As said last week, I’m studying Leviticus this fall, and though the book is sometimes overlooked for being just a litany of Old Covenant rules, Old Law commandments, and Old Testament precepts, I am finding numerous ways in which a study of this text better informs my Christianity.
Take, for example, the subject in the middle of Leviticus 4. The text is about what to do when the whole congregation of Israel sins ignorantly. If everyone gets swept up in an error, without realizing it, and then later discovers they were guilty, God prescribes a kind of sin offering they can bring to be made right in His sight.
The process involves everyone coming together as the elders of the people lay hands on a single sacrificial animal (symbolically transferring their guilt onto the creature), and then killing it. After that, the High Priest sprinkles its blood inside the Tabernacle, pours out the rest of its blood on the bronze altar, burns the fat of the animal (the best part) on the altar to the Lord, and then takes the remaining flesh outside the camp to be burned, not on an altar, but just on a pile of wood, destroyed entirely.
You might ask the question: Why did the people not give all of the animal to God? Apart from the fact that, clearly, God didn’t want the whole animal (or He would have command them to give it), there’s great symbolism in the way this offering is handled.
Blood was used to consecrate the place where God’s presence mingles with the people (the Tabernacle), as well as the place where man’s offerings were brought up to God (the bronze altar). The rest is burned outside the camp. Why? Because the animal bore the sins of the people. An aspect of that animal (the choicest part of it, in fact) was received by God (the fat). An aspect of it (the part that symbolized its life) was used by God for consecration (the blood). The rest of it—the part that bore the people’s sins—God doesn’t need, nor does it have any value. Thus it was burned outside. It was destroyed completely. And when it was gone, so too were the people’s sins.
Looking back on this in the afterglow of Calvary, we recognize the forgiveness of God as being unlocked thanks to the offering of Jesus on the Cross. That is unspoken here. As far as these Israelites are concerned, they killed the bull and were forgiven. Simple as that. Later, as the prophets of God whisper and hint at the Messiah-to-come, they will begin to understand what Christians today know very well: The blood of a bull cannot take away sins; whatever legal satisfaction God gleaned from such offerings were enjoyed solely with the prospect of Jesus’ offering to come: Only the blood of the God|Man can save (Hebrews 10:1-10).
The fact that the sacrifice was destroyed beyond the camp looks ahead to the Christian age, a fact noted by the writer of Hebrews, who reminds us that Jesus “suffered outside the gate” of Jerusalem (Hebrews 13:12). The Lord bore our sins beyond the holy city just as the sin offering was burned outside the camp: The Lord’s action destroyed sin once and for all.
In a more perfect way than the Israelite offering, Jesus is our sin offering. He is our perfect sacrifice. He remained sinless, and was offered up to God, pure, and without spot or blemish (1 Peter 1:19), just as the fat of the animal was offered to God. Jesus’ blood consecrates us, just as the blood of the animal consecrated the Tabernacle and the altar. Jesus’ flesh died outside the camp of Israel, and with the death of his flesh, so too did our sin die. The debt of our sin died with Jesus, and when He rose, our sin did not rise with Him. It remains buried forever.
When I read Leviticus, I am not just reading the history of Israel; I am studying the shadow of Calvary!
~Matthew