Leviticus

Before class an older brother asked me a very good question: in Leviticus, is there a sacrifice that does not involve blood?

There is one, the grain offering, and we will come to it today. The complication is that in most cases the grain offering is presented together with the burnt offering. No blood is shed in the grain offering itself, yet it remains tied to that offering which is given up entirely; the two are done together.

So why must blood be shed at all? Because blood stands for life. Scripture explains this for us:

“For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.”　Leviticus 17:11

Write this verse down. It has two points. The first is the opening clause: the life of the creature is in the blood, and therefore atonement can only happen when life stands in for life—because there is life in the blood, it can atone.

People who do not think from Scripture arrive quite naturally at another idea: wouldn’t it be far easier, in modern terms, to pay money and buy an indulgence? But a principle of Scripture stands in the way: what has no life cannot stand in for what has life. If the lifeless could substitute for the living, the sale of indulgences would be perfectly reasonable. And you know how much corruption indulgences brought into church history, how much darkness, down to social injustice and a hard wall between the poor and the rich. When Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, this was precisely the matter at hand. So Scripture says that only life can cover life; a lifeless substance cannot take the place of a life. Write that down.

And yet the blood of bulls and goats cannot cover a human life, because they are animals; how could an animal stand in for the human being who bears God’s honored image? The Psalm said so long ago: “Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?” Psalm 50:13 What God wants is “a broken and contrite heart” Psalm 51:17.

So we come back to what the LORD makes plain in Leviticus. When we know that we have sinned and a living animal loses its breath in front of us, God means for us to understand with absolute clarity that sin costs a life. And still the animal cannot replace a human life, because only life stands in for life. That is why the New Testament brings us Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, dwelling among us. Jesus is like us in every way, and so his blood, his life, can truly cover our life. The sacrifices of the old covenant became a shadow, announcing the precious blood that would really have power.

The second point is the clause people so often pass over: I have given it to you.

Look carefully. This blood is not something we produce by our own doing. Goats, bulls, doves—all of them are God’s creatures, and no one manufactures a sacrificial animal. That God gives the blood of these creatures to us means that in the matter of atonement a person can do nothing whatever by his own works. Even when he leads the animal to the altar of burnt offering and presents it, Scripture says of that blood that God has given it to us.

Do you remember the first lesson? To sacrifice means above all to draw near to God, and the gift of the sacrifice is exactly the gift God himself has provided. So this too is an announcement: Jesus Christ is likewise the one God provided for us, the true sacrifice. With that, the revelation of the Old and the New Testament joins up. Romans says we are saved not by works but by grace. The blood of the sacrifices does not take away human sin, but God provided his own only Son to take it away for us. Jesus Christ is the greatest sacrifice God provided for us, and the finest gift. I think this is a truth you already know well from church.

I have to say it plainly: Leviticus is not an easy book to read. That is why, in preparing, I wanted to go over the overview once more.

To read this book you have to stand inside the situation Israel was in. They had just come out of Egyptian culture and were about to enter a still more complicated Canaanite culture. History and archaeology tell us that the wickedness of Canaan far exceeded that of Egypt. So Exodus and Leviticus are to be read together: the LORD is speaking to a company that has just escaped Egypt and now stands in the wilderness.

Then we also have to ask: from the standpoint of the New Testament, what did Jesus Christ accomplish? That is the work running through this whole term—how Leviticus connects to the New Testament, and especially to the grace of justification by faith in Romans. This is not only a matter of understanding it in thought and logic. The more pressing question is: what is God saying through Leviticus to you, here, in your life today? And how do we answer? Not simply to hold one more piece of knowledge.

Here is a term you may not have heard, and it is worth writing down: biblical theology.

In church we usually speak of systematic theology. It treats the triune God, Christology, the doctrine of humanity. Its method is like taking a knife straight through the whole Bible and lifting out the matching elements: where the Old Testament speaks of Christ, where of the Holy Spirit, where of the LORD; where the New Testament speaks of the LORD, of the triune God. All of it is cut out and studied together.

I am more drawn to another angle, biblical theology. The two are not opposed; they simply look from different sides. Biblical theology adds one important element: time. It follows the sequence of time and watches how God speaks to his people. Read the Old Testament with that in view and you see that God speaks in words Israel could understand, in their own situation around 1500 BC. That is why there were sacrifices then—Jesus Christ had not yet offered himself. Only in the New Testament is that one offering complete. In the old covenant only the blood of animals was offered; in the new, Jesus Christ took our human form and became like us in every way, and so his blood can stand in our place.

We also see that the LORD calls Moses from the tent of meeting. We covered this in the first lesson—do you remember? God calls. God calls his people to draw near to him. God speaks in order to have dealings with us.

So by what means does God speak throughout Leviticus? Brothers and sisters, God speaks through the ritual of sacrifice. He speaks through the ritual.

Does ritual matter, then? We talked about it in the first lesson: it matters a great deal. The crowning of an emperor is a ritual; baptism is a ritual, a wedding is a ritual; and even when a person reaches the end of the road, the funeral his family holds for him is a weighty ritual. The ritual itself never stops speaking.

And how does a person speak through the ritual? God speaks to his people through the ritual, and the people, in practicing it again and again, come to experience God speaking.

The ritual in Leviticus is not something you listen to while sitting at home; it calls for action. You know what I mean: it is meant to be practiced without letting up. At the festivals the people slaughtered the animals and presented the various offerings, and in those very motions they experienced, again and again, the presence of God’s word.

Jesus Christ speaks to us in the New Testament as well, which is why this speaking matters so much. We no longer have the old covenant system of sacrifice, but God speaks to us through Scripture, through the text, to his people today. Israel drew near to God by obeying the ritual; so how do we today answer God’s speaking, the way Israel lived through those rituals?

That brings us back to what one of our pastors keeps saying, and I agree with him entirely: we are to practice, day after day, in our quiet time, and to practice in one-to-one discipleship. Without practice there is no way to understand how we experience God speaking to us.

Look through the whole Bible: why do some believers grow quickly and others never get off the spot? Ask whether he knows—he seems to know. Ask whether he does not know—he really does not seem to know either. It stays permanently vague. Ask him about justification by faith and he seems to know it; press him on what the gospel is and what justification by faith means, and he cannot put it into words. Where is the hinge? The hinge is obedience and practice.

What Leviticus gives us is this: obeying God again and again within the ritual of sacrifice, and practicing again and again; and that corresponds to what we do today in our churches when we read Scripture and draw near to the Lord—in meaning it is the same thing. Without practice, without accepting this ritual, you do not get inside. You open the Bible, you open the text, you become quiet for a moment, you prepare ahead of time—only then do you enter that condition, a kind of ritual atmosphere, and so your time with the Lord begins. I also hear from brothers and sisters in Taiwan that on Saturdays, before Bible study, they sit up straight, open the Bible, prepare a little, and settle down. That is a practice of ritual, and for us it is exactly the same.

Here we come back to that brother’s question. That atonement is carried in the blood has to be understood against the background of Canaanite culture. The gods of Canaan are nothing like the LORD: in their world an unclean power is at work, sorcery is practiced, children are offered up—“Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.” Leviticus 18:21

Leviticus does not speak that way. It says that God is a holy God, and how holy he is. You do not draw near to him by any power a person can generate, not by divination, not by consulting the dead, not by sorcery. In Leviticus God tells us plainly: you need not guess; by this way you may come near to me. By what way? By the distinction between clean and unclean, by the distinction between holy and common.

Last week we also spoke about the center of the book. Leviticus has twenty-seven chapters, and the Day of Atonement in chapter sixteen is something like the summit. Chapters one to fifteen deal with how a person is made clean and draws near to God; and once we have worked our way over the summit of chapter sixteen, carrying God’s blessing and promise with us, we have to ask how we live a set-apart life that belongs to God.

So Leviticus has three key words, and you should certainly write them down: holiness, sacrifice, atonement.

Holiness tells us that a person has no holiness of his own. We talked about this last time: what people take for holiness is a cleanness of will and conduct, but the holiness Scripture speaks of points to God—he himself is holiness in its very being. Only in him, only within that holiness, can a person live out holiness. Move away from that holiness, stay outside him, and there is no holiness. A person cannot have holiness on his own. So the one condition is to draw near to him, to keep close to him.

That is why Leviticus keeps saying: people are unclean, people are defiled—what then? Through the regulations of holiness, through the rituals of holiness, so that they may draw near to him and return to the state of holiness that was theirs from the beginning. And this is exactly what the New Testament answers. What is the most important phrase in Paul’s letters? “In Christ.” In Christ you have new life; in Christ you can live the life God delights in; in Christ there is a holy life. Colossians says the same thing: God “brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves” Colossians 1:13—which is to say, into the grace that is in Christ, into all the fullness that is in Christ, into the life that is in Christ; only there can the likeness of Christ be lived. The Old Testament puts it this way: in the holy God you can live out holiness; outside the holy God you have no holiness.

Holiness, then, has a boundary line. In my daily reading this week I happened to come to Ezekiel, and there too is a wall that separates the holy from the common: “So he measured the area on all four sides. It had a wall around it, five hundred cubits long and five hundred cubits wide, to separate the holy from the common.” Ezekiel 42:20 That is an important picture. In the same way, sacrifice is the way of reconciliation with God, coming into his presence with a gift; and as for the idea of atonement, we will take that up together when we come to the sin offering.

I had hoped to get through all five offerings in chapters one to seven today, but I do not think it is possible. I would rather follow our own line of thought and stop where the details deserve it.

Can you list them? The five offerings of Leviticus are the burnt offering, the grain offering, the fellowship offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering. Write those five down.

They stand for five different relationships in life. When we come before God it is not only a matter of atonement; we also bring the burnt offering, the fellowship offering, the grain offering. Last week we covered the burnt offering; the grain offering and the fellowship offering are new today.

On the wording: the NIV calls the third offering the “fellowship offering,” while the Chinese Bible has “peace offering,” with “thank offering” noted as an alternative. The English rendering carries the sense of shared table that the speaker draws on; the German Lutherbibel has “Dankopfer,” a thank offering.

The first three are called voluntary offerings, offerings of a willing heart; they have little to do with sin. The last two, the sin offering and the guilt offering, are required, obligatory offerings.

Why are the first three voluntary? Open your Bible and mark this. Chapter one deals with the burnt offering: “When anyone among you brings an offering to the LORD, bring as your offering an animal from either the herd or the flock.” Leviticus 1:2 From the context you can see that this offering, which God accepts, has nothing to do with sin—even though the words “to make atonement for you” appear here. I will come to that shortly.

Chapter two, verse one: “When anyone brings a grain offering to the LORD, their offering is to be of the finest flour. They are to pour olive oil on it, put incense on it” Leviticus 2:1—again “when anyone,” a matter of a person’s own willingness, with no tie to sin. And in God’s sight, “the rest of the grain offering belongs to Aaron and his sons; it is a most holy part of the food offerings presented to the LORD.” Leviticus 2:3

Chapter three deals with the fellowship offering: “If your offering is a fellowship offering, and you offer an animal from the herd, whether male or female, you are to present before the LORD an animal without defect.” Leviticus 3:1 This too is presented to the LORD as a food offering, an aroma pleasing to him. So the first three offerings are brought by a person willingly, out of a glad heart.

This is the part that matters: God does not extract them by force. But when, in your life, in the whole span of your years, you bring such offerings willingly, they are a pleasing aroma to God, they are accepted, he counts them good.

With the sin offering the wording changes: “When anyone sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD’s commands” Leviticus 4:2—then he must do such and such. There is a condition here: you have unintentionally done what God forbids, and so this offering is required of you. The same holds for the guilt offering, from chapter five, verse fifteen: “When anyone is unfaithful to the LORD by sinning unintentionally in regard to any of the LORD’s holy things, they are to bring to the LORD as a penalty a ram from the flock, one without defect” Leviticus 5:15.

Here is the distinction to make. With the first three offerings the word is “accepted”—“You are to lay your hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on your behalf to make atonement for you.” Leviticus 1:4 With the last two the words are “they will be forgiven”—“The priest will make atonement for them with the ram as a guilt offering, and they will be forgiven.” Leviticus 5:16

One is being accepted, the other being forgiven; the conditions are not the same.

I ask myself: do I come before God only after I have done something wrong and need forgiveness? Or are there also times when nobody is pressing me and nothing has happened, and I simply give myself willingly, so that he may take pleasure in me?

Last week we went over the burnt offering. Write this in your Bible or your notes: the burnt offering means the whole offering. The Hebrew word behind it means “to go up” (עֹלָה, olah), what burns and rises to God. So it is a complete and total giving; nothing is held back, and that is why it can be called the whole offering.

We walked through this last week and I will not repeat it. Cattle, sheep, doves—according to what a person can afford; but there is only one condition, that the animal be without defect. Without defect means whole, of good quality, not picked carelessly.

Last week we came to the point where he lays his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and “it will be accepted on your behalf to make atonement for you” Leviticus 1:4.

You know why some people come to a service and clearly receive something, why some receive much in worship; and why others drift in, keep their distance, and—whatever their time, their attitude, their conduct—always seem to remain outsiders. I look at it through this Old Testament condition: laying the hand on the head of the burnt offering.

What does the phrase mean? The animal stands for the person. All his thoughts, all his intentions, his life, have as it were jumped into that animal; there is a deep bond between the two. In our reasoning we know the animal stands for the person; but in the practice of the people at that time, the word for laying on the hand means pressing down, pressing in with weight. Not a light touch, but a heavy press.

It marks a movement of commitment. He throws himself in for real. Some people sacrifice casually, bring an animal along, and just want the ritual over with; others sacrifice from the heart and let the animal truly take their place. There is a large difference between the two. Some go through a service as though wading through a formality; you come to church because you have to, and you are not really there at all. Others are there with their whole heart, as though they had to lay themselves on the altar. The difference is very, very great.

I have to admit that some people in church are in the service with their minds elsewhere; in Taiwanese we say “a soul with no body,” like a scarecrow—the person is here, the thoughts are not. But there are also those for whom everything is present: the person, the heart, every intention.

Can you follow? The sacrifices of Leviticus went on for one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred years; and by the time of the kings, was the people’s worship more a matter of getting through the ritual, or of genuine self-giving? We can see it clearly: within the ritual, the faith of genuine self-giving thinned out more and more, and every time the ritual was simply completed—come before God, do it this way, and that is that. The feeling of ritual grew thicker and thicker, until the people fell into a state where outwardly they kept the LORD’s commands while our hearts had gone far from him.

This is exactly what Leviticus was meant to deal with. So this person is to press down hard, to jump in hard, as though his whole self were leaping onto the head of that animal.

At this point a sister asked a very good question: chapter one, verse four—if the first three offerings are voluntary and accepted by God, why does the burnt offering end with the words “to make atonement for you”?

That is exactly what gave me such trouble at the time. I asked several teachers I trust, and several brothers as well, and found no answer with them. Later I heard the Leviticus course by Hu Weihua on GOODTV’s Bible Institute of the Air, and that gave me some direction for thinking it through. There are several points, a little technical; feel free to take them down.

First, the burnt offering names no specific transgression. It does not say, as the sin offering and the guilt offering do, “when anyone sins unintentionally.”

Second, the burnt offering does not use the word “forgiven,” only “accepted.”

Third, the burnt offering is brought at a person’s own initiative, while the sin offering is required of him.

Fourth, and this matters: the blood of the burnt offering is splashed against the sides of the altar—“You are to slaughter the young bull before the LORD, and then Aaron’s sons the priests shall bring the blood and splash it against the sides of the altar at the entrance to the tent of meeting” Leviticus 1:5; the blood of the sin offering, by contrast, is sprinkled before the curtain of the sanctuary—“He is to dip his finger into the blood and sprinkle some of it seven times before the LORD, in front of the curtain of the sanctuary” Leviticus 4:6. The two are not the same.

And where does the word “burnt offering” first appear in the Bible? Do you know? With Noah:

“Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.’”　Genesis 8:20-22

Note this: it is not the first sacrifice in the Bible—Cain and Abel had already sacrificed. But this is the first place the word “burnt offering” appears.

The atonement here points to that offense between the Creator and the creature, the sin that has been there since Adam and Eve. For its premise is the corruption before chapter eight: everything people did was evil. When we studied Genesis we spent a long time on it; that corruption is like rotting meat—nobody eats meat once it has gone bad, it only gets worse, and there is no coming back. So God brought the flood to stop it. And when the flood had receded, Scripture returns to the order God laid down, and this altar became the bridge of reconciliation between God and humanity.

So the atonement here is more like a sinfulness a person carries from birth; not the consequence of one particular act, but the fact that I am guilty before God to begin with. I offend him constantly, not because I have slipped up in this or that matter. It is a creature’s permanent resistance to the Creator, that unwillingness to obey, that unwillingness to be humbled. Noah built an altar to the LORD and offered a burnt offering; this burnt offering is the bridge of communication, and at the same time it makes atonement before God for the wickedness of the human race that had just taken place. So it is not for one person’s one transgression.

That is why the burnt offering carries a hidden function of atonement. In the text the LORD says in his heart that he will never again curse the ground because of humans. Do you see it? The Creator’s curse on the creature comes to a stop, even though Adam and Eve’s evil, their sin, is present there. And the text says “every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood,” as though a person brought something with him from birth—what we call original sin, though I am not fond of the term, but let us use it for now—a person resists God by nature. This differs from the sin spoken of later in the sin offering and the guilt offering, and it differs from hidden sin as well. What is in view here is the relationship between Creator and creature.

So the atoning power of the burnt offering lies here: it stands for a person’s complete obedience. Whatever standing I have—my standing obeys, my conduct obeys, and I bow completely before this Creator. My thoughts and intentions ask God to cleanse them; through this offering I ask him to accept me entirely. I know I am only a creature, and that I resist him often; but Lord, accept me, this creature who offends you again and again.

Now to chapter six. Verse eight says, “The LORD said to Moses,” and verse nine, “Give Aaron and his sons this command: ‘These are the regulations for the burnt offering.’”

In your Bible you can see the word “priest” there. In fact chapters six and seven weave together the duties of the priests and the duties of the people. It is mainly about how the priests lead the people in the burnt offering; but from the other side, the people are also to receive the priests’ word and to work with the leading they are given, so that the offering can be made. For us that means: what is said to the priests is said to the people. It is exactly the same thing.

“The burnt offering is to remain on the altar hearth throughout the night, till morning, and the fire must be kept burning on the altar.”　Leviticus 6:9

What does “kept burning” mean? It means remain, it means to continue. Write down remain, or keep, meaning to hold on to. In our Chinese way of putting it: it is to last, to endure, to be kept ready—this fire is never to stop burning. And that is another reason it is called the whole offering.

So it pictures a person who keeps moving forward before God and never stops. Whether in daily life, at work, in worship, at church or away from it, all your life long it is remain and keep, jumping onto God’s altar again and again and again. That is why it is called the whole offering. And of the five offerings this one is the most basic; all the others rest on it.

“Throughout the night, till morning” carries weight too. This is the Hebrew day, and the Hebrew day begins in the evening—“And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.” Genesis 1:5

So how is the fire kept burning? The text says: “The fire on the altar must be kept burning; it must not go out. Every morning the priest is to add firewood and arrange the burnt offering on the fire and burn the fat of the fellowship offerings on it.” Leviticus 6:12

Two things stand here: wood, and the fat of the fellowship offering. The fellowship offering is the offering of communion, and this fat stands for the joy that comes out of it; it helps the fire keep burning. You need not only wood, you need the fat of fellowship as well.

Brothers and sisters, how are we to keep burning? You walk on, and at some point you find yourself alone. When service in the church gets harder and harder, how do you keep a fresh and glad heart, how do you keep offering the burnt offering?

The secret is here. First, you need wood; you have to go up the mountain and gather it—which means you need God’s word and everything he gives you. Second, you need fat, and this fat comes from the fellowship offering. The fellowship offering is also the offering of communion, and communion is the joy that arises among brothers and sisters in the church, like our love feasts. What drips down in fellowship, in people’s dealings with one another, that fat, is the most precious and the richest thing; it helps the wood burn. For a church this matters enormously.

Anyone who has grilled meat knows it. Whether you are grilling beef or anything else, when the fat drips onto the wood, does it not help the fire flare up? That is the point. The two work together: how does the burnt offering keep burning? You need God’s word, and you need the joy of being with brothers and sisters, the joy of the church. Otherwise you will not get far. Wood with no fat will not carry you.

So the burnt offering means being given up entirely. In our lives we need God’s word, and we need the support of brothers and sisters in the church, so that we can keep burning. Our whole life is to be given, our whole self given entirely.

One more line: “a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the LORD” Leviticus 1:9. It means a food offering God accepts. God often speaks with us this way, as though the scent satisfied him. Of course this does not mean God eats meat; it is a literary way of speaking, and it says that here a person has found God’s pleasure, so that the relationship between God and humanity is set right.

We will stop with the burnt offering here. The burnt offering is the most important one; if you have not given yourself entirely, a sin offering will do you no good either. For it is the offering that keeps burning, standing for our whole selves given up and used by the Lord. From Scripture’s standpoint it is the first offering, and the most important standard among all five.

Before we move to the grain offering, a brother had one more question: when Abraham made the covenant he cut the animals in two, then fell asleep, and God himself passed between the pieces—was that a burnt offering?

Let us look at Genesis fifteen. Verse ten: “Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half.” This is a covenant sacrifice; Scripture does not say outright what kind of offering it is. The weight of that passage falls on the covenant between God and a human being. The names and classifications of the offerings are revealed clearly only in Leviticus; there the burnt offering, the fellowship offering, and the grain offering come into focus.

My own view is this: where Scripture does not say, you may think of it in terms of the burnt offering, because the burnt offering is the most basic of them all, something like the condition of reconciliation between God and humanity. Did I not just speak of Noah? That is where the word burnt offering first appears, and there the anger between God and humanity comes to rest; we covered it when we studied Genesis—it is the relationship of reconciliation. And a sacrifice as such carries the meaning of covenant; whether grain offering, fellowship offering, sin offering, or guilt offering, the sacrifice is itself a sign of covenant. As far as I am concerned, you may regard it as a burnt offering without difficulty; only Scripture does not say so.

Another brother added Genesis fifteen, verse seventeen: “When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.” If there is fire burning, it ought to be a burnt offering. You may say so, and I agree. That is why I say the burnt offering is the most basic of them all; only the words “burnt offering” do not appear, and you may take it that way. It is certainly not a grain offering, and not a fellowship offering either, since the fellowship offering always has to do with communion; nor a sin offering, since there is no offense there, no unintentional sin, and no regulation of restitution. By elimination, the burnt offering is indeed the likeliest.

The grain offering is the second offering and also the people’s most everyday one. Read the whole passage and you will notice there is no animal in it. It is brought from the things of ordinary life. Let us look at four elements; mark them if you like.

First, the finest flour. Second, oil. Third, firstfruits—“If you bring a grain offering of firstfruits to the LORD, offer crushed heads of new grain roasted in the fire” Leviticus 2:14; much of this is fresh, coming from the fields of daily life. Fourth, incense: “their offering is to be of the finest flour. They are to pour olive oil on it, put incense on it” Leviticus 2:1.

Along with these there is something essential: the offering is to be mixed with oil, and one thing must not be left out: “Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.” Leviticus 2:13

Why the salt of the covenant? Because salt preserves. What does not spoil keeps longer, and the span of time stretches out. From this type you can see that it is a long covenant, a lasting relationship, a bond that cannot be broken. The sacrifice itself stands for covenant, and the salt matters especially here: it says that you may offer even with the ordinary household things of daily life—and what you must never leave out is the salt of the covenant.

One thing, however, is not allowed: “Every grain offering you bring to the LORD must be made without yeast, for you are not to burn any yeast or honey in a food offering presented to the LORD.” Leviticus 2:11

Why no yeast and no honey? Because they change the nature of the thing itself. Let yeast into the grape and you get wine; let yeast or honey into your flour and its original nature has been altered. What does that picture? Once you take that in, you alter the created nature that was yours—and this creature is meant to be holy. So the type in Scripture here is this: you are not to alter the nature God made; you are to present it just as it is.

In the New Testament yeast also pictures sin, and you can say it pictures the sin that alters what a thing is. But in the New Testament parables yeast pictures the church as well—let yeast into the dough and it rises, and the whole batch is worked through. So many types have two sides and not just one. In the New Testament yeast sometimes pictures what is bad and sometimes what is good; but here in the Old Testament the word is plain—no yeast, not a bit of yeast and not a bit of honey burned as a food offering to the LORD, because it alters the nature of the grain offering.

This is an important reminder. Even in the smallest matters of daily life we have a picture that everything we produce belongs to the LORD. And what has that to do with our daily life? It shows in the large and the small alike: even where no one can see, there is to be a grain offering of a sort. So it is not that you must lead a bull or a sheep and shed blood as with the burnt offering; what the grain offering stresses is the most frequent stuff of daily life—there too you are to give yourself to God and be used by him. And in daily life there should be no yeast and no honey to alter the nature of a life that pleases God; instead there should be that salt of the covenant which keeps remembering him.

So the condition of the grain offering is this: a person pleases God in daily life, and where the salt of the covenant is present, there is the guarantee of a covenant between God and humanity that will never be destroyed.

Let me put a hypothetical question to you: which is harder to bring, the grain offering or the burnt offering?

Some say the burnt offering. I think the grain offering is harder. Honestly, the burnt offering is a large and loud thing, and everyone can manage that. The grain offering lies in daily life, in places no one sees, where nobody knows what you are doing. Can you see the salt? In the finished loaf you cannot, and you cannot see the yeast either; both are mixed in, they do not show on the outside but work within. And in the most frequent matters of every kind, everything is to come under God’s hand, and each day’s thoughts and intentions are to be willingly brought before him. For me the real challenge is this side, the grain offering.

One sister said she found the burnt offering harder, and the grain offering seemed more within reach—follow the regulation, no yeast, add salt, add oil, no honey, and she could manage that. I answered: we are to complete the offering, but you have to know with full clarity whether we can complete it at all and what we are able to do; in the end it all comes back to God’s grace. So the grain offering remains a response—a response to the grace by which God keeps me in the large and the small things of daily life.

Another sister, in Germany, said she found the grain offering very hard. The burnt offering is like going to worship every Sunday: she can be fully present, can feel the fullness of the Holy Spirit, can be deeply moved. But once the service is over, in that stretch from Monday to Saturday, we have to keep bringing the grain offering—and that, she said, is harder.

It is the same for me. God looks at the small places in me, at my thoughts and intentions, and not only at the outward shape of my daily life; and in how my thoughts and intentions show themselves, there is a good deal mixed in that I myself do not know about. When I am worshipping at church on Sunday, my mind is often still on other church matters, on all there is to do and to serve in, and a good deal of feeling comes with it; sometimes I do not even know what I am thinking, and I forget to worship with my whole heart. So I can only ask God to shed more light on my thoughts and intentions; for me it is the grain offering that is the daily practice.

Of course I cannot have only the grain offering and no burnt offering, because the burnt offering is the most basic of the basic, and it is to be brought every day.

There is one more thing I want to raise: firstfruits.

Whatever grows from the ground in your daily life and ripens first, that is what you are to bring. This has to do with our giving. Many people think: I will bring what is left over. Scripture does not say that. The first thing that grows is what you are to bring; that is why it is called the grain offering of firstfruits.

Brothers and sisters, on this one point I practiced for a long time. When I was young I had no financial footing, and whenever I gave, I was doing my own arithmetic: the children were small, how was I to live, what would I do in a hard time if no one helped me? It is not only Leviticus that says this; Exodus also says to bring the firstborn, to bring the best. Leviticus uses the word firstfruits. The first fruit—you can hardly get it into your own barn fast enough; can you really bring it?

Sometimes we talk our way past it and move on. But in fact it is to be practiced in every part of daily life: what I earn from my work is my firstfruits, and I bring it to God with thanks; the help I receive from others—that gratitude too is my firstfruits, and I bring it to God. For me this was something that took a great deal of effort before I got across it. So let us learn together, in this matter of the grain offering, how to bring the firstfruits rather than put them in our own barn.

Let us keep a little time for responses. Today we covered only the burnt offering and the grain offering.

After last time I felt I had been too bloody. But you know how it is: if I do not speak with some blood in it, nobody feels anything; and when I do, nobody can take it. The scene at the tent of meeting really was like a slaughterhouse—does that picture come to you? Full of blood. And where there is blood there is death; and what that death points to is life. Later I realized it might be more than the congregation could take, so I stopped. Yet there is so much in it: how we experience death in that fire and at the same time experience sin being cleansed.

You may prefer to hear peaceful words, but Leviticus does not lend itself to that; the book really is full of bloody scenes. And brothers and sisters, this is not something I invented. We know it in church as well: Jesus Christ had to shed his precious blood; he died so that I might live. In his death I have experienced his resurrection, and in him I too am raised.

A sister shared a passage with us:

“Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.”　1 Samuel 15:22

She said: we read Leviticus, and these five offerings bring us closer to God; but what God delights in more is obedience and submission. Obey, and you are blessed. The verse also reminds us that we bring God our best, yet God always looks at the heart; the LORD examines our hearts. Amen!

My sense is that people today do not like to hear about holiness. It is very hard to raise in church; the moment you do, a wall seems to go up between you and the hearers. Preachers do not much like preaching Leviticus from the pulpit either, and probably for the same reason: it is full of the smell of blood, and it says that people must repent, must come before God, must have the presence of this holy God. Those two words are not welcome. Being set apart in holiness is genuinely not easy.

But if we do not speak this way, then let me ask in return: what is it we are receiving in church? Because all grace, all righteousness, every source is bound up with holiness, and there is no way around it. You want God’s grace but will have nothing to do with holiness—that will not work, it is not possible. That would be human appetite. If your love has no connection with God’s holiness, it is only a satisfying of the self; and likewise, if our standard of righteousness has no connection with God’s holiness, it turns into violence, and everything comes out of our own doing.

So I find myself thinking: I too hear little in church about holiness and being set apart, because people do not like boundaries; they would rather keep some grey area open.

Brothers and sisters, we have covered only two offerings today, the burnt offering and the grain offering, far more slowly than I had planned. Let me gather up what matters. Because there is life in the blood, it can atone; what has no life cannot stand in for what has life, and I cannot atone for myself. The people in the days of the kings did not fail to sacrifice—only, outwardly they kept the LORD’s commands while their hearts had gone far from him. The grain offering makes it plainer still: you cannot see the salt, you cannot see the yeast, both are mixed in and do not show on the outside—the smallest, the most frequent, the places no one sees are where what is real shows itself.

May it be, this week, that we are there and our hearts are there too; may we lay down the first portion first, rather than remembering him only when something is left over. And may the church have wood and fat as well—God’s word, and the joy of fellowship among brothers and sisters—so that this fire on the altar does not go out, and our whole life is used by the Lord.