Parashah 24: Vayikra (He called)

Torah - Leviticus 1:1 through 5:26 (6:7 in some versions).

Haftarah (Writings and Prophets): Isaiah 43:21 - 44:23.
B'rit Hadasha (New Testament): Romans 8:1-13; Hebrews 10:1-14; 13:10-16.

Summary & Overview

TORAH
Leviticus 1:1 | The Burnt Offering
Leviticus 2:1 | Grain Offerings
Leviticus 3:1 | Offerings of Well-Being
Leviticus 4:1 | Sin Offerings
Leviticus 5:14 | Offerings with Restitution

Leviticus is the word "Vayikra" meaning - '...and He called'. The first five
chapters of Leviticus describes five sacrifices for unintentional sin, and you may
ask yourself the question why this is so. This part of Scripture was the first
Commandments that YHVH gave to Moses from the Tabernacle after it was
constructed. This Book of Leviticus is also known as the Instruction Book of the
Priests.

Some people do not read Leviticus because it contains a lot of Commandments

and popular belief is that all these Commandments are done away with, but this
Book is in the centre of the Torah and is very important from YHVHs
perspective. To validate this, YHVH gave us hints hidden in the Hebrew text to
emphasise the importance of this Book. If you count every 50 letters from the
tav of the word Beresheet, that is the first word in the Book of Genesis; it
spells Y - H - V H, that is the hidden Name of YHVH. The same is found in the
Book of Exodus spelling YHVH counting every 50 letters. When you go to the
Book of Numbers, starting with the word Moshe, with the letter hey and count
every 50 letters it spells H - V - H Y, that is YHVH's Name backwards. The
same is found in the Book of Deuteronomy, spelling YHVH backwards.

When you go to the Book of Leviticus it is slightly different when you count
every 8th letter, it spells Y H V H. The first two Books and the last two
Books points inwards to the Book of Leviticus revealing YHVH to man. The
number 50 means Grace and the number 8 means "New Beginnings" making
the Book of Leviticus the centrepiece of YHVH's Restoration work, creating a
New Beginning, revealing Himself to man, just as it was in the Garden of Eden.

When you read Leviticus, you do not find anything describing YHVH. Instead,
you read about blood and gore, disembodiment, dismemberment and burning of
flesh, not a good experience for those who are sensitive to blood. All of this is
about bringing us back into the presence of YHVH. Remember where we are in
the storyline of the Restoration Process, YHVH just completed the construction
of the Tabernacle and filled it with His Glory, now is the time to prepare man to
enter into that Glory, and the Sacrificial System is the means to accomplish this.

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Misconceptions Regarding Sacrifices
When we were raised in the Church, we have some misconceptions about
Sacrifices, and we need to clear up these misconceptions to understand what
YHVH is doing and why He is doing this.
The first misconception is that Leviticus is the least important Book in the Bible
because Jesus died as a Sacrifice for us and all the Sacrifices are made away
with. This statement is not entirely true because after Yshua had died, the
Sacrifices continued for another 40 years.
Q Why did the Sacrifices stop?
The Sacrifices are part of the Temple Service and without a Temple, there
cannot and may not be any Sacrifices. After the Temple was destroyed in 70
AD, the Sacrificial System stopped but not because of the blood of Messiah.
When you read through the Prophets, every time the people repented, the
Temple was rebuilt, and the Sacrifices started up again.
The next misconception is that we typically think that Sacrifices only has to do
with sin, that is not true and we will look at the detail to every one of the five
different kinds of Sacrifices to see what each one had a different purpose, and
three of the five had nothing to do with sin.
Another misconception is that without blood there cannot be forgiveness of sin
and some think that YHVH is an angry, bloodthirsty God Who needs blood to
relate to humanity. That is not true, one of the Sin sacrifices is a grain offering
and involved no animals.

The Heart of YHVH

To look at the beginning and the end of the Torah we will
see what is contained within it and what YHVHs motive is
for giving it to His people.

Gen 1:1

Deut 34:12

The first word in the Torah is Bresheet, and the last word in the Torah is
Yisrael. Bresheet means in the beginning and Yisrael means the straight
or righteous people of El or the righteous people of Elohim The first letter in

the Torah is the letter Bet and the last letter of the Torah is the letter

Lamed When you put these two letters together, they form the word bawl
that means heart, and if you read it from left to right, you get the word
labe, that means; heart, centre of all things, intelligence and wisdom.

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This shows that the Torah is contained within the heart of YHVH and is the
centre of all things, the foundation of all intelligence and wisdom. The Torah is
an expression of His love for us, and He wants us to have His Torah in our
hearts as well.
Bet b has the meaning house, and Lamed l means to learn, and these two
meanings speak for themselves. It is the Fathers heart that we should enter
into His house and learn from Him directly. So when you read the passages of
the Torah, know that YHVH gave all of His Word out of love so that we can
know Him and enter into His House so that we can dwell with Him forever.

The Foundation of the Torah

The Book of Leviticus is found in the centre of the Torah and is represented by
the central branch of the Menorah if you place the 5 Books of the Torah on a
Menorah Pattern. What we have learned previously from the Menorah Pattern is
that the central branch is the foundational branch and is the most important
branch because it upholds all the other branches. In the same way when you
place the 5 Books of the Torah on the Menorah Pattern, Leviticus is the centre
branch and upholds all the other four Books of the Torah making it the heart
and most important Book in the Torah.

We have seen that the heart of the Father is His Torah that He gave to us from
a motive of love. Looking inside the Torah makes the book of Leviticus and the
sacrificial system the centre topic of this great love and one of the most
important topics regarding our covenant relationship with YHVH.

We have learned from the book of Exodus the importance of the Tabernacle
based on a number of chapters allocated to describe its blueprint and
construction, making it the most important topic of the Book of Exodus. In the
same way, we see that importance of the Sacrificial System, making it the most
important topic, not only of the Book of Leviticus but also the Torah because of
where it is located. It is as if YHVH is underlining different themes in each Book
of the Torah to tell us the story of Redemption and all the aspects required to
accomplish the Restoration of Creation. Lets zoom in a bit deeper.

The Centre to of the Torah

We know that Leviticus is the Centre of the Torah and contains all the
regulations regarding the Temple Service and the Sacrificial System. Now we
are going to zoom in deeper to see what is in the centre of the Book of
Leviticus.

The Torah (first 5 books of the Scripture) consists of an even number of

words, that means that there are two words in the centre of the Torah.
These words will be significant and will reveal the heart of the Torah.
These two words are in the middle of the Torah; srd srdw derosh,
darash that means to certainly search or to study thoroughly.

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The letters from right to left: Shin Resh Dalet. Shin s means Fire,
Resh r means Head or Leader and Dalet d means Door. The numerical
values of letters are Shin 300 - Resh 200 - Dalet 4. The number 300
means Covenant, 200 means restoration of relationships and 4 means the
work of the Messiah.

The verse in which these two words derosh derash is found is Lev 10:16, the
passage that describes Moses searching the goat for the sin offering:

Lev 10:16 And Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin offering, and,
behold, it was burnt: and he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, the
sons of Aaron which were left alive, saying, Moses sought a goat.

Meditating and putting all of this together can give you the following:

To search or study the Scriptures is to learn the depth of the Torah is

about the covenant (3) and the restoration of relationships (2) between
man and YHWH. This restoration is done through the work of the
Messiah (4) Who is the Door d and the Way to the Father. His cleansing
fire s of purification is part of our preparation so that we can be brought
into His presence. We must follow Yshua Who is our Master and head of
the Assembly r. Moses searched for a goat to offer to YHVH and the
Father searched a Sacrifice worthy to take away our sin. We must
search His Torah to find the same Sacrifice and the Father through which
He reveals Himself to us.

We can even delve deeper into this verse by looking at the meaning of other
words within this passage to support the meaning. Goat is the word saiyr that
means, goat, hair, covering, vile, offensive, recon, reason out, horror, gate, unit
of measure.
Q - How can one word have so many meanings?
This is where you have to meditate on all the meanings to find the wisdom
hidden within the Hebrew text. Meditate on these meanings in the context of
Derosh Derash or to certainly search. The goat is about having your sin
covered so that you will not be offensive to YHVH. YHVH defines what sin is,
and all those things are offensive to Him. You must Search the Torah to find all
these things that are vile and offensive to Him because His Torah is also the
unit of measure with which He will judge the unrighteous, and they will not
enter the Gate and experience Horror in the outside, not entering into His
presence.
In other words, He will cover those who have searched and found Him in His
Torah, those who accepted His Covenant and cleansed and prepared
themselves with the Torah to be Holy unto Him. They will be covered in the time
of reckoning and a time of horror and they will pass through the Gate of the
New Jerusalem while the unrighteous world will be measured by the Torah and
cast out into darkness.

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We also see that searching the scripture will restore your relationship with Him
and will prepare you by using the cleansing fire or His Word and Spirit so that
you may be covered in a time of judgement. All of this is the Redemption and
Restoration Plan of YHVH and we found it in two words in the Heart of YHVHs
Torah; Derosh-Derash.

If we zoom in a bit deeper into the centre of the Book of Leviticus we see
something very profound, we find the centre letter of the Torah. The depth of
Hebrew can be illustrated by the following example where we will look at the
centre letter in the Torah, finding the heart of the Torah and the heart of YHVHs
Plan and Will. In the middle of the Torah we find the letter Vav v and it has the
number (6) that is the number of man. The word that contains that letter Vav
is found in the word belly ]vxg "gaw-khone and the passage this word is
found is in:

Lev_11:42 Anything going on its belly, and any going on all four, and
all having many feet, even every swarming thing that swarms on the
earth, you shall not eat them. For they are an abomination.

Isnt it interesting, the first sin was about what to eat and what not to eat and in
the centre letter of the Torah is the context of things not to be consumed for
they are an abomination unto YHVH. The Letter Vav represents
man a fallen state after eating from the wrong tree and the
restoration process includes Commandments regarding food
and things that are not food. The reason is that when man fell, he
changed from being a nashamah or Spiritual being to becoming a
nefesh or physical animal like being that is driven by his fleshly
nature. The first aspect that YHVH is addressing is that fleshly nature
of man which is connected to his belly and driven by consuming
things that are pleasant for the flesh. YHVH wants ownership on
man and put a restriction of what he consumes so that He can get
fleshly mans attention. If man obeys Commandments
regarding food, then He knows that man is willing to obey the
rest as well and ready to be restored back into a nashamah or
Spiritual man. The Torah is given for mans sake and to
restore him back to the place he has fallen from, starting with the
thing that caused that fall, namely the belly or fleshlyness.

Personal Application: YHVH knows our weaknesses and He makes sin His
highest priority because that is what is standing between us and Him. The Vav
in the centre of the Torah shows us that we are the reason why He gave the
Torah and that we are the centre topic of all that is written, it is all for our good
and benefit because He loves us. It is as if you find the Heading or Topic for this
Book hidden in the centre of the text and it is called MAN, authored by YHVH.

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Qorbanot or Sacrifices
The word for sacrifice and offering is
related to the word Qorban ]brq that
means; an offering, gift, to draw near.
To pray is also a means to draw near to
YHVH and is well understood among
Jewish people today. Most Churches
teach that the Sacrifices are obsolete
and do not make the connection that it
has the same purpose as Prayer.
Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of
qorbanot was not to obtain forgiveness from sin. Forgiveness was only received
from YHVH through His grace. The symbol of the animal that died, was to show
the person the penalty for death and that that he or she was supposed to die,
but the animal died in his / her place instead because of YHVHs Grace. If the
person did not bring his offering in faith, it meant nothing and he /she received
no forgiveness. Forgiveness is only through faith and repentance by His Grace.

The word "qorban" consists of a "qof" q (back of the head, turning the head or
repentance), a "resh" r (human reasoning, mind), a "bet" b (house) and lastly
a "nun" ] (fish, fruitfulness).

For man to come close to YHVH and enter His house (bet) to become fruitful
(nun), he has to repent (qof) of his sinful ways and renew his mind (resh) with
YHVH's Word. The "qorbanot allowed man to enter YHVH's house and to
become fruitful as he learned YHVH's ways.

There were different kind of Sacrifices and each one had a different purpose;
one kind was brought purely for the purpose of communing with YHVH and
bringing you closer to Him. Then there was a Sacrifice that were brought for the
purpose of expressing thanks love and gratitude towards YHVH. Lastly there
were Sacrifices for sin and cleansing.

All the Sacrifices are pictures of things that Yshua has accomplished on the
Cross. All these Sacrifices are pictures of what our sacrifices towards YHVH
should look like. These five qorbanot in Leviticus describe our approach
towards YHVH.

As discussed in previous Torah Portions, the Tabernacle Pattern is a way to

reveal Spiritual things in a Physical way so that we can understand it. We can
study these 5 Sacrifices in the same way by placing them within the Tabernacle
Pattern. This will link to different elements of the Tabernacle revealing another
level of truth to us as well as showing us how the Sacrifices play a part in the
Restoration Processes it was purposed for. Lastly, we will look at how each type
of Sacrifice relates to our relationship with YHVH as previously explained
through the Tabernacle Pattern in a previous Torah Portion.

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There are five kinds of Sacrifices:

1. hli (olah) whole burnt offering Lev 1:1-7 Voluntary

2. hxnm (minchah) meal offering Lev 2:1-16 Voluntary
3. ,ymls (shelamim) peace offering Lev 3:1-17 Voluntary
4. taux (chatat) sin & purification offering Lev 4:1-35 Obligated
5. asm (asham) guilt offering for repentance Lev 5:6-19 Obligated

The order in which the Sacrifices are given is significant as well as the type of
Sacrifice; some were required by everyone to take part in and some were
voluntary expressions of gratitude, yearning for intimacy and to dedication.
Looking at the order of these Sacrifices listed in the Torah Portion shows us that
the first three were voluntary worship type sacrifices and the last two,
everybody was required to take part in because of its connection to sin and
purification.

The first three, the Burnt-offering, the Meal Offering and the Peace-offering
were offerings done to worship YHVH and the last two; the Sin offering and
Guilt offering were required to take away sin and guilt of the individual. Placing
them on the Tabernacle Pattern reveals to us that the first three are connected
to the last steps associated with entering into an intimate relationship with
YHVH. The Burnt offering is associated with the Holy of Holies, the Meal
Offering with the Table of Showbread and the Peace Offering with the Menorah.
All three of these were voluntary, and all three of these have to do with your
personal relationship with YHVH.

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The last two Offerings from the first initial steps with you entering the
Tabernacle or the starting point of your walk with YHVH signified by the Sin
Offering that is associated with the Brazen Altar and the Guilt Offering with the
Laver. (Read the previous Torah portions that covered the topic of the
Tabernacle for clarity). The Sacrifices fits the same Tabernacle Pattern and
were required by YHVHs people to allow them to approach Him. Today, in the
absence of the Temple, the Sacrifices are connected to different kind of Prayers
that form the steps of entering into the presence of the Most High but we will
look at these in the next Torah Portion as we delve deeper into each one of
these Sacrifices.

Sacrifices & Forgiveness

Q How were people saved in the Old Testament times?

You can only be saved if you have

received YHVHs forgiveness. We are
saved from the wrath of YHVH; the
anger YHVH has towards sin and the
actions that destroy His Creation. The
people of Israel were not saved
through the Sacrificial System but
received salvation the same way we
receive salvation today, by faith through
grace. You will only be saved if you
received forgiveness and forgiveness is something only YHVH can give. You do
not automatically receive forgiveness when you bring a Sacrifice; He gives it out
of Grace. It was and still is connected to your hearts attitude if you really
repented and came with a humble heart, presenting the symbolism of the
sacrifice. This makes the Sacrifices objects of repentance and forgiveness will
follow if YHVH approves of your retentive heart and you attitude towards sin.

The way they expressed Repentance was through bringing a Sacrifice. The way
you express Repentance today is through Prayer. This links the concept of
Sacrifices or Offerings to Prayer and both had the same purpose; to draw near
to YHVH. Prayers are more powerful than Sacrifices and a non-repentave
attitude can annul the act of bringing a Sacrifice (prayer) and will result in no
forgiveness.

The Master Surgeon

Q Why is it that something so gory and bloody can be a sweet smelling
offering to YHVH that is pleasing to Him and not to us?

When man sinned, YHVH covered Adam and Eve with skin. Skin is the word
or Ayin-Vav-Resh rvi that sound similar to the word Or Aleph-Vav-Resh
rva that mean light. This indicates that the skin Adam and Eve had was like
light or glory radiating from them, but when sin came, YHVH changed it to the
skin we know today.

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 YHVH decided to do an operation on humanity to cut away the cancer called
fallen human nature and He did this through the medium of animal sacrifices.
If I rephrase the question, you will understand why it is pleasing to YHVH to see
the blood of the sacrifices.
Q Is it pleasing for a Surgeon to do an operation and to see blood?
Yes, any professional Doctor conducting an
operation on someone feels satisfied once the
operation is completed and successful. In the same
way, it pleases YHVH to do operations on us.
These operations look like the Sacrificial System
from our point of view, but to Him, it is a delicate
procedure to remove the cancerous defiled cells
that defiled our nature. Through this process He
starts to restore our skin and cover us with a new
skin, Ore, that is His Light and Glory, just the way
it was in the Garden of Eden.

Repeating the Pattern

If we look back on events we saw Israel leaving Egypt, then YHVH called
Moses up the Mountain to give the Ten Commandments. Israel sinned by
worshipping the Golden Calf and Moses broke the Tablets. He went back a
second time up the Mountain to get another set made to present to Israel. After
that YHVH gave the Blueprint of the Tabernacle and repeated this Construction
Plan gain, before the construction of the Tabernacle.

Reading the Torah Protons, we see that

Leaving Egypt Passover Feast

everything is repeated twice except the Leaving

2nd Set of 10 Commandments
Plan of Tabernacle - Blueprint
1st Set of 10 Commandments

Egypt event. If we overlay the Torah Cycle with

Leaving Egypt - Physical

the Feast Cycle we see that we are currently

Plan of Tabernacle -

approaching the Feast of Passover, the Feast

Golden Calf Event

that repeats the Leaving Egypt event for the

second time, following the same pattern.
Construction

Placing these events on the Menorah Pattern

reveals the repeating of the topics with the
main event in the centre; the worshipping of the
Golden Calf. This was the sin the interrupted the
construction of the Tabernacle and the main
reason for the need for a Sacrificial System.
YHVH had to put this System in place so that
man could enter into the Presence of YHVH and
because of mans inability to follow and obey
YHVHs Commandants.

We will have a deeper look into this Sacrificial System next week and see how
that relates to us today and if there will be Sacrifices after the new Temple or
New Jerusalem will be established on the Earth.