Burnt Offerings - Leviticus 1

Chapter 1 is packed with sacrificial procedure. It’s interesting because both TB and the IM are full of information about this chapter, even though it’s only 17 verses. I personally didn’t find what they said that important to talk about, but there were a few things I’ll bring up here. A cattle burnt offering is to be a male without blemish, and the offerer brings it to the door of the tabernacle to be sacrificed. The IM said that the door of the tabernacle was the designated sacrifice spot because of the previous problems that the Israelites’ had with idolatry. This makes sense because it took away all ability for anyone other than designated priests to perform different temple ordinances. It created a very controlled environment for temple ordinances for the people.

Part of the procedure of sacrifice included “he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering,” before killing it because it symbolically transferred the person’s sins from himself onto the animal. This is like Christ transferring our sins from us onto himself. Additionally this is significant, I think, when you consider different parts of our temple ceremony that we have today. The whole procedure of animal sacrifice is integral to our temple ceremony we have today and it will be fun to explore that during this study of temple procedure.

Anyway, the offerer brings the animal to the door of the tabernacle, transfers the sins to the animal, then kills the animal and the Priests “bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar.” Blood plays a large part in all the sacrifices and the IM comments, “nothing played a more prominent part than the administration of the blood of the offering… The Lord chose blood to dramatize the consequences of sin and what was involved in the process of forgiveness and reconciliation. Therefore, blood symbolized both life and the giving of one’s life. Death is the consequence of sin and so the animal was slain to show what happens when man sins.”

I can only imagine the smell of the sacrifice area with all that blood and burning flesh, I bet it was terrible but I guess that back then blood would have been a more common occurrence in people’s daily lives. People died more often with disease and accidents, animals were killed in the open. We really do live in a much more sanitized version of life these days, so all this talk and imagining of blood is probably pretty foreign to us and hard to visualize.

After the animal is killed and the blood is dealt with however it was supposed to be depending on what type of sacrifice it was, then the animal was skinned, and cut up into pieces with the inwards, legs, fat, and head separated and then the legs and inwards washed with water, then everything was put on the altar and burnt up completely. There are two aspects here that are significant, first is that the animal is cut up and washed. The IM gives an explanation and what I understand it to mean is that in order to be completely cleansed by Christ’s blood and atonement, our entire lives and who we are need to be taken apart and cleaned.

The head, legs, fat, and inwards are representative of our hearts (inwards), might (fat meaning our energy and vigor), mind (head), and strength (legs), are all cleaned and separated to focus on dismantling who we are and offering them to God. We offering our whole souls, thoughts, and actions to God as our part of our salvation through repentance and this is just a visual representation of that. The second part of this that is significant is that the burnt offering sacrifice has to be burnt up completely, there can be nothing left. This con be representative of our whole person being consumed with God’s will and our devotion to him without any deviation. The IM notes that if Jesus Christ had contained one single thought or inclination towards anything that wasn’t completely His Father’s will “had there been one step in the walk of Jesus which was taken not for God, but for His own pleasure;- then He could not have offered HIimself or been accepted as ‘a whole burtn-offering to Jehovah.’ But Jesus gave up all: he reserved nothing. All was burnt, all consumed upon the altar.” When Christ was done offering Himself as an atonement for us, there was nothing left but God’s will.

It’s interesting to think about this in our own lives. I know that personally, mostly what I think about is myself and what I want, but how much do I think about God’s will and what I should do to fulfill that? How often I lash out or withhold because I either feel anger or don’t want to engage with someone else? How often to I act in a way that Jesus would not act and I expect Him to just be fine with it? This is interesting to think about because truly if I had my sole focus be strictly on God’s will for me, how different would my life look? How different would I feel and think? And how do even get to the point where that is the focus, where my whole being is consumed with God’s will? What does that even look like? Maybe the first step is recognizing just how far away I am from that goal, and making baby steps to change that and keep making small changes according to the promptings of the Spirit until eventually I get there. I’m going to have to think about this.