Leviticus 1:10-13

"And if his oblation be of the flock, of the sheep, or of the goats, for a burnt-offering, he shall offer it a male without blemish. And he shall kill it on the side of the altar northward before Jehovah; and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall sprinkle its blood upon the altar round about. And he shall cut it into its pieces, with its head and its fat; and the priest shall lay them in order on the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar: but the inwards and the legs shall he wash with water. And the priest shall offer the whole, and burn it upon the altar: it is a burnt-offering, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto Jehovah."

This whole paragraph is repetitive, stating simply that the same procedure followed for the bullock was also to be followed in case the offering was a sheep or a goat.

The significance of the whole burnt-offering was very great. In this type of sacrifice, the worshipper kept back nothing for himself. Neither he nor his friends used or enjoyed any part of it. It belonged wholly to God. The meaning of this lay in such an acknowledgment of God's total authority. It was also an act of submission and a pledge of obedience.

The specific manner of doing all of this is amazing, even such a thing as the northward direction from the altar being designated as the place where the sacrifice was to be slain! All such particular directions have the utility of teaching that only God is capable of revealing the manner in which He must be approached in worship. Can it be any less true today?

"Of a sweet savor unto Jehovah ..." This is an anthropomorphism in which what pleases men is understood also as pleasing to God. The same expression is found in this chapter three times - Leviticus 1:9,13,17. This figure also appears in the N.T. as well. "Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell" (Ephesians 5:2). In appealing to a metaphor found so often in the O.T., Paul likewise taught the typical significance of all these things as being foreshadowings of the great spiritual realities destined to appear in the fullness of time in the spiritual kingdom of the Son of God.