[Lev 3:1-5] The Aroma of Peace

Good morning to you all. Yeah, I didn't have breakfast either. Good morning, I guess. That's how it sounded. Good morning, everybody. See, you gotta tease people. You gotta make fun of them to wake up.

The Restoration of Communion After the Fall

This morning, we continue our short series on the book of Leviticus, where we encounter the heart of a holy God. God's heart tells us that he wants to be in our midst, he wants to be with us, but God's holiness tells us that before we can come before him, we must first prepare ourselves.

The story of Leviticus is a story of restoration, a story of how God is beginning to restore all things to the way they were in the Garden of Eden. So remember, the goal of redemption has always been the restoration, first and foremost, of communion with God and his people, as things were in the Garden of Eden.

Before Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they had uninterrupted communion and access to God. But that communion was interrupted by their disobedience. After the disobedience of Adam and Eve, God pronounced a word of judgment.

And as he begins to speak to the serpent, he's not even done pronouncing judgment when he pronounces the greatest possible blessing. In Genesis 3 .15, God speaks judgment to the serpent and says, and I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

He will crush your head and you will strike him on the heel. Right there in that verse, we have the beginning of sin and death, but also the beginning of the restoration of all things. And among those is the restoration of communion with God.

That verse tells us that the fall caused an uncrossable gulf between humans and God, an infinitely high wall that separates communion between God and humanity. Humanity will not have communion in the presence of God because humanity is unholy.

But that prophecy right there in Genesis 3 .15 was the beginning of redemption. The promise of offspring or the promise of Eve's descendants is an important one because it is through Eve's descendants that the Messiah, Jesus Christ, will come.

You see, Jesus is the ultimate descendant of both Eve, Jesus is the ultimate descendant of Abraham, who will be a blessing to all the nations of the world. And how so? Through salvation. God promised Abraham that he would give him many, many descendants.

And so we see here God's promise of offspring and descendants, which tells us that the Messiah will ultimately come through Abraham's descendants. And that's why Jesus said that Abraham saw Jesus' coming at his birth and he rejoiced.

In the book of Exodus, we see God calling Moses to deliver his people, and he tells us that he did this because he remembered the covenant that he made with Abraham. In Exodus and Leviticus, we begin to see God restoring communion with his people, that communion that was lost through the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

But this plan in Leviticus, even in Leviticus, it is still imperfect because people must still keep their distance. His people still do not have free, they do not have complete access to God without the mediation of a priest.

God's people will not have open, free access to God until the appearance of Jesus Christ on the cross. But now, says Romans 5, we have free access to God and we now stand in grace. But the work of restoration is still not complete because we still need our mediator, Jesus Christ.

And there is still death, there is still sin. We have full flesh communion with God, but there is still sin and death. But one day, God will restore all things to their completion in the new creation when his people will have communion with God just as Adam and Eve had with God in the garden.

Because in the garden, humanity lived in harmony with each other, with creation, and with God. And you and I are also included in this grand drama of redemption in the right here, in the right now. Leviticus is the beginning of the restoration.

The Fellowship Offering as Invitation, Surrender, and Celebration

And in this book, there are some important, very important things that the Holy Spirit wants us to know about God. Our reading comes from Leviticus 3, verses one through five. If your offspring, 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.

You are to lay your hand on the head of your offering and slaughter it at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Then Aaron's sons, the priests, shall splash the blood against the sides of the altar. From the fellowship offering, you are to bring a food offering to the Lord, the internal organs, all the fat that is connected to them, both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which you will remove with the kidneys.

Then Aaron's sons are to burn it on the altar on top of the burnt offering that is lying on the burning wood. This is a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord. The grass withers, and the glass and the grass fades, but God's word abides forever, and by his grace and mercy, may his word be preached for you.

Hosting friends and family from out of town always sounds good in theory, but it doesn't come without its challenges, right? Two-thirds of Americans have told a guest to make themselves at home, only to regret it later.

That's according to a new survey of 2 ,000 Americans, which found that 72 of these people told other people to make themselves at home, and 91 of those people regretted it afterward. Some of the reasons respondents have regretted allowing people to make themselves at home include guests expecting more meals than planned, that's 54%, 45 they overstayed their welcome, and 39 of people said they made a mess.

Results also looked to see who makes the worst guests, right? Who make the worst guests? 42 said friends, 39 said siblings, and 37 said in-laws. For a third of the respondents, the situation became so unpleasant that they told someone that they are, in fact, a bad guest.

On the flip side, 75 Americans think they're good hosts, and 31 of those say that they're very good hosts. In our text today, you have been invited to God's table. He wants us to feast and eat before him as his guests, he is our host, and you can be sure that we are the worst possible guests ever.

We are dripping in gunk, we are soaked in mud, and God's house and his table are of the whitest carpet, the whitest sofas, the whitest chairs, impeccable white everywhere. Some of us have made ourselves at home, and we don't mind the mess that we've made, and in fact, many of us have brought our dogs into God's house.

I think that that illustration sort of forces us to examine ourselves before we approach God's presence, right? We have to wipe our feet, as it were, before we enter those doors of that sanctuary. But there's a solution, there's a peace offering.

So first of all, this peace or this fellowship offering is an invitation from God. We have been invited to fellowship with God. This is what we do every Sunday morning when we gather before his presence.

We are invited to fellowship. Notice how the chapter begins with the word if. This offering, as were the burnt and the great offerings, this is voluntary. It is an invitation to fellowship with God. Peace offerings were made for three reasons, right?

It was a sacrifice of praise, you wanting to be an act of worship to God. Second, you could have made a sacrifice of gratitude, thanking God for something that he did in your life, answered prayer. And third, as a votive sacrifice, that means make a sacrifice along with making a vow before the Lord.

But notice that our fellowship and peace, for that to even be possible, the shedding of blood, innocent blood, must first be shed. Up to this point, Jim and I have dealt with three of the five offerings in Leviticus, the burnt offering and the great offering, and today the peace offering.

Verse one gives us more instructions on this peace offering. So the Hebrew phrase there reads that this is a sacrifice or it is an offering of shalamim. That's the Hebrew word, shalamim. Does that sound familiar to any other Hebrew word that you know?

Shalom, yes, you're right. As you know, shalom means much, much more than peace. Peace as an absence of conflict. So different versions of the Bible try to capture the meaning of shalom in this verse.

The King James, for example, says it is a sacrifice of peace offering. The NIV says it is a fellowship offering. The Septuagint, the Greek version, reads it is a sacrifice of deliverance offering. And the New Revised Standard Version says that it is a sacrifice of well-being.

Each of these phrases adds to the meaning, but none of these words alone, none of these phrases alone captures the meaning, the deeper meaning. So basically this offering is a result of the deliverance worked by God in our life.

It celebrates the peace that now exists between God and his people. This offering is also deeply communal in nature. So all of those words would fit with the Hebrew word shalom. But for our purposes this morning, I'm going to call it a peace offering.

That should easily remind you what shalom is, shalom and peace, and maybe it'll give you a picture to the larger definition. As we read, this peace offering was done in very similar fashion to the burnt offering that we read several weeks ago.

If you make a peace offering, you would bring an animal from your herd, a bull or a cow this time, or a sheep or a goat. Notice that there are no birds in this sacrifice, namely because birds have little to no fat.

Unlike the burnt offering, this peace offering was not completely burnt up in the fire. So the process was mostly the same as with the burnt offering. If you don't remember that, let me summarize it for you.

You had to choose an animal from your herd without blemish. And this time it is from the herd, from the flock, or from the goats. You had to take it to the entrance of the tabernacle. You couldn't go any farther than that, the very entrance.

You lay your hand on the animal's head as a symbolism that you are identifying with the animal. Then the animal was slaughtered, either by you or the priest. The priest would then splash the blood on the altar, right?

Blood was the sign of life because without blood, you don't live, basically. The symbolism is that the blood is a sign of life and it belongs to God, so it returns to God. That's why it was splashed on the altar, that life returns to God, life is of God.

So that's why it was prohibited to drink blood in the Old Testament. In this offering, you were to burn the fatty parts of the animal. And this is called a food offering to the Lord. One of the main differences is that the burnt offering was completely burnt up.

That's why it's called the burnt offering. In the burnt offering, the whole animal, there was no meat left over for the priests or the offerer. Whereas in the grain offering that we studied last week and the peace offering today, they were not completely burnt up, but the priest got a portion of it.

And in the peace offering, both the priest and the offerer will get a portion of the sacrifice. For the most part, the portion that belonged to the Lord, that was to be burned, was the large net of fat that covered the intestines, the kidneys, and a part of the liver.

All that fat was burned up on the altar, it was burnt on top of the burnt offering, if you made a burnt offering. No doubt to help the burnt offering burn quicker and to keep the fire alive and burning.

A sheep, there's a species of sheep with a very fat, very thick tail. Doesn't even look like a tail. This enormous tail had to be sacrificed as well. And for the goats, the process was the same as with the cattle.

And remember that this chapter began with the word, if you came with a sacrifice. It was not an obligation. It was a voluntary sacrifice or offering. This peace offering is first and foremost an invitation from God.

Here, we again see the dilemma of a holy God wanting fellowship with his people. And no matter how many times I read it in the text, no matter how many times I write it, no matter how many times I say it, I just can't get over it.

God wants to have fellowship with you and with me. This morning, this morning, today, as you walked in those doors, God wants to be in the midst of his people. We need reconciliation, however. We need a covering.

And this is what the sacrifices were in the Old Testament, a covering of our sin. The problem, of course, is that God is holy and we are not. God is a flaming fireball, if you will. The closer we get, the likelier it is that we will be consumed.

For God, our God, is a consuming fire, says Hebrews 10. But by offering a sacrifice, we make atonement. Remember that word? At-one-ment. We become one. We become reconciled to God. And now that we are reconciled, God has provided a way to have fellowship with us.

And now he invites us into that fellowship. And that's a great attitude. That's a great reminder to have as we walk in through those doors. I told you last time that, is that the attitude that you came with or did you come stumbling in late?

And I had, if you remembered, I didn't even play the first song because I was late. All this takes is one mishap and then you're late. It's that driver that, for odd reasons, drives the speed limit or a mishap from your kids during breakfast.

That's all it takes to be late. And that's not the problem. The bigger problem is, when I stumbled in late, as I walked up here, I said, I gotta get up there without anybody seeing me. But some people saw me and some people asked why I was late.

And the attitude that I was is, I need to be late, I need to be earlier, how do I fix that? Next thing you know, worship was over and I lost that moment to worship our holy God. I took it for granted.

He invites us into that fellowship. Secondly, this invitation is to fellowship, but we are also invited to surrender. This is an invitation to our surrender. Notice that the instructions were to sacrifice a specific part of the animal.

And in this instance, it is the fat, the kidneys, and the liver. The fat of the animal is considered to be the best part of the animal, believe it or not. In our culture, we reject the fatty parts of the meat, but in that culture, the fat was the choicest part of the animal.

And the Lord says, that part must be surrendered to me. God wants the best of us. God wants the whole of us. And I think that word surrender captures it all because we can give and we can give and we can give, but to surrender, it means we must let go of something that we are hesitant to give up.

To surrender the fat unto the Lord means that we give our very best. And this hurts, right? Because by nature, we are stingy. Notice I said we, right? We have some idioms for Dutch people, but guess what?

There are Scrooges in all cultures. There are people who are tight-fisted with their resources in all cultures. I thought it was just ours. So when the Dutch people said it, I thought it was funny. We often believe that we can get away with giving the least of our time because being stingy is not just an issue of monetary giving, it is a lifestyle.

It is a lifestyle that began with stinginess in the monetary realm, but then it just seeps over into everything that we do. We are stingy with our resources, with our support for others. When was the last time somebody talked your ear off?

When was the last time somebody unloaded their good times and their bad times on you? That's half of the question. Here's the other half of the question. When was the last time somebody overwhelmed you with their information and you were not irritated by it?

Any of us can get trapped by someone sharing their story, sharing what happened at the mall the other day, sharing a grief, sharing a sorrow, but few of us actually surrender our time to others. But to give time to others, to share and express their joys, their day, their activities, their likes, their hobbies, their struggles, even their day, that demands surrender.

And it is called surrender because it's never the right time, it's never the right place, and it's never the right state of mind. Have you ever sat there and heard someone pour out their heart to you over their griefs, over their sorrows, while you yourself were dying on the inside because of your own sorrows and your own griefs?

That's sacrifice, that's surrender. Surrender your best to the Lord by pouring out yourself into the service of God and his people. Isn't that great? We will be rewarded for every second that we give to one another, even when nobody sees it.

And most people don't. And that's the great part about it, God does not miss one second and you will be rewarded. And we see here, part of that peace offering was given over to the priests so that they could enjoy.

So was this an offering for the priest or was it an offering for the Lord? Yes and yes. Furthermore, in this offering, we see that even though we surrender our best to God, God gives back to us in order so that we could celebrate, so in order that we could feast, in order that we could enjoy of that goodness.

That's our third point, that as God's people who have been reconciled to a holy God, we have been invited to celebrate. It's an invitation to celebrate the Christian life. Further instructions on this peace offering are given in chapter seven.

We know that the fat and the kidneys and part of the liver were for the Lord, but then chapter seven goes on to say that the breast and the right thigh of the animal, they were a contribution for the priest, a contribution for their priestly service.

And when all of this was said and done, the person making the offering then took back the most significant part of the animal meat to return to them. And all that meat, they had to eat it within the same day or within the next day.

All leftovers were to be burnt up. If they weren't burnt up after the second day, your offering was not accepted and you were to be cut off. So the obvious question is, what do we do with all that leftover meat?

We celebrate. It is perhaps the only time in the life of Israelites that they could eat meat, that they would eat meat, that they could afford to eat meat. This sacrifice belonged to the Lord and now he wants you to celebrate the peace that you enjoy with God and feast.

And it was plenty of meat, plenty of meat that if you were going to finish that meat up, you had to invite your neighbors, you had to invite your community, your extended family. Because unless you were full, you fattened that animal up as fat as he could possibly be.

Because when sacrifice came, all that meat came back. Ironically, eating with friends in the Bible is a sign of fellowship, peace and communion at the deepest human level. You can see that in the feasts of Jesus and the meals that he sat down to eat with people.

So in Genesis 3, ironically, after the fall, God imposes judgment and since the fall was caused by eating the serpent was judged there. From this day on, the Lord said, you will eat dust to the serpent.

Human beings, he said, you will eat but only after the deep sweating of your brow, after much hard work. And when we celebrate communion here, we are eating at the Lord's table, we are celebrating peace with God and we are celebrating fellowship with one another because Jesus is the sacrificed lamb and we partake of his flesh and his blood, albeit in a spiritual manner.

Read all the instances of food and eating in the Bible and you will see either the deepest forms of communion and fellowship or you will see the deepest of divisions between humans and between God. It is no surprise then that our life in the new creation at the end of history, when we are in perfect eternal communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, it is going to be called the marriage supper of the lamb.

And we have a glimpse of that eternal communion that we will one day have every time we congregate to worship the Lord on Sunday mornings. We have a glimpse of that eternal communion with each other when we have each other over for a meal.

And I can tell you the most significant, the most memorable memories in my life are when my family ate at your house or you ate at our house. If we haven't had a meal together, let's plan something. I'm sure that there are many people in this church whom you have not had over your house and vice versa.

You haven't been over to their house. We experience fellowship, we experience communion over something so mundane like a meal. When we do it as Christians, there's a deeper spiritual meaning there. Share your resources, get your best meal out, offer to the Lord as a peace offering.

We have been reconciled to God. Let's celebrate. Christ is our shalom. He is our peace. Look at Ephesians chapter two. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

He himself is our peace who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. It was in his flesh. It was in his blood. The wall has been broken down and now we have peace with God.

Let us rid of ourselves, of our attitudes, our critiques, our negative comments, our negativity, our sin. For we are in the presence of a holy but loving God. We have been cordially invited to fellowship with the Lord and with one another.

We have been invited to surrender the fat, the best that we have for the Lord and with one another. We have been invited to celebrate our peace with God by worshiping the Lord and by sharing and eating with one another.

Prayer and Benediction

Would you pray with me? Lord God, thank you that even in the garden, you gave us hope, promising the offspring who would crush the serpent's head. Thank you for Jesus, our peace offering, who restores what sin broke and brings us back into fellowship with you.

As we leave today, help us to live as people reconciled, offering you our best, serving one another with joy and celebrating the peace that we now have through Christ. May our lives be a reflection of the feast to come.

There we will dwell with you forever. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. May the Lord who welcomes us to his table in peace grant you his abiding presence. May the fellowship offered through the sacrifice of Christ fill your heart with joy, your life with thanksgiving and your relationships with harmony.

Go now in the peace of the Lord as made you his own through the offering of perfect peace. Amen.