>>18304390Regarding sacrifices as a whole
In fact there are a couple reasons and purposes for it, so lets adress them once at a time.
The moral lesson:
In the most direct sense, the sacrifices teach us that the wages of sin are death, and have to paid in blood sooner or later. A reminder that our actions have consequenses.
Through animal sacrifices Israel was always reminded of this fact, reminding them of the heavy price of sin, death, while also giving us a way to express our regret and praise, giving something valuable to us as a sign of regret.
The prophetic layer
In the Theological sense it was a fprophetic oreshadowing of Jesus, who through His sacrifice paid for our sin with His blood (for which His sinlesness becomes important as otherwise the death would have paid only for His own).
As such we dont have to use sacrifices to redeem us or to observe the feasts, that did Christ for us. However there are free will and thanksgiving offerings we can commit because we desire to praise God and give thanks to Him, done through the temple of the holy spirit, our body, in form of effort, time, energy or even our lives in order to do what is right and good.
Abstinence from other practices
Considering the rest of the pagan world the command on how and what to sacrifice was mainly preventing human and child sacrifices and similar things. When it says "Sacrifice exactly like this" it means "do not sacrifice like that". It is much like Israel desired a king to be like the other nations, and God agreed to it against His better judgment likewise God permitted a certain kind of sacrifice to prevent others from being comitted. In that same sense, as God stopped the sacrifice of Isaac, He also stopped the practice of child and human sacrifices as a whole.
For this last point I will add a bit of John Chrysostoms "8 Homilies against the jews" adressing this
