THE LEVITICAL OFFERINGS
Leviticus 4-7
“These, then, are the regulations for the burnt offering, the grain offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, the ordination offering and the fellowship offering, which the Lord gave Moses at Mount Sinai in the Desert of Sinai on the day he commanded the Israelites to bring their offerings to the Lord.”
The levitical offerings may be very far from us as Christians because we do not practise them but they give us deep insight into the heart and mind of God.
They are commanded because they are necessary for God to be involved with them yet at the same time there are offerings which are freewill.
The fact that they are necessary must underline for us the truth that sin is a very serious obstacle and we too must be very mindful and serious about the presence of sin in our minds and hearts and lives. God demands that the offeror personally slaughters the sacrifice, skins and cuts them into portions. One is not allowed to let someone else do this for us.
This is a far cry from the way we approach God when we gather to worship him. We could be physically present and mindfully absent. It is a far cry from the way we offer our tithes and offerings, dipping into our pockets or even using our phones to transfer a token amount. Births are rarely celebrated in God’s presence with deliberateness. Thankfully marriages still carry some degree of gravity although there is a lot of push to inject personal variations to vows and the like. Deaths are probably the only occasions when many Christians appropriately contemplate the place of God in their life.
All of these movements away from the concerns of God that are reflected in these offerings not only make our faith shallow and trivial, they also make God to be trivial to us except when we face death. How do you think God feels, having made the sacrifice of his Son available for us so that we can truly enter his presence, truly fellowship with him, and truly know and love him?
“If anyone becomes aware that they are guilty—if they unwittingly touch anything ceremonially unclean (whether the carcass of an unclean animal, wild or domestic, or of any unclean creature that moves along the ground) and they are unaware that they have become unclean, but then they come to realize their guilt; or if they touch human uncleanness (anything that would make them unclean) even though they are unaware of it, but then they learn of it and realize their guilt; or if anyone thoughtlessly takes an oath to do anything, whether good or evil (in any matter one might carelessly swear about) even though they are unaware of it, but then they learn of it and realize their guilt—when anyone becomes aware that they are guilty in any of these matters, they must confess in what way they have sinned. As a penalty for the sin they have committed, they must bring to the Lord a female lamb or goat from the flock as a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for them for their sin.”