Well now do please take your Bibles in hand once again and turn with me to the book of Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 3. If you need to use a church Bible, you’ll find that on page 82. We have been working our way through Leviticus here on Sunday morning. We come today to the third of the five main types of sacrificial offerings found in the book that form the heart of Old Testament Israelite worship. And at first glance – we’ve said this before – at first glance, these Levitical regulations for sacrifice at the tabernacle, they seem to us arcane and obscure and impenetrable. They are really very distant from us culturally and historically and religiously, aren’t they? And as you read through Leviticus we can, as Christians we can often find ourselves a little lost and scratching our heads and wondering what to make of all of it.
Let me suggest to you one way to think about Leviticus that might help you view it a little differently. I want you to think about Leviticus a bit like a visit to Brister Ware’s old office here at the church. Did you ever make it to Brister’s old office, where Chase Wynn now is? When Brister was still on the pastoral staff here at the church, his office was full of weird and wonderful things – fossils and crystals and arrowheads and rams horns and things to do with the Titanic and lots of things to do with trains. But the key thing to know about Brister’s office is that almost all of them had been used by Brister in the course of his ministry over the years as object lessons. I recall hearing a story of a boomerang brought into the sanctuary to show the children one Sunday evening. I think the congregation were all ready to duck, so sure were they he was about to demonstrate its use!
Leviticus is like Brister’s old office. It is full of object lessons, designed to illustrate the Christian gospel. And when you read it that way – these are object lessons showing me something about Jesus or about sin or about grace or about God – when you read it that way, Leviticus stops being the place where your Bible reading plan goes to die and starts becoming full of light that shows you more about your Savior. That’s certainly true of the peace offerings described here in chapter 3. The name for this particular sacrifice derives from the Hebrew word, “shalom,” which you probably know means “peace.” But the peace of shalom is about more than simply the absence of conflict. It means putting right-side-up all the things that have been turned upside-down by sin. Shalom is the way things were always meant to be, where God and human beings and creation live once again in fellowship and harmony and rest. And this offering, the peace offering, celebrates that kind of shalom. It is about fellowship with God because peace has been made in place of enmity between us and our Maker.
And as we consider it together, I want to highlight four themes that are taught here with respect to the peace of God, peace with God. First, peace with God comes at a cost. Peace with God comes at a cost – not our cost, but the cost of a sacrificial substitute. Peace with God comes at a cost. Secondly, peace with God demands commitment. Peace with God demands commitment. As we respond to His grace in making peace, there is a commitment required. Thirdly, peace with God provides communion. A central part of this sacrifice actually involved a meal that the worshipers enjoyed together. Peace with God comes at a cost, it demands commitment, it provides communion, and finally, peace with God is an unfailing constant. God provides it in Jesus Christ for all sinners in every place that we may have peace with Him. So peace with God comes at a cost, it demands commitment, provides communion, and is an unfailing constant.
Before we get to that however, let’s bow our heads as always and look to God for His help as we read and study His holy Word. Let us all pray.
Our Father, we praise You that Your voice causes the mountains of Lebanon to shake. At the voice of the Lord, the deer gives birth and all in Your temple cry, “Glory!” The voice of the Lord raises the dead. The voice of the Lord speaks light into the darkness and there was light. So now, as Your needy people, we cry to You that we may have ears to hear the voice of the Lord speaking in this portion of holy Scripture to call us from sin and self to the Savior. And perhaps for someone here among us this morning even, to raise them from spiritual death to newness of life. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Leviticus chapter 3 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“If his offering is a sacrifice of peace offering, if he offers an animal from the herd, male or female, he shall offer it without blemish before the Lord. And he shall lay his hand on the head of his offering and kill it at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and Aaron’s sons the priests shall throw the blood against the sides of the altar. And from the sacrifice of the peace offering, as a food offering to the Lord, he shall offer the fat covering the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails, and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them at the loins, and the long lobe of the liver that he shall remove with the kidneys. Then Aaron’s sons shall burn it on the altar on top of the burnt offering, which is on the wood on the fire; it is a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord.
If his offering for a sacrifice of peace offering to the Lord is an animal from the flock, male or female, he shall offer it without blemish. If he offers a lamb for his offering, then he shall offer it before the Lord, lay his hand on the head of his offering, and kill it in front of the tent of meeting; and Aaron’s sons shall throw its blood against the sides of the altar. Then from the sacrifice of the peace offering he shall offer as a food offering to the Lord its fat; he shall remove the whole fat tail, cut off close to the backbone, and the fat that covers the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them at the loins and the long lobe of the liver that he shall remove with the kidneys. And the priest shall burn it on the altar as a food offering to the Lord.
If his offering is a goat, then he shall offer it before the Lord and lay his hand on its head and kill it in front of the tent of meeting, and the sons of Aaron shall throw its blood against the sides of the altar. Then he shall offer from it, as his offering for a food offering to the Lord, the fat covering the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them at the loins and the long lobe of the liver that he shall remove with the kidneys. And the priest shall burn them on the altar as a food offering with a pleasing aroma. All fat is the Lord’s. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations, in all your dwelling places, that you eat neither fat nor blood.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy Word.
Well the first thing that the object lessons of Leviticus chapter 3 teach us is that peace with God comes at a cost. Peace with God comes at a cost. Let’s face it, finding peace these days is easier said than done, isn’t it? A quick Google search and I came across web pages, pages upon pages actually with headlines like, “Find Peace of Mind: 6 Steps Toward Lasting Serenity.” “12 Essential Mindfulness Exercises for Cultivating Inner Peace.” “16 Ways to Find Peace of Mind.” One site, declutterthemind.com, really took the biscuit with “How to Find Peace of Mind in 21 Ways.” Just glancing over their 21 rules for inner peace and my stress levels were sky high! It’s not that the advice on these sites is completely wrong or unhelpful, you understand. They say things like, “Take a walk. Get more sleep. Set appropriate expectations.” That’s all good and helpful as far as it goes. The problem is, all they ever have to offer is law. It’s all imperative. It’s all, “do, do, do.” Get the technique down and all will be well.
And the reason that none of those things really can offer lasting peace, the fatal flaw in every one of these strategies without exception is their abject failure accurately to diagnose the problem of our disquiet, to understand the true nature of the human condition. If they understood our problem, they’d know it can’t be fixed from below, as it were, by us, by the diligent application of some technique or strategy or method. It has to be fixed from above. That is, not by our doing but by the divine, “It is done. It is finished,” of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see it’s not just that our thinking is off or that we need to get the balance of diet and exercise right. Our problem runs far deeper, doesn’t it?
We have no peace and we can have no peace until we face our real problem. Our real problem is God is angry with us because of sin. God is angry with us because of sin. We are hardwired for fellowship with God. Augustine was right. “God has made us for Himself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him.” And so there’s no peace, none, without fellowship with God. That’s what we really need. But as sinners, God is our natural enemy, not our friend. “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” Romans 1:18. “Friendship with the world is enmity with God,” James 4:4. No matter how many mindfulness exercises you do, no matter how much journaling you engage in, no matter how many hours of therapy you undergo, real soul peace will elude you like sand through your fingers until you deal with your most basic and fundamental need. You are a sinner, me too, and the God for fellowship with whom we were created is utterly hostile to us in our sin.
But the peace offering of Leviticus chapter 3 preaches to us the way to address that deepest need and deal with that deepest problem. You might have noticed as we read it through that the initial instructions for the first part of the service of peace offering are almost identical to the burnt offerings in chapter 1. Did you notice that as we read it through? There are three variations, three possible permutations of the peace offering, aren’t there, verses 1 through 5. You could offer a bull or sheep, 6 through 11, or a goat, 12 through 16. But in all three cases, the first half of the instructions sound very much like, almost identical to the instructions for the burnt offerings that we considered a few weeks ago in chapter 1.
Let’s remind ourselves for a moment of the prescribed procedure. Just like with the burnt offerings, you were to select an animal without blemish, bring it to the entrance to the tent of meeting or to the tabernacle, lay your hands on its head – literally you were to lean your weight on its head. It was an act, remember, of symbolic identification and substitution. This animal is blemishless, spotless, blameless, and you are a wretched sinner. And by leaning your weight on its head, you were claiming this animal as your stand in, your substitute. And he in turn will be treated now as if he were you. And then with the animal duly designated as your substitute, you cut the animal’s throat. You are to do it, mind. You have the terrible task of slaughter so that you can’t avoid the conclusion that this is what sin deserves. Nothing less than this is what your sin does. It kills and destroys and condemns.
The whole process was intimate and personal and bloody and upsetting, and it was meant to be. Another is dying the death you deserve. You get to live the life your substitute merited. And as you draw the knife across the jugular of your substitute, you are meant to feel appalled by your sin. There was supposed to be a visceral recoil in your gut at what is taking place, at what your sin required you to do – to lead you to repentance, to hate it, and to turn from it as you see something of the dreadful price of sin’s curse, as you enact the price of sin’s curse. Then the priest would take the blood that has been shed and throw it against the sides of the altar, symbolically now applying the blood not to you but to God. The death of the substitute has this God-ward reference. The death of the substitute is designed to satisfy the wrath and curse of God that has burned hot against your sin. That’s the procedure.
Now do you remember what it all means? What is it that we are to make of this? Well don’t forget Brister’s office. Leviticus, like Brister’s office, is full of object lessons. The substitution of a bull or a goat is an especially powerful object lesson and it’s preaching the cross to us, isn’t it? It’s preaching the cross. Jesus, let’s remember, is the true sacrifice whose death alone can satisfy God’s judgment on our sin. Your sin laid on His head and He dies under your penalty, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. And now that the blood of the cross has been shed, now you may stand before God forgiven and clean and justified. That was the first part of the ritual for the peace offering, and thus far the peace offering is almost identical; it mirrors almost exactly the burnt offering in chapter 1.
Now the focus of the peace offering, as we are going to see, is not mainly on how to get right with God. The focus of the peace offering is mainly on celebrating the fact that you have peace with God and responding in worship to God who has made peace. But the opening instructions for the peace offering repeat the instructions for the burnt offering which absolutely is focused on how to get right with God. They repeat those instructions to make it clear that peace with God can only ever come by one root, one way. It only ever comes at the great cost of the death of a substitute. If you haven’t got the message yet, let me state it plainly for you now. Friends, there is no peace for you, no lasting peace, unless and until you have Jesus Christ for your substitute. “Having been justified by faith,” writes Paul in Romans 5:1, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s the only path to peace. You must have Him, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, to stand in your place and bear your penalty and shed His blood that you might live. It’s not a therapeutic path. The root to peace is not psychological or emotional or interpersonal. It’s not about conflict resolution or a matter of better life habits and wiser choices. There’s no technique to apply. None. No 21 steps to achieving inner peace that will ever do the trick. This is the only way, right here. “In Jesus Christ,” as Paul puts it in Colossians 1:19-20, “God was at work to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross.” Jesus is God’s peacemaker. He dies under the weight of our sin to reconcile us to God, to make peace.
I wonder if you’ve been looking in all the wrong places for rest, for peace. Whether it’s the 21 steps for inner serenity of those websites or whether it’s self-soothing with overeating or binge watching your Netflix shows or avoidance strategies as you throw yourself into work. Where are you looking to manufacture peace? Haven’t you found them all, though they might initially taste sweet on the tongue, to turn sour once they go down, bitter in the end? They rob you of peace; they don’t give you peace. The reason none of those things will work in the end, Leviticus 3 says, is because they leave untouched, untouched your root issue, the real problem – my problem, your problem. They don’t touch our sin. They can’t remove the antipathy and enmity of God. What you need, what I need is to turn back to Jesus Christ who was crucified for sinners. He is the only way of peace. Second Corinthians 5:19, “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God! For our sake He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
That, in a nutshell, is the message of the peace offering. Peace with God. Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Reconciled to Him who was once our enemy. The sinless substitute made sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. There’s peace on offer – right now, today, for you. Peace on offer. You need to get it from the nail-pierced hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that’s the first thing to see here. Peace comes at a cost. Not a cost you must pay; a cost that was paid in full in the sufferings of the Lord Jesus.
Secondly – peace comes at a cost – secondly, peace demands commitment. Look again at the passage and notice that after the slaughter of the animal and the throwing of its blood against the sides of the altar, after that the initial similarities with the burnt offering in chapter 1 all but disappear. In the burnt offering, remember, the whole animal was consumed by fire on the altar until nothing is left. But in the peace offering, the blood is thrown against the altar, then the fat covering the entrails, the kidneys and the liver are burned as a food offering to the Lord. The blood, the fat, the kidneys belong to God. Why these three parts offered to God?
Well once again we’re back in Brister’s office with more object lessons. The substitute has died, peace has been established between the sinner and his God, the enmity is removed. You have been reconciled to God and now you’re offering Him a sacrifice that symbolizes your devotion and your commitment. First you offer the blood. Leviticus 17:11 and 14, Deuteronomy 12:23 say the life is in the blood. The blood represents the whole life offered up to God. Along with the blood you offer the fat. In the agrarian world of ancient Israel, eating meat was a luxury for special occasions. The fat of an animal would be a sign to those at the meal this was a healthy, wellfed, prize animal, and so the fat became symbolic of riches and abundance and prosperity, and therefore considered the best part of the animal. Today, you know, we carefully cut the fat off our steaks, don’t we, push it to the edge of the plate. We’re all buying 95% lean beef, or at least our wives would have us gentlemen buy 95% lean beef at the store, wouldn’t they? Our culture says the fat is the worst part, but in ancient times in Israel, the fat was the very best.
Nehemiah 8:10, there is to be a celebration amongst the people of Israel and so they are told to eat the fat and drink sweet wine. Eating the fat was a treat, was a highlight. And so blood spoke about the whole life, the fat spoke about the very best you had to offer, the very best you had to offer. And the kidneys were considered the seed of wisdom of the emotions and of the conscience. We talk about the heart as your inner self, the seed of your emotions. Or someone is asking, “I don’t know what to do.” You might say, “Well what does your heart tell you?” And in much the same way, the Hebrews considered the kidneys the emotional center and the residence of wisdom and the focus of the conscience. And so Jeremiah 17:10, God says, “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind.” Actually the Hebrew word there is, “test the kidneys.” It seems very strange to us – because the kidneys are the center of the conscience and the heart of your emotional self. Or Psalm 16:7, “I bless the Lord who gives me counsel in the night, for my heart” -actually there again, “my kidneys instruct me.” He’s not talking about some dreadful medical complaint that gets him up in the middle of the night. He’s talking about the heart. We might say something like, “My gut tells me to do this or to do that.” That’s close to what the Scriptures mean.
And in light of all of that, do you see the truth these object lessons are trying to teach the ancient Israelites as they bring their offering? Now that peace has been established, now that you are reconciled to God, how should you respond? What does God want from you? He wants blood and fat and kidneys. That is to say, He wants your life, He wants the best of you, and He wants your inner self, your conscience, your emotional life, your judgment. He wants the real you and He wants all of you. That’s what He wants. He wants the real you and He wants all of you. That’s what you are to offer Him now that Christ has reconciled you to God. Do you remember the Christmas carol, “In the Bleak Midwinter” the last stanza? I think it actually gets at the point here wonderfully. “What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part. Yet what I can I give Him; I give to Him my heart.” That’s what He wants – not some grand display of public piety or civic philanthropy. He wants your heart.
Peace with God comes at a cost – the cost of the lifeblood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And peace with God demands commitment – the commitment of your heart, your very self, your life, your best. Then thirdly, peace with God provides communion. It provides communion. The animal has been slaughtered, the portions offered to God have been laid on the altar – what happens with the rest of the animal? Leviticus 3 doesn’t tell us, although verse 17 gives us a hint. Would you look there? Look at verse 17. “It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwelling places that you eat neither the fat nor the blood.” The fat and the blood and the kidneys belong to God, they are offered to God. The rest, it seems, were to be eaten. Actually if you read forward in Leviticus to chapter 7, the peace offerings, rather, are revisited and we get a bit more detail and we learn that the priests receive a portion of the sacrifice to eat and then the worshipers receive the remainder to eat together in a fellowship meal. Eating a meal together, then and now, is the great sign of fellowship and communion. The sacrifice dedicated to God now becomes food for you to sustain you. God gets some of it, the priests eat some of it, and you eat some of it. And you’re all one now, you see, joined together in the shared meal of God’s provision.
Don’t miss that it is specifically the meat from the sacrificial victim that becomes food to sustain your life, nourishing your body, giving you strength. The teaching here is closely parallel to the meaning of the sacred meal of the new covenant, isn’t it – the Lord’s Supper that we enjoy here in our own congregation. Jesus is the Passover Lamb whose broken body and blood shed gives us life. And as we eat and drink the bread and the cup in faith, the benefits of His sacrifice nourish us spiritually as He says His flesh is true food and His blood true drink. We are strengthened and sustained to live for Him. We are nourished at the table together. We have communion not just with Christ, crucified and risen, but in Christ we have communion with one another. Just as the worshiper in the tabernacle had fellowship, communion with God and with the priests and with his fellow worshipers as they enjoy this meal together, so too when we eat and drink at the table of the Lord we have fellowship with our God, with Christ our great High Priest, and with one another. Communion is the sacrament of peace. It is the sacrament of fellowship. It is a meal with Jesus that signals that the war is over. Christ has conquered and we are one with Him and with one another, forever.
Peace with God comes at a cost. Peace with God demands commitment. Peace with God provides communion. And finally and very briefly, peace with God is an unfailing constant. Look again at the concluding exhortation in verse 17. “It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwelling places that you eat neither fat nor blood.” It’s a stern prohibition but it is laced with a promise, a sort of covert promise. You’re not to eat the fat or the blood anywhere at any time because this offering will be offered in all places at all times, across all the generations. In every place where God’s people dwell, the peace offering was to be made to the Lord in exactly this way. Make sure you do it like this. But do you see, in seeing it in this way there is an insistence that the provision of the peace offering will persist, it will remain. The Lord is making provision for all generations in all your dwellings.
Friends, through the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a once for all provision of peace with God for the people of God. He is God’s provision for every generation in every place. Nothing remains outstanding. Nothing is left undone. No impediment remains to peace with God for you. Jesus has made peace with God for sinners by His cross, and so what are you waiting for? What are you still doing toiling away with “21 Steps to Inner Peace” and “12 Ways for a More Peaceful Mind” and “16 Rules for a Peaceful Life.” There’s no peace there or in any other method or strategy you might develop for yourself. God has made peace by sending His Son. Jesus has secured peace by the sacrifice of the cross. He is the peace offering. He makes peace and He gives peace and that peace is available in all generations and in all your dwelling places, Leviticus says. That means, that means peace is available for you today, here, right now. Peace is available. Remember what Augustine said again? “God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him”? Won’t you come and find rest at last on the Lord Jesus Christ? Find peace at last? It’s the only place it can be found. Won’t you look to Him? He will give you peace.
Let’s pray together.Our God and Father, we praise You that You have made peace by the blood of the cross. You were, in Christ, reconciling the world to Yourself. Your anger burns brightly against our sin, and yet in the great mystery of the Gospel, You love the objects of Your wrath and send Your Son to rescue them from the judgment their sin deserves. Help us, please, to see the provision You have made at Calvary for us. Forgive us for trying to manufacture peace. Our best efforts at manufactured peace are only ever poor counterfeits that fail in the end to deliver. We come now back to Calvary, together, and we look upon Christ. We, as it were, we lean our weight on His head and claim Him as our substitute. Father, we would be reconciled to You. Please forgive our sin. And as we receive Your mercy, as we receive peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, we would offer all that we are – our lives, our best, our hearts. Receive our praises and our persons, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.