LEVITICUS 1

Waiyikra - And He called


"Without shedding of blood is no remission of sins". (Heb 9:22)


1 And Yahweh called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying,

Burnt Offering


2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto Yahweh, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock.

It must be a living creature put to death in the act of offering, with the blood poured out at the altar foot. The explanation was given afterwards: 

"It is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul"--"for the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls" (Lev. 17:11). 


The pouring out of the blood was the pouring out of the life, and therefore an acknowledgment on the part of the offerer that he was worthy to die. It was a typical declaration of that righteousness of God which was proclaimed in Christ in the one great offering as the basis of forgiveness (Rom. 3:25-26).

Law of Moses Ch 23



3 If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before Yahweh.

The sex feature is prominent in all the appointments of the law. The numbering of Israel applied to males only (Num. 1). So with the law of the firstborn (Exod. 13:12), "every male shall be the Lord's"; So with the three annual feasts: "three times a year shall all your males appear before the Lord" (Exod. 23:17; Deut. 16:16). The seal of the covenant was imprinted in the flesh of the males only (Gen. 17:10). On the other hand, the female, in cases of vow, was to be assessed at a smaller value than the male (Lev. 27:4-7), and in the case of the birth of a daughter, the mother was to be a longer time in purification (Lev. 12:7) A female animal could not be used for sacrifice except for peace offering (Lev. 3:1, 6) or for the sin of one of the common people (4:28, 32; 5:6).

As all these things have an allegorical significance, we naturally desire to penetrate the meaning. Where shall we find it? We are probably not far away from it when we read "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection . . . for Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1 Tim. 2:11-14). 

"The man is the image and the glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman (taken out) of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man" (1 Cor. 11:7-9).

Here are historical facts and moral responsibilities at the beginning of human history that in-weave themselves with the whole work of God with the race. Of course, the modern school, with their "new woman" racing hither and thither and posing in attitudes and relations for which she is unfitted by nature, will rebel against these divine appointments, Mosaically recorded. They might as well fight against gravitation.

Woman was secondary in the purpose for which she was formed, and she was influential in deflecting man from the path of obedience which he probably would have observed if left to himself. If God has chosen to preserve the memorial of these facts in the constitution of things He has established among men, who can make demur?

Man has the first place all the way through, especially in the one great institution that brings man back to God in reconciliation. It was to be in a man and not in a woman that the righteousness of God was to be declared for the putting away of sin by forgiveness. It was to be by the obedience of one man that justification was to be provided for believing and obedient sinners, and not by the obedience of one man and woman, although it was by the disobedience of one man and woman that death entered the world --not that the law was laid down to Eve: it was to Adam the command was addressed: "Thou shalt not eat": but Eve considered herself included (Gen. 3:2), and was, in fact, included as one flesh with Adam (2:23).

So in the case of the last Adam--the remover of sin: his bride, the Lamb's wife, shares the victory achieved by him when it has been decided at the judgment-seat who constitute such.

In both cases, it is the male that is the subject of direct operation. Though there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus, it is by a man and not by a woman that life has come, though she is instrumentally contributory: for as she was the beguiler of Adam, to the death and ruin of both of them, so she is made his rescuer, in being made use of in a virgin descendant of the House of David to bring the Saviour into the world.

Male and female are thus coordinate in the scheme without interfering with the headship appointed in the beginning. As Paul beautifully expresses it in his letter to the Corinthians:

"Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God" (11:11).

There is congruity in all the ways of God when the relations established by His law are observed. Man is the head, but only for nurture and protection and honour of the woman. Woman is man's equal fellow-heir of the salvation that is offered in Christ, but not to usurp the position that belongs to man both by natural constitution and divine appointment.

Law of Moses Ch 23



4 And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.

His hand upon the head - identifying himself with the death of the animal on account of sin. Head - the thinking of the flesh / transgression. The animals slain were representatives not substitutes



5 And he shall kill the bullock before Yahweh: and the priests, Aaron's sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

6 And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into his pieces.

7 And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar, and lay the wood in order upon the fire:

8 And the priests, Aaron's sons, shall lay the parts, the head, and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar:

9 But his inwards and his legs shall he wash in water: and the priest shall burn all on the altar, to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto Yahweh.


THE BURNT OFFERING


The burnt offering was burnt wholly on the altar. It was left to smoulder all night into ashes, and the ashes were removed in the morning. It was called the burnt offering 


"because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning" (6:9).

 It was an act of worship on the part of a mortal being, apart from guilt of specific offence. Thus Noah, saved from destruction by the flood, "took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar" (Gen. 8:20). Thus also the test of Abraham's faith was to offer Isaac "for burnt offering" (Gen. 22:2).

That burnt offering should be required in the absence of particular offence shows that our unclean state as the death-doomed children of Adam itself unfits us for approach to the Deity apart from the recognition and acknowledgment of which the burnt offering was the form required and supplied. It was "because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel", as well as "because of their transgressions in all their sins", that atonement was required for even the tabernacle of the congregation (Lev. 16:16).


The type involved in complete burning is self-manifest: it is consumption of sin-nature. This is the great promise and prophecy and requirement of every form of the truth; the destruction of the body of sin (Rom. 6:6). It was destroyed in Christ's crucifixion --the "one great offering"' we ceremonially share it in our baptism' "crucified with Christ", "baptized unto his death". We morally participate in it in putting the old man to death in "denying ungodliness and worldly lusts"; and the hope before us is the prospect of becoming subject to such a physical change as will consume mortal nature and change it into the glorious nature of the Spirit. "We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye!"


The whole process of consumption is the work of the Spirit, whether we consider the sending forth of Christ to condemn sin in the flesh, or our association with his death in baptism or our repudiation of the old man as the rule of life, or our change at the judgment seat into the incorruptible and glorious nature of the Son of God. When the work is finished, flesh and blood, with all its weakness and its woe, will have ceased from the earth, and given place to a glad and holy race of men immortal and "equal to the angels".

 

It was a beautiful requirement of the wisdom of God in the beginning of things that He should require an act of worship that typified the repudiation of sinful nature as the basis of divine fellowship and acceptability. Those who deny Christ's participation thereof, deny its removal by sacrifice, and therefore deny the fundamental testimony of the gospel, that he is "the Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world". They think they honour him by saying his flesh-nature was a clean nature. In reality, they deny his qualification for the work he was sent to do. They mistake holiness of character for holiness of nature, and by a wrong use of truth, destroy.


The removal of the ashes in the morning out of the camp, has an evident allusion to the change effected in the dawn of the perfect day, when the unconsumed remnants of sin's flesh--that is, the men who are not changed by the Spirit, or consumed by the altar fire--will be "put away like dross".


 The body of the burnt offering as the type of Christ might not seem to leave room for the idea of "ashes" if we think only of Christ personal but when we extend our view to the whole race as federally involved in him, we can see how the treatment of the body of the burnt offering would typify the purpose of God with regard to the race, and therefore leave a place for the ashes to be removed in the morning.


Law of Moses Ch 25



14 And if the burnt sacrifice for his offering to Yahweh be of fowls, then he shall bring his offering of turtledoves, or of young pigeons.

Turtledoves or young pigeons.

If the burnt sacrifice was to be of feathered creatures, a turtle dove or a young pigeon might be brought (Lev. 1:14)--fitting type in their harmlessness, of the Son of God--"holy, harmless, and undefiled"--which a vulture or an eagle or an owl would not have been.

Death (the appointed necessity in the case) was to be inflicted instantaneously in the wringing off of the head--a violent wrench, but succeeded in a moment by the healing balm of unconsciousness. (The Lord's sufferings were intense, but short-lived.)

The creature's blood was to be wrung out by the side of the altar (the indispensable element of every sacrifice). "The blood is the life"; "without the shedding of blood, no remission of sin", because" the wages of sin is death", and" all have sinned", except the sacrificial man, the Son of God, who is touched only indirectly --by descent from Adam, as to nature: by the mode of his death, as to law: and touched so, that he might die for us.

...The body was to be cloven but not parted asunder--in token that the Lord's sacrifice was only to be carried as far as the spiritual requirements of the case required: crucifixion, but not bodily destruction: wounds, but not mutilation: blood shedding, but no bone-breaking: death, but no disappearance in a dishonoured grave, as would have been the case had the Lord's body been cast in the ordinary course into the local Gehenna as that of a condemned criminal.

The whole process of the Lord's death and burial was so guarded (while giving to mankind every security as to the fact of his death, and every evidence of a complete conformity to the law of sacrifice, as a shedding of blood for the remission of sins), as to fence off all needless humiliation or outrage.

A short three days in a new and honourable tomb, and then the body that had been impaled revived in healing life, without having experienced dismemberment or disintegration, or the humiliation of decomposition. Changed by the Spirit, it ascended to the Father, "a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord."

Law of Moses Ch 23