Giving to God in Worship

Verses 4 and 11 state that God allowed no yeast, or leaven, in the grain offering. Why was yeast not allowed? Sometimes the ingredients of sacrifices carried meaning by association. In the case of yeast, it was associated with corruption. The process of leavening involves fermentation, which is a form of decay and therefore is related to death. In Leviticus the realm of holiness, or cleanness, is the realm of life; and the realm of the profane, or uncleanness, is the realm of death. God’s people were to stay in the realm of holiness, or life; and they were to stay away from the realm of the profane, or death. Certainly they were to stay away from the realm of death in worship. Paradoxically, sacrificial animals were killed in worship, but the slaying of the animal was for the purpose of demonstrating that sin leads to death. As for yeast, it was associated with decay or death, so it was to be kept away from worship.

Yeast is associated with corruption throughout the Bible. In Luke 12:1 Jesus said to keep away from “the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” In 1 Corinthians 5:1-8 Paul mentioned sexual immorality, malice, and evil; and he referred to all of that as yeast. He said to get the yeast out of the church, because a little yeast permeates the whole lump of dough.

When we come to worship, we exclude corruption. Scores of statements in the Bible emphasize that God’s people cannot offer acceptable worship to God if the way we’re living is not acceptable to God. Sinful living or thinking is yeast; it’s corruption. The prophet Samuel said to King Saul, “To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam 15:22). In other words, don’t come to worship and make a show of being right with God only to leave worship and go back to sin. That’s corruption, and to offer right worship we have to clean up corruption.

That doesn’t mean that sinners are not welcome in worship. We are all sinners, and we gather for worship to seek God, to confess our sin, and to seek His forgiveness for sin and His power over sin. The difference between the people who offer right worship and those who don’t is not that right worshipers are not sinners. The difference is that right worshipers know they are sinners, they know they need God, and they know they need atonement and salvation that only come from God in Christ. That was the purpose of the sacrificial system. God knew His people would transgress His laws, and He was providing a way to atone for their sin so they could offer worthy worship to Him. Worthy worship excludes corruption.

We Express Communion with God

All the laws God gave His people from Mount Sinai and from the tabernacle were given in the context of relationship. God established a relationship with the Hebrews when He made a covenant with Abraham (Gen 15:13-14), and He kept the promises of that covenant when He providentially protected Abraham’s descendants and delivered them from slavery in Egypt. God made another covenant with His people at Sinai. He said to them that the whole earth is His, but if they would obey His voice and keep His commands, they would be His treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation (Exod 19:5-6). God and His people were in a covenant relationship.

The sacrificial system maintained that relationship. It ensured the continuation of communion between God and His people. The grain offering accomplished that in at least two ways.

Right Worship Affirms Our Covenant with God

Leviticus 2:13 says that God told His people to season their grain offering with salt. The salt is called “the salt of the covenant with your God.” In the ancient Near East salt represented a covenant. In Babylon, if people said that they had tasted the salt of some tribe, it meant that they had a covenant with that tribe. In Persia, if persons were loyal to the king, they were said to have tasted “the salt of the palace.” Arab Bedouins referred to a treaty between people by saying, “There is salt between us” (Gane, Leviticus, Numbers, 81). When God’s people added salt to their grain offerings, they remembered that they had a covenant relationship with God. The salt represented that covenant. They also knew that salt is a preservative, and they were symbolizing the continuation of their covenant relationship with God.

That’s what we do in worship. We have a covenant relationship with God—the new covenant through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for our sins. When Jesus shared His Last Supper with His apostles, He said, “This cup is the new covenant established by My blood” (1 Cor 11:25). When we come to worship, we remember the covenant we have with the Lord through the blood of Jesus, and in worship we affirm that covenant.

Right Worship Affirms Our Separation to God

Twice in God’s description of the grain offering He said that the grain given to be burned on the altar was the memorial portion. The word translated “memorial” is from the word that refers to remembering. As the Israelites offered this sacrifice, they remembered. What did they remember? Surely God intended for them to remember Him, His deliverance, the atonement for sin He had just accomplished in the burnt offering, and their dedication to Him.

So the grain they burned on the altar was the memorial portion, and the remaining grain was given to the priests as food. In that way the priests had food to eat; the people supported them by giving them the remaining portion of the grain offerings in obedience to God’s command. The grain given to the priests was called “most holy” (vv. 3,10 ESV). Translated literally, the Hebrew is “holy of holies.” The word “holy” means to be set apart for God—separated from sin and separated to God. The leftover grain was “most holy.” What we offer as an offering we give to God. It demonstrates our dedication to Him. In the case of the grain offering, part of the offering was burned and part of it was given to support the priests, but all of it was given to God. Therefore, it was all holy. Everything we have and everything we are is set apart for God. We’re separated from the world and to God; when we come to worship we affirm that.

We Exalt Jesus, the Center of Our Worship

Jesus is the center of Christian worship; we exalt Him every time we gather with God’s people to worship. We sing praise to Jesus. We pray in the name of Jesus because through His sacrifice on the cross we have access to the presence of God. The preaching points to Jesus because the whole Word of God points to Him. The invitation encourages people to put their faith in Jesus because salvation is only in Him.

How do we exalt Jesus as we study the description of the grain offering?

Jesus Is Our Example in Showing Gratitude

The grain offering was given in gratitude for God’s provision. When Jesus fed 5,000 people, He said a blessing before He gave the people the bread and fish (Matt 14:19). Later, when He fed 4,000 people, He gave thanks before He gave them the bread (Matt 15:36). When He shared His Last Supper with His apostles, He took the bread and gave thanks, and He took the cup and gave thanks (Luke 22:17-19). Jesus gave thanks; so should we.

Jesus Is Our Example in Dedication

The grain offering was an enactment of dedication to God. Jesus is God the Son, and He is perfectly dedicated to God the Father. The book of Hebrews says that the sacrificial system of the old covenant is obsolete because Jesus has fulfilled it and in Him we have a new covenant. In the midst of that discussion, the writer of Hebrews quoted Jesus as quoting Psalm 40. He wrote that Jesus said to God the Father,

You did not delight in whole burnt offerings and sin offerings. Then I said, “See—it is written about Me in the volume of the scroll—I have come to do Your will, God!” (Heb 10:6-7)

That statement by Jesus expresses the heart of the sacrificial system and His own heart. Jesus said to God the Father, “You did not delight in whole burnt offerings and sin offerings.” It has never been the offering itself that has pleased God; it has always been what the offering has represented. If the offering is an expression of penitence for sin, a desire for God’s forgiveness, and dedication to God in the heart of the worshiper, then God is pleased. John Calvin wrote,

What could be more vain or frivolous than for men to reconcile themselves to God, by offering him the foul odor produced by burning the fat of beasts? or to wipe away their own impurities by besprinkling themselves with water or blood? . . . God did not enjoin sacrifice, in order that he might occupy his worshipers with earthly exercises, but rather that he might raise their minds to something higher.

Calvin went on to cite the prophets, who criticized God’s people in the old covenant “for imagining that mere sacrifices have any value in the sight of God.” Calvin wrote that the prophets were not criticizing God’s laws about sacrifices; they were criticizing the people for performing mere earthly exercises when God meant to raise their minds to something higher (Institutes, 218–19). God meant His people to offer sacrifices mindful of the atonement He was providing and would provide, and mindful of their dedication to the God they were worshiping.

That’s what we do in worship today. We praise God for the atonement for sin He has accomplished in Jesus for us, and we dedicate ourselves to God. If we’re not doing that, then Calvin’s words apply to us—our worship is “vain and frivolous . . . earthly exercises.” Thank God, Jesus gives us the perfect example of what to do in worship and what to do every day! The writer of Hebrews quoted Him as saying, “I have come to do your will, God.” In worship we dedicate ourselves to do God’s will.

Jesus Makes Possible Our Dedication

Paul wrote about dedicating our bodies (ourselves) to God, and he used the language of presenting an offering to God. He wrote,

Do not offer any parts of it to sin. . . . But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness. (Rom 6:13)

That’s a picture of dedicating ourselves to God, and Paul wrote those words after emphasizing that our old self was crucified with Christ and now we have a new life in Christ. “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in a new way of life” (v. 4). In other words, just as God’s power raised Jesus from the dead, His power enables us to live a new way. Therefore, Paul exhorts followers of Jesus to “consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (v. 11). Jesus gives us a new life. How are we able to please God by dedicating ourselves to Him? We can do that because Jesus has made us new. Before Jesus, nothing in us wanted to be dedicated to do God’s will. But Jesus has put to death the old self of sin and He has given us a new life that delights to do God’s will.

Atonement for sin is not mentioned in Leviticus 2. That is because atonement had already been achieved in the whole burnt offering described in Leviticus 1. The order is important. Before we can please God with our dedication, our sin must be taken away. We have to already be the kind of people who want to dedicate ourselves to God, and that’s what Jesus does in us. He makes our dedication possible.

Jesus Is the Firstfruits of Our Resurrection

Verses 14-16 address the offering of firstfruits to the Lord. When the grain harvest began to ripen, God said to bring some of the first ripe grains to Him in worship. It was an act of faith to give up the first of the harvest and trust God for the rest of the harvest. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul wrote about the resurrection of Jesus and our resurrection in Jesus.Paul called Jesus “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (v. 20). Paul used Levitical language to express the fact that the resurrection of Jesus is the first of a great harvest of souls who will be gathered in heaven for worship.

Sometimes I think I get a glimpse of what worship is like in heaven. I hear God’s people in worship singing enthusiastically, their voices joined in giving praise to God. A church leader prays and I feel the presence of God powerfully. I see a follower of Jesus express love to me or to someone else, and I know it’s the love of God that “has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5).

Still, for the most part, our worship falls short of heaven’s worship. Here we see in a mirror dimly, but in heaven we will see face to face (1 Cor 13:12 ESV). Here our faith is mixed with doubt, and our holiness is compromised by sin. In heaven doubt and sin do not exist. Only Jesus worshiped perfectly on earth. Then He died as the sacrifice for our sins. So when we put our faith in Him, He forgives our sin, reconciles us to God, and gives us new and eternal life. Then He rose from the grave, and we who know Him will be in heaven with Him. Both here and there He is the center of our worship.

Reflect and Discuss