Meditations: Sacrifice

Giving your Best to God

I am a hoarder. I just can’t throw things away. However, when my Mum moved house I had to sort out all the stuff that I had accrued as it wasn’t practical for her to take it all to the new house. I spent many moments agonising over it all, try to decide what to keep and what not. Eventually, many of my Chemistry notes, alongside selections of Maths and Biology had a meeting with the shedder. It was hard to destroy these pieces of paper, even if I don’t often look at them, they still contained memories. It was necessary however to sacrifice them for the great good of a smoother house moving, and less junk to clutter up my new room. 
We are probably all familiar with the concept of sacrifice that is to say giving up something for the sake of a greater good. Likewise, most people are aware that in the past and maybe even in some cultures today, there existed an idea of sacrificing animals to divine beings in order to curry their favour.
In the Bible, we also see this idea of animal sacrifice, except with a difference. It’s not sacrifice willy-nilly with the hope that a god will respond positively as a result. There are vey clear instructions regarding what and how to sacrifice and for what reasons. The book of Leviticus in the Old Testament could be considered the Bible’s sacrifice manual, where most of the details are described.
Leviticus chapter one for example, talks about how to bring an animal to the Lord as a burnt offering. It would appear from Genesis and Exodus that the concept of a burnt offering was already well known, as it is mentioned in both these books. However, Leviticus starts with God speaking to Moses from the tent of meeting and thus setting down some very specific guidelines about how the sacrifices should be. As mentioned above, in many cultures in the ancient world, people brought sacrifices to the gods hoping for a desired response, but in Leviticus God makes it clear what sacrifices He desires and for what reasons.
 The first thing that we learn about the burnt offering in Leviticus one is that it can be performed using different animals. We see here in verse two a choice between an animal from the herd or flock, i.e. cattle or sheep most probably, or later on in verse 14 there is even the possibility of bring a bird mentioned. This shows that this type of offering was open to all, as no matter what type of animals someone kept, or was able to afford to bring, there is provision for them all. Even poorer people who probably didn’t have, or couldn’t afford sheep or cattle, could at least bring a less expensive dove or young pigeon and so were still able to participate in offering a sacrifice.
Next, we are informed that the burnt offering had to be a male animal without defect. Here, we could understand two things. Firstly, that the person bringing the sacrifice should bring their best animal that hasn’t any defect. It would have been tempting to bring an old or sick animal as the person would have had less use for such an animal. However, the Lord commands that the person brings their best, not an animal that they are happy to get rid of anyway.
A story is told of a rich man who visited a church once and put a large sum of money in the collection. At the end of the service, one of the church members who was responsible for counting the money realised that there was a much larger sum of money than usual and that probably the rich man had put it in. Slightly embarrassed by such an extravagant gift, the church member approached the rich man as he was leaving the church and offered him the money back saying that it was too large a gift for their church. The rich man replied however, that he was very rich and that for him it wasn’t such a large sum of money. At that the church member took the money to put back into the collection. The pastor noticed that something was going on and asked the church member what had happened. He explained about the large sum of money and that it was ok because the rich man had said that for him it wasn’t such a big sacrifice. To this the pastor replied that they would give the money back anyway because at their church they only wanted sacrifices that cost something!
There is actually a passage in the Bible that reflects a similar sentiment. David, after making the mistake of sending out his men to take a census that was not pleasing to the Lord, goes to make a sacrifice to appease God’s anger and stop the plague that has come upon the people as a result. He is offered animals and wood for the sacrifice by Araunah the Jebusite, on whose threshing floor he is told by Gad the prophet to make the sacrifice. However, David replies that he will not make a sacrifice to the Lord that doesn’t cost him anything (2 Samuel 24:24).
So, one reason that the sacrifice had to be a male animal without defect is so that it cost the person bringing it something. They were giving up one of their best animals. Beyond this though, if we know our Bibles, there is another obvious reason for this condition. The person making the sacrifice is told to lay his hand on the head of the animal. This symbolises the fact the person’s sins are being transferred to the animal, which was then killed and sacrificed in order to make amends for them. This is reminiscent of Jesus, who took our sins on Himself and then was sacrificed on the cross to make amends for them. Jesus was a perfect male i.e. the only man to ever live without any sin. We see then that this sacrifice was a symbol, a precursor of the one true sacrifice that was to come later in Jesus.
One more important aspect of this burn offering is that the whole animal was burnt. Again, the person bringing the sacrifice might have been tempted to keep some of the animal back for other uses, but we see here that in graphic detail all the animal pieces along with the fat, head, legs and even internal organs are to be used in the sacrifice. Maybe this was a pointer to the fact that Jesus died for all our sins, past, present and future!
Finally then, the question remains of how we are to respond to this. Today, we don’t bring animal sacrifices anymore because, as previously mentioned, Jesus was the supreme sacrifice, who filled everything we needed once and for all. Some people nevertheless still try to bring sacrifices to God to make themselves more acceptable to him. Maybe, they dress a certain way, get involved in a particular ministry or try to help those in need. These can all be beneficial things, but they don’t add anything to the sacrifice of Jesus. Instead the Bible talks about bringing a sacrifice of thanks to God (e.g. Psalm 50:14), which could include all these things, but it’s important to understand that we are doing them to thank God for what’s He’s done through Jesus’ sacrifice, rather than to gain any brownie points by doing our own versions of Old Testament practices.

Image by Mustafa shehadeh from Pixabay