Humanity has a big problem.
It’s the problem of holiness. God, our Creator, is holy, which means that He is “set apart”. We are not holy. We bear the image of God but have been corrupted by sin. Sin separates us from God and thus, from life itself.
This brings up a quandary. In God is all our good, our hope, our life, and our joy. And yet we are separated from Him because of our sin and His holiness. To get to God on our own is like trying to reach the Heavenly throne room from Earth. The ascent is impossible.
Scripture uses the language of ascension to God in multiple places. The Psalmist asks “who shall ascend the hill of YHWH?” (Psalm 24:3). Psalms 120-134 are the “songs of ascent” that Israel would sing as they approached the temple mountain in Jerusalem to worship God.
God is transcendent and far high above us. We are earthbound and small. How can this distance be crossed so that we can fellowship with the God of life?
All-Consuming Fire
The Old Testament gives us a sobering and simultaneously joyous picture of God’s holiness. It is humbling and heartening all at once. Though this is a theme throughout the whole Bible, we’ll examine it specifically as laid out in the first chapter of Leviticus.
Leviticus is a hard book to read as a 21st century American Christian. It details religious rituals and social customs that are so foreign to our minds. Therefore it can be hard to understand and hard to relate practically to our lives. But we know that all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for us (2 Tim. 3:16-17). We also know that all Scripture speaks of and points to Jesus Christ (John 5:39, Luke 24:27, 44-45).
The first thing we must understand about Leviticus is that it is not an isolated book in the Bible. It is set straight in the middle of the Torah (or Pentateuch), the first five books of the Bible. When we read the end of Exodus we realize just how much God loves cliff-hangers:
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.
Exodus 40:34-38
These are the last words of the book of Exodus. Notice vv. 34-35 in particular: “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.“
The theology of the Torah and Exodus in particular is too great to fully examine here but these verses summarize the problem of holiness spoken of earlier in this article. God’s glory is an all-consuming fire (Exod. 24:17) and the people of Israel cannot touch the mountain that His glory rests upon lest they die (Exod. 19:11-12). Now their God has rested within the tabernacle. His presence is among His people but they cannot approach Him. Not even Moses, the chosen intercessor between God and Israel can enter the tent of meeting or the tabernacle because of the consuming glory of YHWH.
With this background, the book of Leviticus starts with these words: “The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying,” (Lev. 1:1). The prepositions are important to take note of here: YHWH called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. Two prepositions: to and from. “To” tells us the direction of God’s speech: it is directed to Moses, the leader of Israel. And “from” tells us about the locational relationship between God and Moses. Moses is outside the tent of meeting and God is inside. There is a separation.
There is so much to learn from this verse alone: sin separates us from a holy God, God takes the initiative to reach out across the separation and pursue relationship with us.
We understand Leviticus more when we cross-reference this verse with the first verse of the next book in the Bible: Numbers. Numbers 1:1 reads: “The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying,”. This verse shares much similarity with Leviticus 1:1 while it adds more detail about the geographic location and time of year that these things took place. But for our purposes, I want to emphasize this phrase: “The LORD spoke to Moses…in the tent of meeting”. Notice the preposition! God is speaking to Moses, no longer from the tent of meeting but in the tent of meeting! The separation has been bridged.
What has transpired between these two points to allow Moses to approach YHWH? The answer is the entire book of Leviticus. Leviticus lays out many rules and regulations for the nation of Israel but we miss the point if we view these as only a checklist for good or moral behavior. It is a red carpet of sorts, leading to the presence of God.
A Bloody Red Carpet
I encourage any Christian to undertake a serious study of Leviticus. I also recommend that any study of Leviticus be accompanied by a parallel study of Hebrews. Read Hebrews as a sort of commentary on Leviticus from God Himself.
We know from Hebrews 9:22 that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Sin indeed is the thing that separates our holy God from His unholy people. It is what separates us from God, our Creator and our life.
So as we continue to read in Leviticus chapter 1 we shouldn’t be surprised to see the shedding of blood. The laws in Leviticus are indeed a “red carpet” leading to the house of God but this carpet is not red because of expensive velvet, it is red because of blood. Leviticus lays the foundation for the doctrine of substitutionary atonement: our sin is done away with and we are saved to eternal life-giving fellowship with God through the substitution of His Son, Jesus Christ in our place.
The author of Hebrews is clear about this: the rites in Leviticus look ahead to the ultimate sacrifice by Jesus (Heb. 9:23). Jesus’ sacrifice in the place of sinners is far better than the blood of bulls and goats (Heb. 9:12-14). Indeed, the blood of animals cannot actually remove a person’s sin (Heb. 10:1, 4) and the many detailed and precise rituals of the Levitical law cannot save anyone.
So two questions must be asked: what is the use of the Levitical sacrifices? and how were people saved in the Old Testament if not through the blood of these bulls and goats?
Passing Over Sin
The use of the Levitical sacrifices can be found in Leviticus 1:4.
He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.
Leviticus 1:4
The word to note here is “atonement”. This word in Hebrew means “covering”. The blood of the bulls and goats in Leviticus worked in much the same way that the blood of the Passover lamb worked during the exodus from Egypt. The sin of the people needed to be covered before they lived in fellowship with God.
The first chapter of Leviticus deals with what is commonly referred to as the “burnt offering”. But perhaps a more appropriate term is “ascension offering”. There were other offerings given for other purposes including the sin and guilt offerings (in chapters 4-6) which were explicitly for the forgiveness of sin and restoration of broken fellowship. The ascension offering was for worship and entering into fellowship. This still requires “covering” so the atonement here is a substitutionary one in which the animal “without blemish” (Lev. 1:3) is killed and completely burned upon the altar. The smoke from the offering “ascends” into the heavens and serves as a “pleasing aroma” to God (Lev. 1:9).
During this process, the altar must be purified by blood (Lev. 1:5) and the animal’s hindquarters must be washed with water (Lev. 1:9). This washing with blood and water looks ahead to the greater blood-cleansing and baptismal symbol in the New Covenant.
I believe we can discern the “use” of the Levitical sacrifices by paying attention to the author of Hebrews:
By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing (which is symbolic for the present age). According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
Hebrews 9:8-12
The sacrifices in Leviticus are pointing ahead to something more significant: Jesus Christ and the redemption He provides. The holy places themselves were symbols and types.
That is not all though. The sacrifices of course did have more than just a symbolic purpose. They did “cover” sin. Paul says as much in Romans 3:25. Here he writes, “whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;“. This “passing over” was based upon the propitiating nature of the sacrifices. They turned away the wrath of God against the people’s sin until the day that Christ Himself would cleanse that sin and atone for it once and for all.
The Way to God
This brings us to the second question: how were people saved in the Old Testament, before Christ? They were saved with the same means as you and I are: faith in Jesus Christ. Abraham was justified by faith (Gen. 15:6). In fact, the author of Hebrews makes clear that all the Old Testament saints were saved by faith (Heb. 11:2). Jesus said that He was the only way to God (John 14:6) and that no one could come to God if not through Him.
We don’t have space here to examine this as deeply as it deserves but I have written elsewhere about the faith of Old Testament saints like Abraham.
Jesus is the one and only way to the Father. He is the ultimate ascension offering that allows us to, through Him, ascend to God’s presence to enjoy life-giving fellowship with Him.
The laws of Leviticus may seem confusing and irrelevant for us today. But as Christians under the New Covenant, they provide a rich foundation upon which rests the central doctrines of our faith.