Torah: Leviticus 1:1-6:7(5:26)
Haftarah: Isaiah 43:21-44:23

Long ago, the Jewish sages created reading calendars to be read annually throughout all the synagogues every sabbath. They are the Parsha (from the Torah, the first five books of the Bible), and the Haftarah (selected readings from the prophetic books of the Old Testament). Today, I continue my series exploring the Messiah in each of these portioned readings that was planned and scheduled in ancient days and appointed for our present days.

This week’s portion for March 21, 2026 is Vayikra (He Called). The specific passages under these readings are cited above for your reference. This week begins this year’s walk through Leviticus. In the first five chapters, God gave Moses instructions concerning offerings the priests, leaders, and people bring to God, namely the burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings. In Exodus, I explained how the tabernacle and its furnishings are a shadow of Messiah. In Leviticus, I will focus now more on how the instructions for offerings in Leviticus are a shadow of the Messiah as well. For the sake of the length and timing of my blog posts, I will break up this portion into several posts. I will also point out in Isaiah that God has forever chosen Israel as His people and He still has gloriously blessed plans for them in the future, through which the world is also blessed, unlike what Replacement Theology teaches.

I’m no expert on the sacrifices of the tabernacle, so I’ve had to park a minute on this material. That’s one reason why this post is coming the week after the scheduled reading, and it only covers part of the scheduled text. Throughout this blog series, I’ve primarily tried to rely on the Scripture and the leading of the Holy Spirit in my writing first, then use credible human sources to expound or elaborate or confirm that leading. This is one of those posts where I have had to heavily rely on external commentary. Christians tend to lump all the sacrifices together as payment for sin, and that’s simply not the case. Not all offerings paid for sin. I think the Church misses out on a lot of richness in the Torah because of this inaccurate generalization. I will do my best to break these offerings down and show how each one foreshadows Messiah. I am no expert, but I am enough of a student of the Bible to know we can’t gather the meaning of all the sacrifices into one lump sum, nor can we say that Jesus’ death and resurrection did away with this sacrificial system. Those are things my own church teaches, even earlier this very day that I write this, and that’s simply unbiblical and untrue. This post will break it down using Scripture. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” We have to remove ourselves from our 21st mindset, be it Western, reformed, both, or something else, to understand the sacrifices as God gave them. We can’t superimpose our understanding on the text. We have to let the Scripture change our thought. I will do my best to convey some basic meanings of the sacrifices in relation to Messiah without getting down in the weeds and making your eyes gloss over. Just like the tabernacle was a shadow of the coming Messiah, so are the offerings.

The Burnt Offering

The burnt offering is the first offering mentioned in Leviticus. In Hebrew, it’s called the ‘olah. It’s the same word from which we get Holocaust. It was completely burned up on the bronze altar. None of it was eaten by priests or congregants. It’s name refers to the sacrifice’s ascent to heaven to the Lord in the form of the smoke. “The sacrifice, in its transmuted form, reaches God” (JPS Torah Commentary, 6).

This was not an offering that atoned for sin. It was many times a voluntary offering that was the first one a person would voluntarily give to secure God’s favor and presence. After the burnt offering, other offerings could be given and well-received by God.

What the burnt offering is described akin to is the half-shekel sanctuary tax that is described in Exodus 30:15. For my own commentary on the half-shekel, please read my post “When You Take the Chance to Stand up and be Counted in God’s Census with Unveiled Face.” The Medieval Jewish commentator and philosopher Ibn Ezra is one prominent person who made this connection. Both the half-shekel and the burnt offering act as a redemption for the ones who offer them, atoning for their lives and ransoming them. This is not for the removal of sin, but a protection from God’s wrath, which can be incurred by a human for simply coming to close too His presence. “The favorable acceptance of the ‘olah signaled God’s willingness to be approached and served as a kind of ransom, or redemption, from divine wrath” (JPS Torah Commentary, 7).

Concerning how this applies to Jesus, Jesus said Himself, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (Jn. 3:36). Jesus says He takes the role of the burnt offerings, that is, removing God’s wrath from believers or protecting believers from His wrath. Jesus also said that He came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). There are many more New Testament verses connecting Jesus to the removal of God’s wrath on believers, but I will try to stick to the highlights so this post doesn’t get too long. I’d encourage you to go do a word study yourself after I present the ideas here.

With Jesus as the ‘olah which allows humans to then approach God without wrath, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

The burnt offering had to be from the herd or flock, without defect. According to the JPS Torah Commentary, the physical unblemished condition of a sacrificial animal was also representative of spiritual purity. Jesus, the Lamb of God (Jn. 1:36), was unblemished. His life as a sacrifice was described as the “precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot (1 Pet. 1:19). He was without sin (Heb. 4:15), and He knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21). The burnt offering, like Jesus, was without defect.

The burnt offering had to be presented in the tabernacle before the Lord. Jesus is like the burnt offering in that He was presented in the temple on the day He entered Jerusalem for the last time of His earthly ministry, that is, the Triumphal Entry. He also visited the temple every day of that week leading up to His crucifixion. The one giving the sacrifice would lay their hands on the burnt offering before is was slaughtered. This was not the transferal of sins from the worshipper to the sacrifice, as I have been taught in Christian circles. This was a ritual called semikah. Semikah was simply the dedication of something to a specific purpose. Semikah could be done on people, such as Moses laying his hands on Joshua as the next leader of Israel. We see semikah in the New Testament too, such as when missionaries are set apart to spread the gospel. Semikah was done on Jesus by the priests and they didn’t even realize it. They were prevented from enacting semikah before Jesus’ ministry was fulfilled. “The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people” (Lk. 20:19). At the right time, God allowed them to perform semikah. When they arrested Him on the Mount of Olives, He told them, “When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness” (Lk. 22:53). Whereas they did not lay their hands on Him before, they did at this time at His arrest. He was then taken to the high priest and sentenced to death, just like a burnt offering would be taken to the priest and dedicated to be a sacrifice. The high priest Caiaphas, without realizing it, himself stated the dedicated purpose of Jesus’ sacrifice, the purpose of His semikah: “it is better for you that one man should die for the people” (Jn. 11:50).

The burnt offering gave “a pleasing aroma to the Lord” (Lev. 1:9, 13, 17). Like the burnt offering that pleased God, Jesus pleased God. God made that declaration in an audible form at least twice (Mt. 3:17, 17:5).

The burnt offering was not an obligatory sacrifice. It was voluntary on the part of the one who brought the sacrifice. Jesus was not compelled or forced to offer Himself. He did it voluntarily. He said,

“¹⁷ For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (Jn. 10:17-18).

Just as a worshipper who brought a burnt offering to the tabernacle voluntarily, Jesus offered His own life voluntarily.

The ‘olah or burnt offering was burned up entirely on the altar. I don’t have a verse that explicitly says Jesus gave all of Himself, but I think it can be inferred. Jesus, in heaven with the Father, one with the Father, left all of that, took the form of a human being, was born in meagre conditions of poverty, whose life was in jeopardy from the beginning, lived with sinful humans for 30 years in submission to the Father and to earthy authorities (parents, religious leaders, the Roman government), was rejected by most people, ridiculed, accused of being a blasphemer and demon-possessed, and finally sentenced to a long cruel tortuous death and suffered on our behalf. He gave up His heavenly glory and His earthly life. I’d argue that could be considered giving His all. When a person give their life for another, we’d say they gave their all. Jesus’ gift tops even that. Paul does describe all this sacrifice Jesus made in his letter to the Phillippians:

“…Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5b-8).

‘Olah means an offering that goes upward, and it did rise upward to God in the form of smoke. As the ‘olah went up, so did Jesus go up to the Father. On the cross, before He died, he said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Lk. 23:46). His spirit went to be with the Father in heaven. After Jesus’ resurrection, He also ascended into heaven in bodily form on clouds. Jesus is the One who goes up on our behalf to God. The night He was betrayed, He said,

“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour… And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn. 12:27, 32)

Like the semikah, Jesus’ was designated for a specific purpose to draw people to God without fear of wrath so that they can have a relationship with God and be heard and blessed, and He did this by being lifted up like the ‘olah.

There is more to the burnt offering than I can exhaustively expound upon at this time, but I think this is a lot to get us started as we understand how Jesus connects to the offerings, and in this case, the burnt offering.

Just as I began this post saying that all the offerings cannot be lumped into a single understanding, we cannot leave this discussion of the burnt offering assuming that its function can be applied to only Jesus. Remember, the ‘olah did not take away sin. There were different offerings that were sacrificed when sins were committed that I’ll get too in another post soon. If all the sacrifices simply meant Jesus dying for our sin, then there are quite a few New Testament verses that make no sense, verses that talk about people offering themselves like sacrifices. The Scripture isn’t suggesting these people are sacrificing themselves for their own sin, so there must be other meaning to the sacrifices even in the minds of the New Testament authors. Let’s look at a couple of these:

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne” (Rev. 6:9).

In Revelation, the altar is the bronze altar upon which all the animal sacrifices were made. It was hollow with a grate half-way down it to hld the wood and the sacrifice as they burned. the ashes fell through the grate. These souls are under the altar, that is, they were burned. They were sacrificed like a burnt offering. They gave their lives “for the word of God and for the witness they had borne.” Like the burnt offering, they were completely consumed. It wasn’t for the forgiveness of their own sins that they were sacrificed on the altar. No Christian would say that (at least I hope not). So clearly some offerings, like the burnt offering, have more meaning than just forgiveness of sin. Let’s take a look at another verse:

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1).

The self-sacrifice Paul is admonishing the Roman believers to practice is not for the forgiveness of sin. Like the burnt offering, their offering is not for the forgiveness of sin, but to present their bodies “holy and acceptable to God” as a living sacrifice. Burnt offerings were meant to make a worshiper’s presence acceptable in the tabernacle, and then they could offer other sacrifices like peace offerings. Only if they needed to be forgiven for particular sins was a sin offering given first. In the case of the believers, Jesus was their sin offering already given, but again, that is to discuss at more length in a following post.

Though this next quote from Jesus doesn’t explicitly say sacrifice, it does connect:

“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Mt. 16:24).

Jesus did die on the cross for the forgiveness of sin, but he didn’t tell His disciples to die for sin. The cross was the means by which Jesus offered Himself for the forgiveness of sin, but He wasn’t telling his disciples to do that. What He was telling them to do is sacrifice themselves similarly, which a burnt offering could be. A cross was an instrument for a person’s death. That was it’s only function. For Jesus to tell His disciples to pick up their cross, He is specifically telling them to die in one sense or another. Picking up on Romans, this is in a spiritual sense, but sometimes, because of persecution, it can be physical, like we see in Revelation 6.

So to come to a conclusion for now, the burnt offering reflects Jesus in several ways, but it also is a great example of the sacrifice believers can make out of devotion to God, because the burnt offering is not explicitly for the forgiveness of sins.

I don’t have a poem this time, but what I will do is provide one at the end of Leviticus chapter 5, which is the end of the portion Vayikra. I don’t know how yet, but Jesus said not to worry about what to say when it is time to speak, that He will provide the words (Mt. 10:19). Though He is explicitly talking about under persecution, He can do the same for believers under any circumstances when it is time to speak. Until next time, God bless.

Sources

The Bible. English Standard Version. Biblegateway.com. Accessed 22 Mar.. 2026.

The Complete Jewish Study Bible. Peabody, Hendrickson Publishers, 2016.

The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus. Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society, 1989.