Offerings to God
I honestly don’t think I have ever written about the book of Leviticus. in fact, I don’t think I have ever dug into it really. But I’m reading through the Bible, chronologically, with my friends at Radiant Sisters (find the reading plan here) and this morning I was in Leviticus when I suddenly became very interested in the offerings to God found there.
The Old Testament foreshadows the New
But I have found that sometimes parts of the Bible just jump out at me. And today was one of those times. I was in Leviticus 4, reading about the Sin Offering and decided I needed to start over at chapter one and really dig into this.
So I did. And what I saw was a picture of our relationship or walk with Christ, post resurrection. It’s actually something I really love about the Bible… that the Old Testament foreshadows the New Testament, and the New testament mirrors the Old.
I haven’t always loved the Old Testament
But it really is fascinating, there are so many incredible stories to be found there. And in the first four chapters of Leviticus there are these offerings:
The Burnt Offering
The Grain Offering
The Fellowship Offering, and
The Sin Offering
And it’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of it. There’s a lot of slaughtering animals and burning things, not really something I take interest in. But if we pull it back a little, and look at the bigger picture of the Bible as a whole we can see it…
Get the YouVersion Bible on your phone or laptop and read Leviticus 1-4.
The Burnt Offering
This is a picture of what Jesus did for us. The hand being placed on the head is symbolic of the transfer of our sin to Him. He bore it for us, and through His sacrifice we are made holy and righteous.
This is the moment when we receive what Christ did for us.
This is Him dying for us.
The Grain Offering
This is thanking Him for what He did for us. It’s a commitment and dedication of our life to Him and His purpose.
This is us living for Him
The Fellowship Offering
This is a celebratory offering, it’s us saying, “Hey God! Thanks for letting us be in fellowship with you!”. This is us wanting to be WITH HIM. How do we do that? In prayer, in reading the Bible, in worship.
This is us spending time with Him.
The Sin Offering
And then there’s this offering….the sin offering. This is the one that made me go back and look at the meaning of the others. This is what made me connect this whole thing to the podcast that posted in Friday fill up this week.
The sin offering may seem redundant in light of the burnt offering noted above. If Jesus paid the price for our sins, why are we making an offering to cover them again? Back in the day of Leviticus there was no “one and done” offering. They had to continually slaughter animals to cover their sins. Jesus came and ended that for us. His sacrifice paid the price once and for all.
How are our sins paid for?
And yet, we still sin. How do we reconcile that? As long as we are in these human bodies…living in this sin sick world….we will sin. This is our humanness. In Leviticus they made sacrifices to cover their ongoing sin. Today we commit to allow Jesus to point out and help us remove those things that cause us to sin…the thinking patterns, the behavioral patterns.
Renew your mind
This is the renewing of the mind. But what does sin have to do with our mind? A whole-heck-of-a-lot! Sin always starts in our mind and makes it’s way to our hand….or to the outward parts of our life. So, if we can renew our mind we can remove the sinful thoughts that create detrimental behaviors and patterns.
This is us, laying our soul – mind, will, emotions – on the altar. This is us, asking God to help us renew our mind and remove the sins of our humanness from our life.
This is us becoming more like Him.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:2