You need to make a clear distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament.” “Rightly handling the word of truth” does not mean, “Put it in its context, discard the Old Testament, and hold on to the New Testament.” I think that misses the whole point. It does not say that at all.

A lot of times that is what happens, guys. “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” When we look at what we offer to God, should we be ashamed at all?

Class discussion: [A class member responds; the exact wording is indistinct.]

Every situation is not going to be the same. But here is the idea: handle this correctly. Look at this correctly. Read God’s word so you know what He expects of you, and then give Him the best. Give Him no reason to be ashamed of you. Give yourself no reason to be ashamed.

What happens when we are ashamed of what we are giving God?

Class member: We distance ourselves from it so we do not feel so bad about it.

That is all we need. If you make a hole, we keep falling into it. The question here is not just about our contribution or our willingness to reject sin. It really does get to this foundational question: This is why I do what I do. This is how far in I really am, body, soul, mind, spirit. It says everything about us.

And when God says, “I demand the very, very best,” that is what He wants from me. That is ultimately what those sacrifices demanded: the best, the absolute best, and nothing less than the best is acceptable.

What was their best? Now what is our best? That is debatable, and it can be different depending on the day and the circumstances. Some days our absolute best is not very good. There is a reason Isaiah says that our righteousness, our acts of righteousness, are like filthy rags before the Lord. Even our very best attempts are pretty rotten.

But the desire to give our best does not mean we get it perfect every time. It does not mean we get it right every time. But He wants you to walk with Him.

Class discussion: [Class discussion turns briefly to Psalm 51, David’s repentance after Nathan confronted him, and dependence on God to fix what David could not fix. Some words are unclear.]

Closing the Class

When we consider the offerings under the old covenant, do not just look at them as rules. We tend to map it out: a burnt offering required this, this, and this; it happened at this time of day; this certain priest could do this sort of thing. And we really disconnect from what God can be.

Nothing God does is unimportant. There is nothing God does that does not make a bigger point about who He is, who He wants us to be, and what He expects from us. The burnt offering and the peace offering say a lot about how we feel about God, where our head and heart really are. That is what we can learn from this.

We are going to get into this even more because God does give some exceptions. Verse 23 really is an exception to the rule. There are always exceptions. When you could not afford an absolute, very best animal, when you did not have a bull from the herd and all you had was two turtle doves, which were basically worthless, God says, “I will accept that as long as you give Me your very best and your heart is in the right place.”

Some people were wealthy. Some people were dirt poor. You lived what I would call a subsistence life, where every day was spent just trying to survive. That is why God demanded people get paid every day. They needed to survive that day.

Okay, when we go into this, that is what I want you to think about. I want you to consider what this exception really says. Next week we will get into this exception, and we will consider more about the sacrifices, what they mean, and how that applies for us.

Thank you for your time and attention. I promise next week I will have this PowerPoint thing sorted out, because I do have tons and tons of slides. There are like eighteen of them, and I forgot to make notes to know when to turn them. So, sorry.

Class discussion: [Light laughter and a few brief comments.]

That is supposed to be Sunday morning. Sunday we did just the introduction: this is what we are going to cover. That is what the handout does. It says, “This is what we are going to cover, and this is what we are going to talk about.” Those are some key passages we are going to deal with and the questions we are are going to ask. We will start with the actual lesson this Sunday.

We are going to talk about what happens when we die. We are going to let the Scriptures say what they say about it. Hopefully, we need to make sure we invite other people, because a lot of people want to know this. We need to make sure it gets out on social media. We need to make sure our friends know about it. People always want to know the answer to that question: What happens when we die?

In the church, I do not think a lot of times we let the Scripture say what it says. We try to build a theology around death that makes us feel a little bit better. The truth is Scripture paints a very simple, straightforward picture of what happens when we die.

Class discussion: [A final brief aside follows, including laughter. The words are not clear enough to transcribe accurately.]

Guys, thank you for your time and attention. It was a good class. We are going to continue thinking about these Old Testament traditions, laws, and things they did, and how that applies to us, what we can learn from it. With that, let’s have a word of prayer, and we will be dismissed.

Closing Prayer

Father in heaven, we thank You for this time here this evening. We thank You for the opportunity to consider Your word and what that really means for us, and what we can learn about ourselves and about You. As we leave here this evening, we ask that You go with us, watch over us, and protect us, Lord. Help us to put You first in all that we do. We thank You so much for Jesus Christ and His great love and sacrifice. Thank You for giving the very best that You had. Help us to strive to do that as well. In Jesus’ name, amen.