The Altar and the Demons Text: Leviticus 17:1-9
Introduction: Worship is Not a Potluck
We live in an age that treats worship like a potluck dinner. Everyone is encouraged to bring their own dish, their own truth, their own preferred deity, and set it on the great big buffet table of tolerant spirituality. The only sin, in this modern religion, is to suggest that there is only one Host, one approved menu, and one designated place to eat. To suggest such a thing is considered arrogant, narrow, and exclusive. But the God of the Bible is gloriously, wonderfully, and mercifully exclusive. He is not one option among many; He is the only option there is. All other options are not just wrong; they are poison.
Leviticus is a book that modern Christians often tiptoe around. It is full of blood, detailed regulations, and things that seem alien to our sanitized, suburban sensibilities. But if we are to understand the gospel, we must understand Leviticus, because this book is the foundation for the work of Christ. It teaches us that God is holy, that sin is deadly serious, and that the only approach to this holy God is the one He Himself prescribes. You do not get to invent your own spirituality. You do not get to worship God "in your own way." That is the very definition of idolatry, and it is what this passage is designed to obliterate.
Here in Leviticus 17, God establishes a central principle for Israel's life: all legitimate killing, all acceptable sacrifice, must happen in one place, at the doorway of the tent of meeting. This was not an arbitrary rule for the sake of bureaucratic tidiness. This was a direct, frontal assault on the pagan, demonic worship that saturated the world around them. The pagans had their high places, their sacred groves, their roadside altars. Their world was filled with a menagerie of capricious, bloodthirsty deities. God commands His people to have one altar, because there is only one God. This law was a spiritual quarantine, designed to protect Israel from the rampant idolatry that defined the nations. It was a declaration that Yahweh is not a local deity to be appeased in the "open field." He is the King of all creation, and He will be worshipped at His court, according to His protocol.
This passage is about the geography of worship, the meaning of blood, and the stark choice between the table of the Lord and the table of demons. And as we will see, this choice is just as real for us today as it was for Israel in the wilderness.
The Text
Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to Aaron and to his sons and to all the sons of Israel and say to them, 'This is what Yahweh has commanded, saying, "Any man from the house of Israel who slaughters an ox or a lamb or a goat in the camp, or who slaughters it outside the camp, and has not brought it to the doorway of the tent of meeting to bring it near as an offering to Yahweh before the tabernacle of Yahweh, it will be counted as bloodguiltiness to that man. He has shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people. The reason is so that the sons of Israel may bring their sacrifices which they were sacrificing in the open field, that they may bring them in to Yahweh, at the doorway of the tent of meeting to the priest, and sacrifice them as sacrifices of peace offerings to Yahweh. And the priest shall splash the blood on the altar of Yahweh at the doorway of the tent of meeting and offer up the fat in smoke as a soothing aroma to Yahweh. And they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat demons with which they play the harlot. This shall be a perpetual statute to them throughout their generations." Then you shall say to them, 'Any man from thehouse of Israel, or from the sojourners who sojourn among them, who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice, and does not bring it to the doorway of the tent of meeting to offer it to Yahweh, that man also shall be cut off from his people.
(Leviticus 17:1-9 LSB)
Life Belongs to God (vv. 3-4)
The commandment begins with a startling restriction.
"Any man from the house of Israel who slaughters an ox or a lamb or a goat in the camp, or who slaughters it outside the camp, and has not brought it to the doorway of the tent of meeting... it will be counted as bloodguiltiness to that man. He has shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people." (Leviticus 17:3-4)
At this point in Israel's history, in the wilderness, there was no distinction between slaughtering an animal for food and slaughtering it for sacrifice. If you wanted a steak, you had to bring the animal to the tabernacle. Why? Because God is teaching them a fundamental lesson about reality: all life belongs to Him. The life of the creature is in the blood (v. 11), and the blood belongs to God. To take a life, even of an animal, is to exercise a god-like prerogative. Therefore, it must be done under God's authority and in His presence.
To kill an animal anywhere else was not just a violation of protocol; it was treated as murder. The text says it will be "counted as bloodguiltiness to that man. He has shed blood." This is astonishingly strong language. God is training His people to have the highest possible regard for the sanctity of life, which is represented by the blood. He is the author of life, and He alone has the right to say when and how it may be taken. To kill an animal in the "open field" was to act as though you were the source of your own authority. It was a declaration of autonomy. It was to act like a little god, making your own rules in your own private chapel of the self. And the penalty for this treason was to be "cut off," excommunicated from the covenant people.
This establishes the principle that there is no neutral ground in God's world. There is no secular space where we can do as we please. Every action, even something as basic as preparing a meal, is to be done in reference to God. All of life is worship. The question is never whether you will worship, but who or what you will worship.
From the Open Field to the Lord's Altar (vv. 5-6)
God explains the reason for this command, and it is explicitly about reorienting their worship.
"The reason is so that the sons of Israel may bring their sacrifices which they were sacrificing in the open field, that they may bring them in to Yahweh, at the doorway of the tent of meeting to the priest, and sacrifice them as sacrifices of peace offerings to Yahweh." (Leviticus 17:5)
The "open field" was the domain of paganism. It was the place of private, unauthorized, syncretistic worship. The Israelites had come out of Egypt, a land saturated with idolatry, and they were surrounded by Canaanite tribes who worshipped a host of grotesque deities. The temptation was to hedge their bets, to offer a sacrifice to Yahweh at the tabernacle, and maybe a little something to a local field-god on the side, just in case. God slams the door on this. He says, "No more. All your worship is to be funneled to one place, My house."
This centralization of worship was a radical act. It taught Israel that Yahweh was not a territorial god, like the gods of the nations. He was the God of the whole earth, and His presence was uniquely located with His people at the tabernacle. It also taught them that there is only one way of access to God, through His prescribed means. You come to His house, through His priest, with His prescribed sacrifice. You don't get to make it up as you go.
"And the priest shall splash the blood on the altar of Yahweh at the doorway of the tent of meeting and offer up the fat in smoke as a soothing aroma to Yahweh." (Leviticus 17:6)
Notice the elements. The blood, representing the life, is returned to God at the altar. The fat, representing the best part, the richness of the animal, is offered up as a "soothing aroma." This is the language of acceptance and fellowship. When worship is done God's way, it is pleasing to Him. It restores peace. This is what the peace offering was all about, a celebratory meal shared between God and His people. But this peace is only possible at God's altar, with the blood rightly handled by God's priest.
No More Goat Demons (v. 7)
Now we get to the heart of the polemic. God names the enemy He is displacing.
"And they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat demons with which they play the harlot. This shall be a perpetual statute to them throughout their generations." (Leviticus 17:7)
The Bible is not coy about the reality of the spiritual world. Idolatry is not merely a sociological phenomenon or a mistaken philosophy. Behind the idols of wood and stone are actual demonic powers. Paul tells the Corinthians the same thing: "what the pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons" (1 Cor. 10:20). The term here for "goat demons" likely refers to satyr-like deities, common in the pagan imagination, associated with wild places, chaos, and lust.
And God describes this idolatry as spiritual harlotry. Israel was the bride of Yahweh. To go after other gods was adultery. It was a violation of the covenant relationship. Worship is a covenant-renewal ceremony. When Israel offered sacrifices in the open field, they were cheating on their divine Husband. They were giving the affection, loyalty, and honor that belonged to Him alone to these grotesque, demonic pretenders.
This statute is "perpetual." The principle does not fade away. God's people must never engage in syncretism. We must never try to blend our worship of the one true God with the idolatries of the surrounding culture. The world is still full of goat demons; they just have different names now. They are the gods of self, of money, of power, of sexual autonomy, of political ideologies. And to bow to them, to sacrifice our time, our children, or our integrity to them, is to play the harlot.
One Law for All (vv. 8-9)
Finally, God extends the application of this law to everyone living among the people of Israel.
"Then you shall say to them, 'Any man from the house of Israel, or from the sojourners who sojourn among them, who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice, and does not bring it to the doorway of the tent of meeting to offer it to Yahweh, that man also shall be cut off from his people." (Leviticus 17:8-9)
This is a crucial point. The law of God was not just for ethnic Israelites. It was for the "sojourner" as well, the foreigner who came to live among them. If you wanted to live in the covenant community, you had to live by the covenant rules. There was one law for all. This is not multiculturalism. This is assimilation to the true culture, the culture of the kingdom of God.
This demonstrates the missionary impulse that was present even in the Old Testament. Foreigners were welcome, but they were not welcome to bring their goat demons with them. They had to leave their old gods at the border. To live with God's people meant you had to worship God, and worship Him His way. There is no room in the kingdom for divided loyalties. The command is absolute: all sacrifice, by all people in the land, must come to the one true altar.
The One Altar and the Final Blood
As Christians reading this, we recognize the pattern. The entire sacrificial system, with its centralized altar and its rivers of blood, was a giant object lesson pointing to something greater. It was a shadow, and the substance is Christ.
The tabernacle, and later the Temple in Jerusalem, was the one place on earth where heaven and earth met, the one authorized place of sacrifice. This was to teach us that there is only one true Mediator, one true meeting place between God and man. That meeting place is not a building made with hands, but the person of Jesus Christ. He is the true temple (John 2:19-21). He is the great high priest. And He is the final sacrifice.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us that "we have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat" (Hebrews 13:10). Our altar is the cross of Jesus Christ. All the sacrifices in the open fields of human religion, all the self-righteous moralism, all the vague spirituality, all the attempts to approach God on our own terms, are nothing but sacrifices to goat demons. They are unauthorized, illegitimate, and an offense to God. They are attempts to shed blood on our own authority, and they result in bloodguiltiness.
The only blood that can cleanse sin, the only sacrifice that creates peace, is the blood of Jesus, shed once for all at the central altar of Golgotha. When we come to God, we do not come through our own efforts or in our own name. We come to the "doorway," which is Christ (John 10:9). We bring our lives, not as a means of earning favor, but as a response to the peace He has already made. Our whole life is to be a "peace offering" laid on His altar.
Therefore, the command to abandon the goat demons is as relevant as ever. We are to have no other gods before Him. We must refuse to "play the harlot" with the idols of our age. We must reject the lie that all spiritual paths lead to the same destination. They do not. There is one Altar, one Priest, and one Sacrifice that matters. Our task is to demolish the open-field altars in our own hearts and in our culture, and to call all men, Israelite and sojourner alike, to come to the one true God through the one true Mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ.