What do we do with Leviticus?
Leviticus 19:2 says “Be holy because I, the Lord your God am holy.”
The way to be holy appears to be to follow the laws that are set down in the book of Leviticus. There are laws in Leviticus that show people how to act in virtually every aspect of their lives. The book of Leviticus was written because the Lord was teaching the Israelites how to be holy after they had left Egypt.
One of the laws that comes up again and again is that after you commit a sin, when you have done something that breaks one of God’s laws, you have to offer a sacrifice to make up for it.
There are varies different kinds of sacrifices for different things. There are five main sacrifices, which are:
The burnt offering
The grain offering
The fellowship offering
The sin offering
The guilt offering
The last two are offerings that the Israelites had to do if they had done something wrong.
This sin sacrifice can be seen in Leviticus 4:2-3 and 5:1-6. It was designed to help the Israelites become more self-controlled and to consider the repercussions of their actions before they do something. This means that they will become wiser in the long run as they learn more about the things that they are likely to do wrong, even unintentionally.
Leviticus 6:1-6 talks about sinning over property. The required ‘guilt’ offering is a symbol of the principle that no matter how you obtain something, if you have been deceitful in any way, then you have to give back the thing that you have gained through it all with a fifth extra.
The guilt offering says that you have to also apologise to the Lord for the thing that you have done, and as a sign that you are sorry you have to sacrifice a bull to the Lord.
Although for everything that the Israelites did wrong there was an appropriate sacrifice for it, sacrifices alone did not bring forgiveness from the Lord. The key part of the sacrifice was not the fact that you were giving something that was of material worth to you; instead the key was the state that your heart was in.
For the Lord to acknowledge your sacrifice and forgive you, your heart had to be in a place where you were truly sorry and not wanting to ever do the same thing again. If this were the case then the Lord would have forgiven the Israelite as the Lord will forgive us for the things that we do wrong if we are truly repentant.
You may want to stop and reflect on this here.
Why is it then that today we do not see Christians carrying out the sacrifices that we have seen laid out in the book of Leviticus?
When a Christian today does something wrong they still say to the Lord that they are sorry for the thing that they have done, however, they do not go to their local church and make a guilt or sin offering for the thing that they have done wrong.
Why is it that we seem to ignore this part of the bible? Why do we not still do the things that were done long ago? Is there a reason somewhere else in the bible that tells us that we no longer have to carry out these sacrifices?
As the New Testament makes clear, the one single event that is the most important to Christianity is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was important that Jesus gave his life freely and chose to die on the cross.
Throughout the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John we see many miracles being performed by Jesus. All of these tell us that he had a great power, and so we would assume that if he had wanted to not die he could have done so. One event that shows this in is found in John 18:4-6.
Here the soldiers, priests and Pharisees were all armed and coming to collect Jesus but they drew away from him and knelt before him. They had come before the Lord without knowing it, and worse than this they were there to arrest and then execute him on a cross if they could.
Despite this there was still something about him that astounded them so much so that they did not feel that they were worthy of standing in the presence of him. Jesus did not take this opportunity to escape; instead he reassured them that it was okay for them to take him with them.
At his trial Jesus did not try to prove that he was innocent, and nobody proved that he was guilty and that he was worthy to die. Yet he stood there and took the punishment that he did not deserve.
He hung in agony upon a cross for the sins that he had not committed, his Father God was angry with him, not for the things that he had done but for the sins of the whole world; for the things that I have done wrong and for the sins that you and everyone else has also committed.
This sacrifice that Jesus gave, his own life, was the sacrifice that changed everything.
After this there was no need to offer sacrifices because Jesus had already completed them. The sacrifices that we see the Israelites carrying out in the Old Testament were in fact just a symbol of their faith in the Lord, their faith that a saviour would be sent, one that could take away all of the sins that they had committed.
For this reason, we no longer need to offer sacrifices when we sin. It is because we no longer live under the Law of the Old Testament, but instead we now live under the grace of Jesus.
It is also the perfect reason for us all to follow Jesus, we already know that the Lord kept this promise, so surely we should follow him and have faith that he will keep the rest of the promises that he gave to us. If we love him we will have eternal life together with the Lord.
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