One of the most famous Christians in the world would have to be Billy Graham. He is a great preacher who has spoken about Jesus to many millions of people all over the world during the past 50 years or so; he has been a personal adviser and pastor to Presidents; a rarity among American evangelists in he is one man who is universally regarded as someone of the highest moral character.
Yet his reputation has had a black spot put onto it recently after the release of some audio tapes from the office of the President in the early 1970’s. Among the hundreds of hours of conversations in those tapes are some in which Billy Graham is heard to agree with statements that Nixon made that are racially prejudiced against Jewish people.
Billy Graham responded to these tapes a few weeks ago, sincerely apologising for the comments, saying they were wrong and that he honestly does not believe they reflect his true feelings towards Jewish people, then, since or now. He asks the Jewish community to reflect on his actions on behalf of Jews over the years that, he says, contradict his words in the Oval Office that day.
His statement concludes with the following words:
" ... we all need God’s forgiveness. I take daily comfort in the Psalmist’s words in the Old Testament: "The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy" (Psalm 103:8). Every year during their High Holy Days, the Jewish community reminds us all of our need for repentance and forgiveness. God’s mercy and grace give me hope -- for myself, and for our world."
It is quite a powerful statement, expressing sincere humility and repentance for a wrong done. It also reminds us that our roots as Christians go deep into the history and culture and religion of the Jewish people. I was impressed by his final comment about the way the Jewish High Holy Days remind us of our need for repentance and forgiveness.
Next weekend we celebrate the “high holy days” of the Christian church – Good Friday and Easter, the death and resurrection of Jesus. We celebrate God’s once and for all provision of mercy and grace for all the world – God’s sacrifice of His own Son, which brought to fulfilment the sacrifices of Old Testament times. No longer is there any need for sacrifices to be made over and over again, because the sacrifice God has provided in Christ is perfect and complete.
In order to fully understand the sacrifice of Christ, it is helpful for us to understand those old practices that were done away by what He did that first Easter weekend. Tonight we are going to spend a few minutes looking at the OT sacrificial system, in order to gain a greater appreciation of how perfect and complete Jesus’ sacrifice was and why Easter is something to celebrate. Turn with me to the 3rd book of the Bible, Leviticus.
Leviticus is probably not the first book many of you would turn to if you wanted some inspiring pre-Easter reading. It does seem a little dry and repetitive. However, when you read Leviticus with “New Testament coloured glasses” Jesus jumps out at us from every page.
And when Jesus jumps out at you it is a life changing experience.
The Sacrificial System in Practice
The first thing you notice when you read Leviticus is that there was not just one sacrifice. There is a whole system of sacrifices, each with a different purpose. The early chapters describe 5 types of sacrifice, and then in chapter 16 there is an additional, extra special annual sacrifice on The Day of the Atonement. We are going to concentrate tonight on the regular sacrifices, the 5 described in the early chapters.
These 5 sacrifices are discussed several times in the early chapters of the book, each time in a different order. The order I will follow is the one in Chapter 9, when we see the sacrificial system in practice. However, the detail of each comes from chapters 1 – 6.
The first sacrifice – sin offering (Lev 4)
This was a sacrifice that had to be offered by everyone in the community – including the priests and rulers as well as ordinary people. For the person offering the sacrifice it achieved forgiveness for sins committed in ignorance or unintentionally. The important part of this sacrifice is the blood of the animal that is offered up – in fact the flesh was cut away and served as food for the priests, and only the innards were actually burnt.
One of the things Jesus said as he hung on the cross was, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” Jesus is our sin offering, the one whose death pays the penalty for all the things that we have done because of our fallen human nature. We like to kid ourselves that we have free will, but the Bible teaches us that it is impossible for human beings to choose anything but to sin – that is our nature, from the time we are conceived in our mother’s wombs. Think of Romans 5, where the apostle Paul talks about us as being by nature God’s enemies, of being ungodly and helpless to do anything about it.
But Paul also says in Romans 5 that for us Jesus died; for us, the sin offering of the Son of God was made and thus God’s anger was turned away from us and directed at Jesus instead. When we turn to Christ our sinfulness is forgiven, we are “born again”, we become God’s friends instead of His enemies and God’s love is poured out on us.
Easter is truly worth celebrating!
The second sacrifice – the guilt offering (Lev 5-6)
This is similar to the sin offering in that it has to do with admitting that you have done wrong and seeking God’s forgiveness. The main difference is that this one was offered when someone had committed sins that they could somehow pay back – eg if they stole from someone they could return the stolen goods plus an extra 20% penalty. In this case there are really two parts to the sacrifice – there is the formal part where an animal is killed, but there is also the “sincerity test” in which the person to whom the wrong had been done is given something back. The guilt offering applied to deliberate sins or to unintentional sins, once the sinner was made aware of what they had done.
Jesus is our guilt offering for the wrongs we have done against God. Think of Romans 7 when the apostle Paul talks about doing the things he doesn’t want to do and not doing the things he wants to do. He asks the question, “what can be done about this?” and the answer is “thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord …. There is no condemnation to them in Christ Jesus.”
These first two sacrifices deal with sin – they show us that sin is serious and that only the death of an unblemished sacrifice can pay a penalty for sin. But they also show us that God has provided a way for the penalty to be paid and for us to be for forgiven, for things to be set right again between us and God.
Putting on our NT coloured glasses we see that the unblemished, perfect Lamb of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, has paid this penalty for us.
Easter is truly worth celebrating!
The third sacrifice – the burnt offering (Lev 1)
Once sin had been acknowledged and dealt with, Leviticus provided for a third sacrifice called a burnt offering. In the first two sacrifices the meat was kept for the priests to eat (that was how they were “paid” for their work as priests), in the burnt offering the whole of the animal was burnt on the altar. This symbolised the person’s repentance and wholehearted devotion to God.
In Romans 6 we are taught that because Christ has died and risen for us, we should consider ourselves as having died to sin and as people who live a new life of service to our Lord and Saviour.
“Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life: offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.” (Rom 6:13)
Are you willing to lay everything on the altar for God? Your love, your faith, your time, your money, your skills, your whole life? Jesus was – He obeyed God even to the point of death on the cross. He gave up equality with God in order to serve God. He did it for us.
Easter is truly worth celebrating!
The fourth sacrifice – the grain offering (Lev 2)
This was an offering of grain or cereals, ground into fine flour and mixed with oil (olive oil or canola oil or something like that). I think there are two ways of looking at these offerings:
1) they represent the basic ingredients of the daily meal of a Jewish person at that time. Thus, this is a form of “saying grace” as we might put it, of acknowledging that their needs are met by God’s provision and that they thank Him for His goodness.
2) they represented the fruit of the person’s own work. He grew the crops and then he had to prepare the offering by grinding and mixing the ingredients. This was then offered to God – their very best.
The Bible says that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was like this – God provided for our needs by sending His only Son and He could offer nothing better as a sacrifice than His own Son! Because God went to such a great length for us we have a great assurance of His love for us. As Paul says in Romans 8:
“if God is for us who can be against us? He who spared not His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also graciously give us all things? ….. {nothing} can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Again I say: Easter is truly worth celebrating!
The fifth sacrifice – the peace offering (Lev 3)
Finally, with their sins forgiven and their lives offered to God in gratitude, the fifth sacrifice in Leviticus is called a peace, or fellowship, offering. This one is different because part of the offering is made into a meal that the priests and the worshippers share together. Thus, this sacrifice gives expression to the relationship that all believers share in the Lord because of the fact that we all have peace with God.
It is a bit like the Lord’s Supper, that we sometimes share together when we break the bread and share the wine in remembrance of the body and blood of Jesus. The reason it is often called “communion” is that we do it together, as fellow believers who share together in God’s blessings.
As Paul says in Romans 5:
“Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom 5:1)
And in the letter to the Ephesians:
“You who were once far away {from God} have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace.” (2:13-14)
This passage goes on to talk about the way that all people who have faith in Christ are “fellow citizens with God’s people and member’s of God’s household” and that we are being “built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.” (2:19-22)
You and I are a part of God’s great building project. Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it.” (Mat 16:18b) His death and resurrection laid the foundation stones and our work of living and proclaiming his message carries it on to this day.
That is why we celebrate Easter – to remind ourselves and to tell the world that Jesus is building His church and that ultimately this is what the whole history of the world is all about!
Concluding Comments
I said at the beginning of this talk that Jesus is the perfect and complete sacrifice.
• He is perfect because all the sacrifices in the OT had to be unblemished, the very best that there was either of the flocks or the crops. Jesus was the sinless, perfect Son of God, the One who did not deserve to die yet took death upon Himself as a voluntary sacrifice for our sins.
• He is complete as a sacrifice because His death on the cross accomplished, once and for all, everything that all the sacrifices of the OT were there to do. In reality they were just shadows, pictures, of the true sacrifice that was to come.
We celebrate these truths especially at Easter. But more than that, we need to recall and celebrate and respond to the sacrifice of Christ every day. In the opening verses of Romans 12, Paul urges us, “in view of God’s mercies”, to “present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God”. I believe that Paul had the sacrificial system of Leviticus in mind when he wrote those words. By God’s mercy our sin was dealt with by the death of Jesus on the cross and in response to that Paul said we should present ourselves to Him, wholeheartedly devoted to serving Him.
May God give us grace to offer ourselves in that way. Amen.
