Thoughts on OT Sacrifices as Worship – Word in 365

I thought, rather than a day-by-day break out of my impressions this week, that I would share the thoughts I keep having as I read these passages.  My thoughts keep going back to something I talked with my hubby about a few months ago – how the Old Testament (OT) sacrifices were acts of worship for the Israelites/Jews, and how that compares to our ‘worship’ today.  Bear with me, as I flesh it out a bit (it’s nearly 2 weeks worth of reading that have been simmering in my brain!).

I’m still not sure I understand all the ‘whys’ behind the OT sacrifices, but I can see that the sacrifice system was a seriously big deal. Sacrifices were the way that individual Israelites interacted with the Lord.  There were specific rules about what to sacrifice and when to sacrifice and which offenses required sacrifice.

It took a lot of time and energy to keep up with it all.

Most of the sacrifices mandated in the OT required the presentation of a pure animal without blemish – a lamb, ram, bull, bird, etc. – or the first fruits of the grains, oils, spices, etc.

That is a lot of animals and goods.

But more than the quantity of creatures involved, which is significant, my thoughts center around the actual act of sacrifice.

disclaimer: my intention is not to gross anybody out… but I do share some details of sacrifice in my thoughts below.  If you are easily grossed out, I would advise that you proceed with caution, or maybe not at all.

smasquelet | stock.xchng

Let’s just imagine that I’m an Israelite male and have to bring a large offering, let’s say a bull, to sacrifice to the Lord.  I am coming to make this offering as an act of worship and to atone for my sin.  First, I have to be sure that I have an animal to bring, so I have raised, cared for, picked and groomed one in my herd, or I have purchased an acceptable one.

Either way there is a sizeable cost for this animal.

It’s supposed to be the best I have to offer.  From a rancher standpoint, I’m losing my best breeding stock, as well as the valuable meat from such a large and healthy animal (if the animal is a sin offering, most of it is burned).  A large beef would easily feed a family for the better part of a year or more.  I also have all the feed cost invested into the animal – and in essence that’s ‘lost’ when the animal is sacrificed and not used for my own consumption. Therefore that investment is also part of the sacrifice.

Once I have the animal, I must actually make the sacrifice.  There are parts of the ritual of the sacrifice that only the Levite priests could perform, but most of the sacrifice required the participation of the one bringing the offering.  This included killing the animal, collecting the blood and taking the body apart (slaughtering) so the different parts could be processed as part of the ritual in different ways.  Some sacrifices required the parts to be washed, and others didn’t.

I have personally been involved in the butchering of a few cattle, many deer (up to 10 at a time), and recently an average-sized cow moose.  So, that is perhaps why this aspect of the sacrifices stands out to me so strongly right now.

This isn’t an easy, quick, or clean process.

The killing of the animal is the easiest part. That part is relatively fast. It’s the ‘taking apart’ of the animal that is time- and labour-intensive, not to mention VERY messy.

Thinking that the cow moose we butchered might be of comparable size to a small bull, I can imagine how long it would take to sacrifice a ‘choice’ bull.  Skinning the animal alone is quite a job, not to mention then taking all the quarters (legs) off and cutting apart the rest of it.  I have thankfully never had to deal with the inner parts (what usually gets left in the field when my hunter hubby ‘guts’ the animal), but if you handle those parts too quickly or roughly, you run the risk of rupturing them and contaminating the rest of the meat (and yourself) with feces, urine, bile, oil from musk glands, and whatever else is in there.  So, the inner parts would have to be carefully dealt with during the sacrifice as well.  I’m sure that the priests who oversaw the sacrifices were skilled in the ‘art’ of taking apart the animals, and perhaps were faster at it than I, as an amateur butcher, would be.  I would estimate that it might take 1/2 a day for the actual sacrifice, once you got the bull to the place for sacrifice.

Also, we’re talking about a nearly perfect bull, likely weighing around 2000 lbs (1000 kg).  The ‘pieces’ aren’t roast-sized bits – you’d be dealing with large slabs of beef, quarters weighing hundreds of pounds each.  It’s WORK to cut apart and move around these big pieces of beef.  Good knives would be a MUST, but even with good equipment, butchering a bull is not an ‘easy’, lightweight job.

a clean altar kmg | stock.xchng

Based on my personal experiences with dismembering animal carcasses, I would also say that a person would get very dirty, messy, yes bloody, while sacrificing their offering to the Lord.  The Bible passages in Exodus and Leviticus specifically mention things like blood, fat, inner parts, kidneys, etc. The sacrifice wasn’t a neat and tidy thing – blood was spilled, poured, splashed, and sprinkled; meat was cut, separated, sorted, placed on or around the altar, and burned; inner parts were removed, washed, and sometimes burned as well.  The people in the area of the sacrifice, their clothes and sandals and feet, the floor/ground, the instruments used for cutting, and of course the altar itself would all be very messy.  The odours of raw meat and blood, then of fire and cooking meat, would also be on the people participating.  If I were bringing the sacrifice, I would be messy and smelly when all was said and done. Blood stains, so I would likely have to get rid of the clothes I wore during the sacrifice, as well (another cost of the process).

THEN I would have to wash and purify myself before being able to go back to my everyday life. From start to finish, that sounds like a whole day process to me!

What’s the point of all of this gruesomeness, and what does it have to do with worship?

An Israelite bringing an offering of worship and atonement did indeed sacrifice much:  the investment into raising a fit animal, the cost of ‘lost’ meat and depleted breeding stock (or the cost of purchasing an animal), plus the time and work and mess of the actual ritual of sacrifice.  They would come to worship the Lord and serve Him by doing what was required of them. The priests would offer special prayers in conjunction with the bringing and burning of the offering, in accordance with the law given to them by the Lord.  It would be pretty all-consuming on the day of the sacrifice, with farther reaching costs as already mentioned.

When we, as modern believers, get together to ‘worship’, do we experience the same level of sacrifice?  Certainly, Christians no longer perform ritual sacrifice, so, literally, we do not experience that KIND of sacrifice.  But what DOES it cost us to gather on a Sunday to worship the Lord?  Some time, yes. Some energy, yes.  Do we get messy when we serve the Lord?  Not bloody-messy, I hope… but are we willing to get relationship-messy, details-of-the-heart-messy, forgive-the-ugliness-of-my-sin-messy?  Is our act of worship anything close to all-consuming?

What we call worship looks VERY different than a sacrifice offered by an Old Testament Israelite as worship. It is right that the actual act of worship should look different (we live under Christ, not under the law; we live in a different culture; etc).  But what can we learn about the sacrificial nature of worship from looking at the intensive processes involved in the Levitical system of offerings?

I think much could be added to our modern idea of ‘worship’ if we applied some of the same cost/value thinking that was a part of the OT sacrifices, and if we were willing to get a little more ‘messy’ in the process.

(side note:  The atoning sacrifices – sin and guilt offerings – were the most extensive, requiring the most of the person offering the sacrifice.  The burnt, grain, and fellowship offerings were less extensive.  My thoughts have focused on the most extreme sacrifices – atoning sacrifices – as acts of worship. But the other offerings would be acts of worship as well, and also require time and effort, etc., just not to the same extent as the atoning offerings.)

For more of my thoughts on this adventure of reading the whole Bible in a year, check out my other WordIn365 posts.