You can't approach the King without a sacrificial gift.
3 "If the animal you present as a
burnt offering is from the herd, it must be a male with no defects. Bring it
to the entrance of the Tabernacle so you may be accepted by the LORD.
4 Lay your hand on the animal's
head, and the LORD will accept its death in your place to purify you, making
you right with him.
In the
previous post
we saw that nothing else could be more important than knowing God and
knowing his demands. Something in mankind has always made him aware
that there is a higher power and they knew that they should be concerned
about making sure that higher power is pleased.
Our God is the only higher power that we need to know, he is the real God
and he wants to have a relationship with us. The fact that we are unclean
makes it dangerous to come close to our holy God if we ignore his rules.
Thankfully God has given his people the information that we need so that
we can safely approach him.
Just as you wouldn't come into the presence of an earthly king without a gift,
you certainly shouldn't approach the ruler of the universe without a gift. The
believers in the Old Testament would not ever consider going to the tabernacle
or the temple without a sacrifice.
If they wanted to come into God's presence a costly gift from their herd or flock was required. It had to be a real sacrifice that cost them something, it wasn't a sacrifice just because it was burned on the altar, it was a sacrifice because it was expensive. They had either purchased the animal or they had the expense of raising it from birth.
Going to worship was a mentally, physically, and emotionally draining event.
Thousands of years later we have lost the worship experience that God's people
had back in the Old Testament. We come to worship so casually without much forethought or preparation.
Imagine the impact of bringing your own animal, laying your hands on the
innocent and personally taking it's life while the priest caught the blood in
a basin. After you caused it to bleed out and die you still had to cut your
animal into pieces and wash them while the priest burned them, piece by piece, on the altar.
The burnt offering has so many symbols that point to Jesus:
- The bull speaks of our Lord as the patient, unwearied laborer, always doing the Father’s will.
- The sheep represents the Lord as the meek and lowly one.
- The goat speaks of Christ as our substitute.
- The turtledove points to Him as the man of sorrows (mourning dove)
- To cleanse and restore the sinner to fellowship with God
The way to atone for our sins and restore our fellowship with God was through the blood of a perfect sacrifice. This truth was fulfilled perfectly and was replaced by a better sacrifice when Jesus came.
For 33 years the lamb of God was inspected and found to be without fault, he
lived the perfect life to be the only sacrifice that actually pays the penalty
for my sin. The symbolic sacrifices in the Old Testament only covered their
sin for a season until the lamb of God offered himself as the only sacrifice
that could bring salvation and make us holy. (John 1:29, Romans 3:25, 8:3, Hebrews 10:1-18)
It is much more difficult to have genuine, deep sorrow for our sin and
truly appreciate the costly sacrifice made for us. We come so casually to worship, we seem to think that there isn't much required of us, we have forgotten the
fact that
holiness is still required
in order to have a relationship with God.
God has only one intended destiny for mankind—holiness. His only goal is to produce saints. God is not some eternal blessing-machine for people to use, and he did not come to save us out of pity—he came to save us because he created us to be holy.
Holiness is the reason for salvation, it is the ultimate reason that Jesus came to be sacrificed, becoming holy is the only way that I can spend eternity with God. Pleasing God is the most important thing in the world and the only way to please him is to become like him and that means being holy. (Hebrews 10:10)
We love to think that God wants us to be happy, healthy and wealthy but none of those things are going to get you into God's presence for eternity. The most important thing in life is your holiness achieved by accepting Jesus as the perfect sacrifice and then committing yourself to work to become more like Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit living in you.
Burnt Offering- Genesis 8:20-22, Exodus 29:42-46, Numbers 28-29 / 1 Samuel 7:9-10 / 1 Chronicles 21:18-22:1, Ezra 3:1-6, Job 1:5, Isaiah 1:11-20, Mark 12:33, Romans 3:25, 8:3, Hebrews 10:1-18
The Law of Burnt Offering- Leviticus 6:8-13
RELATED ARTICLES
How To Become Holy
(thegospelcoalition.org)
What is a burnt offering? (gotquestions.org)
