Well do please take a Bible in your hands and turn with me to Leviticus chapter 2. You’ll find that on pages 81 and 82 if you’re using one of our church Bibles. We began looking at Leviticus last week and we noticed the book begins with rules about burnt offerings. The Hebrew name for these offerings you will remember is really an ascension offering, an offering for going up. They tell us how sinners like us might draw near, how they might go up into the presence of a holy God. To get to God, both then and now, atonement is necessary. A substitute must die in our place to satisfy the wrath of God. Of course the bull or the goat or the bird of the burnt offering merely pointed forward to the final, perfect sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ whose blood alone can take away sin. That was last week.
And now this week as we turn to chapter 2 we read about an offering of a very different character. No blood is shed this time, no lives are taken, no animals are sacrificed. This isn’t an offering for making atonement. Called a “grain offering” in our English versions, this was an offering either of raw grain or of cakes of grain baked in an oven or cooked on a griddle, some of which was consumed in the fire on the altar and the rest of which was given as a sacred meal to the priests to eat. And the focus of these offerings wasn’t on getting right with God but was on devotion and worship and personal consecration to God. A portion of the best grain from the harvest was to be made into fine flour and offered on the altar as an expression of gratitude, acknowledging that the whole harvest, in fact everything that we have, every blessing, all our sustenance, all our welfare, all of it comes from the hand of God. We owe it all to Him and to Him we gladly dedicate it.
Three themes in particular are at the heart of the symbolism of grain offerings. First, the grain offering was about celebration. That is to say it was an expression of praise and thanksgiving. The worshiper is not here seeking forgiveness; instead, the worshiper is celebrating the goodness of God who as provided for him in His grace, both pardon and plenty, and he is celebrating God’s faithfulness and mercy. Celebration. Secondly, consecration. The grain offering was emblematic of the surrender of the whole life of the worshiper to their God. Having been forgiven, this is an act now of personal dedication. Celebration. Consecration. And thirdly, commemoration. This is a memorial reminding the worshiper of God’s gracious provision and committing the whole of his life of which the grain was a mere token of God’s general kindness and beneficence, committing all of his life to the service of his God.
Now we don’t have a physical temple. This is not a temple. Jesus Christ is our temple. The only place where sinners may meet with God is in Him. And we don’t have a special cast of priests – I’m not a priest – that serve in an earthly temple. We don’t have priests anymore in the new covenant. Jesus is our perfect High Priest. And the whole church, every Christian, is a kingdom of priests “to declare the praise of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.” And so we no longer offer ritual blood sacrifices on an altar because Christ is the once for all sacrifice for sin. And yet, all of that notwithstanding, as a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, the New Testament says we do indeed still offer sacrifices. Did you know that? You can’t be a faithful Christian if you don’t offer sacrifices. Did you know that? Only now our sacrifices are sacrifices of praise and of whole life obedience and consecration to God. “We offer our bodies,” Romans 12:1, “living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.” “Through Jesus,” Hebrews 13:15, “let us continually offer to Him a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name.” These are the sacrifices we now offer through our Lord Jesus to God.
And in light of that, the great value of the grain offerings before us today in Leviticus chapter 2 is to show us these three cardinal aspects of true, biblical praise and worship. As we read about the grain offering, we need to try to look past the outward ritual of old covenant sacrifice that lies on the surface and see the celebration, consecration and commemoration that lie at the heart of the symbolism and significance of this ceremony. Because really, these three provide an apt description of the sacrifices of praise that we are still to offer to God today. And so that said, before we look at each of these in turn – celebration, consecration, commemoration – let’s bow our heads and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us all pray.
Our God and Father, we pray now that You would both open our hearts and Your Word by Your Spirit’s work. Give us understanding. Show us the truth. Show us the Lord Jesus. Show us ourselves and enable us to run to Him that we may indeed celebrate Your grace, consecrate our lives and commemorate Your amazing goodness to us as we give not just a portion but the whole to You. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
Leviticus chapter 2 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“When anyone brings a grain offering as an offering to the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour. He shall pour oil on it and put frankincense on it and bring it to Aaron’s sons the priests. And he shall take from it a handful of the fine flour and oil, with all of its frankincense, and the priest shall burn this as its memorial portion on the altar, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord. But the rest of the grain offering shall be for Aaron and his sons; it is a most holy part of the Lord’s food offerings.
When you bring a grain offering baked in the oven as an offering, it shall be unleavened loaves of fine flour mixed with oil or unleavened wafers smeared with oil. And if your offering is a grain offering baked on a griddle, it shall be of fine flour unleavened, mixed with oil. You shall break it in pieces and pour oil on it; it is a grain offering. And if your offering is a grain offering cooked in a pan, it shall be made of fine flour with oil. And you shall bring the grain offering that is made of these things to the Lord, and when it is presented to the priest, he shall bring it to the altar. And the priest shall take from the grain offering its memorial portion and burn this on the altar, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord. But the rest of the grain offering shall be for Aaron and his sons; it is a most holy part of the Lord’s food offerings.
No grain offering that you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven, for you shall burn no leaven nor any honey as a food offering to the Lord. As an offering of firstfruits you may bring them to the Lord, but they shall not be offered on the altar for a pleasing aroma. You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.
If you offer a grain offering of firstfruits to the Lord, you shall offer for the grain offering of your firstfruits fresh ears, roasted with fire, crushed new grain. And you shall put oil on it and lay frankincense on it; it is a grain offering. And the priest shall burn as its memorial portion some of the crushed grain and some of the oil with all of its frankincense; it is a food offering to the Lord.”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy, inerrant Word.
There is, I think we all understand, a world of difference between flattery and gratitude, isn’t there? Flattery and gratitude. Flattery is manipulative. When you flatter someone, you are playing on their ego for your own ends. You are trying to get from them what you want by telling them what you know they’d like to hear. Gratitude, however, expresses genuine thanksgiving for something that has been personally beneficial to you – some kindness shown, some helpful counsel given, some generosity offered. Gratitude feels it deserves none of this, it wasn’t looking for any of it, and so you want to say thank you. Flattery exaggerates the virtues that it celebrates or it invents them altogether. Flattery doesn’t really care about the truth; it wants to manipulate the object of flattery in order to get what it thinks it needs.
Now I bring that up because sometimes I think we approach worship as if it were flattery rather than gratitude. We approach worship as if we were flattering God by telling Him what we think He needs or wants to hear in order to get something from Him, to manipulate some morsel of kindness or favor or grace or blessing. If we just give Him enough of what He says He wants, He’ll give us what we think we need. We want to manipulate out of Him some kindness.
But Leviticus chapter 2 is about making the point that worship isn’t flattery like that. It’s not an act of divine manipulation. It’s actually how pagans worship, both when Leviticus was written and how unbelieving people worship still today. A pagan conceives of worship as giving to the deity enough of what he wants to manipulate him into giving us what we want. But the God of the Bible is entirely different. And that’s actually the first thing I want you to see clearly as we look at this chapter together. Worship is actually an act of celebration. That is to say, it is an expression of gladness and gratitude for what God has already done freely by His grace for us. It’s not an act of flattery, trying to get Him to do for us what we would like.
Before we even get into the text of Leviticus chapter 2, that point comes out if you notice the sequence of these two opening chapters, doesn’t it? Remember chapter 1 is about God’s provision for sinners, so that by means of blood atonement we might enter the presence of God and have fellowship with Him. In other words, chapter 1 is about the Gospel. A substitute dies in the place of sinners so that they might draw near to God. Chapter 1 tells us through the types and symbols of the burnt offering, chapter 1 tells us of the meaning of the cross. God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. But now, having provided a way of atonement for us, Leviticus chapter 2 is about how we ought to respond. You may recall we quoted Romans 12:1 last week; we’ve quoted it again already this morning this week. What we haven’t done is focus either this week or last on the words with which Romans 12:1 begins. Do you remember how Romans 12:1 begins? Paul is actually making the very same point that Leviticus 2 is making. Romans 12:1, “We appeal to you, therefore, brothers in view of God’s mercies, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice.” There’s what we are to do; here’s how we are to worship God. We are to offer ourselves, our bodies, everything we are to God as a living sacrifice. That is our acceptable worship. That’s true.
But why are we to do it? What is the motivation and the reason? We are not to do it in order to manipulate from God some modicum of blessing from His reluctant, miserly hands. No, in view of the mercies of God we are to bring to Him our praises. That is, in view of the grace Paul has been rehearsing for eleven chapters so far in the book of Romans, in view of the Gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ dying for sinners, in view of all this, here is how you ought to respond. How do you respond when you see, “from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down?” When you come and stand at Calvary, how do you respond as you see the Prince of Glory die? What do you do? You offer yourself. How can you keep anything back when He gave all for you? You gladly surrender yourself to Him who loves you and gave Himself for you. “Were the whole realm of nature mine,” you say, “that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all. I give it all, promptly and sincerely” – Calvin’s famous motto. “Here’s my heart, promptly and sincerely, surrendered to You.” “I offer my body a living sacrifice. How can I do anything else when I see what You have done?” That’s what Leviticus 2 is all about. Christian worship isn’t an act of divine flattery; it’s not about manipulation.
The principle movement, remember, of the Christian religion is not from us toward God, bargaining, cajoling, nagging, inciting Him to gain an ounce of reluctantly given favor. That’s not Christianity. The principle movement of the Christian religion is from God toward us. We are dead in our trespasses and sins, utterly unable to save ourselves to move an inch toward Him, to remedy our condition. And He comes freely by His grace, gives His Son, and makes us His children. And now in view of such mercy, how do you keep from praise? How do you restrain worship? How can you do anything other than offer your whole self in gratitude and love? Gordon Wenham, one of the commentators, suggests the oil – did you notice oil was poured on top of these grain offerings? The oil was likely a symbol of joy. And frankincense was to be mixed with these offerings, that when they were burned would have filled the temple with this beautiful aroma. The whole process is designed to pose a striking contrast with the noise and the gore and the stench of the prize bull being slaughtered at the tent of meeting and then burned entirely on the altar. Back in chapter 1, this now quiet, bloodless offering would have filled the tabernacle with a lovely smell as the frankincense was consumed.
The symbolism isn’t hard to see, is it? Here’s the gladness and the beauty of worship, not the grim cost of atonement paid in blood. And that ought always really to be the key note to Christian praise, don’t you think? Because the blood of Christ has been shed once and for all. His work is finished, done, accomplished. No more atonement needs to be made. No other sacrifice is ever required. Jesus paid it all. And so the heaviness of sin has been shouldered in your place by your substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. So now lift up your hearts and let your worship be mixed always with the oil of gladness and tinctured with the beautiful aroma of celebration and thanksgiving.
There is, of course there is still a place for penance and lamentation in Christian worship. Sin still remains. Death is a reality. Sorrow intrudes, unwelcome into our lives. And so as Christians, it is appropriate for us to mourn and to lament even in our worship. But those ought not to be the dominant motif. The dominant motif of Christian worship is praise. It is gratitude. It is celebration. “Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it! Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb! Redeemed through His infinite mercy, His child and forever I am!” That’s our song. How do you come to worship this morning? In what spirit have you gathered in these pews? Do you come gripped with wonder? “I am forgiven, accepted, beloved. God has given His Son for me. Wonder! Robbed in the righteousness of Christ. The filth of my sin hidden from the sight of my God.” Or is your attitude rather more morose and introspective and heavy with reluctance and shame, filled mainly with sights of yourself and not with sights of your Savior? Lift up your head. Look to the cross. Trust in the Lord Jesus. Come and wash your sin away in the blood of Calvary’s Lamb. Put away the heaviness of guilt and shame and give thanks for redeeming grace. In Jesus Christ, dear believer, you are clean and pardoned and beloved. Celebration. Celebration.
Then the second theme taught in the grain offering has to do with consecration. Celebration, now consecration. The name “grain offering” used in verse 1 and throughout this chapter is really a description not a translation of the Hebrew word. It’s an English description. They’re offering grain so they called it a grain offering, but the word actually means “tribute.” It’s the word for the gifts that vassal kings would bring to their overlord. It’s what Israel paid their Moabite oppressor, Eglon, in Judges 13. It’s what the kings paid to King Solomon in 1 Kings 4:21. And that’s the word that is used here. It implies a relationship between us of God who is our Master, our great King, and we submit to Him. He has redeemed us, saved us, conquered us by the Lord Jesus, His Son. And we are to bring Him our tribute as an expression of our submission and our consecration to live for Him.
And that theme of commitment and consecration and submission to God’s will is heightened further, especially if you look at verses 11 through 13. Would you look there please? Notice there are instructions that exclude some ingredients from these sacrifices and include other ingredients. They were to exclude, verse 11, leaven; that is, yeast and honey. And they are to include, verse 13, the salt of the covenant. Leaven, yeast or honey, most scholars believe, were excluded because they were associated with fermentation and decay. They are powerful symbols of the permeating effects of sin. “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees,” Jesus says. “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”
When I was an intern training for the ministry, I once did a children’s address in which I asked for a volunteer from the congregation. I wanted to illustrate to the children what sin does so I picked the oldest gentleman in the church who came forward to the front and then I said, “Now children, the first thing sin does is it spoils.” And I pulled the man’s tie and I pulled out a big pair of scissors and I started cutting up the bottom of his tie and the whole congregation freaked out! And then I called two children forward and I said, “Now boys and girls, the second thing sin does if you don’t deal with it is sin spreads.” And one child took hold of one side of the tie, another child the other side, and they pulled and the tie tore up to the knot. Then I said, “Now the last thing sin will do if you don’t deal with it is it will separate you from God forever.” And I cut the tie at the knot, gave the two pieces of the tie back to the gentleman and sent him back to his seat.
It’s amazing that I kept my job, to be honest! I should have told everyone of course that he was my accomplice. I had given him the tie before the service began and I neglected to do that and so people were horrified at the whole ordeal! But the point, I think, is nevertheless a good one and the illustration is sound. Sin spreads. It spreads and it ruins everything if we’re not careful. The leaven and the honey were symbols of the permeating, pervasive, polluting power of sin in your life. And so appropriately they were to be excluded from this sacrifice that was about being consecrated to the service of God.
But salt on the other hand, salt is a preservative, right? And so it serves as an apt symbol of permanence. Notice Leviticus calls it “the salt of the covenant” in verse 13. The covenant promise of God is stable and sure and permanent. He preserves and maintains His mercy and His covenant love no matter what. And so when you brought your grain offering to the Lord, free from yeast or honey but sprinkled with the salt of the covenant, here’s what you were saying in effect. You were saying, “Sin has no place in my life, just as yeast and honey has no place in this offering. Sin has no place in all its putrefying, permeating power, but I do offer myself, my body, a living sacrifice, and I affirm now the indissoluble bond of the covenant of Your love, O Lord, and commit myself to life according to Your Word.”
The apostle Paul may actually have had this aspect of the symbolism of the grain offering, the salt of the covenant in mind in Colossians 4 verses 5 and 6 where he says Christians are to “walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” The focus of Colossians of course is on our witness before the watching world. And Paul wants us to guard our speech. It should be gracious, always seasoned with salt.
Now look at Leviticus 2:13. Did you notice Paul says three times over in that one verse salt must be offered with all your grain offerings. “You shall season your grain offerings with salt.” “You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering.” “With all your offerings you shall offer salt.” In other words, this matters. This is important. Do not forget this. Whatever else you do, make sure you do this. Check it three times, you might say, to make sure your offerings all have salt. In the same way in Colossians 4 Paul is saying, “Make sure your speech is always careful, purposefully consecrated to God and His glory with the same diligent intensionality that a worshiper in the tabernacle was to show in ensuring that every grain offering he brought to the altar included the salt of the covenant.
That’s the only way to answer people as we engage with them. The only way to show our Gospel is the real thing, it does exactly what it says on the tin. Lips and lives, consecrated to the glory of God and to the covenant of His praise. Season your life and your language with salt. Triple check to make sure you are pursuing holiness. How is your speech, you who profess to follow Jesus? What is there of the salt of the covenant in the way that you talk, the way you live, the way you behave? This is a call; it’s a call to consecration.
Celebration. Consecration. Finally, it’s also a call to commemoration. In verse 2, the priest is to burn a portion of the grain with the incense, notice, “as a memorial portion.” He says the same again in verse 9 and again in verse 16. The offering was a memorial, a remembrance, a token of a greater reality. In verses 14 through 16, the worshiper brings a grain offering of firstfruits. The firstfruits stood as a memorial, a token representing the whole harvest. A grain offering was a reminder everything belongs to the Lord. It’s all His. All my grain is His. All my money is His. All my happiness comes from Him to me as a gift. My family, my home, my life – it’s all His. Let’s be asking ourselves, shall we, “What is my attitude as I think about my stuff?” What is your attitude as you think about your stuff? Your bank account, your body, your time. “It’s mine and I’ll do with it as I please, thank you very much!” Is that your attitude or are you able to say about your life as well as about your precious stuff, “Really, it’s all His. It’s all His. Me too. And so, O God, help me, help me to steward what You have given me for Your glory.”
That’s the point the grain offering aims to express. It’s interesting at this point in their treatment of Leviticus chapter 2, most of the commentaries actually turn to Psalm 40 and they suggest Psalm 40 as a particularly apt psalm for a worshiper to sing as he is offering his grain offering at the tabernacle. Our versions don’t really bring it out in Psalm 40, but Psalm 40 verse 6 actually uses the word for grain offering. I think the ESV says something like, “In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted.” The word really is, “In sacrifice and grain offerings you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offerings and sin offerings you have not required. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come. In the scroll of the book it is written of me, ‘I delight to do your will, O my God, your law is within my heart.’’”
So you picture this scene – you’re bringing your grain offering and you are reminding yourself as you sing these words of Psalm 40 that God isn’t interested only in the correct performance of the outward ritual that He has commanded. He is interested in that; He wants your obedience. But He is interested in more. If all you give Him is the outward show of obedience to His prescriptions and not also the adoration and consecration commitment of your life, you do not worship Him as He yet requires. He wants all of you, and this portion that you are offering is but a memorial and a representation of the whole of your life given up to Him.
Hebrews 10 takes these words from Psalm 40 and applies them to the Lord Jesus. Jesus sings these words as an expression of His own devotion and commitment to God. Nobody ever fulfilled the meaning of the grain offering so perfectly as the Lord Jesus. Jesus is the perfectly consecrated one, the holy, obedient life. He offered Himself in the whole course of His earthly obedience to God not metaphorically, but quite literally, climaxing of course at the cross. His active obedience is the true grain offering, holy and acceptable to God. And now redeemed by His blood, saved by His obedience, we are to offer ourselves in growing imitation of our Savior.
So do you see the pattern in these opening chapters? Leviticus chapter 1 – Jesus, the burnt offering, deals with our sin by His blood. And now Leviticus chapter 2 – Jesus, the grain offering, embodies the consecration of life that we are to offer to God in response. Jesus is both the Savior and the standard. He is the atonement and the template. He is the propitiation for our sin and the pattern for our life. Those for whom He died must learn to imitate His life. “In the scroll of the book it is written of Me,” Jesus said, “I delight to do Your will, O God. Your law is within My heart.” And when the Gospel gets ahold of you, when Jesus rescues you, more and more you will be enabled to say the same thing. “Like my Savior, I too delight to do Your will, O my God. Written by the finger of the Holy Spirit, Your law is now written in my heart.”
That’s the core of the meaning of the grain offering. It is an act of celebration for grace freely given. An act of consecration, dedicating our lives to God’s praise. And an act of commemoration, remembering that all that we are, all that we have comes from Him and to Him we are called to dedicate it all. And so in view of God’s mercies, brothers and sisters, may we become true worshipers like that indeed. Let us pray.Lord our God, we bless You for Jesus who died and we pray that You would awaken in us renewed wonder and gratitude for Your marvelous grace. Please forgive us for being so presumptuous and for taking the cross for granted. Show us what has been done for sinners in the blood of Jesus, in the wounds of Jesus, and then enable us with renewed joy and celebration to offer our whole selves, living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is our spiritual worship. Would You do that please for Your glory? In Jesus’ name, amen.