Numbers 15:1-21--Laws About Sacrifices

Numbers 15:1-21
English Standard Version

Laws About Sacrifices
15 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land you are to inhabit, which I am giving you, 3 and you offer to the Lord from the herd or from the flock a food offering or a burnt offering or a sacrifice, to fulfill a vow or as a freewill offering or at your appointed feasts, to make a pleasing aroma to the Lord, 4 then he who brings his offering shall offer to the Lord a grain offering of a tenth of an ephah of fine flour, mixed with a quarter of a hin of oil; 5 and you shall offer with the burnt offering, or for the sacrifice, a quarter of a hin of wine for the drink offering for each lamb. 6 Or for a ram, you shall offer for a grain offering two tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with a third of a hin of oil. 7 And for the drink offering you shall offer a third of a hin of wine, a pleasing aroma to the Lord. 8 And when you offer a bull as a burnt offering or sacrifice, to fulfill a vow or for peace offerings to the Lord, 9 then one shall offer with the bull a grain offering of three tenths of an ephah of fine flour, mixed with half a hin of oil. 10 And you shall offer for the drink offering half a hin of wine, as a food offering, a pleasing aroma to the Lord.

11 “Thus it shall be done for each bull or ram, or for each lamb or young goat. 12 As many as you offer, so shall you do with each one, as many as there are. 13 Every native Israelite shall do these things in this way, in offering a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord. 14 And if a stranger is sojourning with you, or anyone is living permanently among you, and he wishes to offer a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord, he shall do as you do. 15 For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the Lord. 16 One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you.”

​17 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 18 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land to which I bring you 19 and when you eat of the bread of the land, you shall present a contribution to the Lord. 20 Of the first of your dough you shall present a loaf as a contribution; like a contribution from the threshing floor, so shall you present it. 21 Some of the first of your dough you shall give to the Lord as a contribution throughout your generations.

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We now have another turn in the narrative.  We are going to return to law and regulations, but the focus is has changed--notice how God starts off this section with the certain promise that one day they will enter the Promised Land and inhabit it.  Now the people should be ready to hear God and to listen and to take note of these instructions that they need to make sure they pass along to the next generation (the ones who will be inheriting and inhabiting the Promised Land).  Don't worry--God knows that this generation will not faithfully teach the Law to the next generation and He will give the Law to the new generation before they enter the Promised Land.

Let's first talk about some laws about sacrifices.  The Levitical priests were already given all the instructions in Leviticus of what each offering was to consist of and were given the responsibility of teaching those rules to God's people and to keep them holy, but God decides to speak directly through Moses to the people because at this point in time the people must have sin and atonement on their minds (we'll get to how they are to deal with unintentional sins next, but we'll see that there is no provision for those who commit high-handed sins of rebellion like those that the people had just committed, and it will be followed up with another example of rebellion--the time from among the Levites--that also results in the deaths of many people).  God reminds the people that when they come into the land there will still be many sacrifices that are to be offered--burnt offerings, offerings to fulfill vows, freewill offerings and offerings that are required for the appointed feasts (such as Passover, Pentecost, The Feast of Tabernacles, The Feast of Trumpets, and The Day of Atonement, and later Purim, to name a few).  God said that when they came to offer these offerings at the altar, they should always bring with them a grain offering--and specific instructions were given as to how to prepare the grain offerings that were to accompany each sacrifice.

Why add this provision? My assumption is that it is to take care of the Levites and specifically the priests who were not supposed to have any fields of their own to grow their own grain--the grain offerings and portions of the meat from these offerings that were brought to the LORD were given to the priests and their families.  God is making provision for His people to take care of His ministers and their families, even if they don't realize that's what going on, and God is in a way promising them enough blessing from the land to say the He's not only going to give them enough for themselves and their families, but that they would also have enough to continue making sacrifices and to continue to be generous in their offerings so that the Levites and priests and the families of the Levites and priests will be taken care of as well.  We'll see in the Law that God will also promise enough provision for the people to take care of the poor as well and that God promised that if they would follow the Law that He gave them, they wouldn't have to worry about drought or famine or pestilence--God would make the ground fertile, bring the necessary rain and cause the land to be fruitful so that they would never be in need--they just needed to remember that their blessings come from the LORD.  In this God is helping turn the hearts of the people from being self-centered into being focused on Him and on others.

We see that these offerings are offered not only with a grain offering, but with a drink offering--and offering of red wine that would be poured out before the LORD.  So then we already get to see some Old Testament references to the elements that we think of as the Lord's Supper--the unleavened bread and the wine that were part of the process of atonement here that we remember as the body and the blood of Christ because it was by His body and His blood and His sacrifice that He made atonement for us (as well as securing all these other things--peace/fellowship, removing our sin, removing our guilt, paying for any and all broken vows, being offered as our Firstfruits, our Passover Lamb, and so much more).

There was one set of instructions for all people that were making sacrifices to the LORD, even those who were strangers and sojourners who wanted to make sacrifices to the LORD--they did not get to make their own rules about what kind of sacrifice was going to be acceptable to God or how they were to approach Him.  While we expect sinners to be sinful and to do sinful things, we cannot give them the idea that they can approach God any way they want to and that God must find their "sacrifice" and worship pleasing--there is but one Way and one Door, the Lord Jesus Christ.  "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No man comes to the Father (the LORD) except through Me." (John 14:6).

God then tells Moses to remind the people to offer their firstfruits to the LORD, both of their raw grain and of the dough that they make (prepared goods made from the grain).  This seems like a "double taxation" of sorts, but it is what the LORD commanded to make sure that the people remembered that He was the one who gave them the grain to harvest and He was the one who was ultimately responsible for giving them their daily bread to eat.

So, we may want to read this and say, "Surely there's nothing there to apply to me since I'm not Jewish and not living in the Land."  Not so!  There was one Law for the Jew and the God-fearing Gentile--those who lived in the Land and those who worshiped the LORD outside the Land.  We see here that all those who desired to come to God had a way to do so that points to the sacrifice that Jesus would make for all of us, both Jew and Gentile, and that we need to point everyone to that One Way whether they are Jew or Gentile and make them aware that the LORD wants a relationship with them and wants their sin to be dealt with so that that can happen.  We also see that we are still encourage to bring offerings to God in the New Testament and we too should bring the first and the best of our raw good and our manufactured goods and should not complain about God requiring too much of us (these requirements were a heavy "financial burden" on the people that we don't usually try to calculate), because He was willing to give all for us and He is also the Creator of all things and is owner of them anyways--we are simply allowed to be slaves that have some temporary stewardship over limited resources for a limited time.  What we do with those resources and how we treat them says much of what we think about God and what's important to us.  Whether they realized or not, every time these people obediently made a sacrifice they were proclaiming the gospel and their need for it individually and corporately and that there was one gospel for God-fearing Jews and Gentiles alike who come to God by faith and not by works of the Law.  Are we willing to put our money where our mouth is in our proclamation of the gospel?  Are the sacrifices that we offer in worship of that which we do worship (not assuming the only thing we "worship" is the LORD, as many of us struggle with offering worship to other people and other things as well) a pleasing aroma to the LORD?  Are we giving not just of our things, but also of ourselves?  And most of all, have we checked our hearts to make sure that we too are not living lives of open rebellion like these people were and some of the next people that we'll talk about?  We should not be putting God to the test or abusing His grace in a way that prevents or distorts the gospel.