Understanding Old Testament Sacrifices and Their Purpose

Sometimes, when we look at the Bible and we see the Old Testament and then we see the New Testament, we think that there is a big divide between what happened in the Old Testament and the New. And when we read the Old Testament, it seems so different than what we're used to because so much of what's focused there is on the physical things, whereas in the New Testament there is less focus on the physical things. And in our time, it's almost all spiritual things. So we see these as two big different things. But the Bible declares to us that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Bible is trying to let us know that God who was in the Old Testament is the same God in the New Testament and the same God who is here today. The fact is that God required of the people in the Old Testament the same things He required of people in the New Testament and the same things He requires of us. When we read the Old Testament, though, some of the focus on the things that they had to do seems so foreign and strange to us. But what I want you to do is to look at these things and not see necessarily the physical acts, but the reason for the physical acts and what these physical acts were intended to accomplish in the lives and the minds of the people. You've been reading in your small group times these Leviticus, the book of Leviticus and all the sacrifices that the people were asked to give, and they seem a little bit foreign to us because we don't do that. But they're really not quite so foreign as they might seem. What was taking place in the sin offering that the people came to offer as a burnt offering, the title that they give to that one someplace in the Bible? And you'll find that sometimes it's hard to identify these sacrifices because sometimes they emphasize the end result of the sacrifice, sometimes they emphasize what was sacrificed. So when you read them in different places in the Bible, they'll have different names for these. But this burnt offering was the fundamental part of what God was trying to get across to his people. Jesus in the New Testament said to us, if any of you want to follow me, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. Now this seems simple to us as we hear it, but this is exactly what God was trying to accomplish in the Old Testament. And when you look at this burnt offering, you see a man who comes recognizing his need for God's forgiveness. He comes before God as described here with the most precious animal that he has, a bull with no defect whatsoever. He comes to the priest and says, I come to offer this animal because I have violated the things that God wants me to do, and I'm ready to come and say to God, I give my life completely and totally to you. He was required then to take his hand and press it on the bull's head with a symbol of the fact that his sin would pass to this animal and that he himself would actually be symbolized by this animal as it was sacrificed and burned. It was cut up and washed completely so it would have no bad thing on it, and then it was placed on the altar and burned, and as it was burned, the sins of the man went to God and the man himself was received by God. This was the fundamental offering of the Old Testament. Deny yourself. What is a man doing when he says, I give myself to you as if I was dead and burned up? No more symbol of unity, submission, could be given than this act. This was the fundamental act for all the Israelites to do. When this was over, the next offering they had was the offering sometimes called a serial offering. I like to think of it as a tribute offering. Like if you had a king and you really loved your king, and you would go to his place and you would give him a gift. Now this time they gave the first fruits. You know what that, we don't know what that's like. I mean you're always happy to get the first tomato off the vine, aren't you? But you haven't starved for tomatoes all year. You had them somewhere in the world shipped in here to you. But they would store their grain all year, and long time as it molded with the animals around it and the varmints in it. They longed for the day they had new wheat, brand new wheat. But first it came they had to take to the Lord. You're my God, you're my king, I want to give you a tribute offering. And so they would make a cake out of this new gift from God. Give it to the king, he would burn it up and receive it. Give it to his servants, the priests. Everything went to God and his people. And there you were, burning up the first thing that you had as a way of saying, my very best I give to you. This is how much I pay tribute to you. The Lord had provided these offerings as a way that people would come to understand who he was and what he was trying to do in their lives. He provided a means whereby when they came to make these offerings, they would be able to have peace with him. How do you have a good relationship with someone? Well, when you sin or you do something they don't like you to do, you come and apologize. The sin offering was that. You came and you offered again a bull, a serious thing, to not do what God tells you. You could do it whenever you did something wrong that you knew God didn't want you to do. You could do it whenever you made a promise to God. You said, I really make this promise that I'm going to live in obedience to you. And when you accomplished that, you came and you said, this precious animal of mine I give to you as a way of saying thank you for all you've done. If God blessed you, you might come and burn up this animal to say, God, I give you the very best of my life. A way of bringing peace between you and God, a way of making sure there's nothing that exists between the two of you. In the Old Testament, God was concerned about his people establishing their relationship with him. Deny yourself, pay the price to love me and to follow me. That was his command. And he knew that his people would stray from that. He provided a means whereby whenever they did something that was wrong, there was a way by which they could restore this relationship. He made it possible for them to do something different. He said to the people all the way through the book of Leviticus, over and over again, this issue. You are to be holy as I am holy. That was his charge to them. Now, that may sound strange to us, but it's the very same thing Jesus said to his followers. You be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. Now, sometimes you think of the word perfect to mean you've never made a mistake or there's no flaw, but that's not what the idea means. It means to be complete or whole. If you're looking for something and you're trying to match the decor in your room, for example, and you find a picture and you hold it up and you say, that's perfect. You don't mean it has no flaws. You mean it fits. It completes the wall. It completes the decor of the room. What God said to his people is, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me and do what is required of you like I've told you to do. Fulfill all the things that I've asked of you. That's what God demands. In the Old Testament, he did. Be holy as I am holy. In the New Testament, be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. Knowing that this is the goal, God looks around at his people like us and says, hmm, there's a lot of people in this room that didn't do everything I asked them to do. There's a lot of people in this world who've done things that I told them no, not to do. How am I going to change this for them? In the Old Testament, he provided this sin offering, purification offering, a way by which people might be pure and clean, even though they had been sullied or stained by rebellion and disobedience to God. There's a big difference in this offering than the others. In the Old Testament, the priest was given to people who had no spirit of God, Holy Spirit. So when they came to a question about what to do, they didn't know what to do. They didn't even have the printed Bible that we have. So he gave them priests and he said, the priest will help you know the difference between what's holy and what's common. Now let me explain to you what that means. Anything that belongs to God, that God controls and owns, is holy. Anything that doesn't, is not holy, is common. For example, you could have a bull, it's your best bull, and it comes time to make a sacrifice, an offering, and you select this bull, you take it down to the priest and you say, this is going to be my offering. At that moment, you sanctify the bull. He now becomes holy because he belongs to God. And when he's burned on the altar, he is holy because he's God's animal. And when a person comes to make that surrender of their life to God and say, my life is given to you as this bull is, suddenly you become holy. That's how come he could say, you be holy as I am holy. You're holy by saying, I give myself to you. I pledge myself to live in obedience to what you tell me is the right thing. I will not be controlled by my own desires or my own passions or my own interests unless they fit yours. So that makes you holy as God is holy. It makes you what you ought to be as God is what he ought to be, perfect as he is perfect. So you come to recognize one day. There are passages in the Bible you didn't know you were supposed to do. Sometimes you read a verse in the Bible and you say, gosh, I didn't realize that. Sometimes you see in a Sunday school lesson or a Bible study or some preacher you hear and you stop and say, wait a minute, I never realized how important that was. So there are sins that you commit that you didn't know you committed. How are you going to deal with that? That's what God was helping them with. Then there are times in which you know what you ought to do and you know it's the right thing to do, but somebody just gets on your nerves so bad and you're tired from camp and you're sleepy and you just lash out at them and as soon as you do it, you say, I really shouldn't have done that. It could be your husband or your wife or the people around you, but you know what's wrong. You know you have changed from being holy to something else. The Bible has words for that in the Old Testament. If you are holy, you can be changed from holy to being unclean. You become unclean by doing something God doesn't want you to do, but that's what the phrase unclean in the Bible means. You have done something that God doesn't want you to do, and so as a part of him, since he's holy, he has to build a wall between you and himself. For your uncleanness is polluting to anyone around you. It can be polluting to the temple that you're in, it can be polluting to your family that you're around, it can be polluting to the community. This uncleanness is contagious, so God wants to provide a way by where this uncleanness is transformed and you are cleansed or purified. The test in the Old Testament about this rite of purification is very different than the first three sacrifices that are listed there. In those three, it's the animals. The bull and two of them and the first grain and the other. In this last two sacrifices, the focus shifts from the animals that are sacrificed to the person who's offering the sacrifice. And so in Leviticus chapter 7, it says that the priest should do something that makes him unclean. He's the one that makes the sacrifice at the altar. He's the one that goes and does the things in the temple. So when he's unclean, everything he touches and all the people around him become unclean. So because of his importance and the image that he has for people, his impact on the life of those around him is much greater. So he's required to take a bull of no defect whatsoever, a prized possession, and offer the sacrifice. The blood of the sacrifice is poured on the altar, but some of it has to go to the very place where God lives, the tent of meeting. Then it has to be taken to the place where God is symbolized to be living in the Holy of Holies, and some of that blood is sprinkled on the wall of the very place where God lives as a purifying agent for the temple itself. The priest has done something that damages not only himself, but other people around him. And then there can be communities of people who do things that are wrong. We see riots, you know, where people are killed on the street. They take murder as a part of their own lifestyle. If a community did something like that, it was a great influence because it causes everyone around them to think this is acceptable behavior. Look at the people in our community, everyone else does it. So when you come to realize that, you have to come again with a perfect animal. And now, the sacrifice is not sprinkled in the temple, because it's the community, but it's poured on the altar, and there the whole community says, God, we have failed to be obedient to you. Or they could have someone that came in the community who was in need of help, and they didn't help them, and they died, and they would say, God, this is what we failed to do. And then he said, there may be a man somewhere in your community who has done something he ought not to have done, the sin of commission, or he's not done what he should do, omission. He had to bring a male goat, less value, and then if a woman did something in the community, she ought a female goat of less value. So the focus on purity is this. What is the influence that your failure to obey God has on other people? God, you see, not only judges us for our obedience to him, but the impact that it has on those around us. For sin, or rebellion against God, is a polluting agent. It is easier to lie if all the people around you lie also. It's difficult not to take a drink with everyone else when you've had enough till you get drunk if everyone else around you is drunk too. Our failure to be obedient to God influences others to do the same thing. The purification sacrifice takes in consideration two things. What have you done that God does not want? And what influence have you had to encourage others in the same rebellion? For you're not only guilty of what you've done, you're guilty of encouraging other people to do it too. It's not just a matter of saying, okay, God, forgive me so I won't be punished. But you have to be conscious of the fact that God has expected you to live in holiness and not to pollute the world around you. Everybody in the world has been in experiences where you saw somebody do something and it sort of relieved you and said, well, I'm not quite so bad after all. What God wants is for us not to look at what other people do, but to look at God. As God is holy, am I holy? As God is perfect, am I perfect? He judges us against his expectations of us. So he says, if this happens, you're to take an animal, depending on the influence you have, and you're to offer the sacrifice the greater the influence has and the more influence you've given to other people to do the same thing, you must pay the price. Now I said to you, the Old Testament and the New Testament are one long stream. Why don't we have to do that now? Because in John, John says, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him might perish but have everlasting life. And so Jesus came to the end of his life, lived a perfect life, deserved nothing except going back to be with the Father, and there he gave himself on the cross. The cross not beautiful, decorated, but painful and atrocious. The blood on Jesus' forehead ran down his face. The blood from his side ran down his body. And Jesus died for our sins. Painful, agonizing death. He died for our forgiveness, for our purity. His blood washed us white as snow. Not automatically, any more than the sacrifices in the Old Testament were automatic. What had to happen was the person had to bring the animal to be sacrificed, lay his hands on his head and say, I give myself as this animal is given to you in submission and obedience to you, God, forgive me. So we look at Jesus Christ who died for us and we say, you have given the sacrifice for my sins. I give myself to you to live in obedience and submission to what you ask. I meet people once in a while who say, I can't ever be a follower of Christ because my life has been filled with so much wickedness and evil. They think that their sin has mounted to such a degree it could never be forgiven. There is not an animal expensive enough to be worthy of paying for my sin and their right. But there was a man who lived a perfect life, whose life and blood can pay for our sins. So in the New Testament, our purification offering has been offered 2,000 years ago. Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins. So John wrote that when we have sin in our lives, we confess our sin. That means that you say to God, I know what you've asked me to do and I failed to do it. That's a sin of omission, something you failed to do. I know what you told me to do, to not do, and I did it anyway. Here are my reasons for it. We can always give God good reasons for disobedience, as any small child can to their parents. But they're sins. They're uncleanness. So you confess that you're unclean because of what you didn't do or because of what you've done. You acknowledge that to God. You say to him, I cannot do anything to change this, but I claim the blood of Jesus Christ as the sacrifice for my sin. And when you confess your sin, that is, admit what you did, ask for forgiveness, the Bible said God cleanses us of all unrighteousness. His cleansing is so powerful that it's hard to believe. I meet people all the time who say, I can't get over the sins that I've committed in my life. Do you believe God can forgive you? Yes, they say, but I still feel guilty. I still feel like a failure. What John says is that when we ask his forgiveness, he cleanses us of all unrighteousness. It's wiped away. There's no more sin or stain. It's as if it never occurred. What happened to the people who were doing the sin offering in the Old Testament is exactly what happens to us when we ask God's forgiveness. A man and his family walked away from that sin offering saying, God has released us from the burden of our sin. We are now pure. Pure. It doesn't matter what we've done in the past. God sees us as pure. We don't have to find an animal. We can't find one good enough for all the sins that we commit. But Jesus Christ was good enough. We don't have to kill anybody or any animal because the animal, the person has been slain already in Jesus Christ. And he did this not because he had to, but because he loved us. God wants you to be a pure and holy person, living a pure and holy life. And everything in your life that is offensive to God turns his stomach. He wants you to find this purity and this holiness, so much that he gave his only Son that your sins might be wiped clean. What he asks is that you accept him as the Savior, Redeemer, and Lord of your life. In the Old Testament, the people who brought the sacrifices were saying, God, we believe if we do what you tell us that you will forgive our sins. What God asked you to say to him is, I believe that if I do what you tell me to do, I trust you that much, I believe that you will erase my sins. I believe that you will take care of all those things that stand against me. That's what the purification offering is. It has already been offered for you. The Lamb has been placed on the cross and slain. His blood is available to wipe out your sins. All God asks is that you confess your sin, acknowledge your failure, own what you've done and been, and that you say to him, I give my life to you. As in the Old Testament, the animal placed on the altar, the fire burning, the fire burns and the animal ascends by smoke to God. So your life is given away from your control to the hand and control of God completely and totally. And in that moment, your sin is forgiven. And when it comes that you do something else God doesn't want, you stop and say again, God, I am unclean. I acknowledge it. I confess what I've done. I give myself anew to you. Forgive me. And he wipes your life clean and pure again. You should never, ever feel stained, guilty or in shame. For God has provided a means for your sin to be removed. Would you bow your head, please, for just a moment? The Old Testament is a very physical book. A man knows if he's taken an animal and put it on the altar and watch it burn. But even though he did that, he may not really have surrendered his life to God. He may be just going through the motions. What God is interested in is your submission to him. Can you point to a time in your life, or maybe can you say now, that you have pledged your life to live exactly as God wants you to live? You've made him the ruler, the king, the Lord. And everything he tells you becomes the first priority of your life. If that trust in God is yours, then the sacrifice has cleansed you of sin. If you've never done that, the sacrifice is already made. All God wants is for you to say, this is for me. I give myself to you as you have given yourself for me. You can do that now by acknowledging that you not trust God. You've done whatever you want. But from this moment on, you want to be holy as God is holy. You want to be perfect as God is perfect. And that now is your new goal. Say that to him. And the sacrifice will become operable in your life. Maybe you've made that promise to God. I'd like to ask you, is your life plagued by things you know you're supposed to do that you don't do for God? See, that's one of those sins of omission that makes you unclean, separates you from God. His presence is not close to you. You don't feel the joy you felt in the past in your life. There are things in your life you're doing that you know God said no to those. But you still do it because, well, you have your reasons. There's a wall between you and God as long as that exists. And you need the purification sacrifice. It's Jesus Christ on the cross. Say to him what you've done or haven't done. Ask his forgiveness. And today, every bit of that will be wiped away. Maybe you know something God wants you to do. Maybe you've made a promise to God and you never have fulfilled it by saying, I know you want me to come and become a part of this church, but you've never done that. Maybe you feel like, I know God wants me to be baptized to show the whole world where I stand with God. Or maybe you know there's a job that God wants you to take, or a person that you know God wants you to talk to. What is it that you know that you're saying no to God about? Today, I ask you to say, OK, God, I'll do it. The moment the pianist is going to play, and I'll be at the front here, and someone else will be here also. If you know there's some kind of promise you want to make to God, and he wants you to make it, don't leave here by not doing what he's told you. That makes you unclean. Leave here pure. Would you stand, please, for a moment of prayer together? There is a meal, fellowship meal, in our annex. We'd like you to come and be a part of that. If you didn't bring anything, there's always a lot of stuff left over. So you can have a time of meeting people, getting acquainted, sharing your time and lives with each other. We should talk about how God has drawn us as one together. So, Father, we give you thanks that animals, killing animals, is not a part of the way which you've allowed us to come to you. We know it was the surrender these people gave to you, but we still have that opportunity. We give you thanks for each person today that you've talked to about what they should do and what they have done. Make clear the direction you want our lives to go, and give us the courage of faith to trust you that if we place our lives in your hands, they are safe, secure, and purified. In the name of Christ, we give thanks for this. Amen. We're just—there you go. Thank you.