Let us pray. Our Father, as we now approach your throne to listen and bow before your word, we ask that you will help us give utterance to the one who is preaching and ears to hear by those who are listening. And in all things, Lord, make your grace and your triumph preeminent among your people. Do the work in us that we cannot do for ourselves by your grace and power. For it is in Christ's name that we pray this. Amen. As you're seated, turn with me please to the book of Leviticus, chapter 1. Leviticus chapter one. The five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, cover thousands of years of history. 40% of those five books take place at the base of Mount Sinai over a period of a few months. Now think about that. Forty percent of a group of books that cover thousands of years suddenly slow down when you get to Exodus chapter 19. It's God's way of saying, pause. What I'm telling you from Exodus chapter 19 to Numbers chapter 10 verse 10 is very, very important. Something momentous happens at the end of the book of Exodus. The God who created the world and everything in it, the God who called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to himself, made a covenant with him, gave to them promises, that God who basically was silent for 400 years of Israel's history as she languished in slavery in Egypt, that God has now shown up. He's appeared. The smoke and the fire on Mount Sinai have now descended to a tabernacle. And that glory cloud, the visible representation of who God is, has now come to dwell in this place. And at the end of the book of Exodus, in chapter 40, we read these words in verse 34. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle. And Moses, was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the clouds settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. This is important because it is Moses and Moses alone who was allowed to go and summit Mount Sinai. It was Moses who said to the Lord, can I just get a glimpse of your glory? It was Moses who was told by the Lord, get into the cleft of the rock and I'm going to let my glory pass by so that you might just get a small vision of it. And now that Moses is standing on the outside of the tabernacle and the glory of the Lord has filled there, he can't enter it. And so as you finish the book of Exodus, the question is this. If the choice servant of God, Moses, who saw God speak to him out of the burning bush and who spent months with him up on Mount Sinai, if that man can't enter into the very presence of God then what does that mean for anybody else? Who in the world could ever draw near to God? And what good is it if God should come and dwell among his people if his people always have to stay back, remain aloof, who are never given entrance into the presence of God? And so the book of Leviticus picks up that theme. and says, no, God has drawn near to us, and now we can draw near to him, but only on his terms. And the book of Leviticus gives us these terms. And ancient people like the nation of Israel would have understood that if you're given an audience with the king, and God is Israel's king, then you come bearing gifts. You don't come empty-handed. So what do you give the Lord who has everything? And the answer, as we saw last week, is you give him what he tells you to give him. You only bring to him what he says is appropriate. That's the regular principle of worship. Anything else is strange fire. Anything else will get you in big trouble, as Nadab and Abihu tragically found out. If you're going to come with an offering, And that's what these sacrifices are called, offerings. Then you bring the offering that God himself tells you to bring. Now the reason why this is so important is because the modern evangelical church doesn't even think of the corporate gathering of God's people on a Sunday morning as worship anymore. It isn't. It's the means to grow the church by additions. It's not the means by which the church comes and approaches the Lord brings her offerings to him in worship, and then is blessed by his presence. No, it's all about the visitors. It's all about the people that we're trying to attract. What are their preferences? You know, it's akin to a parent who would just be aghast if their child was invited to a birthday party, somebody else's birthday. And they show up, and the entire time that they're there, They complain about the games that are being played, I don't want to play that, I'd rather play something else. Well, I don't like that food, I want something else. You'd be aghast if your child did that, right? It's not your birthday party, it's not about your preferences, it's about the boy whose birthday it is. And yet, Christians approach worship this way all the time. Well, I don't like that portion or that's not really interesting to me or something else is more my preference. We have to get it out of our head that worship is about us and remind ourselves continually that it is really about the God that we have come to stand before. And the book of Leviticus makes this very clear. Each of the sacrifices is called an offering. Look at verse three of chapter one. If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish. Look at chapter two, verse one. When anyone brings a grain offering as an offering to Yahweh, his offering shall be a fine flower. Look at chapter three, verse one. 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 Yahweh. Now the noun that is translated offering is virtually the same as the verb that says to come near. So the verb is you come near to the Lord and the noun is the thing that you come near with, the offering. It's the gift that you are bringing to your God. The verb occurs over 102 times in the book of Leviticus and the noun 80 times in this book. As God has come near to Israel, Israel must draw near to Him, and they do that with a sacrifice, an offering. I want you to take a look at the screen. We're talking today about sacrifices, and this may help you understand these things. So over on the left hand of the screen, in chapters one through seven, we are given five different offerings. All of these are from the individual or from the family. The three that we're looking at today, the bird offering, chapter one, the grain offering, chapter two, and the peace slash fellowship offering in chapter three, are voluntary. Now, that's what the V stands for there, voluntary. Now, they're voluntary, and let's put the word in quotation marks. They're voluntary in the same way that remembering your wife's birthday is voluntary. I mean, technically, you're not mandated to say happy birthday. In reality, you're not much of a husband if you don't, right? In the same way, you don't have to bring a burnt offering, a grain offering, a peace fellowship offering, but if year after year and decade after decade go by and you never bring these offerings to the Lord, you're not much of an Israelite, right? In chapters four and five, we have the sin and guilt offerings, which we will talk about next Sunday, and you'll notice the M next to those, they're mandatory. If you've sinned, even unintentionally, you must bring offerings before the Lord. Then over on the right-hand side, there is the national sacrifice, which occurs one time a year on the Day of Atonement. And we'll talk about that in two weeks. It's told to us in chapter 16. All right. Today, let's talk about the voluntary offerings. The burnt offering, the grain offering, and the peace slash fellowship offering. I'll explain why it's called both of those things in just a moment. But here's the point. One of the recurring themes of these sacrifices is that as the offering is brought and placed upon the altar, Where there's smoke, there's fire. And the fire of that altar causes the smoke to rise. And it is as though God has a nose. And he smells the smoke. And it is pleasing to him. I want you to see this. Go down to chapter one in verse nine. Its entrails and its legs he shall wash with water. The priest shall burn all of it on the altar as a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to Yahweh. Verse 17, he shall tear it open. It's a bird that's brought. He shall tear it open by its wings, but shall not sever it completely. And the priest shall burn it on the altar on the wood that is on the fire. It is a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord. The same thing is said of the grain offering in chapter two and the peace offering of chapter three. It is not said, by the way, and we'll talk about this next Sunday, it is not said of the sin and the guilt offerings. The first three offerings, the bird offering, the grain offering, and the peace slash friendship offering, are called food offerings. It's as though, and this is an anthropomorphism, it's as though God has a mouth with teeth, a digestive system, taste buds, and we are bringing him food. And as the smoke comes off of the altar, it is as though God takes a big whiff of it, and it's really sweet. and it's an aroma that is pleasing to him. Now here's the point. The main theme of these first three voluntary food offerings is that God is pleased by them. How can Israel, an unholy, defiled, unclean, sinful people please the Lord? And the first three chapters of the book of Leviticus says, bring him the offerings that he desires. A burnt offering, a grain offering, a peace fellowship offering. If you will bring those to the Lord, the Lord himself will be pleased. Chapter one, the burnt offering. This is sometimes translated the whole burnt offering. And the reason why is that it's the only one of the offerings where the entire animal is consumed by fire. All of the other five over there on the individual family offerings, all of the others have a portion that's set aside to be eaten by the priest, the one who is giving the sacrifice, or both. But this first offering, the burnt offering, the whole burnt offering, all of it is consumed. Now there are three types of these burnt offerings. In verses three through nine, he speaks of an offering from the herd, cattle. If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish. He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before the Lord. He shall lay his hands on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. Then he shall kill the bull before Yahweh, and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting. Then he shall flay the burnt offering, cut it into pieces. And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall put fire on the altar, arrange wood on the fire. And Aaron's sons, the priests, shall arrange the pieces, the head, the fat, on the wood that is on the fire of the altar. Its entrails and its legs he shall wash with water. And the priest shall burn all of it on the altar as a burnt offering, a food offering. with a pleasing aroma to Yahweh. If you don't have a cow, a bull, you can bring something from the flock, sheep or a goat. It also has to be a male and without blemish. And if you don't have either of those, maybe you're somebody that's very, very poor, but you want to bring a burnt offering and you can't afford cattle and you can't afford sheep. What about you? But the Lord says go get a dove, go get a pigeon, you can find those and bring those in verses 14 through 17. Now here's the procedure. First of all the animal must be without blemish. You offer God your best, not your worst. Don't go looking around and seeing what you can live without and then bring that to him, right? It's brought to the courtyard where the priest stands. So let's just picture this up here, okay? Now, the tabernacle is a giant enclosed area that is enclosed by a curtain all the way around it, okay? It's a rectangular place. It faces to the east. So let's imagine that this platform area represents the tabernacle. There's a giant courtyard that sits on the east end. And in that courtyard, dominating the courtyard, is an altar. The altar has four horns that come out on each of the corners of the altar itself. Then on the west end of this enclosure, there's a tent. And in that tent, there are two places, there are two rooms, if you will. There is the holy place, and then there is the most holy place, and dividing those two, there is this big, thick curtain, okay? Now, when you want to offer a burnt offering, you come into the courtyard, into the end of this area that's a door, and you bring your bull or your goat or your turtle dove, and you present it to the priest. Now, this is the way the sacrifice is going to happen. The altar has to be burning. God gives instructions that the fire is never supposed to go out of the altar. It is always supposed to be going. So you've brought a bull, and the bull is going to be sacrificed. The priest will tell you that you are to take your hand and put it on the bull. It represents your identification with this animal. This animal is your substitute. It's dying in your place. It is your gift, your offering to the Lord. So you put one hand on the bull, then with the other hand you take a knife and you wrap it around the head of the bull to its neck and you slit it. You cut the carotid artery. I want you to think about this for a moment. This is the way we do things today. In a slaughterhouse, somebody takes a gun, puts it up to the front of the bull, and it's over like that. This is slow. It's painful. Every time that heart beats, there's another squirt of blood that comes out. It's messy. The animal groans, begins to move until finally, its legs give out, and it falls to the ground. Everything here is designed to awaken your senses to how seriously God takes your sin. And if you're prone to downplay your disobediences, to downplay your sin, this is designed to get your attention. to make you wake up and think, this is how I have offended a holy God and this ought to be me. But you're not done. Because as the priest are stoking the fire on top of the altar, it's your responsibility as the person that brought the sacrifice to take that knife and now you've got to begin to cut it up into pieces. So that the entire thing, is ultimately positioned by the priest on top of the altar and it's burning. Now you've listened to the groans of the animal, you have watched him die, you have gotten dirty and filthy by all of the blood, and now its flesh is burning. Do you know what burning flesh smells like? A number of years ago, I had a wart right there. So I went to the doctor, and I said, can you give me something to get rid of the wart? They said, oh, we'll do it right now. She went and got a soldering iron. And she burned that wart. Now, she had numbed it so I wasn't feeling the burning, but I was smelling it. You know what it smells like? And it's this that God says is a pleasing aroma in his nostrils. Think about this. The priest then take a portion of the blood and with their hands they begin to splatter it on the sides of the altar. So when you've seen these pictures of the altar you know it looks gold and it's beautiful and it's all clean. No. It's dirty, it's filthy, and that's the way it's supposed to be. Because it's all about our sins. This is an atonement for sin, according to verse four. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. But it is atonement in general. It's about sin in general. It's also called a food offering for the Lord, the smoke of which, as we've seen, is a pleasing aroma to him, verse nine. Now, in other places of scripture, it's associated with the dedication of people or things to the Lord, Exodus 29 and 40. Special occasions, like Numbers 10, 10. When somebody makes vows and gives other offerings, Numbers 15, 13, Psalm 66, 13. It's associated with prayer and petitions and songs of praise, 1 Samuel 7-9, 2 Chronicles 29-27-28. It is also to invoke the Lord's presence and request his help. The burnt offering is kind of the Swiss army knife of the sacrifices of Israel. It's something that does a little bit of everything. But in our message today, I want you to think of it as this. When somebody voluntarily brings a burnt offering, they are invoking God's blessing upon their life and their family's life through faith in a substitute that has been offered for them. That's what the burnt offering is. So you can imagine if you go years and years and years and you never bring a burnt offering, What does that say about your relationship to this covenant God? It's kind of like Christians today who go year after year and decade after decade and never just spontaneously stop and say, Lord, I am overwhelmed by your goodness. I'm amazed at how you have blessed us. I am so thankful and I want to express it as a offering of thanksgiving to you. The idea that you've accepted me because a substitute has died in my place. I need your blessing. What kind of person would you be? What kind of Christian would you be if you never did any of that? Chapter two, there's the grain offering. Unlike the offering of chapter one, the bird offering, this has no animal associated with it. It's just grain. And there are five options for you. We won't read them all. You can do this in chapter two. But the five options are these. You can bring uncooked wheat flour, which is then placed on the altar. That's verses two through four. I'm sorry, two through three. You could take loaves and bake them in an oven and then bring them to the altar, verse four. You can cook it on a griddle and make small little cakes, verses five through six. You can cook it in a pan, verses seven through eight. Or you can bring roasted ears of barley that aren't made into anything and they're placed upon the altar and they are offered there. Now, here's what I want you to notice. There's several things here that are important for you to know about the grain offering. First of all, incense is put on the loose grain to give it an aroma. The cooked grain would have an aroma of its own. But he says in verse one, when anyone brings a grain offering as an offering to the Lord, his offering shall be a fine flour. He shall pour oil on it and put frankincense on it, that is incense, and bring it to Aaron's sons, the priest. And he shall take from it a handful of fine flour and oil, and with all of its frankincense, and the priest shall burn this as a memorial portion on the altar." Very important phrase. A food offering, just like the bird offering was, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to Yahweh. But the rest of the grain offering shall be for Aaron and his sons, and because of that, he says, it is a most holy part of the Lord's food offerings. If you ever wonder how the Levites live, because they don't have a farm ground to take care of. They don't have flocks or herds. They live because people bring offerings. And they eat part of the offerings that they are given except for the first one, the bird offering. Incense is put on this loose grain to give it aroma. And this offering was to produce a pleasing aroma before the Lord. But it's also called, in verse two, a memorial. A portion is given to the priest as a memorial. That is, this offering commemorates God's covenant promises to Israel. Now, the genesis of this particular offering is all the way back in the book of Genesis. In Genesis chapter 18, Three men show up and visit with Abraham. We discover that one of those men is really the Lord, and the other two men are angels that come with him. And you know if you've got visitors that show up, you start scrambling to find food for them, right? And so Abraham goes and he gets some morsels of bread to tie them over while he runs out to the herd to find something to slaughter and cook and roast for them all. And it is in connection with him giving this grain offering to the Lord and the angels there that the Lord turns and says, I have two words for you, Abraham, two messages that you need to know. Number one, a year from now, your wife is going to give birth to that long expected, long promised child that you have been waiting for. Within a year, it's going to happen. The covenant promises that I made to you are now going to be fulfilled for you. That's promise number one. The second message that I have for you is a message of judgment. The cities of the plains that nephew Lot lives in, Sodom and Gomorrah and the others, I'm going to destroy. So this memorial meal that's given to Aaron is like a remembrance of the covenant fulfillment that God makes to his people. so that he gives them what he has promised to them. And just as Abraham gave the Lord this grain offering, so Israel is to now give this grain offering to the Lord. There's more. In addition to putting incense on the loose grain, they are to leave out two things. Look at verse 11. No grain offering 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. Leaven and food will make it impure. Leave it out, but there is something that you must include. Verse 13, 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. No leaven, no honey, but make sure, and your cardiologist would not like this, make sure that all the offerings that you give to the Lord must have salt. Why salt? He calls it the salt of the covenant. And the answer is that salt's a permanent thing. Sodium chloride in its purest form does not degrade. It doesn't become anything else. And because of that, it's a beautiful picture of the covenant promises that God makes with us. Just as salt is eternal, God's covenant is eternal. You can count on it. But there's also something else here. And just like when Abraham is told by the Lord that one, I'm going to fulfill my promise to you, and two, I'm going to judge these nations, salt carries the same connotations. On one hand, I am going to make a covenant with you that will be forever. But on the other hand, if you fail to live up to the terms of my covenant, you will suffer loss. Now here's why that is. In the ancient world, one king takes over another king, right? And that king brings in, brings in the conquered king, brings them before the Lord, brings them before himself, and he says to him, I'm gonna make a covenant with you. But this covenant is conditioned upon your obedience. If you do not obey me, you're going to face consequences. And one of the consequences that they faced is that they would take salt, bring it out into the ground, the land of the conquered king, and he would salt all of their ground so that they could not grow anything. Right? So this says to the nation of Israel, it is very important that you individually keep covenant with me By the way, it's not an accident that after the Lord destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife turns around and looks back, and what does she become? A pillar of salt. Chapter three, the peace slash fellowship offering. It's called peace because the Hebrew word that is translated peace here is shelamim, It's derived ultimately from the word shalom. Shalom has a wide range of meanings including communion, fellowship, shared. This is the only offering of these five where the person that brings the offering gets to share in the meal with the priest, the Levite. It's a food offering for the Lord and it's a food offering for the one who brought it and that's why sometimes it's called not a peace offering but a fellowship offering. You are in this offering bringing it before the Lord. Here's what he says in verse one of chapter three. 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 Yahweh. 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. So this is exactly what was happening with the burnt offering, except the burnt offering is only males. This can be a male or female as long as it doesn't have blemish. Take your Bibles and turn over as we're given more details about this in chapter 7. Look at verse 11. And this is the law of sacrifice of peace offerings that one may offer to Yahweh if he offers it for a thanksgiving. Then he shall offer with thanksgiving sacrifice unleavened loaves mixed with oil, unleavened wafers smeared with oil, and loaves of fine flour well mixed with oil. So in addition to the animal, he's bringing loaves of food. And portions of that loaf will go to the priest and portions of it will be left to him. Portions of the sacrifice on top of the altar the priest will eat and portions of it he will eat. This is a fellowship offering, a food offering that we share in it. Now the purpose of all of this is Thanksgiving, chapter 7 verses 12 through 15, we just read that. Then look at verse 16. But if the sacrifice of his offering is a vow offering, or a free will offering, it shall be eaten on the day that he offers his sacrifice and on the next day what remains of it shall also be eaten. So this peace or fellowship offering can be an offering of thanksgiving. It could be a time when someone was making a vow to the Lord to solemnize it in a sacrifice. Or it could be free will. The Lord has blessed us. It's wonderful. I want to just give. The Lord hasn't required this of me. I just want to give. It's like a Christian today saying to his spouse or her spouse, the Lord has just blessed us amazingly in the last six months. Why don't we write a check out and send it to some missionaries? Voluntary, free will. That's what it is because we share fellowship with them. This is dining with the Lord. It's communing with him, fellowshipping, because you're at peace with the Lord who is pleased with us. Now, let's wrap all of this up. I want to give you a picture. As we continue through the book of Leviticus, I want you to remember this picture, okay? I want you to think of everything that we're seeing in the book of Leviticus as a beam of light that goes through a prism, and when it goes through the prism, it comes out on the other side refracted. Everything that we're reading in this book of Leviticus is like that beam of light that comes. All of these sacrifices, the work of the priest, all of the process of cleaning ourselves before the Lord, it all comes to Christ and then on the other side, through the rest of the New Testament, it gets refracted in a bunch of different ways. Now, how do we refract these three offerings through Christ? First of all, God is already pleased with you. He is. In terms of your justification, God cannot be more pleased with you than he already is and it's because he has placed you in his son Jesus Christ, his beloved son in whom he is well pleased. Who offered himself as an atoning sacrifice, a burnt offering, a grain offering, a fellowship offering. And it was as pleasing a Roma before God the Father and he accepted it. And if you through faith have been united with Christ, he accepts you. Your sin has been atoned for. You are found righteous in him and you don't get more righteous in terms of your justification than you already are. But in terms of our sanctification, as our brother Greg taught this morning in Sunday school. There are many passages in the New Testament that speak of behavior that is pleasing to the Lord. In 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 4, Paul aims to please God and not man. In 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 1, he taught the Thessalonians how to live and please God. In 1 John 3, verse 22, to keep God's commandments equals to do what pleases Him. So in terms of your justification, you're not trying to sacrifice things in order to please Him. Christ has pleased Him for you, and if through repentance and faith you have been united with Christ, that's all you need. You're not offering sacrifices to atone for your sin. There is one sacrifice that has already been made and that atonement has been accepted in the court of heaven and there is no need for another one. But in terms of your growth in sanctification, how you live, how you obey, how you put on and put off, as Greg was talking about this morning, there is behavior that is pleasing to him and there is behavior that is displeasing to him. And we are to make it our aim that we please the Lord. So how do we please the Lord under the new covenant? Thinking of these three sacrifices. God is pleased when like in the bird offering, We approach him and ask his blessings while trusting in the sacrifice of his son that he is made to atone for our sins. And in the grain offering, God is pleased when we remember his covenant promises to us in Christ, just as Abraham believed the Lord. So we believe and hold on to those promises even when it seems unlikely. And like in the fellowship offering, God is pleased when we fellowship with him in worship. And that brings us to this table. This table has its genesis in the Passover meal. And the Passover meal is a form of fellowship offering. A lamb is slain, its blood is spread, and then the family gathers Those unleavened loaves they take and they break and they eat. And as we come to this table today this is how that fellowship offering has been refracted in Christ. It is a memorial meal like the grain offering except this time we're not giving it to the Lord He's giving it to us. He's saying to us, those covenant promises that I have made to you in the Lord Jesus, I'm not going to forget them. When I told you that your sins were forgiven and pardoned and your guilt was removed and I have clothed you in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, I'm not changing my mind. And as you eat of this bread and you drink of this cup, you memorialize what I have done for you. So eat it and drink it in faith, because in doing so, your doubts can dissipate, and your faith can be strengthened, and your heart can be emboldened, and your commitment to obey and to keep His commandments become stronger. This is the family meal, the memorial meal for all of us. Now if you're here today and you're not yet a believer, you haven't yet repented of your sins and trusted in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ or maybe you have but you haven't yet made it public through your baptism. We're gonna ask you not to participate in this meal, because just as salt speaks of the eternality of God's judgment, of his promises, but also the severity of his judgment, so this meal does the same thing, and that's why Paul says to the Corinthians, be sure that you don't take this meal in an unworthy manner, and the most unworthy manner you could take it is by eating it just because everybody else is, and not because the reality is true for you. As the men come forward, I'm going to ask the Lord's blessing on this meal and then we're going to participate in it together. Our Father, we thank you for the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given himself as a burnt offering, a grain offering, a fellowship offering. that we might commune with you and know the glory of the eternal covenant. We're grateful for the emblems that we have of bread and cup that speak to us of the blood that was shed and the body that was given. We ask that as we take of this that you will come as you have come over and over again and manifest your presence to your people. Dwell with us in grace and mercy and love and kindness. For it is in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord that we pray this, amen.