Leviticus is a book filled
with laws and rules. God is prescribing how He is to be worshiped by His chosen people. For the most part, it reads just like a law book.
Dry, dense, and with a dash of excessive attention to minute detail
thrown in for fun. It can be easy to forget sometimes, amidst all
the minutiae, that this business of being a priest and dealing with
the sacrifices was a bloody, messy, fiery job. For example, when you
burn flour from the grain offering:
I know, I know, the flour wasn't
mixed with oil or frankincense, but it's a cool video anyway!
I would also like to
mention briefly what is completely obvious: these chapters we read today come after
the chapters that preceded them. Each of these offerings and sacrifices
mentioned in today's reading has been mentioned previously in
chapters 1-5. If you want some more info (or you are looking for the
Biblical cure for insomnia) I would recommend taking a look at these
additional chapters.
Now we get to the meat of
the issue! (Heh!)
As much as the philosopher
in me cringes away from absolute terms like “always” and “every”
and “never,” I'm going to go ahead and say it: Every offering or
sacrifice detailed in Leviticus always points to Christ. This is
never not the case. Much has been written on the symbolism of the
various offerings and it would take years to exhaust all that could
be said, and I'm not going to go into all of that in this post. (As a brief aside, students should make sure to pay
attention in English class when learning symbolism and foreshadowing,
it will pay major dividends when considering the sacrificial system
of the Jewish people) I'm just going to briefly mention something
that I thought of while doing the reading. Namely, that the
priests ate of the offerings. They ate the meat and the flour with
oil as unleavened bread.
Christ is represented by the
substance of the offering, be it dead animal or flour and oil bread. I was reminded of what Jesus said in John
6, “I am the living bread... If anyone eats of this bread he will
live forever.” And a little bit later, “Unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man... you have no life in you.” We see a
similar vein of thought at the Last Supper, where Jesus took the bread broke it
and said “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you.” (1
Cor. 11:24). In 1 Peter 2 we are called a “holy priesthood, to
offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.”
It might be worthwhile to take some time to reflect on how our priesthood interacts with Christ's work, through life, through death, and through resurrection, not only as the propitiation for our sin, but as the sustenance for the new life that burns inside us. The life everlasting, that cannot die.
P.S. I've provided some links below which gives some brief info about the various offerings if anyone is interested.
Sin Offering
Grain Offering
Peace Offering
Burnt Offering
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Dude, first, great post, and second, loved the video, it really gave a great visual to what we read!
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