THE opening verses of each of the first three chapters of Leviticus help us to understand in what spirit we should approach the subject of them. These chapters are not commands to bring certain offerings. They start with the movement of heart produced by a sense of God’s grace and goodness towards those who deserve nothing from Him. “When any man of you presenteth an offering to Jehovah” (1:2); “when any one will present an oblation to Jehovah” (2:1); “if his offering be a sacrifice of peace-offering” (3:1). They begin with a man who has been so filled with a sense of God’s goodness in coming to dwell amongst His people, His grace in redeeming them, His mercy and truth in His dealings with them, that he wishes to bring a present to God. If I wish to give a present to a friend, my first thought is, naturally, “What would he like?” So worship is not a matter of certain regulated or traditional forms and ceremonies, but flows from the desire to bring to God something that shall be acceptable to Him. And the heart that wishes to worship will be truly prepared to listen to God’s description of what is acceptable to Him, His thoughts of Christ that shine out with Divine brightness in every detail of these three chapters which take us into the secrets of worship. But unless they are read with the desire to get just what they were written to give, we shall end by a mathematical analysis which will leave our hearts quite cold. On the other hand, if they are studied in a worshipping spirit, the order, fullness, and infinite variety of the details will only give fresh themes for worship the more minutely they are examined.
The meat-offering is the second of these pictures which God gives, through the types, of Christ and His work. The name is rather misleading, as “meat” has now a rather narrower meaning than it used to have it should be rather “food-offering,” or, as the new translation renders it, “oblation,” something offered up. The first chapter of Leviticus showed us the various ways in which the perfect offering of Christ on the cross is brought home to the heart for worship, that which will delight the heart of God.
This chapter takes up the perfect offering of His life in all its sweetness to God. This offering also is presented in three different aspects, like the burnt-offering, from which it cannot properly be separated. Before looking into these three ways in which the Holy Ghost presents the life of Christ as an offering, we may notice two main points in which the second chapter differs from the first:
(a.) We have no mention of the blood in this chapter, while in each of the offerings of the first chapter the blood is emphasized. There are many today who would like to have the second chapter without the first, but God’s order is the only possible one. No one who has not come by way of the burnt-offering can have any right to share in the oblation, nor has he any power to enter into God’s thoughts of Christ’s blessed pathway of obedience and service.
(b.) The priests have a share in the oblation, but the burnt-offering is wholly for God; all is burnt, and none may be eaten by the priests. There is a special reason why the priests had this as part of their food, a reason which will come out later when we get to what is called “the law of the offerings”; but this at least we may gather from the contrast between the first and the second chapter, that the blessed Lord was alone in His atoning work, and that no one but the Father could know all its value. We enjoy the results, but have no share in the work. But in the blessed Lord’s obedience and pathway we are called to tread, not in a vague indefinite sort of way, but in a remarkably clear and definite way. In fact, there is no other way to walk without losing the way. We have been sanctified “to the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:22Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. (1 Peter 1:2)),
Now, if we read carefully through the chapter, and I hope that no one will venture to read anything that is written here without first reading the second chapter of Leviticus carefully several times, its divisions will soon appear.
1. The Uncooked Oblation (vers. 1-3). ―This consisted of fine flour, the very choicest part of wheat flour; the worshipper was to pour oil upon it and put frankincense on it, and then to bring it to the priests. No question of the amount is raised. The point is, not the meeting of some special need or circumstances, but what sort of offering will delight God’s heart. The worshipper’s hand is to be filled with the flour, oil, and all the frankincense. Then the handful, called “the memorial,” a touching name, is to be burnt like incense on the altar. The word used for “burn” does not convey the meaning of the consuming power of the fire, as in the case of the sin-offering (Lev. 4:1212Even the whole bullock shall he carry forth without the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire: where the ashes are poured out shall he be burnt. (Leviticus 4:12)), but brings out the thought that the testing of the fire only causes the sweet savor of the offering to ascend as incense before God. This offering, then, gives us a picture of the perfect service of the Lord Jesus as man upon earth, doing the Father’s will. He entered a body prepared for Him, He was born of the Holy Ghost, He was anointed by the Holy Ghost for service, all that He did was obedience in the power and energy of the Holy Ghost, all was holy, no unevenness, like grit in the flour, marked His ways of grace. We are all marked by some strong characteristic, most ails with strong wills, some with passions and emotions ruling, others intellectual, but the blessed Lord had no will, no thoughts, no feelings, that were not of the Father, and who may ever know what this was, is, or forever will be, to the Father’s heart? May He give us to fill our hands with this!
2. The Cooked Oblation (vers. 4-10). ―The remarkable thing about this form of the oblation is that before it reaches the fire on the altar it has already been subjected to the action of the fire in three different ways, the oven, the cauldron, and the pan.
This is a wonderful type of the sufferings of the blessed Lord during His pathway, especially those sufferings which arose from His taking a place in the midst of Israel, and being afflicted in their afflictions. One of the most important things to bear in mind in reading the Old Testament is that God has given us in the history of Israel a history of His government. The principles of this government were laid down in Exodus 34:6, 76And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. (Exodus 34:6‑7). And all the sorrows that Israel, as God’s people, passed through were the consequences of God’s mercy and judgment dealing with their sins and with them, in order to carry out His own will, and to bless them in the end. Now when the blessed Lord entered on His pathway to do God’s will, all this had to be taken up by Him. He did take it up, and went right through all that the oven, the cauldron, and the pan are symbols of; and this He did, not for Himself but for their sakes, and also for us, that we might learn, where alone it can be learned, how to go through the government of God in the spirit of Christ now. This is immensely important, and gives balance and stability to our poor, light, flighty hearts. So we find that the priests partook of this offering, with a special object, as we shall see when we get to the law of the offerings. Some of the Psalms express, by the Holy Ghost, the feelings and experiences of the blessed Lord Jesus in going through all these things, as they led up to the consummation at the cross. And the epistles of Peter apply these experiences, and this aspect of the Lord’s pathway to our own, and teach the beginning of wisdom, “the fear of the Lord,” to the newborn babes who feed on the sincere milk of the Word.
Parenthesis (ver. 11-13). ―Attached to this second form of oblation, and closely connected with it, is a parenthesis dealing with three things:
(a.) No leaven or honey was to be used in making the cakes which formed this second kind of oblation. Human nature has been corrupted, human relationships have been spoiled by sin, so that natural feelings or natural ties which may be right and sweet in themselves may only serve to corrupt and hinder the accomplishment of God’s ends. Hence neither of these things were found in the motives that guided the blessed Lord in His pathway of obedience. God’s heart delights in One who knew no other motives, no other ties than those which flowed from the doing of the Father’s will (cf. Matt. 3:15, 11:25, 26, 12:48-50).
(b.) The First-Fruits. ―These were the two loaves of Leviticus 23:1717Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the Lord. (Leviticus 23:17). They were a new oblation, a new kind, not to be burnt at all, but to be waved before the Lord. What they mean we shall find when we come to Leviticus 23, but leaven was put in here to show the contrast.
There was no leaven in the blessed Lord. We shall never get rid of it till we are at home with Him; but grace links us together with Him.
What grace, and what a contrast!
(c.) Salt. ―It is “the salt of the covenant of thy God.” That is the great point that must lay hold of us. Our God, whose grace has brought such poor, wretched things as us so near Himself through Christ, is a consuming fire. The fear of God, not a God afar off, but One with whom we have to do, produces judgment of evil according to God’s thoughts, evil in ourselves. “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” How many strife’s would cease if this were so!
3. The Oblation of First-Fruits. ―Like the other two, this oblation was to have oil and frankincense, but unlike the other two, it does not say that it was a sweet odor to Jehovah, nor does it mention that the priest had a part of it. I believe that this offering closes the picture of the blessed Lord’s Person as Man on earth in all the power of the Holy Ghost, and all the acceptance and fragrance of His devotedness and obedience in divine perfection to the Father. It closes it by showing the Lord in His connection with the whole race of Adam. It shows Him as the first-fruits, the only fruit that God ever had from man, but cut off before His time (Ps. 102:23), it was green ears, beaten out. The only perfect fruit to the Father’s heart, thrust out of this world at the cross! That is the climax and end of man’s history, looked at from God’s standpoint in this picture. We know Christ after the flesh no more, but God has known such a Christ, and the memorial is an eternal sweet savor to Him. But the wave-sheaf, followed by the wave-loaves, tell the story of resurrection-life and the new man. Christ is there the firstfruits from the dead, not so here.
Again, I must say what I feel, that we must earnestly seek from the Lord grace and mercy to let these things sink down into our hearts, that they be both the spring of worship, and the food of our soul’s life. To have them in the head alone only brings greater condemnation.
Answers to Questions.
1. Lev. 8:2828And Moses took them from off their hands, and burnt them on the altar upon the burnt offering: they were consecrations for a sweet savor: it is an offering made by fire unto the Lord. (Leviticus 8:28) is not called an oblation, but a consecration offering, cf. Lev. 7:3737This is the law of the burnt offering, of the meat offering, and of the sin offering, and of the trespass offering, and of the consecrations, and of the sacrifice of the peace offerings; (Leviticus 7:37). The first is Lev. 9:44Also a bullock and a ram for peace offerings, to sacrifice before the Lord; and a meat offering mingled with oil: for to day the Lord will appear unto you. (Leviticus 9:4), then Lev. 14:10, 2110And on the eighth day he shall take two he lambs without blemish, and one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish, and three tenth deals of fine flour for a meat offering, mingled with oil, and one log of oil. (Leviticus 14:10)
21And if he be poor, and cannot get so much; then he shall take one lamb for a trespass offering to be waved, to make an atonement for him, and one tenth deal of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering, and a log of oil; (Leviticus 14:21); Lev. 23:16, 18, 3716Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord. (Leviticus 23:16)
18And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish of the first year, and one young bullock, and two rams: they shall be for a burnt offering unto the Lord, with their meat offering, and their drink offerings, even an offering made by fire, of sweet savor unto the Lord. (Leviticus 23:18)
37These are the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord, a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings, every thing upon his day: (Leviticus 23:37).
2. See Num. 28:3-83And thou shalt say unto them, This is the offering made by fire which ye shall offer unto the Lord; two lambs of the first year without spot day by day, for a continual burnt offering. 4The one lamb shalt thou offer in the morning, and the other lamb shalt thou offer at even; 5And a tenth part of an ephah of flour for a meat offering, mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil. 6It is a continual burnt offering, which was ordained in mount Sinai for a sweet savor, a sacrifice made by fire unto the Lord. 7And the drink offering thereof shall be the fourth part of an hin for the one lamb: in the holy place shalt thou cause the strong wine to be poured unto the Lord for a drink offering. 8And the other lamb shalt thou offer at even: as the meat offering of the morning, and as the drink offering thereof, thou shalt offer it, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord. (Numbers 28:3‑8). Mentioned in 2 Kings 16:1515And king Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, Upon the great altar burn the morning burnt offering, and the evening meat offering, and the king's burnt sacrifice, and his meat offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, and their meat offering, and their drink offerings; and sprinkle upon it all the blood of the burnt offering, and all the blood of the sacrifice: and the brazen altar shall be for me to inquire by. (2 Kings 16:15); Ezra 9:4, 54Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the transgression of those that had been carried away; and I sat astonied until the evening sacrifice. 5And at the evening sacrifice I arose up from my heaviness; and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and spread out my hands unto the Lord my God, (Ezra 9:4‑5); Ps. 141:2; Dan. 9:2121Yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation. (Daniel 9:21). The same is referred to in 1 Kings 16:29, 36.
3. and 4. have been answered in the Notes.
Subject for March
―The peace offering, Leviticus 3. The following questions may be answered:
1. What are the main points of difference between the sacrifice of peace-offering and the two previous offerings?
2. What point of connection do you find in this chapter between the peace-offering and the burnt-offering?
3. Trace out the history of the peace-offering in the Old Testament.
B. S. ED.