“He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.”

What would you do if you survived the apocalypse and were one of only a handful of people left on the planet? Plenty of fiction has been produced exploring that premise, but we don’t need to turn to fiction, for Noah found himself in that very circumstance. Having found grace in God’s sight for being a righteous and blameless man in a world where everyone’s thoughts were continually upon evil, Yahweh gave Noah instructions for constructing an ark that would enable him, his wife, his three sons, and their wives to survive the uncreation that He was preparing to unleash upon the earth. After surviving the death of every living thing upon the planet, Noah finally leaves the ark and steps onto the recreated world, and here is what he does:

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. (Genesis 8:20)

How many types of clean animals and birds were there in Noah’s day that came with him off the ark? No knows, but we can assume that Noah’s first day out of the ark was spent slaughtering and burning whole some from every clean animal that came off of the ark. Yet here is the result of Noah’s sacrifices:

And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Genesis 9:21-22)

Even though man’s sinful nature remained unaffected by the flood (consider, for instance, Noah’s sin in Genesis 9), Yahweh nevertheless vows never again to destroy all life on earth, as long as the earth itself still remains. What caused God to make this resolution if post-diluvian humanity is just as sinful as ante-diluvian humanity? He smells “the pleasing aroma” of Noah’s offerings. Indeed, the word for pleasing in Hebrew is nikhoakh sounds rather like Noah’s name noakh, which means rest. Thus, Iain Duguid suggests that “it is a ‘rest-giving’ aroma” (EEC Vol 1, 107). At the smell of Noah’s whole burnt offerings, Yahweh rested from His righteous anger toward mankind. His wrath had been propitiated. A ransom had been paid.

But why were Noah’s whole burnt offerings so pleasing to God? By God’s grace, our study of the whole burnt offerings here in Leviticus 1 will enable us to better understand their usage all throughout Scripture.

A Call to Worship

Last week, we used Leviticus 1:1 to orient ourselves for rightly studying this magnificent book. For in that verse, we remembered who Yahweh and Moses are, what is the significance of the tent of meeting, and the threefold declaration that what follows are the very words of Yahweh. And here now are the words that follow:

Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When any one of you brings an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of the livestock from the herd or from the flock.

This verse not only establishes the remainder of our present text but the following chapters as well. You see, Leviticus begins by describing the five basic forms of offerings or sacrifices that the Israelites were to make: the whole burnt offering (also called the ascension offering), the grain offering (or the tribute or meat offering), the peace offering (or the fellowship offering), the sin offering (or the purification offering), and the guilt offering (or the reparation offering).

Each of these five basic offerings has its own purpose, but they are all offerings, sacrificial gifts that the worshiper could bring to Yahweh at the tent of meeting. In fact, the word brings is a bit more significant that the English suggests. The verb is qarab, which means to approach or to draw near, and it comes from the same root as the word for offering, qorban. Thus, as Palmer notes, “A worshiper draws near to the Lord through that which he brings near, an idiom that may best be captured in English as ‘[to] present a present’” (EEC Vol. I, 841).

The point is this: an Israelite brought his or her offering for the purpose of drawing near to Yahweh and for spending a moment or two in His presence. In Psalm 27:8, David says, “You have said, ‘Seek my face.” My heart says to you, ‘Your face, LORD, do I seek.’” In Hebrew, the word for face and presence are the same word paneh. God has commanded His covenant people to seek, which also entails desiring, His presence, and as David models for us, His people ought to desire and seek to be in His presence. Or as David said in verse 4: “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” David wished that his whole life could be spent in the tabernacle, gazing at Yahweh’s beauty.

Let us keep in mind as we study these offerings that the LORD has always looked supremely at the heart, and in many ways, these sacrifices were intended to be enacted mirrors, reflecting and exposing the worshiper’s own heart back to him. The prophets particularly would later tell Israel over and over again that the sacrifices themselves were not the point. Yahweh wanted obedience more than sacrifice. Indeed, the sacrificial system would often be abused throughout Israel’s history. Yet even then, the LORD was revealing the heart of the worshiper. Morales is right:

One’s approach to God is the surest dissection and deepest revelation of the heart. More than this, the God-ordained approach to himself is the most proficient school for the heart. If Leviticus as the central book of the Pentateuch has anything to teach at all, it is that Israel’s theology is hammered out upon the anvil of approaching God in worship.

Let us consider, then, how we approach God for worship. Marvelously, we are commanded to boldly draw near. Hebrews 4:16 gives us this command: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Yet confidence is not frivolity. It is just as perilous to draw near the presence of Yahweh today as it was for the Israelites of old; the only difference is that Christ fully paid for our sins and clothed us in His righteousness while the Israel was still waiting for that blessed day. Even so, our response to drawing near to God is still indicative of our hearts. Do we draw near to God in prayer, in reading His Word, in gathering together as His people, recklessly, as though the grace of God in Christ were owed to us? Or do we draw near in humility, wondering why God was merciful enough to choose us?

Again, these offerings in the opening chapters of Leviticus are how an Israelite could draw near to Yahweh. We would do well to keep Allen Ross’s words with us as we study these offerings:

Sacrifice is at the heart of all true worship… In the Old Testament it was not permissible to come into the presence of the LORD in the holy place without some kind of sacrificial gift. Sacrifice was the normal ritual act that symbolically expressed both the unworthiness and the dependence of the worshiper as well as the gracious provision of God. These rites declared that any uncleanness or sin must be removed before the worshiper was accepted by God and communion achieved. It was not magic or superstition; rather, it was a divinely instituted drama that enacted God’s way of sanctifying those who desired communion with him. Accordingly, rites were valid only if the attitudes and activities of the worshiper were in harmony with the spiritual standards of the faith. Without faith it has never been possible to please God (Heb. 11:6). (73)

Given that the ordinary Israelite could not afford to own his or her own scrolls of the Torah, these offerings were “divinely instituted drama” or, we might say, visual sermons. Let us, therefore, dive into the first and most common type of offering: the whole burnt offering. And while we will begin with what the whole burnt offering meant in ancient Israel, Paul tells us that “all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, and for education in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Let us also then ask: How then does the whole burnt offering teach, rebuke, correct, and educate us in righteousness today?

If His Offering Is a Burnt Offering

If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish. He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted by the LORD. The burnt offering is, in some ways, the most basic offering that an Israelite could give. Indeed, it was the standard offering that the priests made in both the morning and the evening to open and close each day’s sacrificial hours. Every major English translation calls it the burnt offering, while some scholars refer to it as the ascension offering. I prefer the translation that the Greek Septuagint made: the whole burnt offering. That name gives emphasis to the most notable aspect of this sacrifice, which is that the entire animal was burnt upon the altar. Jay Sklar comments that:

With most animal offerings, at least some of the meat was eaten, whether by priests (Lev. 6:19); 7:6) or by both the priests and offerers (Lev. 7:15-18, 31-34). But with the whole burnt offering, all the meat was consumed on the altar (1:9), making it very costly; it was the supreme sacrifice. (88)

To help us understand the cost of this sacrifice, we can think of our own financial giving today. Just as the priests and Levites lived off the meat and grain presented by the Israelites, so too does our giving go to any number of different functions: pastoral pay, church building maintenance, benevolence, parachurch ministries, etc. Of course, we give to the Lord, but our giving practically benefits all of those things.

Read More