Offering
Burnt
When the Lord Jesus Christ
"through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God,"
God found His rest there. It is no matter where I find my rest, if I am not
seeking rest where God has found His. God has found it in Jesus (He can look
for or to nothing else, in one sense); and we can rest there also. Here we have
the ground of worship, and worship itself: it assumes the proper savour of all
that Christ was and did for us, and thus has the character of the
burnt-offering."[i]
The burnt offering was a
"sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto Jehovah," Lev. 1: 9.
The more it was searched by the fire, the more its sweetness came out before
God. So was it in Christ. The coming down of the fire of the holiness of God,
trying and searching all the inwards of everything in Him, only brought out a
"sweet savour" unto God.[ii]
it is said then again of the burnt-offering that no
part was eaten; it was all burnt to God: this was characteristic of it.[iii]
Drink
The
drink-offering is universally the joy of God. It was thorough action between
God and the people.[iv]
Free will
"Seven weeks shalt thou count:
from the beginning of putting the sickle into the corn shalt thou begin to
count seven weeks. And thou shalt hold the feast of weeks unto Jehovah thy God
with a tribute of a voluntary offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give
according as Jehovah thy God hath blessed thee." - Now then, it is that I
come with a freewill offering. - There was no freewill offering at the
Passover.[v]
But the Holy Ghost having given us
the knowledge of what is ours in Christ, He enables us now to carry up a
freewill offering from the heart, just as Israel did when put into possession
of Canaan. It is not merely what we are saved from, but what we are
saved to; that which fills up the affections and the heart. I know I am
in the favour of God, that is the present grace wherein we stand. Christ dwells
in me, and I in Him, and I come with these first-fruits to God. The heart comes
to God and the Father with the things it has got from God and the Father.[vi]
Heave
The waving
is presenting before God; and the heaving is a little stronger.[vii]
Meat/Meal
There was a meal-offering added,
Christ's perfect human nature and offering as born and anointed of the Spirit,
but it was made by fire on the altar of God, or was no sacrifice.[viii]
It was not an Ishah, an offering made by fire, a sweet
savour to the Lord, and this is always kept up. The two leavened cakes of
Pentecost* were presented, but they could not be burnt on the altar for a sweet
savour. And these Minchas
or
meal-offerings, were offered with the other offerings; and as the
burnt-offering shewed Christ's perfectness in death as an absolute offering to
God, ever sinless, but now offered up, so the meal-offering shewed His
perfectness unto death, the pure Man, born of the Spirit, anointed with the
Spirit, all the frankincense of His
grace going up to the Lord,
finally burnt on the altar to God, but the food withal of the priests. In its
own way death, the altar, the fire was as much brought in here as for the
burnt-offering. No Christian doubts the perfectness, and perfect obedience of
Christ all the way along, but here it became a sweet savour perfected on the
altar of God.[ix]
Peace
The first thing to be observed in the peace-offering is the complete and absolute acceptance of the sacrifice, so that the Lord speaks of it as His food, that in which His holiness could find intrinsic satisfaction. The inwards were presented for a sweet savour (as Jesus); they are tried and examined by fire, and found to be food for God Himself.[x]
The family ate the peace-offering,
so, if a man asked a company to dinner, he had to make a peace-offering of it,
and part was offered to Jehovah, and part to the priests, and the company made
their feast of the rest. If a man killed an animal in the wilderness, and did
not bring it for an offering to the Lord, that soul was to be cut off from his
people (Lev. 17: 3, 41: 5; Deut. 12: 21). And you notice, his own hand is to
bring the offering made by fire (chap. 7: 30). "The fat with the breast,
it shall he bring, that the breast may be waved for a waveoffering before the
Lord." "And the right shoulder shall ye give unto the priest for a
heave-offering of the sacrifices of your peace-offerings."[xi]
In another character - as the
"sin-offering" - sin was laid upon Him, "He was made sin for
us," 2 Cor. 5: 21. This was not "an offering made by fire, of a sweet
savour unto Jehovah," but was burnt without the camp as an unclean thing;
Lev. 4. When the offerings themselves are brought out in Leviticus, the
burnt-offering, meatoffering, and peace-offering are mentioned first, and then
the sin-offering; but in application, when the individual worshipper is treated
of, he presented his sin-offering first, then his burnt-offering, etc., because
he could not worship whilst sin was against him, but had to approach by the
efficacy of that which took it away. Though God meets us in our sins by the
blood of Christ, yet when we speak of worship we speak of Him in His own savour
before God. We come in all the savour of Christ's sacrifice. Sin is gone out of
the place, and we stand in the value, the intrinsic value, of Christ.[xii]
All acting against God's
commandments and doing that which was not to be done, was sin, and called for
the sin-offering; but there were trespasses against the individual,
wrongs done to the neighbour, by breaches of confidence and the like,
and for these there was a trespass-offering. See the first seven verses of
Leviticus 6.[xiii]
Our peace is established in what He did, and "the counsel of peace" is "between them both." Jesus has accomplished that which God purposed towards us. In order to this, it was needful that He should "bear our sins," and this He did as the "sin-offering." He was made "sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." In the sacrifices, when the offerer laid his hand upon the head of the victim, there was in that act the complete identification of himself with the victim. Now there are two great characters in the sacrifice of Christ: the one, that of the burnt-offering; the other, that of the sin-offering. We lay our hands on Him as the "burnt-offering," thus identifying ourselves with Him. "Accepted in the beloved," all His perfectness, all His "sweet savour" unto God is ours. But then as to the "sin-offering," it is just the reverse with the hand laid upon the victim; it became identified with my sins, charged with my guilt.[xiv]
It supposes a case of wrong done to
an individual, as in the trespass-offering, where it is said, "If a soul
sin, and commit a trespass against the Lord, and lie unto his neighbour,"
etc.* There is the sovereignty of grace to forgive, even to the "seventy
times seven"; but "thou shalt in anywise rebuke thy neighbour, and
not suffer sin upon him." [xv]
The waving is presenting before God;
and the heaving is a little stronger.[xvi]
Wood
They cast lots to bring wood for the altar of God at appointed seasons. Nehemiah 10:34[xvii]
Also see Bible Dictionary