You may notice that the Hebrew word Vayikra ends with an aleph (letter A), which is smaller than the rest of the letters. In Orthodox Judaism, a young boy's education begins with this book. As he reads the first "a", it is celebrated with joy by dipping his finger into honey teaching him that every letter of Torah is sweet. By doing so, we are teaching our children that it is a sweet thing to come to God. Yeshua also said that we need to be like children in approaching him and in doing so we receive a great reward.

This book is also called the book of holiness, sacrifices and the priests.

It is the introduction to the sacrificial system. Without this book, it is impossible to understand the sacrifice that our Messiah Yeshua did for us. The two major opinions from the Rabbis on the subject of sacrifice come from Rambam (Maimonides) and Ramban (Nachmanides) and of course since we need three opinions, I will give you mine as well.

Rambam's perspective is purely physical in that the sacrifices were to bring Israel in a direction toward the God of Israel and away from paganism. The animals used were clean animals only, killed in a humane way and done in only one location where G-d would meet us. Ramban however differed by taking a more metaphysical position, stating that the sacrifices had a higher intrinsic value which our Messiah would one day explain to us.

I agree with both of them but as it states in Berachot…" from Moses to the last
Prophet, every word spoke of the times of the Messiah, therefore let me take this one step further.

Let us go back to the beginning-Adam and Eve sinned and G-d removed them from Gan Eden, never to return. Mankind thus embarked upon a journey of stress, anguish and pain through the curses given to the snake, the woman and then to man. Mankind began by blaming others instead of accepting responsibility for their own sin. Once their eyes were open, they tried to fix the problem in their own way. "…they knew they were naked" implies more the shame of disobedience than physical appearance, with the idea that we cannot cover our inner selves from G-d who can read our inner selves completely. Man chose to cover himself with a leaf, a temporal cover but G-d gave us animal skins instead which points to the first sacrifice and the first shedding of blood. According to tradition, the animal sacrificed for their sin was a lamb already foreshadowing the "lamb of G-d who would take away the sins of the world' in the book of Yohanan.

We continue on to Cain who offered a minchah (grain offering) and Abel who brought an animal sacrifice. They already knew the rules but Cain chose to do it his own way. After the flood, Noah immediately brought sacrifices, then Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The precedent had been set but G-d. But as usual, man continues to set up his own religion which tries to tell G-d what to do instead of allowing G-d to tell us what He wants us to do.

The Scriptures shows us that from Adam until today the message has not changed. No one is good, everyone sins and G-d has shown us the need for the sacrifice of the innocent to pay for the guilty. There is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood. Judaism believes that we can work hard to try to beat down the evil inclination (yetser rah) but the only way we can truly beat it is to die. Yeshua takes it a step further when he said that we need to die to ourselves in order to truly follow him.

The word korban (sacrifice) has the same root as karob which means draw near. We can only draw near to G-d through a sacrifice which would be the substitution for our own death. Yeshua our Messiah as it is written in Hebrew 9 and Romans 3:21-17 was that ultimate sacrifice. He was our High Priest through whom we can now draw near to G-d.

With this understanding, there is truly no room for our self-righteousness since our own works can never be enough to pay the price for our sin. May we come to the understanding of what our Messiah Yeshua did for us and that all our true value lies in Him.

 

     Rabbi Percy Johnson
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