Accepted - Leviticus 1-3

Leviticus 1:3 (ESV Strong's)
3 “If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish. He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the LORD.

Accepted!!

In the spring of the year many high school seniors are waiting to hear back from college after college about their fall entry plans.   They, in good faith, sent out multiple college admissions applications, but they are looking for that ONE who will accept them into their college.  Colleges and universities around the country have created a lottery type mentality about their schools.   They ONLY “accept” a certain number of students, or a certain type of a student, or a certain percentage of a type of  person.   When the senior receives their “acceptance” letter (especially if it is from THAT university), the student (and their parents) begins to publish that they were “accepted” into University _______.  Those who did not get their first choice are less enthusiastic about their acceptance letters and, as a result, less into publishing.    Being “accepted” is a good thing.   In the above passage we have another form of “acceptance.”  But this is not to some brick and mortar money pit.  This is the ultimate acceptance.  It is not being accepted into a club, a school or a group of friends.   This is being accepted by God.    The book of Leviticus gives us God sacrificial system about being accepted by God.   God does not simply just accept us because we are made in His image.  His image was completely damaged by the sin in the garden of Eden, committed by Adam.   Adam disobeyed God.  As to all men and mankind.   Adam needed to be be forgiven by God.   The sin exposed Adam’s nakedness.   God “killed” an animal to clothe Adam and Eve.  The animal being killed was the first “shedding of blood” on the earth.  That symbolized the need for a sacrifice for sin.   The book of Leviticus is the laws and rules for those sacrifices that allow man to be “accepted” by God.   But, like the animal in the garden being a shadow of what was to come, so too, is the Levitical system of sacrifice.   What we read in Leviticus is a shadow of what Christ did on the cross for us. He became the sacrifice for us that we might be accepted by God.   All the offerings, sacrifices and rituals listed in Leviticus are for the purpose of pointing us to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.   The writer of Hebrews, in the New Testament, said it this way:

Hebrews 10:1-10 (ESV Strong's)
Christ's Sacrifice Once for All
1 For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”
8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Faith in Jesus Christ allows us to be “accepted” by God.