Leviticus 1:1-5
The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting. He said, "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When any of you brings an offering to the Lord, bring as your offering an animal from either the herd or the flock.
If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he is to offer a male without defect. He must present it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting so that it (he) will be acceptable to the Lord. He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. He is to slaughter the young bull before the Lord, and then Aaron's sons the priests shall bring the blood and sprinkle it against the altar on all sides at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.
God has had Moses supervise in building all the parts of the Tabernacle and its furnishings; now He is directing how the different parts of it are to be used.
He starts with the most basic and important of the offerings--the individual sacrifice for a person's sins. Mankind has known that sin requires a death, with blood shed, since the Lord God made garments for Adam and Eve from animal skins. Now God is institutionalizing this idea with specific rituals, so that His chosen people will understand and be constantly reminded of the fact that God requires purity to come into His Presence.
The Bronze Altar stood just inside the doorway in the outside curtain surrounding the courtyard to the Tabernacle, or Tent of Meeting (God meeting with man). The only way an Israelite could approach God is in providing this sacrifice. The penitent would "lay his hand on the head of the" animal that would be the "burnt sacrifice," to lay his personal sins on the beast, which would be "accepted on his behalf" to die in his place, to atone for his sins, its blood covering over his sins by being sprinkled against all the sides of the altar.
Jesus said that He had not come to do away with The Law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). He fulfilled this part by coming in our human flesh to die our human death for us, in our place, individually; as this individual brought the lamb or bull, Jesus is God's Lamb, specifically (in the Greek), the Lamb set aside for sacrifice.
The blood of the animal could never take away sins, only cover them; Jesus' Blood was God's Blood, with infinite value, to actually take away our sins. Just as the penitent would put his hand on the head of the animal, we need to each figuratively "put our hand" on the Head of our Lamb, admitting that we deserve the death that we have earned (the "wages of sin"), and let Jesus take our place in being Crucified. This picture, Jesus' Crucifixion, is a demonstration of how God is offended and repulsed, and disgusted by our very sin nature, which Jesus carried on the Cross, the root and fountainhead of all our sins: "He Who had no sin, became sin, for us" (II Corinthians 5:21).
So if you have never realized that Jesus took your place on His Cross, then pray for God to grant you the gift of Saving Faith, for "it is by Grace you have been saved, through Faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the Gift of God--not by works," not by anything we can do (Ephesians 2:8-9). Anything we do of ourselves cannot be accepted by God because it comes through our nature, and Ephesians 2:3 tells us that "we are by nature objects of wrath." That is how Jesus fulfilled this detail of The Law.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
