Leviticus 1

I don’t know about anyone else, but I find that reading these sorts of rules about the priestly law makes it difficult to understand the immutable quality of God – i.e. how could God apparently care about arbitrary animal sacrifices and then later claim that they were ineffective to cleanse people?  God later states that He doesn’t even want the sacrifices: “The multitude of your sacrifices – what are they to Me?” (Isaiah 1:11).  So if God actually doesn’t want the sacrifices, why did Moses have to give them?  Many different explanations are offered.  I find the most synthesizing explanation is that verses like these (and much of the Old Testament in general) are a record of God entering into the human experience and interacting with the Hebrew people in a way that would have made sense to them at the time.  His goal being to conform them for the purposes of His ultimate redemption story in Christ.  If the ultimate understanding of God’s character is found in Jesus, then we know that God is willing to make Himself look like a broken sinner in order to woo His people back to Him.  This perhaps explains the large amount of violence in the Old Testament that a lot of Christians have a hard time understanding and accepting.  God might have been allowing Himself to look like a vengeful Middle Eastern warrior God in order to woo the Israelite people into His redemptive purposes.  Another example to explore is that before Moses authorized animal sacrifice, human and child sacrifices were commonplace in this time period.  So, God’s law ratcheted down the violent atrocities, yet it was only a shadow of His true character in Christ.  Other interpretations highlight the need for sacrifices to atone for God’s vengeance.  Either way, ultimately, God has been fully satisfied in the one pleasing sacrifice of His Son!

You are to wash the internal organs and the legs with water, and the priest is to burn all of it on the altar. It is a burnt offering, a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord. ‭‭Leviticus‬ ‭1‬:‭9‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Because of our identity with Christ, we are now the very aroma of Christ, which is pleasing to God: “For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing” (2 Corinthians 2:15).  That is awesome!