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Good morning. I hope that the feed is working
okay at Blue Ridge. I'm coming to you from my sofa
this morning. I appreciate the prayers and
concern of all my friends and the church family at Blue Ridge.
Unfortunately, the sciatic nerve problem that I've had for going
on 10 years now, has really flared up at the moment. And I'm having
a lot of trouble walking and keeping balance and those sorts
of things. And so just out of some prudence to prevent having
a fall and having you all have to help me get up out of the
floor and all that sort of thing, I'm going to be sharing the word
from home this morning. But thank God for the technology
that lets us be able to do that. You know, technology is both
a blessing and a curse, but it certainly does give us the opportunity
to be able to share the gospel in ways that just wouldn't have
been possible 20 years ago. So we're thankful for that this
morning. We're looking at Leviticus chapter 2. Most of you were with
us last week, probably as we began Leviticus, and it's a book
of instruction about public worship, essentially. It's about how we
give offerings to the Lord, about how we make sacrifice, about
how the sins of people are covered by those sacrifices. And so Leviticus
2 kind of comes just right on the heels of Leviticus 1 with
a follow-up to the instructions that are given there. If you
remember, The first chapter of Leviticus is about animal sacrifice,
about burnt offerings that were given on the altar for the sins
of the people. And those included bulls and
rams and goats and pigeons or doves, those kinds of things.
And it gave very specific instructions for how those sacrifices were
supposed to be handled and how they were made and how those
things brought relief from the penalty of sin and the wrath
of God against sin for God's people. So let's look at Leviticus
chapter two. I'm just going to kind of read
through the chapter and then we'll pull it apart a little
bit. When anyone brings a grain offering
as an offering to the Lord, his offering shall be a fine flower.
He shall pour oil on it and frankincense on it and bring it to Aaron's
sons, the priest. And he shall take from it a handful
of the fine flower 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 a 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 the most holy part of the Lord's food offerings. Sorry, my screen just skipped
on me a second here, so. No grain offerings, verse 11,
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.
For 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." Now, I know that seems kind of repetitive,
but it's very specific kind of instruction for how it is that
we go about making these offerings. So last week, we kind of got
our feet wet a little bit with Leviticus. We saw how animal
sacrifices were commanded to appease God's wrath against sin
for the people of Israel. And the burnt offerings of bulls
and sheeps and goats and birds was the primary means that God
gave for the people to be forgiven. But there were other offerings
too. And one of those that we see here in Leviticus 2, the
other most common one were grain offerings. These come kind of
paired back to back in Leviticus one and two, because when a sacrifice
of grain was made and a burnt offering of an animal was made,
if they were made at the same time in the temple, the grain
offering always came second. So you would have the offering
of say, a lamb on the altar, and you would follow the instructions
in Leviticus 1 for how that sacrifice was to be made. And then there
might be an offering of cakes of wheat or barley or something
on the altar to the Lord, and then that would be according
to these instructions in chapter 2. In Hebrew, we have this word,
mencha, which is used to describe the grain offerings here. And
it's a word that we see other places, like in the book of Judges,
for instance, that talks about the kind of offering of thanksgiving
that the people would make to a gracious king. It's this idea
of giving an offering of thanks for the mercy and the kindness
and the watch care of the king. And so you can certainly see
the kind of connection here with giving thanks to God at the temple
as we come and bring the first fruits of the harvest and burn
them on the altar. And we give thanks for God's
goodness, his mercy, his grace, his provision for us. And so
we essentially are the subjects of the king who are thanking
him for his goodness. And so when we do that, essentially
the grain offering, the temple had the same purpose as the offerings
of flesh as the burn offerings. And that was to express Thanksgiving
and to thank God for his mercy. So we see that the grain offering
could kind of come in two ways, either raw, essentially you just
brought grain, or more often made into cakes. And when we
take cakes here, it's not the kind of thing that you and I
might think of when we think cakes. I have a mental image. I definitely have a mental image
of what I think cake is, right? I mean, when someone says cake,
there's this thing that flashes in my mind. It's like a five-layer
southern red velvet cake with cream cheese, pecan, frosting,
and all that stuff, right? That's not quite what we're talking
about here, though. What was offered in the temple
would have been more like pancakes or flatbread, sort of like pita
or something like that, because there's a very specific provision
here that no leavening could be used at all in the loaves
that were offered to the Lord. Cakes of grain like this would
have been a staple thing for God's people, been a main part
of their diet because it would have been a reminder to them
that everything in their daily lives should be consecrated to
the Lord. So what they offer is something that would be a
common part of their own diet. Essentially, they're taking from
their own food reserves and giving to the Lord. And there's this
reminder that we have everything that we have, even the simple
bread that we eat every day, we have that because of the grace
and the mercy of God. providing for his people. And
like the burnt offerings, the grain sacrifice had to be pure.
It couldn't have any kind of mixture of anything that would
cause it to ferment or rise. No leavening, no honey could
be added to the grain because that seems to relate to the people's
understanding of fermentation and the idea that there's a kind
of decomposition that takes place when you ferment grain to raise
bread. And that's actually fairly accurate
since the yeast that caused the leavening do digest the carbohydrates
in the flour and so there is some degradation that happens
there. Clearly that wasn't a process that was understood by ancient
people. But you know, this again is an example of how we say scripture
wasn't written to be a science textbook or a history textbook
or whatever. And yet, we find again and again
that it's scientifically accurate and sound in what it does say.
So while it doesn't set out to explain the process of fermentation,
no one had microscopes back then. No one understood that there
were living organisms called yeast that fermented grain and
caused bread to rise and that kind of thing. Nobody knew that.
But they knew the truth. of God and they understood in
a way within the context of their time that there was something
happening there. And that was associated again
and again through scripture, not always, but most of the time
when we see things like yeast and leavening referred to, it's
the idea of something that's unclean. Part of that is that,
where did you get the yeast? Well, you got the yeast from
old steel bread dough, or you got it from the gleanings from
the bottom of a wine cask, those kinds of things. So it was kind
of sludge. It was kind of leftovers. It
wasn't the first fruits. It wasn't this beautiful, pristine
offering of grain that you just harvested. It was something that
was kind of secondary. It was something that was sort
of using up leftovers to be able to make something. And that's
how you got your bread to rise. Again, they didn't understand
the scientific principle, but they knew that's where it came
from. That's how they got their bread to rise. And so God forbid
that. Honey specifically is forbidden
because it caused the fermentation process to work a lot faster.
It was the main source of sugar that ancient peoples would have
had in this part of the world. And when you added sugar to or added
honey to grain that you were fermenting, then it just rose
that much more and that much faster because the yeast eat
the sugar faster than it can plain starch. They don't have
to convert it. They produce that much more carbon dioxide gas
as a waste product, which is what causes the bubbles that
raise the bread and cause it to be fluffy and all that kind
of stuff. And so lots of times when we see leavening referred
to in scripture, it's an allegory. It's a reference to sin. because
it's this mixing in of something that's imperfect. It's this mixing
in of something that's not the first fruits, that's not the
perfected first offering. And the purity that God demands
here for these offerings, for the grain offering to be pure
and unleavened, goes back to the same ideas like the burn
offerings, that the animals had to be pure and unblemished, they
had to be spotless and perfect. You couldn't have, you couldn't
offer up a goat or a lamb with a gimpy leg or a weird ear or
some kind of strange marking or something, they had to be
perfect. It had to be the very best that your land produced. And that points us again and
again through the burn, that the sacrifice that would atone
for sin had to be perfect. That God's requirement was for
a perfect sacrifice. And of course, we only find that
perfect sacrifice in Christ. There could never be a perfect
sacrifice in anything that people offered because it was always
going to be tainted. It was always going to be something less than
absolutely pure. And that's a reminder that on
our own we could never be holy, that on our own we could never
be righteous apart from God. These sacrifices were temporary
at the very best. They needed a permanent, perfect
sacrifice that would relieve them from the burden of having
to come and offer burnt animals and grain and those kinds of
things. And Christ would fulfill that ultimately. Now, oil and frankincense were
allowed to be added to the grain offering because they were associated
with gladness and celebration and thanksgiving. And again,
as I say, this is sort of a thanksgiving to the king for his graciousness
to his people. It's a thanksgiving to God for
the grace that forgives us of sin. Salt was part of the grain
offering because it was a preservative. But I think symbolically, it
has an awful lot to do with the idea that the covenants are preserved. They are perfectly maintained
by God's faithfulness. And so salt becomes kind of an
image of that. And in fact, it talks about the
salt of the covenant and that you're not allowed to omit that.
It has to be included in the grain offering. It's a reminder,
too, as we see again and again in the New Testament, that salt
is something different. Salt is something that stands
apart from the world. As God's chosen people stand apart from
the lost world around us, as salt gives flavor and interest
to food, if you ever try to cook, say, chicken or beef or something,
and you don't put any salt on it, if you've ever been on a
salt-restricted diet or those kinds of things, It needs something. If you don't have salt, you've
got to find something to substitute for it. Because without it, if
you cook, just take a really nice steak, and you don't put
any salt on it at all, and you grill it, it doesn't really taste
like steak very much. Salt brings out the beefiness
of beef. It brings out flavor. You add
salt. In cooking, I love to cook, you add salt whenever you put
vanilla in a dish, because salt makes vanilla taste more like
vanilla. You use it with chocolate because it brings out the flavor
of chocolate. You use salt with a lot of things because it amplifies
flavor. And so salt here was a reminder
of the difference, the setting apart of God's people. It was
a reminder of the preservation of God's covenants, and that
that was through God's faithfulness, not through anything the people
could do, but through God's goodness, the very thing that they're giving
thanks for. And then there's this last aspect to consider
here. And then when a grain offering was made, you had a portion,
what was called the memorial portion here in Leviticus 2,
that was set aside, that was burned on the altar as an offering
to the Lord. In ancient understanding, they
thought of the incense, the scent of the offering that was made
as it burned, that smoke going up and rising in the direction
of heaven, as being something that was pleasant in God's nostrils.
Whether we should interpret that literally is a whole other thing.
Some church traditions really treasure the idea of incense
and those kinds of things because of this kind of instruction.
I personally don't know that it's meant to be taken in that
literal kind of a way. But again, this was the understanding
of ancient peoples in an ancient time and place who didn't really
know an awful lot about science or technology or whatever, but
they knew the smoke rose upward. And they thought of upward as
being the direction of God's dwelling. And so their sense
was that when they burned these offerings and the smoke drifted
upward, that would be pleasing to God. And indeed, scripture
says it was. But you had this memorial portion
that was sacrificed by fire. We use the term immolated to
refer to making a burnt offering like this, whether it's grain
or whether it's meat or whatever. Immolated comes from the Latin
for grain. And so it actually refers to
this kind of grain offering. But you had that portion that
was burned. And then the bigger portion, was for the priests,
it was for the Levites, it was for Levi and his sons, those
people who ministered in the temple, in other words, and it
was to supply their food. It was to provide their livelihood,
to keep their families fed. Since ancient times, the leaders
of God's people have survived, at least in part, by the generosity
of God's people to provide for their livelihood. And that's
something that scripture encourages us toward, that we should be
generous and we should support those who minister the gospel.
and that we should make an effort to make sure that those who dedicate
their lives to sharing the gospel are taken care of as best we're
able to, to make sure that they have a livelihood and that they
don't go hungry and that their children are not starving and
naked and those sorts of things. And so this is an example of
that very early on in Leviticus 2. So we have a little layers
here to this grain offering. On one level, it emphasizes the
need to dedicate ourselves to the Lord, to provide for the
work of those who minister the gospel to us. It reminds us that
in giving the fruits of our land and of our efforts, that those
things are consecrated to God. That the land itself, that the
physical ability that makes us able to raise crops and farm
animals and those kinds of things, that that is something that should
be consecrated to God. Our work, our energy, those kinds
of things. And it's a reminder that everything
we have, including that ability to do work, comes as a blessing
from God, that we would have nothing, that we wouldn't have
food, we wouldn't have physical ability, we wouldn't have anything
if it weren't for the Lord. So today, we make offerings in
a different kind of way. Scripture tells us that God no
longer desires burnt offerings, that those kinds of things are
not specific to the worship of God's people under the new covenants,
but that God desires the sacrifices of a pure heart, of repentance,
of right worship, of a desire to glorify him, and it'd be near
to him, that those are the things that God seeks from his people.
And so today we make those kinds of offerings, but it's still
with remembrance that our ability to do those things, my ability
to get up out of bed and go to church on Sunday morning, or
to get up on Thursday morning and read the scripture and pray
and be able to talk to God and be able to praise Him, to be
able to sing His praises and be able to speak about Him and
glorify Him before people, that those things, the energy that
lets me do that is the gift of God. that the energy that lets
me work to be able to earn a living for myself and my family is God's
grace in my life. And we make these offerings as
thanksgiving. We seek to live holy lives in thanksgiving to
God. We seek to be near to him and
draw into his presence and to praise him and lift him up with
our voices and with our hearts and our prayers, because we're
thankful to the merciful King who provides for us. I think it's important that we
bear in mind that, you know, we think sometimes we get this
teaching from some quarters that the sacrificial system, that
everything kind of under the old covenants was a whole different
means toward salvation. And that it was a way of people
earning salvation through works. It was not. Salvation has always
been through God's grace. It's always been through the
person and the character of Christ. Those who live before Christ's
birth, lived and were saved through faith in the coming Messiah.
By the gift of God's grace, they learned through things like the
sacrificial system to look forward to that perfect sacrifice that
would eternally atone for sin, that would eternally make them
right before God and do away with the need for slaughtering
and killing animals and burning grain and all those kinds of
things. In the same way, pardon me, In the same way, God's people
were appointed to hope that lay ahead for them in Christ. Those
who came after Christ, obviously our faith is in Jesus. It's given
by God's Holy Spirit drawing us to trust him and to put faith
in the work of Christ at the cross as being the only righteous
sacrifice, the only permanent and perfect sacrifice that fulfills
the very thing that God's law demanded under the old covenants.
And so Jesus said, I didn't come to do away with the law and the
prophets, but to fulfill them. In the same way, our worship
today doesn't, it's not a different way to please God. It's not a
different way to appease God for sin. God's appeasement against
our sin, the relief of God's wrath against our sin is always
through Jesus Christ and his perfect sacrifice. Today, we're
able to celebrate that together. We're able to rejoice in his
name. We're able to glorify him together. Honestly, even in trials,
one of the things that struck me the last few days is I've
been struggling with my back and I'm stumbling around and
last night fell on the floor and was kind of, you know, very
frustrated with the fact that I just couldn't stand up. I realize,
though, in the midst of that, and I'm not trying to sound like
a martyr here or anything, but I mean, I really, legitimately,
this is something that God has taught me over time, to give
thanks for my trials, to give thanks for my struggles, to give
thanks for the days when it hurts and it's hard because I have
the sure promise of God from the days of old to God's people
up to now, that everything that God allows in my life, if I'm
His, if I'm in Christ, everything He allows is for my blessing
and for His glory. It doesn't mean it's all pleasant
at the time. It doesn't mean it's all fun to go through. I'm
not saying that at all. I'm not saying you should enjoy
suffering. I don't think that's an oxymoron. Nobody enjoys suffering. But
at the same time, I can give thanks to God because whether
I can see it or not, right here on the surface, I know this,
that God is sanctifying me. He's making me more and more
into the image of Jesus Christ as he teaches me to suffer well.
He's leading me to have things like patience and forbearance
and long suffering through the experiences of this life and
the hardships that we all go through. And every one of you
has those. And he also is glorifying himself. Somehow, some way God is bringing
glory to himself as he helps me to survive through the trials
in this life. And so what's the response of
my heart? to give thanks to the gracious
King for all of his provision, for all of his kindness, for
all of his mercy to me, the very thing that God calls on his people
to do here in Leviticus. Let's pray together. Father God, thank you for grace.
Thank you, God, for the personification of grace in Jesus Christ, that
in your spirit and human form, that
as you walked as a man in this world, that we could be able
to see and understand and have record of what grace truly is. That those who had labored under
the sacrificial system for generation after generation were set free
from the responsibility to offer up grain and meat and those kinds
of things to appease your wrath because you've told us that in
Jesus Christ, your wrath against our sin, if we're in him, is
forever appeased. That you are never angry and
never again will be angry with your children who are in Jesus
Christ. God, I can think of no better reason to worship you.
We don't worship in this age because it's required to seek
forgiveness from your anger against us. We worship exactly because
your anger has already been appeased perfectly in Jesus. We worship
because you are so worthy. You're so gracious and you're
so good, God. This morning, as we lift our
voices in song and prayer to you, Father, let the aroma of
that Be pleasing. Let that bless us and glorify
you. In Jesus name, amen. Thank you
so much for being with us this morning. God bless you.
Leviticus chapter 2
Series Leviticus
In this message Steve teaches on the Grain offerings and their application to the 21st century Christian. Listen to know more.
| Sermon ID | 37222242334547 |
| Duration | 25:30 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Leviticus 2 |
| Language | English |
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