Offerings for the King: Leviticus 1-7

How can a perfectly holy God dwell with perfectly unholy people?

That’s what we’re about to find out.

Welcome to Leviticus! Where we learn what exactly is involved in being part of a covenant Kingdom with the Creator of the Universe as your king.

Maybe the first question we should ask is: why would dwelling near the presence of God be desirable? Why would you want to be a part of this kingdom in the first place?

I think Psalm 16:11 answers these questions perfectly:

You make known to me the path of life;
    in your presence there is fullness of joy;
    at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

If you want an abundant, joyful life full of God’s blessings then dwell in the presence of your covenant King.

On this side of the resurrection, we take dwelling in God’s presence for granted. We do not need to approach God with any kind of ceremony, because Christ’s blood perfectly atoned for our sins once for all giving us access to God anytime we desire it. Not only that, but God sent his Spirit to dwell within us, leading us and guiding us as we walk with him throughout our lives.

This was not the reality that the ancient Israelites knew. At the end of Exodus, we see God dwelling with his people over the ark of the covenant inside the tabernacle. Only those who had been consecrated could go near his dwelling place, and only once a year could the High Priest go near God’s throne in the Holy of Holies.

And in order for the people of God to dwell near God in this covenant community, they had to constantly make offerings to atone for their sins. Day and night the altar of burnt offering was kept burning. The blood of animals was required in order for the people’s sins to be forgiven so they could keep dwelling near the presence of their Holy God.

Leviticus chapters 1-7 deal with the all the laws regarding the offerings the people were to make to atone for their sins. All of it points to the one final sacrifice that Jesus would make on our behalf to permanently and eternally forgive us for our sinfulness.

*Note – some of my information has come from Jay Sklar’s Tyndale Old Testament Commentary on the book of Leviticus. I have tried to note whenever I am summarizing one of his ideas.

Laws Regarding Offerings

What follows will be a short summary of each of the offerings that is described in Leviticus chapters 1-7. If you’re following along in your Leviticus Inductive Bible Study Workbook, I’ve included my answers to the “Offerings Table” found in the Observation section for chapters 1-7 (workbook page 16) . Click the link below to download the table and see my answers.

The Burnt Offering (Ch.1, 6:8-13, 7:8)

In order to offer a burnt offering, the offeror would bring a male cow, goat, sheep, turtledove, or pigeon without blemish to the court of the tent of meeting (the tabernacle). The animal was then slaughtered, the entrails and the legs washed, the blood collected and splashed against the sides of the altar, and the entire rest of the animal (except the skin) was burnt on the altar. With the other offerings, the priests (and sometimes the offeror) got to eat portions of the animal. But this was not so with the burnt offering. The burnt offering was for the atonement of Israel’s sins in general. The entire animal was required in order to atone for Israel’s general sinfulness (Sklar, 2014). We learn in chapter 6, that the skin of the animal was given to the priests as part of their due (not to be eaten but to be used for other purposes) (Sklar, 2014). We also learn that the priests were to offer a burnt sacrifice once every morning and once every evening and that the fire was to be kept burning. For all of Israel’s sinfulness a burnt sacrifice was to be constantly offered.

The Grain Offering (Ch. 2, 6:14-23, 7:9-10)

The grain offerings were to be made alongside offerings of meat. This is because the offerings were seen as meals given to the Lord (not that the Lord needed the offerings to eat, see Psalm 50) (Sklar, 2014). The grain offering could be of fine flour, unleavened cakes, wafers, or griddle cakes, or (for an offering of firstfruits addressed later in the book) fresh ears or crushed grain. They were to be offered with oil and salt and sometimes frankincense. The salt was always to be added as a reminder of Israel’s covenant with the Lord (see 2:13). The priest would take a handful of the offering and burn it. This was called the memorial portion and it belonged to the Lord. The rest of the offering was to go to the priests. Just as you and I provide for our pastors through our offerings, the Israelites were to provide for their priests. Just like the burnt offering, we learn in chapter 6, that there was to be a continual grain offering as well.

The Fellowship (or Peace) Offering (Ch.3, 7:11-18, 28-36)

This is my favorite offering. A male or female cow, goat, or sheep was brought to the entrance of the tent of meeting, slaughtered, the blood splashed against the sides of the altar, and then all of the fat of the animal offered to the Lord. Then the offeror, the priests and their families ate the rest of the meat. This was a celebratory meal to fellowship with the Lord and remember his covenant. We learn in chapter 7 that there were three types of fellowship offerings: Praise (thanksgiving), Vow, and Freewill and there were different rules regarding the meat for the different types of offerings (Sklar, 2014). We also learn in chapter 7 that the thigh and the right breast (choice parts of the meat) were offered to the Lord (by waving it before the Lord) and then given to the priests as their portion of the fellowship offering. The purpose of the fellowship offering was to praise and thank God for blessings and answered prayers and to celebrate the covenant he had established with them.

The Purification (or Sin) Offering (4:1-5:13, 6:24-30)

These last two offerings (the Sin and the Guilt offering) can be a little tricky to understand because they involve specific types of sins. The Purification offering dealt largely with unintentional sins (and cleansing from those sins, see my previous post where I talk about atonement as ransom and purification). Chapter 4 starts by describing the type of offering given for different types of people: the high priest, the entire congregation, a leader, and a common person. The high priest and the congregation required the most costly offering (a bull), while the common person required the least costly (a female goat or lamb). If the people unintentionally sinned and then realized they sinned (by suffering from some of the consequences of those sins), they would bring a purification offering for atonement for those sins (Sklar, 2014). What’s interesting to note is that, it wasn’t just the people who needed to be purified from their unintentional sins, but the tabernacle itself needed to be cleansed. This is why we see the priests sprinkling the animals’ blood in front of the veil or on the horns of the altars of incense and burnt offering. The holy things of the tabernacle needed to be purified. No one could eat of the offerings in which the blood of the sacrifice was brought inside the tabernacle (for the high priest and the whole congregation), but the priests could partake of the other offerings (for a leader or common person).

Chapter 5 begins by describing specific sins that require a purification offering. Those are: being a witness to a crime and failing to come forward, becoming unclean and failing to deal with it properly, and making a rash oath and failing to follow through on it. These three sins involved denying justice, defiling the Lord’s tabernacle, and profaning the Lord’s name (since they took oaths in the Lord’s name) (Sklar, 2014). These types of sins would require purification.

The Reparation (or Guilt) Offering (5:14-6:7, 7:1-7)

The reparation offering had to do with honoring God’s holiness (Sklar, 2014). If you committed a sin that profaned God’s holiness, a reparation offering was required in order to make right your wrong (or “repair” the damage). The sins that required a reparation offering were: touching or taking one of the holy things (such as food items which were the Lord’s), suspecting that you touched or took a holy thing without realizing it, and defrauding someone and then lying about it (under oath, thus profaning the Lord’s name). The reparation offering has to do with sins in which God’s holiness is disrespected: either his holy things or his holy name. This is seen as covenant unfaithfulness (Sklar, 2014). The guilty party must bring forth a ram as an offering (or its equivalent) plus restore what he had unlawfully taken and add a fifth to it. We learn that the reparation offering is just like the purification offering in which the fat is burned on the altar and the priests may eat the rest of the meat in a holy place. It is considered a most holy sacrifice.

Click here to download my completed “Offerings Table” to see how I filled it in.

Application – How should it change me?

You may have read all these laws about offerings and wondered: what does any of this have to do with me? We clearly no longer follow the laws regarding offerings. We can’t even fully understand the laws because the concept of bringing sacrifices is so foreign to us. Things that would’ve made sense to the ancient Israelites are lost on us. How do we read, learn from, and apply such a text?

To answer that question, I want to make you uncomfortable for a minute. I want you to picture what was happening during these offerings. I want you to picture leading a young sheep to the court of the tent of meeting. I want you to picture you yourself cutting its throat and spilling its blood. I want you to picture it being butchered and pieces of it thrown onto the burning altar. I want you to picture its blood being thrown against the sides of the altar.

Are you feeling uncomfortable? Good. Sit in that discomfort for a minute.

That is the cost of your sin.

Life must be taken, blood must be spilled in order for you to dwell in the presence of a Holy God.

But this didn’t happen just once. These offerings had to be made continually. Over and over again young animals lost their lives to pay for Israel’s sinfulness. Think of all the animals that died for the sake of Israel’s atonement.

And then think about the overwhelming amount of rules you just read. Think about how hard it must have been to keep every single one of the laws laid out in Leviticus 1-7. Did you feel overwhelmed by the amount and the detail of the laws as you read them? You should!

That is the cost of sin. These were the things that had to happen in order for Israel to dwell near the presence of God and be in a relationship with him.

How utterly Holy is our God. How utterly sinful are we!

Here’s the question you need to ask yourself in order to apply Leviticus 1-7 rightly:

How do you approach this Holy God?

The Israelites had to approach God with much ceremony and reverence being careful to obey his commands.

How do you approach God? In prayer? In worship? At the Lord’s supper? Do you show this holy God the same kind of reverence that was required of the Israelites?

We no longer need to make sacrifices in order to dwell in the presence of our Holy God. Hebrews explains why:

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Hebrews 9:11-14

Christ himself was our sacrifice. He was the final and perfect sacrifice, buying for us our eternal atonement.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God,

1 Peter 3:18

We no longer need to enter God’s presence through the blood of animals sacrificed on our behalf, because our Great High Priest offered himself as our sacrifice and purchased our eternal redemption with his blood.

If the thought of slaughtering animals makes you uncomfortable, how much more the thought of our slaughtered Lord!

Leviticus 1-7 should be a reminder to us to never forget the cost of our sinfulness and the holiness of our God.

We need to remember this when we come before him. When we go before him in prayer. We need to remember when we prepare our hearts for worship. We need to remember when we come to the Lord’s table. We need to remember as we open his Word.

We need to remember when we come before God that he is so utterly holy that it took blood (our Savior’s blood) to bring us here.

There is a great cost involved in order for unholy people to dwell with a Holy God. May we never forget!

Homework

Next week we’ll be taking a look at Leviticus chapters 8-10. This is one of the only sections of narrative throughout the book and it deals with the anointing of Aaron and his sons as Israel’s first priests. Your homework will be to read this section and to observe, interpret, and apply it.

I’ll be back next week with a few thoughts on chapters 8-10.

We’ll see you then!