Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures

As I read about sacrifice in places like Leviticus Chapter 8, a question was ringing in my mind. What do we do as believers that amounts to the type of sacrifice required in the Old Testament? Truthfully, I don’t think there’s anything we (I) do that amounts to this. Is dropping some money in a plate really sacrifice? Is giving up my time to do something I love (playing music) really sacrifice? I mean, these people were giving up highly valuable animals without blemish for Yahweh. I bet it took great diligence and devotion for these people to give up such a prized possession for Yahweh. I guess I need to start thinking of what my prized possessions are and if I’d be willing to give them up.

Reading through some of these passages, I am reminded of objections that come from many non-believers. I have heard many non-Christians claim that the Bible and Christianity portrays a vengeful, blood-thirsty God.

Certainly, these people must have read up on at least some of their Old Testament. Its when reading passages like Leviticus 20 and 24 that I can understand their objections. These chapters mandate death for sinful acts such as adultery, wizardry and blaspheme. In Leviticus 10, God causes Aaron’s sons to die in a fire because they offered “unauthorized fire before the Lord” (10:1). Furthermore, a quick search of my concordance in Leviticus shows about 20 different references to stoning and the phrase “put to death” in this book alone.

I know all the Sunday School answers regarding this issue, but my question is how can we address this issue in a way that makes sense to modern minds?

Leviticus mentions several types of offerings.  There are five offerings mentioned in Chapters 1-7 that are later mentioned in Chapters 8-10:  sin offering, guilt (or trespass) offering, grain offering, peace offering, and burnt offering.  I became curious to the purpose of having the different offerings so I did a little research.

The burnt offering was an offering with the purpose for covering general sins of the people and to show a life of devotion to the Lord.

A peace offering was a volutary offering used by the offerer to express peace, gratitude and fellowship between the offerer and God.  There were three expressions of thanksgiving: a thank offering to express thanksgiving for an unexpected blessing, a votive offering used to express thanksgiving when the offerer had made a vow to God and God had granted them the blessing they had petitioned for, and a freewill offering to thank God without any specific blessing in mind.

A grain offering was also voluntary and was used as an act of worship and thanksgiving towards God.

A sin offering and a guilt (or trespass) offering are very similar in that they are both used as a sacrifice for sins committed unknowingly by the offerer.  The only difference is that the guilt offering is offered when the sin has a monetary value of sorts and restitution has already been made by the offerer.  Neither sin or guilt offerings are used when the offerer has knowingly committed a sin against God in defiance.

The information above was found on the following website:

https://www.theox.org/images/images_A2115/sacrifices1.pdf

My post has just been a generalization of the information found on this site.  There is a lot more detailed information about the offerings in regards to scriture references, the preist’s portion, God’s portion, the offerer’s portion, and what each offereing constisted of.