The short answer
No, the sacrifices have not been abolished. And no, we cannot offer them. Those two statements sound like a contradiction until you see that Scripture holds them together, and has done so before.
The law that commands sacrifice also restricts it. Offerings may be brought only to the place the LORD chooses, on his altar, through the priests he appointed (Deuteronomy 12:5-6, 11). No temple stands in Jerusalem and no Levitical priesthood serves at an altar. So the commands about offerings are not void; they are waiting. In the meantime the Messiah has done for us what no animal ever could, and the prophets describe a day when a temple and its offerings return. That is the whole answer. The rest of this page walks through it.
Only where the LORD chooses
“Be careful that you don’t offer your burnt offerings in every place that you see; but in the place which the LORD chooses in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you.”
Deuteronomy 12:13-14
This is why the question is not a loophole. Under the Torah, killing an animal as an offering anywhere other than the appointed sanctuary was not zeal; it was bloodguilt (Leviticus 17:3-4). A believer who built an altar in the backyard and offered a lamb at Passover would not be keeping the law. He would be breaking it, because the law says where and by whom, and today there is no where and no whom.
The same holds for the priesthood. The offerings belonged to the sons of Aaron and the Levites in their service (Numbers 18:21; Ezekiel 44:15). We are not Levites appointed to that service, and we are not free to appoint ourselves. Doing it our own way is exactly what Deuteronomy 12:32 forbids. To attempt the sacrifices now would itself be sin.
What the exiles did
Israel has been here before. For seventy years in Babylon there was no temple, no altar and no sacrifice, and the law had not changed by one letter. What did faithful people do?
“When Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house (now his windows were open in his room toward Jerusalem) and he kneeled on his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did before.”
Daniel 6:10
Daniel prayed toward Jerusalem three times a day. He did not build an altar in Babylon. In his great prayer of confession he named the real problem, that “all Israel have transgressed your law” (Daniel 9:11), and he asked for mercy on the basis of God’s character, not on the basis of an offering he could not bring. Hosea, speaking to a people about to lose their sanctuary, told them what to bring instead.
“Take words with you, and return to the LORD. Tell him, “Forgive all our sins, and accept that which is good; so we offer bulls as we vowed of our lips.”
Hosea 14:2
Words. Repentance. The praise of our lips offered in place of the bulls we cannot bring. The writer of Hebrews picks up this exact language.
“Through him, then, let’s offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of lips which proclaim allegiance to his name.”
Hebrews 13:15
Long before the exile, David, who had full access to the tabernacle, understood what God was after underneath the offerings.
“For you don’t delight in sacrifice, or else I would give it. You have no pleasure in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. O God, you will not despise a broken and contrite heart.”
Psalm 51:16-17
“I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). None of this means the sacrifices were bad, or optional while the altar stood. It means that when the altar is gone, God is not left without a way for his people to draw near. He never was.
What the sacrifices could never do
“For the law, having a shadow of the good to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect those who draw near. Or else wouldn’t they have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices there is a yearly reminder of sins. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.”
Hebrews 10:1-4
The Torah’s offerings were a shadow: a true outline of a coming reality, repeated year after year precisely because they could not finish the job. They taught Israel that sin costs a life and that God provides a substitute. They did not take sin away. Only one offering does that.
“But Christ having come as a high priest of the coming good things, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained eternal redemption.”
Hebrews 9:11-12
“Once for all” is the heart of the matter (Hebrews 10:10). No believer needs an animal for atonement, and no believer ever really had one. Those who trusted God under the old administration were redeemed by the same death we are, looking forward as we look back (Hebrews 9:15). So when we say sacrifices are not possible now, we are not saying something is missing from our salvation. Nothing is.
A temple in the prophets
Then why not say the sacrifices are simply finished? Because the prophets do not. Ezekiel spends nine chapters, 40 through 48, measuring a temple that has never yet been built, and describing offerings on its altar by Levitical priests.
“He said to me, “Son of man, the Lord the LORD says: ‘These are the ordinances of the altar in the day when they make it, to offer burnt offerings on it, and to sprinkle blood on it. You shall give to the Levitical priests who are of the offspring of Zadok, who are near to me, to minister to me,’ says the Lord the LORD, ‘a young bull for a sin offering.”
Ezekiel 43:18-19
The prince brings burnt offerings, meal offerings and drink offerings on the feasts, the new moons and the Sabbaths, “to make atonement for the house of Israel” (Ezekiel 45:17). Zechariah describes the nations coming to Jerusalem to keep Sukkot when the LORD is king over all the earth, and those who sacrifice cooking their offerings in pots made holy to him (Zechariah 14:20-21). Malachi says the sons of Levi will be purified and will offer to the LORD “offerings in righteousness” (Malachi 3:3-4).
“It will happen that everyone who is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of Armies, and to keep the feast of booths.”
Zechariah 14:16
How offerings in a future temple fit with the once-for-all work of the Messiah is a question believers have discussed for a long time. Our answer is the one Hebrews gives for the past: the offerings never took away sin; they taught and pointed. The Passover kept every year did not bring Israel out of Egypt; it remembered a deliverance already given. We hold what Scripture says about the cross and what it says about Ezekiel’s altar together, and we do not claim to know every detail. We also do not speculate about when. Scripture gives no date, and we will not invent one.
How we live with this now
In practice this shapes how we keep the appointed times (Question 11). We keep the days, the rest, the assembly and the memorial; we do not attempt the offerings. We read Leviticus not as a closed book but as instruction about the Messiah and about the holiness of the God who dwells among his people. And we bring what the exiles brought: prayer toward the place God chose, confession, obedience in everything we can do, and the fruit of lips that proclaim allegiance to his name.
What Hebrews calls obsolete (Hebrews 8:13) is the old administration and its priesthood, which is why the same letter can speak of a change in the law concerning the priesthood (Hebrews 7:12) while the commandments themselves are written on our hearts (Hebrews 8:10). We take that up in Question 10.