These chapters are all about offerings to God. We begin with a burnt offering. The priests dealt with this all day....they actually had to butcher very precisely. All covenant involves blood, and you can be assured that there was lots of blood. The sacrifice had to be perfect and without defect (this symbolizes Jesus being the perfect human......when he hung on the cross, his legs were not broken you will see). Note that the priest had to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering....the whole point here is the SUBSTITUTION. Something else bore the sin so that someone could be forgiven. Notice that this was done so that the aroma could be pleasing to the Lord.....if this was being done all day, there would be an aroma in the camp.....what a reminder of sin.....
The grain offering could be presented in three ways...
a) fine flour with oil and incense
b) baked cakes or wafers of fine flour and oil
c) roasted kernels of grain with oil and incense...
yeast represents sin....even a little yeast spreads when you use it
The offerings were sealed with salt as a reminder of the people's covenant with God.
There was a fellowship (peace) offering...this is an expression of gratitude...and is a way of establishing fellowship with God....
Remember that it is estimated that 2 million people left Egypt....this is a lot of sacrificing and blood in the camp.. the above offerings were all voluntary....the sin offering was not voluntary. This was for unintentional sin and different animals were sacrificed for different types of sin....
God adapted all this to the people's culture in their day and time, according to His plan. Animal sacrifices were common in the Middle East at that time. This was a way that God could give the people an awareness of sin. God moves them into teaching a whole new way of life. Everything is pointing toward Jesus.....Jesus will be the ultimate sin offering....
Look what comes up from the depths of the sea.
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one note....my bible points out that leaven or yeast is often used as a picture of sin. It was not to be offered on the altar, just as sin is not to be allowed to dominate our lives...........
ReplyDeleteI have heard of people not eating meat rare because they said the bible says not to eat blood. In ch 3 verse 17, is this where it comes from?
Probably so.....Leviticus 7: 27 says If anyone eats blood, that person must be cut off from his people.....my study note says....because blood was the river of life, and life was God's gift and his alone, blood had to be returned to God and not used by his people." We'll be finding out that the Lord decreed lots of things for the health of his people as we move forward in the Old Testament.....but just as sacrifices are no longer needed after Christ served as the ultimate sacrifice, Peter will have a dream in the New Testament and God will be telling him that nothing the Lord created is unclean...but we are not to be a stumbling block to people or blatantly disregard the beliefs of people when we are with them. For example, if an orthodox jew doesn't eat pork, don't blatantly eat pork and disrespect his belief system in front of him.
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