The Seven Day Consecration (Exodus 29:35-37).
“And thus shall you do to Aaron and his sons, in accordance with all that I have commanded you. Seven days you shall consecrate them. And every day you shall offer the bullock of sin offering for atonement, and you shall cleanse the altar when you make atonement for it, and you shall anoint it to sanctify it. Seven days shall you make atonement for the altar and sanctify it. And the altar shall be most holy. Whatever touches the altar will be holy.”
This probably means that the same ritual as is described above is to be gone through for seven days, the number of divine perfection. Their consecration must be total and complete. This necessarily involves offering the ox bull of the purification for sin offering for atonement, and now we learn that it is not only to be efficacious for Aaron and his sons, but is also to be efficacious in cleansing and making atonement for the altar which they will use.
Furthermore as well as the sacrificing of the sacrifice the altar is also to be anointed to sanctify it. So important is all this that the command is repeated. ‘Seven days shall you make atonement for the altar and sanctify it.' In Leviticus 8:15 we learn that the altar is purified by putting the blood of the sin offering on the horns of the altar and sanctified by the blood being applied to the base of the altar, and that this also makes atonement for it.
So all that is to be used in making atonement for the people must first, themselves and itself, be cleansed, sanctified and atoned for, for they are of the sinful and profane world. Thus are they made ‘holy', set apart to God for a holy purpose. This is now especially stressed as far as the altar is concerned
“ And the altar shall be most holy. Whatever touches (or ‘would touch”) the altar will be holy.' As a result of its consecration the altar becomes so holy that all that touches it becomes holy. This latter is not necessarily to be seen as a benefit for the person who touches it. Rather it is a warning. If a man touches the altar he becomes especially ‘set part to Yahweh', and must either be slain or redeemed, for he has become Yahweh's (in a similar way to the firstborn in Exodus 13:2). But this is to bring out that the altar is Yahweh's. It is a holy thing.
All this is a reminder to us that if we as ‘royal priests' (1 Peter 2:9) would be consecrated and sanctified to God it can only be through the shed blood of Christ and through our being set apart wholly to Him. Then we may partake of His bread and act as ‘priests' on behalf of others, bringing them to the foot of the cross. Indeed all these offerings point to Christ. He is our sacrifice for sin in order to make atonement for us, He is our whole burnt offering through Whom we offer ourselves to God, He is our peace offering through Whom we find peace with God and of Whom we can partake by coming to Him as the bread of life and to eat of His body by coming and believing (John 6:35; John 6:53-56).