Quickly... the burnt offering required that the offerer bring a one year old male animal. Most commonly a lamb, but a bull or goat was accepted and also a pigeon (for the poor). This animal had to be perfect, without defect whatsoever. Also, the entire animal had to be given. In some of the sacrifices, the priest would get the "leftovers" from certain parts of the animal, or it would be returned to the one offering it. This offering required that the entire animal be given to God. I think this is hard for us Westerners to understand. For the Israelites meat was a rare commodity. It's not like us, where we eat steak like its our job (obviously I am painting a broad picture here... sorry vegans, vegetarians and such) Anyway, meat was something of high regard to these people. Needless to say, this was quite a sacrifice for them.
Furthermore, the crazy thing about this offering was that the offerer had to kill the animal themselves. They skinned it, dismembered it and such (sorry for the graphic mental picture). Most of the time, the priest was responsible for this. So, needless to say, they were taking an active role in their worship to God. Wow, not only did they have to give all of the best animal they had (which were not many), they had to personal slaughter it. Also, this was the most common of required sacrifices, in that they had to be performed most often. All this was done for the primary result of pleasing the Lord. It was seen as a "pleasing aroma to the Lord" (1:4). This was done as a reparation for sin, and also for thanking God for what he had done i.e. (childbirth, healing) (Lev. 12-13).
(Sidenote: I wanna say that this passage brings me to my knees, in that I am unspeakably thankful for the Son of God becoming the perfect and permanent sacrifice for every sin, and also making it possible for us to commune with our Lord without the medium of a sacrifice.)As I started thinking about what lessons I can learn from this, it made me realize how little (or not all) I sacrifice in my worship to God. These offerings were seriously significant to these people. They really had to understand what the word "sacrifice" truly meant. I thought about all the times I give God "second-rate" offerings. I, many times, read my Bible or pray after I have already done all the other stuff I want to do. I give God my "leftovers", when I should be giving him my "first fruits" (see Numbers 18:13). Or what about giving money or talents, gifts etc. to the Lord. What if we had the mindset of these people, in that we gave from the top of our proverbial cup, instead of the drops that fall out when we are done indulging ourselves.
So, who says Leviticus can't mean something to Christians today? You won't hear that from me!
