Leviticus 6

Leviticus 6:8-7

Subdivision 2. (Leviticus 6:8-30; Leviticus 7:1-38.)The offerings in relation to priest and people. But we have now to look at their relations to the priests and people, especially to the former. The laws here fall into six sections; the offerings in general taking their place much as before, except that the meal-offering for the high-priest takes here the one occupied by the peace-offering, and the peace-offering itself has the last place, as bringing before us that communion with God in which we find the rightful effect and conclusion of the whole.

1. The burnt-offering comes first, then, in order; and it is to be always upon the altar, an abiding testimony to Israel’s acceptance with God. Typically even, this was only imperfectly attained in their case by lengthening out the morning and evening sacrifice, so as to merge them, as it were, in one. For us it is simple that the one offering abides before God continually, and we abide in the value of it, without possibility of change. Absolutely necessary as the sin-offering is, and the only thing that can open the holiest, yet how different is the ordinance as to it! Except some special sin of the whole congregation called for it, there was but one sin-offering for all Israel on the day of atonement once a year. Nor, as we have seen, does it seem ever to have been voluntarily offered, or multiplied as the burnt- and peace-offerings might be, to any extent. It was the duty of the priest to keep the burnt-offering with its sweet savor going up to God. The true sacrifice needs not this continual service; and yet it does not follow that there is nothing that answers now to this priestly work. God delights to have us remind Him (though He can never forget it,) of the work of His dear Son, and that we have here our occupation, and live in the fragrance of His acceptance. This is really the foundation of all practical holiness, as it is of rest and satisfaction to the soul. Christ is our righteousness before God: we are accepted in the Beloved; in Christ we are as Christ, even in this world. Here the perpetual sunshine settles down on us: it is the true Beulah land for the saint, where the birds sing ever, and the heart goes forth in perpetual melody. “There be many that say, Who will show us any good?

Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us!” Here it is ever lifted up, for God turns not His back upon His Son: this day knows no decline. Well may our relation to the offerings begin with this transcendent blessedness! 2. Then we come to the meal-offering, -Christ personally enjoyed, the food of the priests of God. Here is full communion, the memorial for God, the rest for Aaron and his sons. But it can only be eaten in a holy place -in the court of the tent of meeting, where the fine linen of practical righteousness shuts us in from the world. Whatever is put in contact with this becomes holy, whatever we can connect with Christ finds indeed, thus, that He is sanctification; what cannot is leaven, and to be excluded. 3. What is the meal-offering of the high-priest in the day of his anointing, and which (like the burnt-offering,) is to be wholly burned, not partaken of? If we go back to the time of Christ’s anointing, when at His baptism by John the Father’s voice proclaimed His delight in His beloved Son, the gift of the Spirit was the seal of the perfection so declared. But to what did it testify? To the preciousness of thirty years of human life which in the inspired history has, it may be said, no place. What it was to God He testifies; He had lived in it to God in the common toil of men -a life of which it is natural to ask, Why should it be hidden from us?

Gospels of the Infancy have been imagined even, to fill the gap and satisfy the need, but have only proved their absolute incompetency. It remains, and for us will remain, until we hear it perhaps in the speech of heaven, absolutely hidden, a meal-offering to God alone. If this be the true interpretation, as it seems, then we can understand why it is made with oil, but not anointed; and we realize the opposition of the world to Him, even before He came openly forward as God’s Sent One in it. Half offered in the morning, half at night, it may show us His abiding perfectness all through, whether in sunshine or in shadow: things that test us equally, yet in such different ways, in Him bore equal witness to unchangeable goodness. Could these thirty wondrous years go without notice in these types? Yet it is here only, -nowhere if not here, -we seem to find it. 4. Where the sin-offering was not wholly burned, it was eaten by the priest, -the priest who offered it, and who typifies Christ Himself, sharing it with the priestly family. The eating has the same significance as elsewhere: it is the entering into that which makes atonement for God, hence of necessity into the sin itself as before Him. In Christ it was necessarily found when “bearing our sins in His own body on the tree,” and in this way was part of the atonement itself, as Leviticus 10:17 indicates; but the fact that the priests could as a whole partake of it shows that it is not to be limited to this. Daniel confessing his sin and the sin of his people was surely eating the sin-offering; and just such identification of ourselves with the sins of God’s saints is a great need for all of us: a realization which the knowledge of the cross that we have as Christians will intensify, not in any wise lessen. Alas! the slight knowledge of God’s grace may indeed allow a light treatment of sin, perhaps also a bitter judgment of it: a real eating of the sin-offering makes one as serious as tender: who can harshly judge when Christ has borne the judgment? who can treat lightly what brought Him to the cross? Nothing could be holier than the sin-offering; and as in the previous case of the meal-offering, every thing brought into connection with it becomes holy. Imputed sin is not imparted sin. There is, indeed, in the case of the red heifer (Numbers 19:1-22), what seems to argue this, but even in this case the ritual as a whole shows this not to be really so. And here the treatment of the vessels in which the flesh had been boiled was not because of their having been defiled, but that the holy food should not be mixed in any way afterward with common food. “It was possible to prevent this desecration, in the case of copper vessels, by a thorough cleansing; but not so with earthen vessels, which absorb the fat, so that it cannot be removed by washing. The latter, therefore, were to be broken in pieces, - i.e., thoroughly destroyed.” (Keil.) This minute care as to the type should surely teach us how separate from every other thing is the work of the cross. Death there was not as death elsewhere: Christ was no mere martyr. To mix this wondrous work for God and men with any other thing whatever is but to degrade and desecrate it. 5. In the law of the trespass-offering we have supplied what with all the other offerings comes into the first part, -the direction as to the killing, the sprinkling of the blood, and the burning of the fat. They were left out before, as it seems, to fix our attention upon the specific character of the trespass-offering as restitution. Here, in what is indeed (what the whole book of Leviticus is often called) the “priests’ guide-book,” they are taught that for restitution there must be true sacrificial atonement: in government, God’s nature must be declared; and this we see the gospels maintain so fully, -that what is in Leviticus absolutely distinctive of the sin-offering is in Matthew as much given as in Mark, so that it is even difficult to distinguish between them. 6. Lastly, the peace-offering fills the sixth place here. It is that which, in the bringing together God and man whom sin has sundered, displays His victory over it. There are three subsections here, the two last plainly marked out, in a way we have seen before, by their being distinct communications from Jehovah. In the first part, we find, in type, through the work of atonement, God and man at one, -peace which is not merely peace, but much more. In the second, we have reiterated the prohibition of eating fat and blood. In the third, we have the priest’s portion in the offering. (1) As has just been said, peace with God is never merely peace. God can never be simply not at variance with His creatures; there is in His nature no indifference, no neutrality; what He is He is with His whole heart, and, of all things, He nauseates lukewarmness. So to be at peace with Him is to have His love poured out upon us, -it is to be brought into His banqueting-house, and to be made to sit at His table: and thus it is pictured here. The peace-offering is the only one in which the offerer himself partakes of his own offering, and this partaking shows him not only brought into a place of acceptance, but in heart reconciled and brought nigh. That which has satisfied God satisfies him also: peace has become communion. There are three characteristics of the peace-offering here, -a thanksgiving, a vow, and a free-will offering. It is strange that there should be contention among the commentators as to the meaning of these, as also that by some the higher character should be ascribed to the first, when the law itself so plainly decides otherwise. The “thanksgiving” is plainly the acknowledgment of some special blessing from God, while the “free-will” offering, on the contrary, supposes that nothing of this kind had roused the heart to remembrance: it needed nothing; as where one walks with God, and finds Him ever before him, walks in His light, rejoicing ever in Himself. It is clear which is the higher state implied, and which therefore is the higher character of offering. As to the vow, it is not so plain at first why it should be higher. The vow is supplicatory, was often dictated by the pressure of circumstances, is in the text distinguished from free-will offerings.

Yet as addressed to Jehovah, the expression of confidence in Him in trial, He rates it higher than the simple thanksgiving. And this is evident, if we could not at all account for it, by the fact that, in the case of this as of the free-will offering, the flesh might be eaten the day after as well as the day of the sacrifice, typically implying more energy for sustained communion than in the thanksgiving-offering. On the third day even here, whatever remained was to be burned in the fire; and if eaten, it would be pollution. The contact with uncleanness also, if one went on with what expressed communion with God, would be grievous sin, as connecting His table with it. Reconciliation with God means holiness of life. (2) The fat and the blood God claimed for Himself; and there was need to insist upon this where the people were thus encouraged to draw near to God. Man soon mistakes familiarity for nearness: God has therefore to insist afresh upon what is His due being rendered to Him. Life, as expressed in the blood, was His; and the fat, the will and energy of the life, was to be consecrated to Him alone. Good and needful it is, at the table of the Lord, to recognize that it is the Lord’s: “the shout of a King is among them” must be characteristic always of the people of God. And so speak the dimensions of the eternal city, every way a 12, -the length and breadth and height of it equal. (3) Lastly, we have the priests’ portion of the peace-offering. The offering priest we necessarily recognize as Christ. The wave-breast belongs to Aaron and his sons; for we are, as priests, able to enter into and partake of the affections of His heart. The shoulder is His alone, for His alone is the power by which all things are sustained in blessing. With this the law of the peace-offering ends.