SACRIFICE: THE BURNT
OFFERING
Lev 1:2-4
THE voice of Jehovah which had spoken not long before from Sinai,
now speaks from out "the tent of meeting." There was a reason for
the change. For Israel had since then entered into covenant with
God; and Moses, as the mediator of the covenant, had sealed it by
sprinkling with blood both the Book of the Covenant and the people.
And therewith they had professedly taken Jehovah for their God and
He had taken Israel for His people. In infinite grace, He had
condescended to appoint for Himself a tabernacle or "tent of
meeting," where He might, in a special manner, dwell among them, and
manifest to them His will. The tabernacle had been made according to
the pattern shown to Moses in the mount; and it had been now set up.
And so now, He who had before spoken amid the thunders of flaming,
trembling Sinai, speaks from the hushed silence of "the tent of
meeting." The first words from Sinai had been the holy law,
forbidding sin with threatening of wrath: the first words from the
tent of meeting are words of grace, concerning fellowship with the
Holy One maintained through sacrifice, and atonement for sin by the
shedding of blood. A contrast this which is itself a Gospel!
The offerings of which we read in the next seven chapters are of two
kinds, namely, bloody and unbloody offerings. In the former class
were included the burnt offering, the peace offering, the sin
offering, and the guilt, or trespass offering; in the latter, only
the meal offering. The book begins with the law of the burnt
offering.
In any exposition of this law of the offerings, it is imperative
that our interpretation shall be determined, not by any fancy of
ours as to what the offerings might fitly symbolise, nor yet, on the
other hand, be limited by what we may suppose that any Israelite of
that day might have thought regarding them; but by the statements
concerning them which are contained in the law itself, and in other
parts of Holy Scripture, especially in the New Testament.
First of all, we may observe that in the book itself the offerings
are described by the remarkable expression, "the bread" or "food of
God." Thus it is commanded {Lev 21:6} that the priests should not
defile themselves, on this ground: "the offerings of the Lord made
by fire, the bread of their God, do they offer." It was an ancient
heathen notion that in sacrifice, food was provided for the Deity in
order thus to show Him honour. And, doubtless, in Israel, ever prone
to idolatry, there were many who rose no higher than this gross
conception of the meaning of such words. Thus, in Psa 50:8-15, God
sharply rebukes Israel for so unworthy thoughts of Himself, using
language at the same time which teaches the spiritual meaning of the
sacrifice. regarded as the "food," or "bread," of God: "I will not
reprove thee for thy sacrifices; and thy burnt offerings are
continually before Me I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor
he-goats out of thy stalls If I were hungry, I would not tell thee;
for the world is Mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh
of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God the sacrifice
of thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the Most High; and call upon
Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify
Me."
Of which language the plain teaching is this: If the sacrifices are
called in the law "the bread of God," God asks not this bread from
Israel in any material sense, or for any material need. He asks that
which the offerings symbolise; thanksgiving, loyal fulfilment of
covenant engagements to Him, and that loving trust which will call
on Him in the day of trouble. Even so! Gratitude, loyalty, trust!
this is the "food of God," this the "bread" which He desires that we
should offer, the bread which those Levitical sacrifices symbolised.
For even as man, when hungry, craves food, and cannot be satisfied
without it, so God, who is Himself Love, desires our love, and
delights in seeing its expression in all those offices of
self-forgetting and self-sacrificing service in which love manifests
itself. This is to God even as is food to us. Love cannot be
satisfied except with love returned; and we may say, with deepest
humility and reverence, the God of love cannot be satisfied without
love returned. Hence it is that the sacrifices, which in various
ways symbolise the self offering of love and the fellowship of love,
are called by the Holy Ghost "the food," or "bread of God."
And yet we must, on no account, hasten to the conclusion, as many
do, that therefore the Levitical sacrifices were only intended to
express and symbolise the self offering of the worshipper, and that
this exhausts their significance. On the contrary, the need of
infinite Love for this "bread of God" cannot be adequately met and
satisfied by the self offering of any creature, and, least of all,
by the self offering of a sinful creature, whose very sin lies just
in this, that he has fallen away from perfect love. The symbolism of
the sacrifice as "the food of God," therefore, by this very phrase
points toward the self offering in love of the eternal Son to the
Father, and in behalf of sinners, for the Father’s sake. It was the
sacrifice on Calvary which first became, in innermost reality, that
"bread of God," which the ancient sacrifices were only in symbol. It
was this, not regarded as satisfying Divine justice (though it did
this), but as satisfying the Divine love; because it was the supreme
expression of the perfect love of the incarnate Son of God to the
Father, in His becoming "obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross."
And now, keeping all this in view, we may venture to say even more
than at first as to the meaning of this phrase, "the bread of God,"
applied to these offerings by fire. For just as the free activity of
man is only sustained in virtue of and by means of the food which he
eats, so also the love of the God of love is only sustained in free
activity toward man through the self offering to the Father of the
Son, in that atoning sacrifice which He offered on the cross, and in
the ceaseless service of that exalted life which, risen from the
dead, Christ now lives unto God forever. Thus already, this
expression, so strange to our ears at first, as descriptive of
Jehovah’s offerings made by fire, points to the person and work of
the adorable Redeemer as its only sufficient explication.
But, again, we find another expression, Lev 17:11, which is of no
less fundamental consequence for the interpretation of the bloody
offerings of Leviticus. In connection with the prohibition of blood
for food, and as a reason for that prohibition, it is said: "The
life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon
the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that
maketh atonement,"-mark the expression; not, as in the received
version, "for the soul," which were mere tautology, and gives a
sense which the Hebrew cannot have, but, as the Revised Version has
it, -"by reason of the life," or "soul" (margin). Hence, wherever in
this law we read of a sprinkling of blood upon the altar, this must
be held fast as its meaning, whether it be formally mentioned or
not; namely, atonement made for sinful man through the life of an
innocent victim poured out in the blood. There may be, and often
are, other ideas, as we shall see, connected with the offering, but
this is always present. To argue, then, with so many in modern
times, that because, not the idea of an atonement, but that of a
sacrificial meal given by the worshipper to God, is the dominant
conception in the sacrifices of the ancient nations, therefore we
cannot admit the idea of atonement and expiation to have been
intended in these Levitical sacrifices, is simply to deny, not only
the New Testament interpretation of them, but the no less express
testimony of the record itself.
But it is, manifestly, in the nature of the case "impossible that
the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." Hence, we
are again, by this phrase also, constrained to look beyond this
Levitical shedding of sacrificial blood, for some antitype of which
the innocent victims slain at that altar were types; one who, by the
shedding of his blood, should do that in reality, which at the door
of the tent of meeting was done in symbol and shadow.
What the New Testament teaches on this point is known to everyone.
Christ Jesus was the Antitype, to whose all-sufficient sacrifice
each insufficient sacrifice of every Levitical victim pointed. John
the Baptist struck the keynote of all New Testament teaching in this
matter, when, beholding Jesus, he cried, {Joh 1:29} "Behold the Lamb
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Jesus Christ
declared the same thought again and again, as in His words at the
sacramental Supper: "This is My blood of the new covenant, which is
shed for many for the remission of sins." Paul expressed the same
thought, when he said {Eph 5:2} that Christ "gave Himself up for us,
an offering and a sacrifice to God, for an odour of a sweet smell";
and that "our redemption, the forgiveness of our trespasses," is
"through His blood". {Eph 1:7} And Peter also, speaking in Levitical
language, teaches that we "were redeemed with precious blood, as of
a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ";
to which he adds the suggestive words, of which this whole Levitical
ritual is the most striking illustration, that Christ, although
"manifested at the end of the times," "was foreknown" as the Lamb of
God "before the foundation of the world". {1Pe 1:18-20} John, in
like manner, speaks in the language of Leviticus concerning Christ,
when he declares {1Jn 1:7} that "the blood of Jesus cleanseth us
from all sin"; and even in the Apocalypse, which is the Gospel of
Christ glorified, He is still brought before us as a Lamb that had
been slain, and who has thus "purchased with His blood men of every
tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation," "to be unto our God a
kingdom and priests". {Rev 5:6; Rev 5:9-10}
In this clear light of the New Testament, one can see how meagre
also is the view of some who would see in these Levitical sacrifices
nothing more than fines assessed upon the guilty, as theocratic
penalties. Leviticus itself should have taught such better than
that. For, as we have seen, the virtue of the bloody offerings is
made to consist in this, that "the life of the flesh is in the
blood"; and we are told that "the blood makes atonement for the
soul," not in virtue of the monetary value of the victim, in a
commercial way, but "by reason of the life" that is in the blood,
and is therewith poured out before Jehovah on the altar, -the life
of an innocent victim in the stead of the life of the sinful man.
No less inadequate, if we are to let ourselves be guided either by
the Levitical or the New Testament teaching, is the view that the
offerings only symbolised the self offering of the worshipper. We do
not deny, indeed, that the sacrifice-of the burnt offering, for
example-may have fitly represented, and often really expressed, the
self-consecration of the offerer. But, in the light of the New
Testament, this can never be held to have been the sole, or even the
chief, reason in the mind of God for directing these outpourings of
sacrificial blood upon the altar.
We must insist, then, on this, as essential to the right
interpretation of this law of the offerings, that every one of these
bloody offerings of Leviticus typified, and was intended to typify,
our Saviour, Jesus Christ. The burnt offering represented Christ;
the peace offering, Christ; the sin offering, Christ; the guilt, or
trespass offering, Christ. Moreover, since each of these, as
intended especially to shadow forth some particular aspect of
Christ’s work, differed in some respects from all the others, while
yet in all alike a victim’s blood was shed upon the altar, we are by
this reminded that in our Lord’s redemptive work the most central
and essential thing is this, that, as He Himself said, {Mat 20:28}
He "came to give His life a ransom for many."
Keeping this guiding thought steadily before us, it is now our work
to discover, if we may, what special aspect of the one great
sacrifice of Christ each of these offerings was intended especially
to represent.
Only, by way of caution, it needs to be added that we are not to
imagine that every minute circumstance pertaining to each sacrifice,
in all its varieties, must have been intended to point to some
correspondent feature of Christ’s person or work. On the contrary,
we shall frequently see reason to believe that the whole purpose of
one or another direction of the ritual is to be found in the
conditions, circumstances, or immediate intention of the offering.
Thus, to illustrate, when a profound interpreter suggests that the
reason for the command that the victim should be slain on the north
side of the altar, is to be found in the fact that the north, as the
side of shadow, signifies the gloom and joylessness of the
sacrificial act, we are inclined rather to see sufficient reason for
the prescription in the fact that the other three sides were already
in a manner occupied: the east, as the place of ashes; the. south,
as fronting the entrance; and the west, as facing the tent of
meeting and the brazen laver.
THE RITUAL OF THE BURNT
OFFERING
In the law of the offerings, that of the burnt offering comes
first, though in the order of the ritual it was not first, but
second, following the sin offering. In this order of mention we
need, however, seek no mystic meaning. The burnt offering was very
naturally mentioned first, as being the most ancient, and also in
the most constant and familiar use. We read of burnt offerings as
offered by Noah and Abraham; and of peace offerings, too, in early
times; while the sin offering and the guilt offering, in Leviticus
treated last, were now ordered for the first time. So also the burnt
offering was still, by Divine ordinance, to be the most common. No
day could pass in the tabernacle without the offering of these.
Indeed, except on the great day of atonement for the nation, in the
ritual for which, the sin offering was the central act, the burnt
offering was the most important sacrifice on all the great feast
days.
The first law, which applies to bloody offerings in general, was
this: that the victim shall be "of the cattle, even of the herd and
of the flock" (Lev 1:2); to which is added, in the latter part of
the chapter (Lev 1:14), the turtledove or young pigeon. The
carnivora are all excluded; for these, which live by the death of
others, could never typify Him who should come to give life. And
among others, only clean beasts could be taken. Israel must not
offer as "the food of God" that which they might not eat for their
own food; nor could that which was held unclean he taken as a type
of the Holy Victim of the future. And, even among clean animals, a
further selection is made. Only domestic animals were allowed; not
even a clean animal was permitted, if it were taken in hunting. For
it was fitting that one should offer to God that which had become
endeared to the owner as having cost the most of care and labour in
its bringing up. For this, also, we can easily see another reason in
the Antitype. Nothing was to mark Him more than this: that He should
be subject and obey, and that not of constraint, as the unwilling
captive of the chase, but freely and unresistingly.
And now follow the special directions for the burnt offering. The
Hebrew word so rendered means, literally, "that which ascends." It
thus precisely describes the burnt offering in its most distinctive
characteristic. Of the other offerings, a part was burned, but a
part was eaten; in some instances, even by the offerer himself. But
in the burnt offering all ascends to God in flame and smoke. For the
creature is reserved nothing whatever.
The first specification in the law of the burnt offering is this:
"If his oblation be a burnt offering of the herd, he shall offer it
a male without blemish" (Lev 1:3). It must be a "male," as the
stronger, the type of its kind; and "without blemish," that is,
ideally perfect.
The reasons for this law are manifest. The Israelite was thereby
taught that God claims the best that we have. They needed this
lesson, as many among us do still. At a later day, we find God
rebuking them by Malachi, {Mal 1:6; Mal 1:13} with indignant
severity, for their neglect of this law: "A son honoureth his
father: if then I be a Father, where is My honour? Ye have brought
that which was taken by violence, and the lame, and the sick; should
I accept this of your hand? saith the Lord." And as pointing to our
Lord, the command was no less fitting. Thus, as in other sacrifices,
it was foreshadowed that the great Burnt Offering of the future
would be the one Man without blemish, the absolutely perfect
Exemplar of what manhood should be, but is not.
And this brings us now to the ritual of the offering. In the ritual
of the various bloody offerings we find six parts. These are:
(1) the Presentation;
(2) the Laying on of the Hand;
(3) the Killing of the Victim; in which three the ritual was the
same for all kinds of Offerings.
The remaining three are:
(4) the Sprinkling of Blood;
(5) the Burning;
(6) the Sacrificial Meal.
In these, differences appear in the various sacrifices, which give
each its distinctive character; and, in the burnt offering, the
sacrificial meal is omitted, -the whole is burnt upon the altar.
First is given the law concerning
THE PRESENTATION OF THE
VICTIM
"He shall offer it at the door of the tent of meeting, that he
may be accepted before the Lord." (Lev 1:3)
In this it was ordered, first, that the offerer should bring the
victim himself. There were parts of the ceremony in which the priest
acted for him; but this he must do for himself. Even so, he who will
have the saving benefit of Christ’s sacrifice must himself bring
this Christ before the Lord. As by so doing, the Israelite signified
his acceptance of God’s gracious arrangements concerning sacrifice,
so do we, bringing Christ. in our act of faith before the Lord,
express our acceptance of God’s arrangement on our behalf; our
readiness and sincere desire to make use of Christ, who is appointed
for us. And this no man can do for another.
And the offering must be presented for a certain purpose; namely
that he may be accepted before the Lord; and that, as the context
tells us, not because of a present made to God, but through an
atoning sacrifice. And so now it is not enough that a man make much
of Christ, and mention Him in terms of praise before the Lord, as
the One whom He would imitate and seek to serve. He must in his act
of faith bring this Christ before the Lord, in such wise as to
secure thus his personal acceptance through the blood of the Holy
Victim.
And, finally, the place of presentation is prescribed. It must be
"at the door of the tent of meeting." It is easy to see the original
reason for this. For, as we learn from other Scriptures, the
Israelites were ever prone to idolatry, and that especially at
places other than the appointed temple or tent of meeting, in the
fields and on high places. Hence the immediate purpose of this order
concerning the place, was to separate the worship of God from the
worship of false gods. There is now, indeed, no law concerning the
place where we may present the great Sacrifice before God. At home,
in the closet, in the church, on the street, wherever we will, we
may present this Christ in our behalf and stead as a Holy Victim
before God. And yet the principle which underlies this ordinance of
place is no less applicable in this age than then. For it is a
prohibition of all self-will in worship. It was not enough that an
Israelite should have the prescribed victim; it is not enough that
we present the Christ of God in faith, or what we think to be faith.
But we must make no terms or conditions as to the mode or condition
of the presentation, other than God appoints. And the command was
also a command of publicity. The Israelite was therein commanded to
confess publicly, and thus attest, his faith in Jehovah, even as God
will now have us all make our confession of Christ a public thing.
The second act of the ceremonial was
THE LAYING ON OF THE HAND
It was ordered:
"He shall lay his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it
shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him." (Lev 1:4)
The laying on of the hand was not, as some have maintained, a mere
declaration of the offerer’s property in that which he offered, as
showing his right to give it to God. If this were true, we should
find the ceremony also in the bloodless offerings; where the cakes
of corn were no less the property of the offerer than the bullock or
sheep of the burnt offering. But the ceremony was confined to these
bloody offerings.
It is nearer the truth when others say that this was an act of
designation. It is a fact that the ceremony of the laying on of
hands in Scripture usage does indicate a designation of a person or
thing, as to some office or service. In this book, {Lev 24:14} the
witnesses are directed to lay their hands upon the blasphemer,
thereby appointing him to death. Moses is said to have laid his
hands on Joshua, thus designating him in a formal way as his
successor; and, in the New Testament, Paul and Barnabas are set
apart to the ministry by the laying on of hands. But, in all these
cases, the ceremony symbolised more than mere designation; namely, a
transfer or communication of something invisible, in connection with
this visible act. Thus, in the New Testament the laying on of hands
always denotes the communication of the Holy Ghost, either as an
enduement for office, or for bodily healing. The laying of the hands
of Moses on Joshua, in like manner, signified the transfer to him of
the gifts, office, and authority of Moses. Even in the case of the
execution of the blaspheming son of Shelomith, the laying on of the
hands of the witnesses had the same significance. They thereby
designated him to death, no doubt; but therewith thus symbolically
transferred to the criminal the responsibility for his own death.
From the analogy of these cases we should expect to find evidence of
an ideal transference of somewhat from the offerer to the victim
here. And the context does not leave the matter doubtful. It is
added (Lev 1:4), "It shall be accepted for him, to make atonement
for him." Hence it appears that while, indeed, the offerer, by this
laying on of his hand, did dedicate the victim to death, the act
meant more than this. It symbolised a transfer, according to God’s
merciful provision, of an obligation to suffer for sin, from the
offerer to the innocent victim. Henceforth, the victim stood in the
offerer’s place, and was dealt with accordingly.
This is well illustrated by the account which is given {Numbers 8}
of the formal substitution of the Levites in the place of all the
firstborn of Israel, for special service unto God. We read that the
Levites were presented before the Lord; and that the children of
Israel then laid their hands upon the heads of the Levites. who were
thus, we are told. "offered as an offering unto the Lord," and were
thenceforth regarded and treated as substitutes for the firstborn of
all Israel. Thus the obligation to certain special service was
symbolically transferred, as the context tells us, from the
firstborn to the Levites; and this transfer of obligation from all
the tribes to the single tribe of Levi was visibly represented by
the laying on of hands, And just so here: the laying on of the hand
designated, certainly, the victim to death; but it did this, in that
it was the symbol of a transfer of obligation.
This view of the ceremony is decisively confirmed by the ritual of
the great day of atonement. In the sin offering of that day, in
which the conception of expiation by blood received its fullest
symbolic expression, it was ordered {Lev 16:21} that Aaron should
lay his hands on the head of one of the goats of the sin offering,
and "confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel."
Thereupon the iniquity of the nation was regarded as symbolically
transferred from Israel to the goat; for it is added, "and the goat
shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land." So,
while in this ritual for the burnt offering there is no mention of
such confession, we have every reason to believe the uniform
Rabbinical tradition, that it was the custom to make also upon the
head of the victim for the burnt offering a solemn confession of
sin, for which they give the form to be used.
Such then was the significance of the laying on of hands. But the
ceremony meant even more than this. For the Hebrew verb which is
always used for this, as the Rabbis point out, does not merely mean
to lay the hand upon, but so to lay the hand as to rest or lean
heavily upon the victim. This force of the word is well illustrated
from a passage where it occurs, in Psa 88:7, "Thy wrath lieth hard
upon me." The ceremony, therefore, significantly represented the
offerer as resting or relying on the victim to procure that from God
for which he presented him, namely, atonement and acceptance.
This part of the ceremonial of this and other sacrifices was thus
full of spiritual import and typical meaning. By this laying on of
the hand to designate the victim as a sacrifice, the offerer
implied, and probably expressed, a confession of personal sin and
demerit; as done "before Jehovah," it implied also his acceptance of
God’s penal judgment against his sin. It implied, moreover, in that
the offering was made according to an arrangement ordained by God,
that the offerer also thankfully accepted God’s merciful provision
for atonement, by which the obligation to suffer for sin was
transferred from himself, the guilty sinner, to the sacrificial
victim. And, finally, in that the offerer was directed so to lay his
hand as to rest upon the victim, it was most expressively symbolised
that he, the sinful Israelite, rested and depended on this sacrifice
as the atonement for his sin, his divinely appointed substitute in
penal death.
What could more perfectly set forth the way in which we are for our
salvation to make use of the Lamb of God as slain for us? By faith,
we lay the hand upon His head. In this, we do frankly and penitently
own the sins for which, as the great Burnt sacrifice, the Christ of
God was offered; we also, in humility and self-abasement, thus
accept the judgment of God against ourselves, that because of sin we
deserve to be cast out from Him eternally; while, at the same time,
we most thankfully accept this Christ as "the Lamb of God which
taketh away the sins of the world," and therefore our sins also, if
we will but thus make use of Him; and so lean and rest with all the
burden of our sin on Him.
For the Israelite who should thus lay his hand upon the head of the
sacrificial victim a promise follows. "It shall be accepted for him,
to make atonement for him."
In this word "atonement" we are introduced to one of the key words
of Leviticus, as indeed of the whole Scripture. The Hebrew radical
originally means "to cover," and is used once {Gen 6:14} in this
purely physical sense. But, commonly, as here, it means "to cover"
in a spiritual sense, that is, to cover the sinful person from the
sight of the Holy God, who is "of purer eyes than to behold evil."
Hence, it is commonly rendered "to atone," or "to make atonement";
also, "to reconcile," or "to make reconciliation." The thought is
this: that between the sinner and the Holy One comes now the
guiltless victim; so that the eye of God looks not upon the sinner,
but on the offered substitute; and in that the blood of the
substituted victim is offered before God for the sinner, atonement
is made for sin, and the Most Holy One is satisfied.
And when the believing Israelite should lay his hand with confession
of sin upon the appointed victim, it was graciously promised: "It
shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him." And just so
now, whenever any guilty sinner, fearing the deserved wrath of God
because of his sin, especially because of his lack of that full
consecration which the burnt sacrifice set forth, lays his hand in
faith upon the great Burnt offering of Calvary, the blessing is the
same. For in the light of the cross, this Old Testament word becomes
now a sweet New Testament promise: "When thou shalt rest with the
hand of faith upon this Lamb of God, He shall be accepted for thee,
to make atonement for thee."
This is most beautifully expressed in an ancient "Order for the
Visitation of the Sick," attributed to Anselm of Canterbury, in
which it is written:
"The minister shall say to the sick man, Dost thou believe that thou
canst not be saved but by the death of Christ? The sick man
answereth, Yes. Then let it be said unto him: Go to, then, and
whilst thy soul abideth in thee, put all thy confidence in this
death alone; place thy trust in no other thing; commit thyself
wholly to this death; cover thyself wholly, with this alone And if
God would judge thee, say: Lord! I place the death of our Lord Jesus
Christ between me and Thy judgment; otherwise I will not contend or
enter into judgment with Thee."
"And if He shall say unto thee that thou art a sinner, say: I place
the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and my sins. if He
shall say unto thee, that thou hast deserved damnation, say: Lord! I
put the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between Thee and all my sins;
and I offer His merits for my own, which I should have, and have
not."
And whosoever of us can thus speak, to him the promise speaks from
out the shadows of the tent of meeting: "This Christ, the Lamb of
God, the true Burnt offering, shall be accepted for thee, to make
atonement for thee!"
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