Giving to God in Worship

Giving to God in Worship

Leviticus 2:1-16

Main Idea: The God we worship is the Lord of all and the provider of all good things, so we offer our best gifts to Him and live pure lives to express our gratitude and worship.

I. We Enact Dedication to God.

A. Dedication to God calls for gratitude.

B. Dedication to God calls for giving our best.

II. We Exclude Corruption from Our Lives.

III. We Express Communion with God.

A. Right worship affirms our covenant with God.

B. Right worship affirms our separation from God.

IV. We Exalt Jesus, the Center of Our Worship.

A. Jesus is our example in showing gratitude.

B. Jesus is our example in dedication.

C. Jesus makes possible our dedication.

D. Jesus is the firstfruits of our resurrection.

When we read the descriptions of the five major sacrifices in the first seven chapters of Leviticus, we should keep in mind that the sacrificial system was given by God as His invitation to His people to meet with Him and worship Him. After the exodus, God spoke to Moses and gave him His law for His people. God knew His people would transgress His law, but instead of giving up on His people, He provided a means of atonement for their sin so they could come into His presence. The sacrificial system was that means of atonement.

The first chapter of Leviticus describes the first type of sacrifice—the burnt offering. The second chapter describes the grain offering. The burnt offering and the grain offering were similar and dissimilar. Both the burnt offering and the grain offering had to be of the best quality, both were offered by fire, and both resulted in a pleasing aroma to the Lord, meaning that the Lord was pleased with the offering. But the burnt offering was an animal, and the grain offering consisted of grain—uncooked or cooked. The burnt offering was a blood offering, and the grain offering was not. All of the burnt offering was consumed on the altar, but only part of the grain offering was burned on the altar, and the rest was eaten by the priests.

Chapter 2 falls into four basic divisions. Verses 1-3 focus on the offering of uncooked grain. Verses 4-10 provide the regulations regarding the offering of cooked grain or unleavened bread. Verses 11-13 state what could and could not be added to the grain offering. Verses 14-16 introduce the offering of the firstfruits of the grain harvest. What does the description of the grain offering teach us about our relationship with God and our worship of Him?

We Enact Dedication to God

The Hebrew word for grain offering is minchah. Elsewhere in the Old Testament minchah is used to refer to gifts people gave to a king. Vassal nations paid tribute to kings whom they recognized as their lords or superiors. For example, the Moabites and Arameans were subject to King David and paid him tribute (minchah) because they recognized they were subject to him (2 Sam 8:2,6). When King Hoshea of Israel withheld tribute (minchah) from King Shalmanezer of Assyria, Shalmanezer saw it as an act of rebellion, and he attacked and conquered Israel (2 Kings 17:3-6). Hence, the meaning of minchah included the act of a servant nation offering a gift to an overlord nation. Thinking of that use of minchah may help us when we read of giving grain offerings to God. However, the Israelites gave grain offerings to God not merely because He was a superior overlord, but because He is God. They offered Him not only service and allegiance; they offered Him the worship that is due only to God.

In contexts of worship minchah refers to animal sacrifices as well as grain offerings. In Genesis 4 minchah refers to the offerings of both Cain and Abel, though Cain’s offering was produce and Abel’s offering was an animal (cf. 1 Sam 2:17; Wenham, Leviticus, 69). But in cultic contexts minchah refers exclusively to grain offerings as defined in Leviticus 2.

The purpose of the grain offering was not atonement, but worship. God provides the produce of the land. God’s people worship Him as the One who provides all good things (Jas 1:17). He is the Lord, the King, and in bringing Him their gifts His people were expressing their allegiance to Him. As they brought the sacrifice, they were thanking God for His provision, dedicating their harvest to Him, and symbolizing their dedication to Him. That’s what God’s people do in worship today. We bring a gift to God as an act of dedication to God—“God, I dedicate myself and my possessions to You.” We not only feel gratitude; we show it. We not only talk about our dedication to God; we demonstrate it.

Aiman Youssef is a Christian who lived in the same house in Staten Island for over 20 years. On October 29, 2012, about 8:15 p.m., hurricane-force winds came screaming into his neighborhood as Hurricane Sandy made landfall. Youssef said the water came down his street like a tsunami. As the giant wave approached his house, he saw electrical transformers exploding, cables falling, and cars and debris rushing in the current toward him. When the wave arrived, his house filled with water over his head immediately. He didn’t know how to swim, and neither did his mother. Somehow he and his nephew pulled his mom against the current, up the street to a house on a hill. As soon as his mother was safe, he heard somebody screaming for help. He saw a woman hanging onto a van about to be carried away by the current. He forgot he couldn’t swim, went back out into the water, carried her to safety, and then he did that for 16 more people.

Aiman Youssef’s story is not primarily about rescue; it’s about gratitude and dedication. That night he knew his life was in danger. But he survived. He knew God had allowed him to live, and he was so grateful to God that he promised God he would dedicate one full year to nothing but helping other people. His house was a complete loss, but in the place where his house used to be he erected a large tent and packed it with canned goods, bottled water, and serving tables. He called it “Midland Avenue Neighborhood Relief.” He received food donations from charities all over the city, and for months he served about 700 meals per day to other people displaced by Hurricane Sandy (Hamill, “Staten Island man”).

Aiman Youssef is living the lesson of the grain offering, because the grain offering teaches us that we enact gratitude and dedication to God as the One who gives us all good things. Youssef dedicated himself to serve God and others, and he lived out that dedication. That’s what the Israelites did through the grain offering. The purpose of the grain offering was not atonement, but worship. In the grain offering God’s people enacted their acknowledgement that God had provided for them. As they brought the sacrifice, they were dedicating their grain to God, symbolizing dedicating their lives to God, and they were thanking Him for His provision. That’s what God’s people do in worship today. We bring a gift to God. That’s an act of dedication to God—“God, I dedicate myself and my possessions to You.”

Dedication to God Calls for Gratitude

Our giving to God is an act of gratitude. We know that what we have comes from God, so in giving to God we’re thanking and praising God for His gift of daily bread. That’s what the Israelites were doing. God gave them all they had, and He told them to bring part of the produce as an offering to Him.

Are you grateful to God for what you have? Show me someone who is not grateful to God for what he has, and I’ll show you someone who has forgotten that God is the One who allowed him to have it. People who aren’t grateful to God for what they have think they earned it; they fail to acknowledge that God gave them the strength to earn it. What we have comes from God, and giving some of it to God reminds us that it all comes from Him. If we’re dedicated to God, we’ll be grateful.

Dedication to God Calls for Giving Our Best

Verse 1 mentions that the grain offering was to be of “fine flour.” The word translated “fine flour” is used five times in this chapter (vv. 1,2,4,5,7). It was a special word that referred to finely ground flour. It’s used in the Old Testament to refer to the

finest of flour . . . ground exclusively from the inner kernels of the wheat. . . . Though available to all, it was expensive and considered a luxury item (Ezekiel 16:13; 1 Kings 4:22), to be used especially in entertaining important guests (Genesis 18:6). (Patterson, “so¯let ”)

God’s people were to bring only the best flour to God.

Verse 1 also says that God told them to add frankincense to the grain. Frankincense was expensive. The offering that God’s people brought to God was to cost them something. What if they couldn’t afford frankincense? Then verses 4-7 say that they could cook their grain into unleavened bread. If we’re dedicated to God, we won’t bring something second-rate; we’ll bring the best. If we have the money to get the best, we’ll spend it, and if we don’t have the money we’ll spend the time to make our gift the best we can make it.

When God gave these laws to His people, they were in the wilderness. They weren’t growing wheat or barley in the wilderness. They weren’t growing anything. They were nomads in the wilderness, not farmers. Therefore, grain to grind into fine flour was rare and valuable, and so was the olive oil poured on the grain offering. Some people have speculated that initially the grain they gave to God as grain offerings had to be the seed grain that they were planning to plant once they arrived in the promised land. Giving that seed grain was an act of faith; they were trusting God that when they gave grain to Him, He would provide for them so they would have enough left to plant a crop in Canaan. When is the last time you gave to God in a way that depleted your reserves so that you had to trust Him to provide? Dedication to God calls for giving our best.

We Exclude Corruption from Our Lives

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

1. What are similarities and differences between the burnt offering and the grain offering?
2. What is the connection between the grain offering and paying tribute (minchah)?
3. How should the dedication one shows to God differ from that shown to an overlord or earthly king?
4. What was the purpose of the grain offering? What can you offer to God to demonstrate your gratitude?
5. How were Aiman Youssef’s actions after Hurricane Sandy a living lesson of the grain offering?
6. If you are dedicated to God, then you will give Him the best you have. Are there some areas in which you are withholding your best from God? If so, explain why.
7. Why was yeast not allowed in the grain offering?
8. How are sinners able to offer right worship to God?
9. How did the grain offering ensure the continuation of communion between God and His people?
10. How does your study of the grain offering in Leviticus 2:1-16 lead you to exalt Jesus?