Leviticus 22

Little by little over many centuries and in various ways including the ceremonial law, God prepared Israel for the coming of a holy Priest who would make a holy Offering. There were many ways for a priest to become unholy and to bring death upon himself and upon Israel by profaning the Lord's tabernacle. One way to do this was to assume upon himself the right to take what was not His from the offerings that were dedicated to the Lord, acting as if the Lord's portion or the portion that belonged to the worshiper was first his to consume when and where he chose. God spoke to Aaron through Moses about the restraint that the true priest needed to possess: “Speak to Aaron and his sons so that they abstain from the holy things of the people of Israel, which they dedicate to me, so that they do not profane my holy name: I am the Lord.”

The priest needed to be holy and the offering needed to be holy. An unholy priest could destroy an otherwise acceptable offering, and an unacceptable offering brought condemnation upon a priest and the whole nation, The priest and the offering were connected, but they also could be distinguished, so that the people could eventually see not only Jesus as the perfect Priest, but also the offering that He brought to God of His life and His willing death as the perfectly acceptable Offering.

If the Levitical priest had an uncleanness, he would destroy the goodness of an offering. “That person shall be cut off from my presence: I am the Lord.” Jesus needed to enter the presence of the Almighty for us with an acceptable blood sacrifice of Himself. If He had been cut off from the presence of the Almighty as an unacceptable offering, we would have no way to draw near to God with a full assurance of faith.

We are priests to the Lord, but what uncleanness would mar our service to the Lord? What swarming thing, what emission, what death, discharge, or leprosy of sin has threatened us with lost fellowship with God and His people? Yet we have been made acceptable through the perfect Priest who made the perfect Offering. He remains faithful, for we are united to Him, and He cannot deny Himself. If we will just confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive our sin, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. May we not grieve the Holy Spirit with pride and a stubborn rejection of the way of love, for He is ours, and we are His. He is the Lord who sanctifies us.

In the Old Covenant, the holiness of the priesthood and the offerings would be marred by an outsider eating food that was only for the priests and their households. But now the way into a more permanent priesthood has appeared for nations of outsiders through Jesus the Messiah. Yet anyone who would presume to draw near to God today through some other road than Jesus will find Himself outside the true temple of the Lord. There is no wisdom in a stubborn rejection of the Lord's good provision for Jews and Gentiles.

Our High Priest is holy and His offering of Himself is without blemish. The acceptable offering in the days of preparation had to be “of the bulls or the sheep or the goats.” But only the offering of a perfect Man could pay our real debt. An animal would not have been acceptable to God for us.

The sin that destroyed mankind came through a man. It was necessary that the righteousness that redeemed a people for the Lord would also come from a man.

What was the perfection that was necessary? In the time before the Messiah's death and resurrection, perfection could be outward and ceremonial. Not the blind, the disabled, or the mutilated; no discharge, no itch, no scabs; no limb too long when one of perfect proportions had been promised; nothing bruised or crushed or torn or cut could be offered to the Lord. But when the perfect Man presented His own body for our guilt, He was bruised and crushed and torn and cut. He possessed a perfection that an animal could never have accomplished: the full inner righteousness of a sinless man with a true body and a real soul. On the outside, where man is able to see, He was an offering from which men hid their faces. On the inside, where God knows the heart, He was a lamp of purest gold, a sinless substitute, a perfect and willing gift of love.

He did not come to us through the generosity of Jews or Gentiles, as if men made Him to be who He was. He gave His Father the gift of Himself as the perfect Man from heaven.

He was not offered up for death as a child, a natural innocent as in some pagan rituals. He spent His youth in quiet and holy submission to his mother and “father,” but as one who already knew that God was His real Father, and that the temple as the house of God was truly His Father's house. But when He was about thirty years old, He presented Himself publicly with signs and words from another world. He took His place as our holy Priest. Then He offered up Himself on the cross as our holy Offering. His death has become our death. His resurrection is our eternal life. He has delivered us from the most cruel bondage of sin, death, and even from the yoke of the ceremonial law that neither we nor the generations before us could bear. He has saved us, and He is the Lord who sanctifies us.