Okay, so what we're going to be doing for lesson two here is we're going to be conquering what is often called the priestly code Leviticus chapters one through ten. It's a good chunk of material here. I'm often depending on what commentary that you read. Now you're going to have commentators say that all ten chapters are the priestly code because the first seven chapters is about sacrifice.
And then chapters eight, nine, and ten are about the ordination of the priests. And that makes sense because what do priests do but offer sacrifice. So the whole thing is known as the priestly code by many. Sometimes it'll be narrowed down like I think in a bar Bible called just chapters eight, nine, and ten the priestly code because it's about the ordination.
I think it's true. The whole thing is a priestly code because priests offer sacrifice. So what we're going to be looking at is the sacrifices of Leviticus and what they are, the different kinds are five different types of sacrifice that are listed here in these opening chapters. And then we'll finish with the ordination of Aaron the high priest and his sons, the priests.
We're going to be looking at typology all the way through because that's what makes this stuff come alive is to see. All right, well back then here at Mount Sinai we're at like give or take, you know, 1500 years before Christ. There's a broad stroke there. 1500 years, 1400 years before Christ.
And now they are offering you sacrifices and they're very bloody and very gory with very specific minute details here. This has no relevance to my life, but it does because if you're a Christian it's going to all that will help you to understand Jesus Christ and his perfect sacrifice. So that's what we want to do. As much as possible throughout this entire section, really all these lessons on Leviticus is to show how it points forward to Jesus Christ.
The sacrifice, atonement, holiness, all this stuff. So let's begin this first section and our introduction to the what, the why and the how of the sacrifice. Lots can be said. Lots is said about sacrifice.
It is a really fundamental human act. What sacrifice is it's really part of the virtue of religion. I mean everyone everywhere throughout the history of humanity has offered sacrifice to their gods. It's fundamental for who we are to recognize that there is the divine.
There's really only one God unfortunately through sin. Polytheism has creeped in pretty badly, but nevertheless you still have this concept of offering sacrifice to the divine. So what is sacrifice? Well the etymology is very very helpful.
So in Latin you sacrifice those from two words, sakra and fachate. Sakra means holy or sacred. You can see sacred and sakra, right? Easy word to remember.
So sakra is holy and sacred and fachate is to make. So literally it's to make holy or to make sacred. So in other words, it's to make something holy or sacred by offering it up to God. Right.
So we talked briefly just very briefly in the last lesson about the word kadosh. The Hebrew word for holy is kadosh. We'll talk a lot about it when you get to the holiness code. The kadosh is to set apart because the people are set apart.
They're being holy for holy God. That's our title of the Bible side, right? A holy people for a holy God. God is holy other.
God is holy distinct from anything that he's created. And so the people he calls are meant to be set apart from the world for him. So to be made holy to be sacred is to really to set it apart by offering it up to God. All right.
So that etymology I think is pretty darn far. I'll talk more about kadosh and a couple of lessons here. Then there's a big question of why have sacrifices. Like I said, it's a fundamental human act.
It's part of the virtue of religion. The great philosophers and theologians could break that down for many, many long hours on the virtue of religion and sacrifice. We can only do some introductory remarks here. But why do we have sacrifices?
Well, there's a number of considerations here that we have to keep in mind. First and foremost, I give you go back all the way to Genesis chapter 2 verse 17. You've got this command where God says, you know, do not eat of the fruit of the tree and knowledge of good and evil for. If you do, you will die, right?
If you disobey my command and all of God's commands are for life, right? We talk all about this in the Genesis Bible study of the nature of the fall. But the command is if you eat of the forbidden fruit of the tree and knowledge of good and evil, you will die. And Hebrew, it dies mentioned twice.
You will die the death or you will die die. Because the fact of the matter is sin destroys our relationship with God. Right? God is holy, holy, holy.
And we are created by God for God. And so if we rebel against the author of life through sin, we will die spiritually and physically. And that's kind of what's getting, that's kind of the point of the repetition of the word die there in Genesis 2 17. You'll die the death.
You'll die. You'll die spiritually, which is what happened to them immediately, Adam, and even physically. Physical death and suffering and pain is a result of sin. And Paul says this very clearly in Romans 6, 3, very famously, the wages of sin is death.
So if you're going to commit sin, the consequences of that is death can only be death. Because again, we're rebelling against the author of all life and again, all holiness. So then related to that, then the sacrifice animals, when you offer sacrifice, that animal that is slain is a substitute in place of the sinner. That the animal is offered on behalf of the sinner.
Because your consequence of sin is death, but this animal is dying on your behalf. Right? So we've got a great quote here from your Catholic introduction to the Old Testament, your commentary. I'm always wanting you to read a great, great book.
So it says, it is important first to emphasize that the basic meaning of all sacrifices, of whatever kind, is that of a kind of ritualized self offering. By means of the sacrificial gift, be it blood your own bloody animal, food, or drink, the worshipper symbolically offers himself to God. All right. That's really helpful.
And of course, we go to St. Thomas Aquinas and again, he's amazing. But we're just doing the introductory remarks here about what sacrifice is, why we have it, because it's a ritualized self offering. We offer ourselves in a ritual.
This animal is on our behalf being offered up to God. So this animal symbolically represents us. That's why we're doing it, because we have committed sin in some fashion and the consequences of death. But this animal is dying on our behalf.
And we are ritually offering ourselves through this animal. Right? Okay. So that is one aspect to consider.
And they a lot of people really get that in terms of sacrifice. And honestly, I have to say, typically, when you think of sacrifice and talk about sacrifice, we moderns don't really understand it. Because we don't really offer sacrifices in our religion. Christianity, Judaism doesn't offer sacrifices because the temple has been destroyed since the year 70 when Titus marched in and wiped off the place of the planet.
The temple has been destroyed and they don't have sacrifices. Christianity doesn't. You do, unless you're practicing voodoo stuff and you're sacrificing chickens or whatever. You really don't offer up animals on our behalf anymore.
So this concept is really, really foreign to us. We think of sacrifices like, I'm gonna offer up chocolate. I'm gonna sacrifice chocolate during Lent during the sacrifice, television or whatever, whatever it might be, a sweet, something like that. I'm offering up the sacrifice or sacrificial giving.
I'm donating money to my church. It is a sacrifice that I am offering up in order to support the priests or the ministries and things like that. We tend to think of sacrifices in that regard, like offering up something that's dear to us. And there's something related there as we'll move on.
So what we're talking about here for Leviticus, sacrifice is this ritualized self offering. It is on our behalf. And related to that is this third point, point C really in your notes. The sacrifice seal is a covenant.
Sacrifice is essential for sealing a covenant. And by the way, I'm leaning heavily on your Catholic Bible dictionary. There's a really great article in there called sacrifices. Look it up and I'm taking a lot of great content from that so you can read even more than what I'm sharing with you now in that article.
But sacrifice seals a covenant. A lot of people just overlook the issue. So when you have a covenant between two parties, in order to seal that covenant, there's sacrifice. And so these two parties become family.
And so there's a good quote here from the article on sacrifice that says, on the positive side, the lifeblood release from the animal victim symbolized the new relationship that bound the two parties together. And that makes sense. Just kind of pause here for a second. That makes sense.
There's a positive effect that's going on where blood makes family. So when you sacrifice the animal and the animal's blood is spilt, that blood unites the two parties, whether individuals or peoples or tribes or whatever it might be. Or in case of God with his people, it's God being united with his people. So that's a positive side.
And then the article goes on to say, on the negative side, the ritual slaughter of animals symbolize the curse of death, that the covenant threatens to impose on any partner who dare to violate its stipulations. So the blood has a double meaning. Positive is like your family. That's great.
We share blood. The negative side is, well, if you break the terms of the covenant, may you be slain like these animals? The death of the animal symbolizes the consequences of you breaking the terms of the covenant. All right.
So if you remember, if you listen to the Bible study that we have in the audio library on Exodus, as one example, when you go to Exodus 24, you have a covenant between God and the people. Moses is the mediator and he sacrifices. He got the peace offerings of burn offering. He sacrifices all the animals there and they throw some of the blood on the altar and they throw some of the blood on the people and they're bound, like they're bound as family.
And so the Moses and Aaron and the elders go up to the mountain and they eat and drink and be told, God, this is a family covenantal meal that is taking place. So that's the positive side. The negative side is Israel. If you do not uphold the terms of the covenant, which had been sworn in till chapters 20 through 23, so the 10 commandments and the various ordinances, then may you be slain like these animals.
That's what's going on there. Okay. There's all kinds of examples as well. You can go into Genesis.
There's Abraham and Abimalek. I believe that's chapter 21. If I'm not mistaken. And then chapter 15, you know, God swears a covenant to Abraham saying, I swear, I'll make you a great nation and God passes in the form of fire and smoke in between the two halves of the slain animals because he's ritualizing the self-maladictory.
Oh, if I break my terms of the covenant, may I be slain like these animals? So God is speaking a language and performing a ritual that Abraham would understand. So sacrifice seals covenant. That's really, really instructive.
Or you can't have a covenant. You can't be made one with another person and become family and kin kinsmen with another person without sacrifice in the same as true with God. You can't be God's adopted child without sacrifice. And ultimately this will be fulfilled with Christ.
It's the sacrifice of Jesus and the spilling of the blood of Christ through his covenant that we become adopted children, adopted sons in the one and only son of God, Jesus Christ. So all of this always leads to Jesus. Okay. All right.
So actually, I should say on that we can connect point B and C very easily, right? So the negative side is you break the covenant, you're going to bring the curse of death upon you. Well, that's exactly what sin is. We talked about this in points, AMB.
Sin destroys a relationship with God. And so the animal dies on your behalf. Well, in the same way you break the covenant and you sin, well, now the animal is dying on your behalf because the consequences of sin is death. The consequences of breaking the covenant is death.
And so that animal is dying on your behalf. Okay. So they're very much related or not, they're distinct, but they're related. All right.
Then a number or number letter D in your notes, this is also really important because for Israel, sacrifice is a repudiation of pagan idolatry. It's really all of these things. For Israel, if sacrifice is sealing the covenant, for Israel, sacrifice is the atonement for sin, but it's also a repudiation of pagan idolatry. And this is really important for understanding the multitude of mandatory sacrifices that are prescribed after the golden calf.
After the golden calf, there's all kinds of sacrifices that are prescribed as we're going to see here. So but why? Well, we haven't actually a hint about this when you look back at Moses' dialogue with Pharaoh in Exodus chapter eight. So it says in verses 25 and 26, here in your notes, Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, go sacrifice to your God within the land.
But Moses said it would not be right to do so for we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God, offering subominable to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offering subominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? Okay. So this is interesting.
So Pharaoh says, okay, go and sacrifice but stay in the land. And Moses is basically saying, you know what, we're going to be sacrificing the animals that you guys worship as representations of the deities, all the gods you worship. So if we sacrifice the animals before your eyes, they're going to get quite upset. They're going to freak out and they're going to stone us.
We need to go out of town three days journey out of town in order to offer these sacrifices. Because what are we doing? Well, Israel over these hundreds of years have begun to worship the gods of the Egyptians, right? They're worshiping the gods of the Egyptians and they've fallen into grave idolatry and pantheism and they need to renounce that idolatry.
So when Israel sacrifices the bulls, the sheep, the lambs, the goats, they're basically saying, you're dead to me, right? You're weak and powerless. I renounce you false gods of Egypt and I am embracing the one true God of Israel who is Yahweh, right? I am who I am.
So this is going to go on throughout the rest of Israel's history after they worship the golden calf because they've fallen back into Egyptian idolatry. Now they have to sacrifice these animals even more frequently to try to get it out of their system. Because when they go into the Promised Land, the Canaanites are worshiping these animals as well. And so look, you've got to sacrifice them.
You've got to renounce them. They are no gods to you. Be faithful to God alone. And that's a big part of it as well.
Okay? So again, that is very important for understanding why there are so many sacrifices because God doesn't really care as I'm going to repeat myself. I'm sure many times God doesn't really care about the blood of animals. He's not like these pagan false gods who need who needs meat to eat, right?
And you've got to feed the God because he's going to get angry or he's going to get hangry as the expression is. I mean, he's going to get really mad and cranky and he's just going to hurt you or something. No, God is pure spirit and he's perfection itself. He doesn't need any sacrifices for the sake of Israel and for the sake of us to learn from the sacrifice of Jesus.
They're for our benefit, not for God's benefit. Okay? All right. Then, um, let her eat here.
Sacrifice. So sacrifice is all of these things certainly is about relationship. It's about broken relationship that must be restored. It's about protecting that relationship by renouncing idolatry.
Oh, related to that about renouncing idolatry. You know, earlier I was just saying that, you know, sometimes in sacrifice for us, moderns, like I'm sacrificing by giving money to the church. There's something related to renouncing idolatry there too because we tend to worship money. All right.
There's a threefold cuckoo, since I've talked a lot about this, especially with the fall of Adam and Eve, as well as, oh, I did when talking about the sin of the golden calf, you got this presence of the threefold cuckoo, since the less of the eyes, the less of the flesh and the pride of life. All right. Well, we can tend to worship money, right? We desire, we lust after possessions that's the less of the eyes.
And Jesus, well, don't say you cannot serve both God and man. Right? So by giving money away to help the poor, to help the needy, to help ministries, we are basically saying I renounce money as my idol. I renounce money as my God.
I'm relying upon YAHQA, relying upon the triune God to provide for all of my needs. I will trust in him, just like the Israelites had to trust in the wilderness or the manna. But I'm not going to worship this God. I'm not going to dedicate my life to this God of money.
So we're announcing it. I'm giving it away. We do the same thing. That's kind of the point that I want to make right here.
So the Israelites are repudiating, they're picking idolatry by sacrificing animals in a similar way. We renounce our idolatry to money by giving it away. Okay. So I just didn't want to forget that point.
Then there's this last point here, Ian, your notes. Sacrifice also is a, can simply be used to be an active gesture of love and worship and adoration of the Almighty God, right? Because there are sacrifices that I'm going to share with you. Express communion with God.
Well, sometimes we're offering a sacrifice and praise and glory of divine majesty, right? Who has loved us and saved us and delivered us from evil or whatever the case may be. So it doesn't all have to be, you know, like, Oh gosh, I've sinned and I'm this animal's dying on my behalf where I've broken the covenant or I'm renouncing idolatry. Sacrifice can just simply be a pure act of love for God as well.
Okay. All right. So I hope that I'll make sense. There's a lot to chew on right there.
This is why we have sacrifices. And this kind of is why we've always had as a human race sacrifice to glorify the divinity. Unfortunately, that has been corrupted with paganism and pantheism. But nevertheless, this is what we are as human beings if we are honoring the first commandment, then we are honoring God through sacrifice.