The Burnt Offering

What follows is the burnt offering (Ex. 29:15-18). Not only would God have the sins of His people atoned for, and thus blotted out from before Him. He will have that people accepted in His presence. The burnt offering brings this thought blessedly before us. As in the sin offering, the people had to lay their hands on the head of the victim. This laying on of hands in the offerings always speaks of identification, but in these two offerings, the order of identification is reversed. In the sin offering, the victim was identified with the sins of the people; in the burnt offering, the people were identified with the perfection of the unblemished animal, and it was accepted for them.
The burnt offering is the highest sacrifice in Scripture. It is characterized by being “a sweet savor... unto the Lord.” All of this offering being burnt upon the altar, and all going up as a sweet savor to God, shows the satisfaction and the delight God took in the blessed One of whom the offering spoke. Another characteristic of this offering was that the one who offered it brought it “of his own voluntary will” (Lev. 1:3). All this brings out the devotedness of the One whose devotion was even unto death, and His obedience in His willingly offering Himself. When the burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin became an empty form on the part of the people, and God could take no pleasure in them, Jesus offered Himself; His words were, “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God” (Heb. 10:7-9). The old order must give way to the one perfect offering. His will was ever yielded to the will of God. In the agony of Gethsemane, when facing the unmingled sorrow of the cup He would needs drink, His words were, “Not My will, but Thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). In the unparalleled sufferings of the cross, He vindicated God in the expression, “But Thou art holy” (Psa. 22:3). Perfection marked this blessed One in all His earthly path, and the cross was the crowning manifestation of it. Although forsaken of God, because bearing the sins of His people in His own body on the tree (1 Pet. 2:24), yet at no other time was the sweet savor to God so precious as in that bitter hour. And in all that sweet savor — in all the value of that perfect offering — those who come to God by Him, are accepted of God.