The Substitute Leviticus 1:1-9
There are many people when they read are hear about the millions of animal sacrifices that were offered to God, don’t understand that they were a type, or were pointing to, the ultimate Sacrifice, “The Lamb Of God” that was to be slain on the altar of the cross for mankind’s sins.
Many people begin to read about the Old Testament sacrificial system and think something like: “Why all the blood? Why all this slaughtering of animals? It seems so gruesome and disgusting. Why did God require all of that? What was the purpose?”
Listen as I read today’s text found in Leviticus 1:1-9
1And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle** of the congregation, saying,
2”Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock.
3If 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 the LORD.
4And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.
5And he shall kill the bullock before the LORD: 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.
6And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into his pieces.
7And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar, and lay the wood in order upon the fire:
8And 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:
9But 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 the LORD.”
The Old Testament sacrificial system was pointing to some very important truths. The first is that:
The sacrificial system was pointing to God’s plan to save his people. To help us understand lets go back to the time of Adam & Eve.
Adam and Eve enjoyed a perfect paradise. Their relationship with God was close & real.
God would walk and talk with them. There was no barrier between them. But something happened to spoil that relationship. God had said to them in, Genesis 2:15-17 15And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
God was not keeping something good from them; he simply did not want them to know what evil was like through personal experience. He was sparing them from evil, for he knew it would bring suffering and death into the world. As a consequence of disobeying this important command, God told them they would die if they disobeyed. But every day that passed made the fruit of the tree look better and better. Add to that the satanic suggestion that God did not really love them because he was keeping something from them.
Satan promised that if they ate from the tree that they would have special knowledge and power, and better still, they would become like God. So they ate from the tree and their world did become drastically different, but not for the better.
The world around them changed. Their bodies looked different. They felt shame. They were afraid of God — something that had never occurred to them before.
But one thing did not happen — they did not die. the process of death had begun in them, but they did not die immediately.
Why was that? Did God make a mistake?
The secret to answering that question can be found in what God did next.
Because they felt shame, Adam and Eve had covered themselves with fig leaves. But God gave them another kind of covering. The Bible says in Genesis 3:21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.
Was God just wanting to give them better clothing, or was something else happening here?
God told them they would die when they sinned against him and they did not. If they did not die, something had to die in their place. There was a substitute. God took the life of two animals in their place, and then he covered them with the skins of those animals. They deserved to die, but another life had taken their place.
The sacrificial system is based on this spiritual principle, that the people of that day deserved to die for their sins, but God in his mercy accepted a substitute to die in their stead.
The people of the Old Testament lived because another living thing died in their place.
We see this throughout the Old Testament. Noah was the most righteous man of his time and God spared him from death by the flood. But Noah knew that he was not perfect, and that he deserved to die just as the others had. So the first thing he did when he got off the ark was to offer a sacrifice to God — a substitute which would take his place.
Abraham was told by God to offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice. But just as he is about to take the life of his son, God speaks to him to stop, and Abraham sees a ram caught in a thicket. Abraham called the place “The Lord Will Provide,” because God provided a substitute to die in the place of his son.
This was God’s plan from the beginning. The righteous demands of God’s laws had to be met, and death was the penalty for failure to meet God’s laws, but God had put in place a plan to spare the human race.
God in his mercy allowed a sacrifice to be offered in the place of the one who had sinned.
And secondly, this was not only pointing to God’s plan to save his people, the sacrificial system was pointing to the seriousness of our sin.
To many in our culture this all seems so unnecessary. We don’t understand the seriousness of sin and we expect God to excuse it.
Psychology has become the new religion of the day. It explains our behavior and gives us reasons for the things we do. Such as~~
~~Our behavior has ceased to be a moral failure and has instead become the natural result of some damage that we experienced in our past. It is not sin, it is a psychological condition or illness. ~~ As soon as someone commits some horrible crime, the media goes into a frenzy checking their background for an explanation for why they did what they did.
What psychology can’t understand is that we feel guilty because we are guilty.
The Bible helps us to understand that people are not so much sick as they are sinful. They do these things not because they have a psychological illness, but because they are evil.
Their actions are the result of sin, which lives in their hearts. The Bible says, 1 John 1:8 8If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Our problem is not that we have been damaged psychologically; our problem is that we have lived our lives away from God and sinned against him. We deserve death, and we need to be forgiven.
We have to stop justifying our behavior, explaining it away, and pretending that we cannot help what we do. We need to stop redefining sin so that almost nothing qualifies as sin and almost no one qualifies as a sinner.
The Bible says, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” Ezekiel 18:20,
Isaiah the prophet wrote: Isaiah 59:2 2But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.
Sin is serious because it separates us from God both now and in eternity. Sin ruins our relationship with God and destroys our lives. No amount of excuses will make it go away.
And the third point is that:
The sacrificial system was pointing to God’s desire to forgive. God has made a way out for us. His moral laws never change, and their consequences cannot be ignored.
But he has provided a way that we might be forgiven. The whole point of the sacrificial system was that God wants to forgive us and has made it possible for us to live.
The Bible says, Romans 4:7-8 Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. 8Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
When Moses asked the Lord to show Himself to him, the Lord passed by him saying, Exodus 34:4-7 4And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.
5And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 6And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. When we confess our sins, we confess them to a God who cares for us and is more than willing to forgive.
When we psychologize our sin we cover over it and excuse ourselves. When we confess our sins our sin is taken away and God forgives us.
God loves us and wants to forgive our sins, but if we are not honest about our sins they cannot be forgiven.
The Bible says, 1 John 1:8-10 8If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
But the most important lesson of all is the fourth and final point:
The sacrificial system was pointing to God’s perfect sacrifice.
As we read in the Scripture text in Lev. !:today, the person presenting the sacrifice would confess their sins and place their hands on the head of the animal which would die in their place.
Their sins would be transferred to their substitute. Then they would watch as the animal’s life was taken.
The seriousness of their sin was shown to them vividly. The lamb would then be placed on the altar and offered to God as a sacrifice. Life for life. The blood of the animal for their blood.
The blood of the animal was sacred because the life of the animal was in the blood. The life in that blood was passed to the one whose sins were being atoned for. The animal was then taken off the altar, and the one who had offered the sacrifice would take the roasted lamb home and eat it, along with his family, as a sacrificial meal. But there was a problem. Because people kept on sinning there was no end to the sacrificing of these animals.
It was not a perfect system. What could be done? God knew there was only one thing that could be done, and he had planned it from the beginning.
There needed to be One Sacrifice for all people and all time. This perfect Sacrifice is hinted at as the New Testament opens and we hear John the Baptist saying, as he points to Jesus, John 1:29 Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
The Bible teaches that Jesus was not just another good man or moral teacher. He was not just a prophet or religious leader. Jesus Christ was God who came in the flesh as one of us. As the perfect man he came to undo the sin of Adam. He died to identify with the sins of the entire human race. As God he came to take our place and atone for our sin.
The entire sacrificial system was temporary and pointed to the future.
It was meant to give Israel a living picture of what it would mean for the Messiah, the Savior, to come and die in their place.
Isaiah had prophesied about him: Isaiah 53:4-6 4Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 6All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
The apostle Peter would write: 1 Peter 2:24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
Jesus Christ was the perfect Lamb of God who died in our place that we might live. He was our Substitute, the perfect Sacrifice. He said, John 10:10 I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly
