22 “But suppose you unintentionally fail to carry out all these commands that the Lord has given you through Moses. 23 And suppose your descendants in the future fail to do everything the Lord has commanded through Moses. 24 If the mistake was made unintentionally, and the community was unaware of it, the whole community must present a young bull for a burnt offering as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. It must be offered along with its prescribed grain offering and liquid offering and with one male goat for a sin offering.
27 “If one individual commits an unintentional sin, the guilty person must bring a one-year-old female goat for a sin offering.
30 “But those who brazenly violate the Lord’s will, whether native-born Israelites or foreigners, have blasphemed the Lord, and they must be cut off from the community. 31 Since they have treated the Lord’s word with contempt and deliberately disobeyed his command, they must be completely cut off and suffer the punishment for their guilt.”
Notice that the person (people) who sin unintentionally are given the opportunity to atone and be forgiven while those who are intentional with their sin and to be separated from the community.
So let's think about what it means to be intentional in your disobedience and why the punishment. So in order to be in willful disobedience, you first have to know what you are supposed to do. Then you also have to think about what you will do and make a conscious choice to do it sinfully. In the case of the sacrifices, that means that the person needs to understand that they are to honor and be grateful to God for all the blessings God has given and then the person has to decide to do to that.
When a person does that, they are receiving the blessings, but taking them for granted and not appreciating the one who has provided them. God is saying, don't take me for granted. And the punishment for that is to cut that person off from the fellowship of the community.
Why that punishment. I believe that it has to do with the fact that an attitude of taking things for granted is easily spread. The punishment is more about protecting the rest of the community. God doesn't want that attitude to become a community attitude.
I completely appreciate what God is trying to do. I also look at who we are today as a society...
We are experts at taking others for granted. Especially those we are closest to. We just expect that those closest to us will keep loving and caring for us regardless of how we treat them. And we can see this attitude pervasive throughout the nation.
What do we do? Well, for one, we make sure we are not doing this. We become people of appreciation and recognize both God and others for the role they play in our lives and the blessings they add to our lives. For another, we set this example and encourage others to make this shift as well.
Just as a negative attitude can spread, so can a positive one. It won't be easy, and we may stumble and fall ourselves, but we need to be faithful as God is faithful and when we sin, we need to repent and atone.
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