You can open your Bible if you
want to Leviticus the first chapter, although we really aren't going
to be reading a lot of this, but you can kind of be glancing
at Leviticus chapters 1 through 7 as I go through what we want
to look at this morning. You remember last time I got
to speak to you, it was on the sacrifices in the Old Testament,
specifically the sacrifices that our patriarchs did in the Old
Testament and the observations that I saw in that. And I wanted
to follow on today with part two of sacrifices, the last part
of what I wanna share with you. And we'll go through the Levitical
system of sacrifices and then make a few observations as to
how that relates to our age and the New Testament. Very important
subject in the Bible and the more I look at it, the more that
I'm struck with the idea that in the Old Testament, This consumed
the lives of the saints in the Old Testament, the sacrificial
system. And so we need to understand it and what the types are of
the New Testament, because that's all that it really matters for.
And as far as a review of what we talked about last time, just
briefly, you remember the Old Testament saints offered sacrifices
and at the same time called upon the Lord. They seemed to go together.
And you have examples that we went through last time of Noah,
Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, all offering sacrifices, building
an altar and offering sacrifices and at the same time calling
upon the name of the Lord. And the interesting thing about
it is this was before the sacrificial system was given to the people. in Exodus as part of the law,
way before that, and yet they knew enough to offer sacrifices. Now we know and we're aware of
the fact that in the world, pagans have offered sacrifices too.
It's a common theme. What's different between the
pagan sacrifices that are so prevalent in history, and the
Christian, or the Old Testament saints, doing sacrifices. Big
difference. Pagans did it to bribe the gods. They wanted something out of
it. Christians, with the correct heart in the Old Testament, did
it because they were thanking God, and yes, they were asking
Him for things, but they were thanking God and they were giving
tribute to Him and honoring Him with these sacrifices. So, really,
At the heart of all of these sacrifices, though, is the fact
that they are types of the only sacrifice that has been effective
in all of history, and that is the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus
Christ on the cross. They all point to that, and especially
now as we get to the law in Exodus and in Leviticus, and we start
talking about the Levitical system of sacrifices, that's what we
wanna do today. We also went through last time
with you the great type in the Old Testament of sacrifice, and
that is Abraham being told by God to offer his only son, Isaac. And that whole thing about that
type of Christ. Talking to the pastor after that,
he pointed out some even more types in that that I had overlooked. The silence of of Isaac in that,
versus the silence, the lamb being led to the slaughter, and
then Christ not saying not a word. Things like that are so prevalent
in that passage. Okay, in Exodus and Leviticus,
we have the whole sacrificial system told to us through the
law. And you remember God gave to
Moses the commandments, the Ten Commandments, but much more than
that. He gave him the prescription for the building of the tabernacle.
And that in itself is a tremendous study of the dimensions of the
tabernacle and the things it was made out of and all the different
pieces of furniture. We don't have time to go through
that, but it's intimately related to the sacrificial system. So
let me just remind you of the basic setup. You had this tabernacle,
and they called it the tabernacle before the temple. The temple
was a permanent building. The tabernacle was all of this
thing they took apart and put back together as they traveled
through the wilderness. And by the way, I studied this
week a little bit about the timing of the wanderings in the wilderness.
And it's very interesting. It took them probably about 30
days to get to Mount Horeb, or Mount Sinai. But then they wandered
another probably two years and two months before they were rejected,
remember, at the promised land and had to wander the rest of
the time to make up 40 years. So evidently, for 40 years, they're
taking down this tabernacle, putting it back together as they
wander. It's amazing to think about.
Anyway, you have this tabernacle, and it's got dimensions to it.
And the outer walls of it are about a seven-foot-high curtain
of certain materials on silver poles and sockets. It tells them
exactly how to make it and set it up. There's a door to the
whole thing, the courtyard there. And out in the outer part, you
have the burnt offering altar. This thing was about 7 1�2 feet
by 7 1�2 feet, forget the height, so fairly big. And that's where,
as we study these sacrifices, that's where the burnt offerings
and so forth were made, is on that outer altar, not inside
the actual temp of either the holy place or the Holy of Holies.
So you have the altar out there, the bird-offering altar, and
you have this big laver that the priest washed up at. So you
have a place to wash and you have the bird-offering altar.
Then inside the tent with the holy of holies, I mean the holy
place and the holy of holies, you have the three pieces of
furniture in the holy place. You have the candlestick, You
have the showbread table crossed from each other, and then you
have the altar of incense. So that's another altar, but
it's just of incense. Then, through the veil, through
this fantastically heavy veil that was ran into when our Lord
was crucified, and you have the Holy of Holies that the priest,
the high priest, only was permitted to go into once a year for the
Day of Atonement. We're gonna talk about that.
And inside there, you have the Ark of the Covenant, You have
the piece of furniture where God resided on the mercy seat
on top of that Ark of the Covenant. You have the two cherubim with
their wings almost touching the walls in that inner sanctuary,
overshadowing that Ark of the Covenant. And so you can, by
the way, you can Google this stuff now and there's renditions,
pictures, fantastic stuff to look at, to see what it might
have looked like. It's interesting doing that. Alright, so, in the
Levitical system, described in Leviticus 1-7, there are five
offerings. There are five types of offerings
we need to understand. And by the way, in Leviticus
8-10 is then the priests, and how they are supposed to offer
the offerings, and how their clothes are supposed to be, and
the washings and all of that. We're not going to try to touch
that. But let me just recite to you the notes I took as I
went through these five types of offerings, and let's study
them for a minute. But first of all, the big revelation
to me this week, I'm trying to understand how many of these
offerings were made, just the sheer number of them. And I'm
not really understanding too well, and then I read and get
help on it, and then I'm coming to understand the number of sacrifices
made on these particular days. And I'm thinking, how does that
relate to every day? Well, there was a daily sacrifice
morning and evening, but those were what they called the national
or the priestly sacrifices. What about every day, every person? You and me, the common people,
what did they do? Well, look at me on Leviticus,
the first chapter. It really hit me, it's just right
there. Leviticus one, one and two. Then
the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of
meeting, saying, speak to the sons of Israel and say to them,
When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall
bring your offering of animals from the herd or the flock, and
it goes on. And you see this several times
during these chapters. Besides the set offerings or
the national offerings that were made on certain days, including
every day, The people had their own injunction to make offerings
for themselves when they felt sin, when they wanted praise. And so I believe what you have
going on here is you have the set offerings, which amount to,
if this one site was right, I didn't count them, on the web said that
there were 1246 offerings, this is either a bull, a goat, or
a lamb, in the national sacrifices a year, 1246. Then you add to
that the personal sacrifices that were made by people like
you and me going down to the tabernacle to make a sacrifice,
and you have an enormous number going on here. Do you remember when Solomon
dedicated his temple, the standing built structure? It says that
he, on that dedication of the temple, offered 22,000 bulls
for a peace offering and 120,000 sheep. And that, there's some
division of thought on that. That was either in one day or
seven days, but either way, unbelievable. Now when Ezra, years before,
dedicated the temple after the Babylonian group came back, he
didn't offer quite as many. It was in the hundreds. But this
is what you have going on in the Old Testament. It's fascinating.
So the 1246 is when you add up Every day, you were supposed,
the priest did a morning and evening sacrifice, okay, two
a day times 365. Then you add to that, there were
sacrifices on the Sabbath, sacrifices on the Passover, sacrifices on
three different feasts, and sacrifices on the Day of Atonement. And
in one of those, Feast days, I think it was maybe the Feast
of Weeks, or the Feast of Tabernacles, I forget. It runs for eight days,
and they did 14 bowls the first day, and 13 the second day, and
12, it's like the song of the days of Christmas. So anyway,
huge number of sacrifices going on. All right, so that setting
the stage, let's look at the different types of sacrifice.
First of all, and named first, is the burnt offering. The bird
offering was a bull, a ram, or a bird. Now, depending on how
rich you are, you're either offered a bull, a ram, or just a bird.
It had to be a male without defect, very typical of the Lord Jesus
Christ. A male without defect, and what the person would do
Now, this could either be the ceremonial or national sacrifice
by the priest, or it could be by the common people. Now, I'm
gonna describe to you what the common person did. If you or
I were making a bird offering back in those days, we would
get our bull, ram, or bird, we'd go down to the tabernacle, take
it with us, and we would ourselves, the priest didn't do this, and
you can see this in the writing here, I would, first of all,
put my hand on the head of this thing. That's transferring my
sins. And then I would, myself, kill
it, skin it, cut it up, right there at the door of the tabernacle,
or maybe inside, and wash it. And then the priest would take
it over, put it on the burnt offering altar out there outside
the rooms, and he would burn it, offer it. The priest would
sprinkle blood on the altar and then burn it. So that was the
way that it went. You know, I never really, really
captured that before. I don't know why. But these are
people coming down. I mean, must have been a line
of them every day. doing this and As we were talking
last time had to be a bloody mess I'm sure they they you know
the Jews were very clean and so they cleaned it up every day,
but wow what a what a thing going on there, and then they would
pack up the tabernacle and Move on and I don't think they did
that every day of course, but they did they were nomadic and
they did move on all right the burn offering Bull, ram, or bird,
male without defect, lay hands on, and it was, the symbol here
is total consecration. And with a little bit of a symbol
of atonement, but we're gonna get to the real atonement sacrifice
in a minute. The whole animal except the skin.
Blood on the altar. And so, that's the burnt offering. Now, the grain offering. So,
among these offerings you have animal sacrifices with blood,
and you have non-bloody sacrifices. The next one is the grain offering,
and it was often offered with drink along with it, with a drink
offering along with it, and it usually accompanied an animal
sacrifice. It was wheat flour mixed with
olive oil, incense, frankincense, salt, the salt of the covenant,
And then at home, not there in the tabernacle, at home you would
bake it, either bake it, fry it, or cook it to bring to the
tabernacle. So what did this symbolize? This
grain offering symbolized dedication to God. That's what it was all
about. It says it was a sweet aroma to the Lord. Some of it
was given to the priests for income. So here you have the
priest being taken care of. They would evidently come and
cut some of that cake off and give to the priests for their
use. And it was often spoken of as
the first fruit. So here is a grain offering,
has nothing to do with the blood or animals, that goes along with
the blood sacrifice just to symbolize dedication to God. All right,
then we have the third offering, is the peace offering. This is
also called the fellowship or the covenant offering, and the
word is closely related to the Hebrew word shalom, for peace. It's a male or female, finally
we allow a female animal, without blemish, hand on the head, blood
on the altar again. Much of this could be eaten by
the worshiper. And it evidently is symbolizing
prayer, thanksgiving, petition. And it involved a meal. So they
probably took part of it back to the home to eat. I don't know
whether they did it there or at the house, but this is the
peace offering. Seeking God's blessing or celebrating
his blessing, either before or after the fact. So here you have
really the content of prayer and thanksgiving and petition
going on. The final two. Number four, which
is a big, big deal, is the sin offer. All right, this is the
one that is for atonement. This is the one paying the price
for sins. It is only for unintentional
sins. There was nothing you could do
to pay for an intentional sin. That was usually the death penalty
for that. So these are unintentional sins
through error, against the law, maybe sins of commission that
you would commit. It's a young bull without blemish.
The priest sprinkles the blood now seven times in front of the
veil. He's getting closer to the Holy
of Holies. Plus the horns of the altar. I forgot to tell you
that that altar out in the outside courtyard has horns on each corner. Look up a picture of it. It's
interesting to look at. By the way, when Solomon built
his temple, he made the altar 20 cubits by 20 cubits, which
is 30 feet by 30 feet. And it was so big. that they
built a ramp up to it, and you can look at pictures of that.
So the sin offering is the priest sprinkles blood seven times in
front of the veil, on the horns of the altar, and at the base
of the altar. So they're sprinkling blood everywhere. And they burn
the fat, but the rest is burned outside the camp. So it's not
like the burnt offering where the whole thing is burned, except
the skin, but they're a little more selective and they burn
the fat and various other pieces. Now, the sin offering could be
offered for individuals, for the congregation as a whole,
or for the leaders. So it's very specific in who's
done the sinning that has to offer the sin offering. Then
finally, the trespass offering. This is the final fifth one.
Now there's some confusion about this in the passage as to whether
they really are identifying another fifth offering or whether this
is just more identification of a subset of the sin offering.
But what they talk about in the trespass offering is certain
sins are identified. And it could be sins of oaths
taken and not carried out, uncleanness, maybe somebody touched an unclean
body or something and had to offer a trespass offering for
that. Sins of omission or inadvertence or rashness were covered by the
trespass offering, whereas the sin offering was more sins of
commission. You really went against one of
the commandments and you needed to offer a sin offering. A trespass
offering often involved restitution, where you had to make restitution
to the party that was offended, a confession, and then a sin
offering to accompany it. So these were the five offerings. What we have then is various
of these offerings happening every day, and then certainly
on the national holidays by the priests, And it was quite a production
line of offerings. And as I said, by this one man's
count, 1,246 offerings of the national type during the year,
plus however many would have been offered for personal sins
or thanksgivings or things where people decided to go down to
the tabernacle and make an offer. Now, all right. Numerous sacrifices,
and we have we know that that these are a type Typical they're
foreshadowing something else going on. They're foreshadowing
atonement and and specifically by blood atonement Substitution
where they laid the hand their hands on the head of the animal
that substitution going on and The male without defect, this
is foreshadowing something. But besides the typical nature
of these sacrifices, these sacrifices did absolutely nothing for the
people who offered them. That's the amazing thing about
it. They did nothing in God's eyes. They were totally just
typical for Jesus Christ. It's amazing. They did nothing
permanent. Let's look at Hosea 6.6. Now,
when you think about God himself, and did he get any pleasure from
what was going on here, let's look at Hosea 6.6. And this is quoted in the New
Testament in Matthew 9, 13, and Mark. For I delight in loyalty
rather than sacrifice. Now that word loyalty is a really
interesting word, it's hesed. And it means either mercy, faithfulness,
or loyalty. For I delight in loyalty rather
than sacrifice. and in the knowledge of God rather
than burnt offerings. This is God himself, Jehovah
God, saying that there's something more important to him than these
sacrifices. He delights in loyalty, chesed,
and in the knowledge of God. And this is quoted, as I said,
by the Lord Jesus, to really emphasize it again. So God desires
mercy, faithfulness, loyalty, more than sacrifice, and the
knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. So this is just
another evidence of the fact that all of this ritual going
on in the Old Testament is to, yes, remind people of their sins,
point them to God, give them an opportunity to give thanks,
but the blood of animals and all that burning going on did
nothing for their sins. So, now, let's turn to Hebrews
and make that point further as a wrap-up. Hebrews 9 and 10. You know, Hebrews is the great
book on better things. How the Old Testament was full
of types, but that we've got better things right now, and
what was the Old Testament all about? We certainly need to study
it. I love studying the Old Testament, but we need to realize that it
was nothing in and of itself. By the way, I forgot to mention
one thing. Let's do this. The Day of Atonement,
the biggest sacrifice of all. In Leviticus 16, we have the
Day of Atonement described. It's in the seventh month on
the tenth day. And what happened on the Day
of Atonement, let's concentrate on this for a minute because
this is really interesting. Aaron, on the Day of Atonement, this
is the only time of the year when the high priest, in this
case Aaron, went into the Holy of Holies. So he went through
that veil and he actually went into the presence of God and
the Ark of the Covenant on this one day of the year. What was
his offering on the Day of Atonement? It was twofold. He had an offering
for himself since he was a sinful priest, unlike our sinless priest. He had to offer a bull as a sin
offering for himself, plus a ram for a burnt offering for himself.
He offered a bull and a ram first before he went in there. He also,
for the congregation, took two male goats, a sin offering and
a ram offering. I'm sorry, two male goats for
a sin offering plus a ram for a burnt offering. This is for
the congregation. Okay, did I confuse you? Two offerings were going
on. One for himself, twofold, a bull
and a ram for a burnt offering. And then for the congregation,
two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering.
What happened with the two male goats for a sin offering for
the congregation? Well, lots were thrown, dice,
whatever, two lots. One of these goats was for the
Lord, and one of them was the scapegoat. And you know what
happened to the scapegoat? The scapegoat, hands were put
on the head of the scapegoat, and he was released. into the
wilderness, which is so typical of our sins being carried away
by the scapegoat. So Aaron, on the Day of Atonement,
would offer his sin offering, and then the congregation's sin
offering, the one that got the lot that he would be offered,
versus the scapegoat. He would offer incense and after
he burned these sacrifices on the altar out there, the burnt
offering altar, he would take the burning coals into the Holy
of Holies onto the mercy seat and he would sprinkle blood there.
He would then put his hands on the head of the scapegoat and
he would confess sins of the congregation and send it away,
and it says clearly that it bore all their iniquities. Now, it
didn't. It was typical of it, but to
them it did. All right, so that's the Day
of Atonement. Now, Hebrews. That gives you the most important
sacrifice of the year. In Hebrews 9, 6, all the way to 10, 18, We have
a long passage about what is deficient in the Old Testament
system versus what the real anti-type is nowadays. And we're not gonna read all
that, but I want to just, I took down some notes as to the things
it says, and you can kind of glance through there as I recite
these, you'll see. some of the things it says in
that passage. First of all, the way into the Holy of Holies was
not yet manifest in the first tabernacle. So, even though that
high priest got to go into the Holy of Holies once a year, the
real way into the holiest of God was not manifest in those
days. The second thing, that's plainly
said in this passage. Gifts and sacrifices could not
make a person's conscience perfect in the Old Testament economy.
Along with that, the blood of bulls and goats could not take
away sins. Clearly said in Hebrews. It didn't
do it. Next, Christ came as a high priest
of the good things to come with greater and more perfect tabernacle,
that is his own body. So the tabernacle was a symbol
of Christ's own body. With his own blood, he entered
the real Holy of Holies in the presence of Jehovah God once
for all. And this is the big, big thing. Those guys were doing this every
single day. You wonder what went through
their heads, what went through the minds of the priests as they
made these bloody sacrifices day after day after day. So Christ
came and offered himself once. That's why we have such a disagreement
with the Catholics. not other reasons too, but they
offer this sacrifice, they say again and again and again, no
way, Christ offered his sacrifice one time for all the ages, and
that was good enough, having obtained eternal redemption.
Next, the blood of bulls and goats somehow purified the flesh
back then. some way. They were doing what
God told them to do, so it purified their flesh, but that's nothing
compared to the blood of Christ who cleanses our conscience from
dead works. So you have consciences in the
Old Testament not cleansed, not made good, cleansed and consciences
in our day, our consciences are cleansed of our sins. Now we
feel sin and we feel bad for it, but our consciences are cleansed
by Christ once and for all. And he offered his blood without
himself, without spot, which is another time. Then he's the
mediator of a new covenant with the blood of the covenant. And
you know, I didn't really trap this into my mind before, but
back at Sinai, when all the law was given to Moses, he wrote
it down. And he sprinkled blood on the
book of the covenant. Read it, read it for yourself.
So he sprinkled blood on that writing of his of the law. And
now Christ has the real blood of the covenant in what he copies
of things in the heavens. Those, that furniture and that
tabernacle and all that was going on back then were copies of things
in the heavens. But, and the holy places made
with hands versus heaven itself, that contrast is given in Hebrews.
Christ entered heaven himself, Jehovah, God our Father, in the
presence of him to do his sacrifice, to put away sin and to sanctify. And the Day of Atonement every
year is mentioned in Hebrews as something that could not make
perfect, but it was a reminder of sins every year. That's what
it was. So these folks had quite a life
in the wilderness. They packed up that tabernacle
and went from place to place, and their whole lives was centered
on it, and of course, on God. And they did these sacrifices,
and they were obedient, and they were what they were back then.
But any thinking Jew back then had to have thought on his bed
at night, there's something a little more to this, and it's in the
future. And of course, they had the Messianic
passages, and they could put two and two together. Of course,
God granted them faith like he gives us faith, saving faith. It's just that they didn't understand
as much as we did.