GUT-LEVEL WORSHIP Selections from Leviticus 1-7
Maybe you have had the experience of going to a funeral or memorial service, where you heard things about the deceased that you didn’t know before. Maybe you thought, “I wish I had known about those parts of his life earlier; it would have helped me understand him better.”
We might know people through work or church or social contacts, but our knowledge is limited. If we could see them with long hair in their radical young days, or serving in Vietnam, or going through a life-changing illness, we would know them better. If we could see them with young children, or on a vacation with their spouse, or in the heat of athletic competition, we might have a fuller understanding of how they relate to people.
How well do you know God? Our relationship with God is anchored in life experiences. If you could observe God in a different time, a different culture, and different situations, would it help you know him better?
The Bible helps us know God, of course. Yet parts of the Bible, like Leviticus, are not read very often. In Leviticus, we see God in a different setting, at a different point in salvation history. We learn more about the God we love and worship, and we learn some things about ourselves as well.
(Project an OT timeline, and maybe a map of the Sinai Peninsula.)
Here is the setting of Leviticus: God called Abraham to go to the land of promise, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived in the land of Israel. Then a famine struck, and the descendants of Jacob moved to Egypt, where Jacob’s son, Joseph, took care of them. The people lived in Egypt for about 400 years, and during that time, they became slave to the Egyptians. God sent Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, and they spent 40 years in the dry, rugged wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula.
The Israelite horde of former slaves wandered in the Sinai desert, moving with their animals from one watering hole to another. There was no electricity, no maps, no horses, no houses, no dependable water supply, no sanitation, no doctors or dentists, no police, no medicine or personal hygiene products.
Leviticus is God’s instructions to those former slaves, living in a strange, almost alien, environment. It seems to have little to do with us, yet when we study Leviticus, we learn about God, and we learn how God establishes a relationship with people.
So imagine jumping into a time machine, emerging in the Sinai Peninsula in about 1650 B.C. You find yourself gripping the neck of a bull or goat, holding a flint knife, as you prepare to slit the throat of the animal you are offering as a sacrifice to God.
BURNT OFFERING. Read Leviticus 1:1-9.
What would the burnt offering mean to an Israelite, and what does it say to us?
First, God values our offerings. For 400 years in Egypt, God’s people had not brought offerings to God. Now, in the wilderness, God invited them to bring offerings to him, as an act of worship. God values the worship of his people—even former slaves!
I knew a man who was convinced that God did not value his worship. Like those enslaved in Egypt, he was a slave to a 30-year meth habit. Yet he finally understood that God valued his worship, and that when he brought his humble offerings to God, God would accept what he brought. God values the offerings we bring!
Second, God wants our best. The animal given for sacrifice must be “without defect.” Depending on the wealth of the individual, it could be a bull, a sheep or goat, or even a pigeon—but it must be the best the person could give. When we give God our talents, our resources, or our service, we must bring our best, not the little bit of time or money we have left at the end of the week.
Third, God is pleased with our offerings! Verse 9 says that the burnt offering had “an aroma pleasing to the Lord.” That might surprise us; the aroma of burning animal guts might not be so pleasing to us! Of course, it was not the smell that pleased God, but the offering of life.
God is pleased when we offer him our lives! Romans 12:1 says, “I urge you…in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship.” We please God when we serve him, when we care for others, and when we pray. The God of the universe, who made everything, is pleased by our offerings!
GRAIN OFFERING.
Along with the burnt offering of animals, Leviticus also provides for a burnt offering of grain. The grain was mixed with oil and prepared on a griddle. It was fried without yeast, which symbolized impurity, but with salt, a symbol of covenants. Most of the offering was given to the priests to eat, and a small portion was burned. The entire offering was holy, set apart for God and his servants.
Burnt offerings and grain offerings were offerings of worship. Leviticus describes three additional offerings:
SIN OFFERING Read Leviticus 4:1-2.
The sin offering was to confess and atone for unintentional sins, whether by priests, leaders, the entire community, or everyday people.
Why would God require sacrifices for unintentional sins? The word used for sin means “missing the mark,” and when people sin, they are missing out on God’s best. Even unintentional sins affect the health of individuals and the community, and they needed to be taken seriously.
GUILT OFFERING. Read Leviticus 5:14
Like the sin offering, the guilt offering was for unintentional violations of God’s commandments. The guilt offering was a sin “in regard to any of the Lord’s holy things.” Significantly, the “holy things” included “his neighbor.” People are holy—important—to God!
A unique characteristic of the guilt offering was a component of restitution. Read Leviticus 6:1-7. God’s plan of restorative justice was already in operation; instead of being locked up or harmed by revenge, the offender could make restitution to God or the victim, adding a fifth of the value.
So, there were worship offerings of animals or grain, and offering for sin and guilt. Leviticus describes one other type of offering.
FELLOWSHIP OFFERING. Read Leviticus 7:11-21.
The fellowship offering had nothing to do with sin or guilt. It was voluntary, an offering a person “MAY present before the Lord.” It could express thankfulness, or a vow, or simply a love-gift to God.
In the fellowship offering, only the blood and fat of the animals was burned; the rest could be shared between the priests and the people. The common people could eat at the Lord’s table!
Interesting history, perhaps, but how is it relevant to us today? We don’t bring animals to church, to be slaughtered and burned on an altar. Why not?
WE HAVE A BETTER SACRIFICE.
Hebrews 10 says, “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming--not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins…It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins…we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all… by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”
The sacrifices of Leviticus did not take away sin; they foreshadowed the one sacrifice that would atone for the sins of all people, in all times and places, who would believe in the grace of God expressed in Jesus Christ.
If the sacrifices of Leviticus are no longer needed, what do they teach us? There was something about the blood and guts of those sacrifices. When an Israelite man and his wife chose their best animal to offer to God, and they smelled the aroma of the burning fat on the altar, they knew that God was pleased with their offering. When they brought an animal to atone for their sin, the man put his hand on the animal, transferring his guilt to the animal, whose throat was then slit. The blood was brought before God, and the guts were burned. Their sin was gone! When they shared a fellowship meal around the table, they were sitting at the table with God and his people.
By comparison, our worship can sometimes be superficial. We sing, we greet, we sit back and listen, and then we have cookie fellowship! How do we connect, at the gut level, with God, with forgiveness in Christ, and with the wonder of fellowship with God and his people?
COMMUNION: SACRIFICIAL WORSHIP
Today, we will celebrate the sacrament of communion. We are gathered around the table of the Lord, and we will take a little cube of bread and a tiny cup of juice. Why do we do that?
Jesus said something one day, in the synagogue in Capernaum, that caused many people to stop following him. He said, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.” (John 6:53-56) His words were as offensive to them as they might be to people today!
Of course, Jesus was not talking about cannibalism, but he was connecting them, at a visceral level, with his own blood and guts, given as a sacrifice, for the sin of the world. When we take the bread and cup of communion, we grab hold of Jesus, the perfect and eternal sacrifice. The bread and cup truly represent the blood and body of Jesus, sacrificed for us on the cross.
The Old Testament sacrifices were a “foreshadowing” or “type” of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. (Hebrews 10:1 calls them “a shadow of the good things to come.”) They pointed to a much greater, truly effective sacrifice, when the Son of God gave his life as an offering.
Communion builds upon the meaning of the Old Testament sacrifices.
Jesus is the sacrifice that is pleasing to God. He is the Lamb without fault, the one of whom God said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” The offering that God accepts is the offering that God provides: the body and blood of the Lamb of God.
As we come before God, we recognize our sin and guilt. We lay our sins on Jesus, the one of whom Isaiah, “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” By faith, we believe that his blood atones for our sins. As Romans 3:25 says, “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
In the spirit of the guilt offering, we seek not only forgiveness, but reconciliation. If we have sinned against another person, we make restitution. Jesus was quite specific: “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:23-24)
We gather around the table of the Lord, sharing deep fellowship with God and his people. As Romans 5 says, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:1-2)
Then, as the Holy Spirit is present among us, we take together the body and blood of Christ, offered for us, and then given to us to strengthen us. We share the life of Christ together, a foretaste of how we will share eternal life with Christ and each other in heaven.
This sacrament, this offering, this fellowship is our visceral connect to life in Christ. It is where everything we believe touches the core of our being, and Christ becomes real to us.
We will get up from this table, free from guilt, thankful to God for his mercy and grace, and joined with Christ through the Holy Spirit.
