The Burnt Offering

You can't approach the King without a sacrificial gift.

Leviticus 1:1-4 The LORD called to Moses from the Tabernacle and said to him, 2 "Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. When you present an animal as an offering to the LORD, you may take it from your herd of cattle or your flock of sheep and goats. 

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.

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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.

-Oswald Chambers

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

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How To Become Holy (thegospelcoalition.org)

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The Most Important Thing

God is holy and he requires that his people be holy.

Leviticus 11:44-45 For I am the LORD your God. You must consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. So do not defile yourselves with any of these small animals that scurry along the ground. 45 For I, the LORD, am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt, that I might be your God. Therefore, you must be holy because I am holy.

Leviticus 19:1-2 The LORD also said to Moses, 2 “Give the following instructions to the entire community of Israel. You must be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.

Psalms 33:8  Let the whole world fear the LORD, and let everyone stand in awe of him.

Psalm 96:8-9 Give to the LORD the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come into his courts. 9 Worship the LORD in all his holy splendor. Let all the earth tremble before him.

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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. The most ancient cultures all over the world have sought to appease the gods so that they could live and be prosperous. 

But we aren't worried about their "gods." We know there is only one higher power to be concerned with. Our fear about how God will treat us became obvious as soon as we sinned, Adam and Eve didn't have any way of knowing how God would react, we read in Genesis that they were afraid but I think that is an understatement.  

The first worshippers that the Bible tells us about are Cain and Abel, after that is was Noah and then all of the forefathers of Israel. They all used a sacrifice as a gift to God even before the laws about sacrifices was given. 

The book of Leviticus is God's gift to his people to let us know what he expects from them when they have made him unhappy with them. None of the "gods" ever went out of their way to help their believers know what is expected.

Nothing else could be more important than knowing God and his demands but most of us like to stay out of the Old Testament so we don't get the full story. We don't realize that our view of God is inaccurate because we are only reading half of God's book.

The fact that God devoted an entire book of the Bible to the subject of holiness would indicate that it’s an important subject, one that we dare not ignore. Whenever we minimize the holiness of God, we’re in danger of minimizing human sinfulness, and the combination of these two errors results in the minimizing of the cross of Jesus Christ.

-Warren Wiersbe Commentary

The most popular way of referring to God in scripture is simply "the holy one," it is so important that it is the one characteristic that is most celebrated before his throne in Heaven. "Holy, holy, holy" is the song of the saints before God's throne. (Isaiah 6:3, Revelation 4:8-9, 15:2–4)

God wants a relationship with us but his holiness is dangerous to unclean people if we do not adhere to his rules about approaching's him. By ignoring the Old Testament we find it easier to avoid the fact that God is holy, Moses described him as being "glorious in holiness" (Exodus 15:11) and we have been commanded in both the Old and the New Testament to be holy just as he is.

God’s holiness can be understood as the momentum behind all the other attributes of God.  Holiness is the essence of God.  It is the driving force behind the righteousness, justice, mercy, wrath, compassion, will, truth, and all other attributes of God.

A Brief Analysis Of The Holiness Of God by John Wilsey

We don't like to think about God's holiness or his demand that his people be holy. The most popular way of referring to God today is to say that God is love, everybody likes that God, we want a God that helps us get along with each other, solves our problems and carries our burdens. We want a God that affirms us and tells us to follow our heart or trust our feelings.

We are too much like the crowds that followed Jesus around looking for a cure, looking for a meal or looking for a leader to save them from the Roman oppression. But as soon as Jesus fails to make our life better we turn on him.

We want a Jesus that makes us happy, so don't even mention a Jesus that wants to control our lives and change our character. The idea of God or Jesus wanting us to be happy is a concept that isn't found in the Bible.

1 Peter 1:15 But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy.

1 Peter 2:5 And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God.

1 Peter 2:9 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

We have been commanded to be holy, that is our greatest goal, we must be unique and separate from the world. We belong to a holy God who has given us a job to do. As his nation of priest we have work to do that requires us to be holy. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, and 2 Corinthians 7:1)

10 Things You Should Know about the Priesthood of Believers

Jesus came to be our High Priest so that we can be priest that do God's work, interceding for others and representing God to them. How can we draw near to God as a priest if we are unholy? How can we accurately show God to others if we are a terrible example?

God's attributes must be seen as equal, we shouldn't stress his love and neglect wrath and justice, too much emphasis on any of them is a distortion of who God is. Without a proper view of God's holiness there is a lack of fear or reverence for him and we won't see a need to change.

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. Instead of pursuing our happiness in this world we should seek to prepare ourselves for the next world where we will experience joy eternally.

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The Problem Solving Jesus (mereorthodoxy.com)

God's Holiness And Your Worship (gty.org)

What Does It Mean to Fear the Lord? (olivetree.org)