As we continue studying the consecration of the priests into the Lord's service, we see today that this could not take place without blood. Your consecration into the Lord's service and my consecration into the Lord's service was accomplished by blood as well---the blood of Christ.
"Bring the bull to the front of the tent of meeting, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on its head. Slaughter it in the Lord's presence at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Take some of the bull's blood and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger, and pour out the rest of it at the base of the altar. Then take all the fat on the internal organs, the long lobe of the liver, and both kidneys with the fat on them, and burn them on the altar. But burn the bull's flesh and its hide and its intestines outside the camp. It is a sin offering." (Exodus 29:10-14) In yesterday's passage they were told to bring one bull and two rams. The bull is for the sin offering. The priests are to lay their hands upon its head to signify that their sins are being symbolically transferred to the bull. They are acknowledging that the bull is being offered in their place. They owe a debt to the Lord for their sin, and the penalty for sin is death. (Romans 6:23) The Lord is willing to accept an animal sacrifice in place of the death of a human being, so the men place their hands on this bull to solemnly attest to this bull being a "stand in" for them.
The blood, the fat, and certain organs were considered the finest and most vital parts of the body. In the sin offering we find the priests offering the bull's blood, fat, liver, and kidneys to the Lord after Moses has swiftly and humanely slaughtered the animal by using a special knife across the jugular vein in one quick motion. The flesh (likely signifying man's carnal nature) and the intestines (perhaps symbolizing the "waste" or "filth" of sin) are not offered to the Lord but are burned outside the camp of Israel.
Next a burnt offering is made to the Lord with one of the two rams. "Take one of the rams, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on its head. Slaughter it and take the blood and splash it against the sides of the altar. Cut the ram into pieces and wash the internal organs and the legs, putting them with the head and the other pieces. Then burn the entire ram on the altar. It is a burnt offering to the Lord, a pleasing aroma, a food offering presented to the Lord." (Exodus 29:15-18)
A burnt offering was an offering for guilt---an offering for atonement. This offering was wholly given to the Lord, even though it may have to be cut into pieces and arranged in a way so that everything fits on the grate of the altar overtop of the fire. Symbolically the bringer of a burnt offering was making a full surrender of himself to the Lord: admitting his failure to live up to God's standards, throwing himself on the mercy of God's court, acknowledging he hasn't devoted his "all" to the Lord while he is devoting all of this offering to Him, and asking the Lord's help to do better. Placing his hand upon the head of the offering before it's made is a way of saying, "I failed to give all I could to the Lord. I am symbolically transferring my guilt to this ram who is about to give his all to the Lord."
While you're reading this you may be thinking how gruesome and sad the sacrificial system was. And you'd be right. It's intended to make us feel this way because sin itself is a horrifying, life-destroying, gruesome thing. Sin comes between man and God and sin comes between man and his fellow man. Our sins affect our own lives and the lives of everyone around us. It pollutes and permeates everything on the earth. God could have required our own blood for our sins but instead during Old Testament times He accepted the blood of a "stand in" animal rather than slaughtering human beings. How much more gruesome and sad would it have been if every human being who ever sinned had to be slaughtered at an altar? The human race would have ceased to exist on the earth in that case, for all have sinned and fallen short. (Romans 3:23) The only human being who never sinned is the one who was fully God and fully man at the same time: the Lord Jesus Christ. And the only sacrifice capable of making sinful human beings righteous in the sight of God for all time is the sacrifice made by the Lord Jesus Christ: the spotless Lamb of God. This is the sacrifice of the New Testament---the new covenant---and it is capable of making us clean forever in the eyes of God. This is a sacrifice that had to be made only once, not year after year like the sacrifices of the Old Testament.
The blood of Christ is so superior to that of the blood of sacrificial animals that it made us not just ceremonially clean (like Aaron and his sons in today's passage where the Lord says, "He and his sons and their garments will be consecrated") but it makes us clean all over and from the inside out. "The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!" (Hebrews 9:13-14)
Join us tomorrow as we continue studying the ordination and consecration ceremony of the priests.
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