This third installment of the Lectures on Leviticus delves deeper into the specific procedures of the Burnt Offering. From the sprinkling of blood to the cutting of the sacrifice, each mechanical step in the Old Testament reveals a profound spiritual requirement for our worship today.
4) Sprinkle the blood
Next, after the cutting of the offering into pieces the priests sprinkled the blood of the young bull against the altar and on all sides. The blood is the life of every living creature. Leviticus 17:11 says, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.”
Hebrews 9:22 says, “And according to the Law, one may almost say all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” For this reason, our Lord Jesus shed His own blood when He redeemed us on the cross. Because the wages of sin is death, sinless Jesus sacrificed His own life to redeem all men from sins. He redeemed you from sins by shedding His blood that is His life itself.
Genesis chapter 4 shows that God was pleased with Abel’s sacrifice of a lamb and its fat. Abel gave the sacrifice of the blood because he knew the spiritual law of the sacrifice acceptable to God and followed it.
In the same way the blood of a young bull had to shed because the life is the blood. After people slaughtered a young bull and shed its blood, the priest sprinkled the blood against the altar on all sides at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. All sides of the altar refer to any place where people may go. “To sprinkle the blood against the altar on all sides” symbolized that through the sprinkled blood, our sins that we commit in all places were forgiven.
All sides here do not indicate only visible and physical directions. There are four directions in this world. Each person chooses his own way and he goes according to where his desires lie. Whether it is to the west or to the south, it is a personal choice.
In the same way, perhaps the truth of God says, “You must go to the east,” but many people do not go to the east though they know the truth. So, the priest, in sprinkling the blood of a young bull against the altar on all sides is symbolizing that they could be forgiven of all their sins committed by going in directions other than God’s direction.
It is the same today. The podium is the altar where God’s word is preached, and the minister who leads the service is the priest who sprinkled the blood. So when we listen to the word of God in each worship service we can be forgiven of the sins and wickedness committed against the commandment and law of God through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, and we should go only in the direction that God wants us to go after we are forgiven. We should not commit the sins again.
5) Skin the burnt offering
Verse 6 says, “He shall then skin the burnt offering and cut it into its pieces.” You should not just give God just any chunk of meat as an offering. First you should “skin out the burnt offering” and cut it into pieces according to the prescribed procedure.
You should skin out the animal first. You burn all parts of that animal, but the skin is first removed. Its skin is dirty, tough and difficult to burn it. It smells bad when it is burned. So you should skin it out first and then cut the meat into pieces to give it as a very pleasing offering.
What then is the spiritual meaning of skinning out the animal in the worship service?
God accepts the heart of those who give that burnt offering, but does not accept the heart that is unacceptable to Him. You should take off the filthy and foul-smelling ‘skin’ to give God an acceptable and pleasing offering. This represents that you should take off worldly and sinful things before attending services and come before God in a godly and holy manner.
God tells us to circumcise not our body but our heart. People of God may do the things that are neither holy nor godly, but they are not really sins. They may still have the worldly ways of living or they still have a boasting or arrogant mind.
For example, there are people who habitually enjoy shopping in department stores or super markets. Or there are people who watch TV or play computer games too much. Of course these things are not really sins. They can enjoy such entertainment in the freedom of truth. It is not wrong that they go shopping for necessities or enjoy recreation during their break times for relaxation. But it is undesirable if they put in too much energy and spend too much time in pursuing those things without self control. If in doing so they lose the fullness of the Holy Spirit, God is not pleased. A person cannot be faithful in all God’s house without self control. You should remember that when you pursue the world and give your heart to the worldly things, you are moving away from the love of God. You must not do that. You should get closer to God and be loved by God more. It is such a great loss if you go away from God. You should not put yourself in such a situation in the first place. If you cannot control it, you have to quit it completely.
If you look back on yourself in prayer, you will find in yourselves what is not true, what is not perfect or what is not gracious in the sight of God. You should cast off all these things to go into the whole spirit and be perfect in the sight of God.
Additionally, you should repent all your sins before you attend worship service so that you will have a pure and godly heart. Repentance is like the skinning out and preparing the animal given as an offering, it is to remove what is not perfect, objectionable, and what is worldly from the heart before attending the service to offer our worship. To do this, you should come to the church a little bit earlier than the beginning of service. You should not be late for service nor be in a hurry. But you should enter to attend service about 10 to 20 minutes early and prepare your heart for service in prayer.
Preparing your heart for service, you should first give the prayer of thanks and repentance. That is, you may give thanks to God who has forgiven all your sins, and repent your sins shown in your lives. You should repent of what was not perfect and that you followed worldly things. So you can prepare yourself for holy worship service. Only when you skin out your offering by preparing yourself for the service through repentance, can you offer to God sacrifices that are spiritual and acceptable.
Then, how was skin of the bull used? God gave them to priests so that priests might use them as needed. Even a piece of skin was very valuable to them because they did not have a well developed civilization or useful materials.
In fact, people of Israel needed skins of animals for many reasons because they traveled through the wilderness. God forgave people of their sins and transgressions when they skinned animals and burned the animals as offerings, and through the grace and mercy of God, He let the priests use the skins of those animals.
6) Cut it into pieces
They cut the bull into pieces after they skinned it. They cut it into several pieces according to each part of the bull like head, legs, side, belly, internal organs and so on.
You would not serve your boss or other superior apples or watermelons that are whole. You’d peel them and cut them into pieces to make them acceptable for serving. In the same way, when we give a burnt offering to God we have to do it according to the proper procedure.
What, then, is the spiritual meaning of cutting the bull into pieces? We will examine the spiritual meanings in four aspects.
First, worship services are classified according to each kind.
There are Sunday Morning service, Sunday Evening service, Wednesday Evening service and Friday all-night service. You also have cell group worship service at members’ homes. You also have your family service.
Cutting the animal into major pieces is just like dividing the offering into the different kinds of services.
Second, cutting into smaller pieces refers to dividing the contents properly when we pray.
So when you pray, you first pray for forgiveness of your sins. Then you pray to drive out evil spirits and give thanks to God. You pray for the senior pastor, construction of the sanctuary, ministers of the church, and other workers. Then, you pray for your duty and for your soul to be prosperous. In this way you pray for the kingdom and righteousness of God first, and finally pray for the desires of your heart. You finish your prayer, saying, “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen!”
Cutting the animal into smaller pieces spiritually is to pray according to the prayer titles in detail. Of course, you can pray while you are walking or taking a break. Sometimes you can enjoy the fellowship with the Lord meditating on God or thinking over the grace of the Lord. However, you have to pray in a loud voice with detailed praying titles like they cut the offering into pieces in an orderly manner. As God commands us in both the Old and New Testaments, we need to cry out in prayer.
God is pleased with your orderly prayer and gives you the answer quickly. Sometimes, you do not cry out but pray in silence, or you may pray while walking, but you have to fix a certain time to cry out in prayer. God looks at our heart, but angels don’t. When we cry out in prayer angels record everything that is done and said, but they cannot see or hear the heart. These angels are for both believers and unbelievers. When you pray, angels receive the aroma and offer it to God. God looks at your inner heart, but angels cannot. That’s why they can offer your prayer to God when you cry out. That is why God also caused us to toil and sweat to get something on this earth when He drove Adam out to this earth after his sin, so now we have to sweat in our prayer as well.
Third, cutting into pieces indicates that the word of God in the Bible is divided into 66 books for us.
The 66 books of the Bible as a whole explain about the living God and the providence of salvation through Jesus Christ with consistency of a whole yet they are divided into parts.
Still, each of the books exactly matches the others. They express the will of God more systematically since they are divided into parts. Those children of God who are saved should keep all the words in the mind, and since it is divided into Old and New Testaments, it is easier to learn it.
It is easier for us to learn the Bible since it is divided into parts, rather than being written as one big book. For example, if the procedures of giving sacrifices are all mixed in many books here and there, it would be very confusing. It is easier for us to understand because the books are divided into sections, for example, Leviticus, of the priestly law and ceremony that is steeped in spiritual meaning; Deuteronomy imploring the keeping of the Law delivered by Moses; and Exodus, the history of enslavement, deliverance and setting apart in service to God.
Cutting the offering into pieces indicates that each service consists of different procedures.
We should repent of our sins before the beginning of service and begin the service with silent prayer. We end it with the Lord’s Prayer or Benediction. Of course, there are other things like the message, representative prayer, hymnal praises, reading the Bible passages, prayer for offerings, and so on.
Each in the order has its own meaning and we should worship according to each and the order, which is symbolized by cutting the sacrificial animal into pieces. By the way, there are some people who are late for services or go out before the end of the service. Or some others come in and go out of the sanctuary during the service. Sometimes people say, “It is enough just to listen to the message because other programs are not as important.” But we should offer to God all the procedures that comprise the full service.
Let’s say you cut an animal into three parts, head, internal organs, and legs. Then, if you give God only the head and internal organs saying, “I will give God only head and internal organs because legs are not important,” you are not giving God a complete burnt offering acceptable to God. You should burn all parts of the animal. In the same way, we should attend each service according to the orders and procedures. Moreover, we should remember that we attend the service to worship God the Most High and to listen to the word of God. It is disrespectful and rude to be late for an appointment with your seniors or to go out and come in while they are talking to you!
We should not be rude or disrespectful before God while we are worshipping God the Creator. However, there are some people who are permitted to be late for the service and other who must go out of the sanctuary before the end of the service because they are required to perform duties in support of that service, like the ushers.
Even though they have to leave early for their duty, if they truly love to worship God, God accepts their service. Also, for the Wednesday or Friday All-night services you may come late to the service even though you long to worship God so much, because of your work or other such reasons. God will not blame this either. But you should never be late for Sunday service.
It is commanded by God and we have to keep the Sabbath holy. God does not blame those who are late for Wednesday service or Friday All-night service because they get off from work late. God sees the heart of each one and accepts the aroma of each service coming from the heart.