Draw Me Near
By Terance Clark April 7, 2025 8 Minute Read
Week 24
This Weeks Passage: Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26
When Jewish children turn five years old they begin their study of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) with the book of Leviticus. Five year olds learn first the hardest book of Moses and the one that most Christians don’t have any idea about. Leviticus is easily the least read book in the Christian Bible. It’s kind of funny when you think about it, our salvation is based on a ritual that Jesus did for us on a cross, one which we proudly proclaim has ended the need for sacrifices forever and yet no one knows a thing about how what He did accomplishes what we say it accomplishes.
It’s one of the reasons why I knew I needed something more. A deeper understanding of God’s word. My eternal soul was dependent on something I didn’t understand. Atonement is not about death and as Christians we keep pointing to the death of Jesus, but that is not where atonement happens. Atonement is about life, so we need to understand more of how Jesus paid for our sins.
“Atonement is about life“
This week we crack open the book of Leviticus, and honestly it will be one of the hardest things to teach in such a short weekly blog, but if you stick with me I think you will come away encouraged as we expose the myths and confusion so often taught and find the hope and purpose for why God initiated so many rituals. Let me be clear some things will continue to be a mystery as some things God just doesn’t make clear, but today I am in a much better place than I have ever been in understanding what Jesus actually did for us on Calvary. Let’s jump into it.
Leviticus begins with a Hebrew conjunction in the very first letter, much like the word “and” because God wants us to understand that it’s a continuation of what was happening in Exodus. Exodus ends with a problem that is solved in Leviticus. The glory of God settles into the tabernacle. His presence is now among us (Exodus 40:34), but in Exodus 40:35 it says that Moses was unable to enter the tent. The separation still existed because although Moses had stood face to face with God when God actually truly came personally Moses could not come close to Him. So God calls out to Moses and then what begins in Leviticus is His solution as He begins to describe the process for coming near to Him.
Exposing the Myth
There is a myth that Jews believed that sacrifices paid for sins. It goes like this, when a person sinned God demanded payment so people brought a lamb or goat that died in their place and God covered their sin through that process and then Jesus came later to pay once and for all for all the sins. But there were actually five different types of sacrifices and most of them had nothing to do with sins. So what was the purpose for the other sacrifices? Did Jesus’ sacrifice cover the other sacrifices too? How did it? You see we rarely talk about it or explain it because I don’t think we ever truly understood it to begin with. In reality, we simplified a very complex process, but in doing so we lost the real meaning of what was really being done.
The words offering and sacrifice translated from the Hebrew word Korban do not accurately express what is happening. The root word for korban actually means to come near. One brings a korban (sacrifice) to come closer to God it was not to pay for sins. Sacrifices were considered gifts and by bringing a gift one could draw near to God that was the goal. It’s not that God needs a gift it’s that he presented a way for us to get close to Him. To be fair, there was a sin and guilt offering as well, but the death of the animal was not used to pay for the sin it was used as a proxy to bring the worshiper near to God. There is a sort of sense that death was associated with drawing near to God so in some ways it could look like it was a payment and it certainly causes one to think about the cost of coming into the presence of God so that could be where some of the confusion came in. Just understand that Jews never believed that sacrifices paid for sins, they always believed that salvation came by faith as taught to them by Abraham.
Connecting the Soul to the Animal
Jews believed that the soul was in the blood. They brought the animal and through laying on hands invested their identity on to the animal. Now the animal was legally bearing the worshiper’s identity. The person slaughtered the animal to draw out the soul within the blood. The priest caught the blood and applied it to the alter. You see it was not the death of the animal that brought atonement, that was the means needed to provide the blood with the persons soul attached to it and applying it to the alter is where atonement took place. On the alter the persons soul connected to the blood entered the presence of God bringing the person near to Him.
“It was not the death of the animal that brought atonement
that was the means needed to provide the blood”
The purpose was to draw close to God. To be able to have relationship and that was the reason God instituted it. There were five different ways to draw near to Him including when you sinned but that was really a rare case. Usually, it was just an opportunity for the worshiper to come and show his love to God. There is so much more to understand but this is a start as we work through the book. Let’s end this week by reminding us that God initiated a way for us to draw close to Him and Jesus eventually came to make a way for us to draw near eternally but the most important thing to remember is God wants you close, so draw near!
