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Articles, Bible studies, and sermons that contain Numbers 8:15:
Numbers 8:14-19
Excerpted from: Wilderness Wandering (Part 2)Numbers 8:14-19 Thus you shall separate the Levites from among the children of Israel, and the Levites shall be Mine. After that the Levites shall go in to service the tabernacle of meeting. So you shall cleanse them and offer them like a wave offering [as though they were a sacrifice before God]. For they are wholly given to Me from among the children of Israel; I have taken them for Myself instead of all who open the womb, the firstborn of all the children of Israel. For all the firstborn among the children of Israel are Mine, both man and beast; on the day that I struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them to Myself. I have taken the Levites instead of all the firstborn of the children of Israel. And I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and his sons [who are the priests] from among the children of Israel, to do the work for the children of Israel in the tabernacle of meeting, and to make atonement for the children of Israel, that there be no plague among the children of Israel when the children of Israel come near the sanctuary."
Let me explain what happened here. Everyone knows that the Levitical priesthood was established to offer sacrifices, but how many of you know that they were living sacrifices, separated to the work of God, and as such they became forerunners of you and me. The wave offering given in this ceremony was of themselves. Symbolically and figuratively, they were sacrificing themselves, and when hands were laid on the sacrificed animals, the animals then represented them.
In other words, the Levites, who were offering themselves here to the direction of Aaron, laid their hands on the animals that were actually sacrificed, and when they laid their hands on the animals, those animals figuratively became them, and then those animals were actually sacrificed, but the priest remained alive. The emphasis in the Old Testament sacrifices was not on the death of the animal, but the giving of a life—a life lived. Now where do you think Paul got the expression telling us to be living sacrifices? That is where he got it. Right there.
Numbers 8:14-22
Excerpted from: The Priesthood of God (Part 2)I think you are seeing that God was pretty insistent about these people being attached to the high priest and to Him. This was no minor responsibility.
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