Companion: Deep Study
A condensed companion to the full study. For each section of the expanded outline: key insights, applications, and the application questions for discussion.
Section 1 — A Breach of Faith Against the LORD (Leviticus 6:1-7)
Key Insights
- Cheating a neighbor over a deposit, a pledge, a robbery, an oppression, or a lost thing kept is called a breach of faith against the LORD (v. 2).
- The Hebrew word is maal, treachery — the same term used of Achan’s theft and of marital unfaithfulness.
- The case is opened by conscience, not by a court, since the offender simply “has realized his guilt” (v. 4).
- The penitent restores the principal plus a fifth on the same day, where a convicted thief paid double.
- Isaiah’s Servant is Himself the asham, the guilt offering that the ram could only picture (Isaiah 53:10).
Applications
- Make a written list of what you still hold that belongs to someone else.
- Repay promptly rather than conveniently, because the text sets the day of conviction as the deadline.
- A warning: restitution settles the debt to your neighbor but never purchases pardon from God.
Application Questions
- Is there anyone alive who could truthfully say that I still hold something of theirs — money, property, credit, or a reputation I damaged and never repaired?
- When my conscience finally names a wrong, do I act that same day, or do I wait until it is convenient, until it is cheaper, or until I am caught?
Section 2 — The Fire on the Altar Shall Not Go Out (Leviticus 6:8-13)
Key Insights
- The address turns from the people to the priests with the words “Command Aaron and his sons” (v. 9).
- The evening lamb was laid on the hearth so the flame would survive the night until morning.
- Clearing the ashes in linen, then changing clothes to carry them outside the camp, made humble labor part of holy service.
- The command not to let the fire go out is repeated three times, because the flame had fallen from heaven and was God’s gift to guard.
- Christ fulfills the perpetual fire: the priests stood daily, but He sat down after one sacrifice (Hebrews 10:12).
Applications
- Feed the ordinary means of grace on a fixed schedule rather than by mood.
- Honor the unseen service that makes corporate worship possible.
- A warning: the fire was God-given, so this text calls for vigilance and fuel, not for manufactured emotion.
Application Questions
- Which of the daily fires in my life — Scripture, prayer, the Lord’s Day, confession — has quietly gone out while I was not watching?
- Am I willing to do the ash-carrying work — the unnoticed, unglamorous service that lets others worship — without needing it to be seen?
Section 3 — The Law of the Grain Offering and the Priests’ Portion (Leviticus 6:14-18)
Key Insights
- A handful of flour, oil and frankincense goes up as the memorial portion, and the rest belongs to the priests (v. 15).
- The priests’ bread must be eaten unleavened and inside the court, never taken home.
- God calls it “a thing most holy” and says plainly, “I have given it as their portion of my food offerings” (v. 17).
- Holiness spreads by contact here, so that whoever touches the most holy things comes under a priest’s obligations.
- Christ reverses the current: the Holy One touches the leper and the leper is cleansed (Mark 1:41).
Applications
- Pay and provide for those who labor in the Word, deliberately and not by default.
- Receive ordinary daily provision as holy, since the priests’ most holy portion was simply their supper.
- A warning: this passage funds ministry without creating a priestly caste, because every believer now offers spiritual sacrifices.
Application Questions
- Do I actually take responsibility for the material needs of those who teach me the Word, or do I assume someone else has it covered?
- Where has familiarity made me casual about holy things — the preached Word, the Lord’s Table, the fellowship of the church?
Section 4 — The Anointed Priest’s Own Offering, Wholly Burned (Leviticus 6:19-23)
Key Insights
- The anointed priest brings his own grain offering, half in the morning and half in the evening (v. 20).
- The mention of a successor “anointed to succeed him” quietly admits that the priest will die (v. 22).
- Unlike the people’s offering, his own is wholly burned and he eats none of it.
- Eating the people’s offering signified bearing their guilt, so eating none of his own confesses that he cannot bear his own sin.
- Christ is the High Priest who needed no sacrifice for Himself and still had bread to give away (Hebrews 7:27).
Applications
- Honor your leaders without treating any of them as a mediator.
- Serve where there is no return, since the priest’s own offering went up as smoke and came back as nothing.
- A warning: this text humbles the ministry without arguing that ministers should go unpaid.
Application Questions
- Do I look to any human leader — a pastor, an author, a mentor — for something only Christ can give me?
- Am I content to serve where there is no present advantage — no thanks, no visibility, no return?
Section 5 — The Law of the Sin Offering and the Holiness That Spreads (Leviticus 6:24-30)
Key Insights
- The sin offering is killed at the same place as the burnt offering and is called most holy (v. 25).
- The officiating priest eats it, enacting his bearing of the offerer’s guilt.
- Blood splashed on a garment is washed inside the sanctuary, never carried out into common life.
- An earthen pot that absorbed the offering is broken, while bronze is scoured — what cannot be cleansed must be destroyed.
- Offerings whose blood went inside were burned outside the camp, and so Jesus suffered outside the gate (Hebrews 13:12).
Applications
- Refuse to speak of the blood of Christ as a common thing.
- Distinguish what can be scoured from what must be broken, and stop managing what God says to destroy.
- Bear one another’s burdens by going outside the camp with those the respectable have excluded.
Application Questions
- In what way have I begun to treat the blood of Christ as a common thing?
- Is there something in my life that cannot be cleansed and must simply be broken?
Christ is the guilt offering who pays what we stole, the Priest who could not be replaced, and the fire that never goes out.
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