Meal Offering

Once again, it is our privilege to welcome all present. Thank you indeed for coming, and the Lord bless our coming together. Most will know the meetings continue until Friday each evening at this time.

Do remember the meetings in prayer. We invite the saints to do so throughout the day, looking to the Lord for blessing upon His Word. Now we're moving into chapter 2 of Leviticus, and chapter 2, verse 1. Here's our reading.

Leviticus chapter 2, and verse 1. And when any will offer a meal offering unto the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour, and he shall pour oil upon it, and put frankincense thereon, and he shall bring it to Aaron's sons, the priests, and he shall take thereout his handful of the fine flour, and of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof, and the priests shall burn the memorial of it upon the altar, an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord. The remnant of the meal offering shall be Aaron's and his sons. It is a thing most holy of the offerings of the Lord made by fire.

And if thou bring an oblation of a meal offering bacon in the oven, it shall be on leavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or on leavened wafers anointed with oil. And if thy oblation be a meal offering bacon in the pan, it shall be of fine flour on leavened, mingled with oil. Thou shalt part it in pieces, and pour oil thereon.

It is a meal offering. And if thy oblation be a meal offering bacon in the frying pan, it shall be made of fine flour with oil. Thou shalt bring the meal offering that is made of these things unto the Lord, and when it is presented unto the priest, he shall bring it unto the altar.

The priest shall take from the meal offering a memorial thereof, and shall burn it upon the altar. It is an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord, and that which is left of the meal offering shall be Aaron's and his sons. It is a thing most holy of the offerings of the Lord made by fire.

No meal offering which ye shall bring unto the Lord shall be made with leaven, for ye shall burn no leaven nor any honey in any offering of the Lord made by fire. As for the oblation of the first fruits, ye shall offer them unto the Lord, but they shall not be burnt on the altar for a sweet savor. And every oblation of thy meal offering shalt thou season with salt, neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meal offering.

With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt. And if thou offer a meal offering of the first fruits unto the Lord, thou shalt offer for the meal offering of thy first fruits green ears of corn, dried by the fire, even corn beaten out of full ears. Thou shalt put oil upon it, and lay frankincense thereon.

It is a meal offering. The priest shall burn the memorial of it, part of the beaten or bruised corn thereof, and part of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof. It is an offering made by fire unto the Lord.

The Lord will richly bless to us another time the reading of his word. Now last night we came to the book of Leviticus and commenced with the burnt offering aspect of the death of Christ as presented to us so fully in chapter one of Leviticus. Now we move to chapter two, and I think it's good at this moment of time just to point out something that you can recognize very, very readily in the reading of each of these chapters.

In each of these chapters there is a key word, and if we hatch or hitch onto this key word, it will help us tremendously in our remembrance of the material presented by each chapter. After all, we want to commit as much of this as we possibly can to our fertile memories, and to be able to draw upon it in thanksgiving, in meditation, and in ministry, as well of course as motivating our lives for God. Now I don't know whether you noticed or not how many times in chapter one last night the word fire occurs.

Well, go back to that chapter again and see and count how many times the word fire occurs. And I think that's a very good word as a key word upon which to hinge the truth of the burnt offering. Its characteristic word is fire.

Now when we come to chapter two of this book of Leviticus, which we have just read, we're looking at the meal offering, and the key word for the meal offering, of course, is the word flour. Now note how many times the word flour occurs in this chapter, and that will help you to link the material of this offering in your mind. Tomorrow night, in the will of God, we'll read chapter three, and chapter three has got to do with the peace offering.

And one simple word occurs a sufficient number of times to impress itself upon us, and it is the word fat. Notice again how many times that word occurs in chapter three. So fire for the burnt offering, flour for the meal offering, and fat for the peace offerings.

Now we come into chapter four and part of chapter five on the next evening in the will of God, and there we'll be looking at the sin offering. And the great word that is repeated in that collection of verses, of course, is the word forgiven. Forgiven.

And that is really the fruit of the sin offering, isn't it? To be forgiven. And then from chapter five and chapter six, we'll be looking at the trespass offering. And the key expression with the trespass offering is, of course, the fifth part.

Now there are words that are found in the word of God itself, and I think they're very, very helpful, very helpful indeed. Let me repeat them so that you'll be able to note them carefully. Chapter one, fire, the burnt offering.

Chapter two, flour, the meal offering. Chapter three, fat, the peace offering. Chapter four, the sin offering, and the word is forgiven.

And then the trespass offering, the word or the expression is the fifth part. Now there's a little alliteration from the word of God itself that helps us to hinge the truth very firmly in our minds. Now when we come to what we have before us tonight, we're looking at the character of the Son of God.

If the meal offering presents anything, it is the character of the Son of God in that holy life that he lived, and in that holy disposition that he displayed in his character and conduct down here. Then of course, it's the same at this moment of time, for he is glorified man in heaven, but he's still man. And all that marked him whilst here on earth in the perfection of his character marks him at this moment of time.

And I think that is seen in this chapter as well. So we are thankful to God that we can look at this and enter into the believer's apprehension and appreciation of this as seen in the offering of this chapter. Now let us come first of all to what I'm going to call the prerequisites of the offering.

Verses 1, if you like, to verse 3. Now first of all, what we notice is this, and when any will offer a meal offering unto the Lord, this of course is indicative of the person's apprehension or appreciation. And in order to express his appreciation to God, he's going to bring this offering. And this offering, or rather this appreciation, is based on his comprehension of what God presents.

Now let us get that very simply in our mind. Appreciation by comprehension. After all, beloved, the Spirit of God indwells you and indwells me.

And it is he that would enable us to comprehend aright the person of the Lord Jesus. And as we are enabled to do that, we can bring these issues in worship, in gratitude, in thanksgiving to God for his Son. Now that's what we're concerned about.

And so here the first point is appreciation by comprehension. So what is he to do? His offering shall be of fine flour. Now that's my first point.

We must stop there, haven't we? The fineness of the flour. Very simple, but very precious. The fineness of the flour.

It doesn't really mean so much that it has been ground to this position. It really means that it's perfect and ready. And that is so characteristic of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That blessed one that came in manhood was absolutely ready. All that God required was in that blessed one born in Bethlehem. It took time, of course, for it to be manifested.

It took time for it to be displayed. But there he was in all the perfection of his manhood the moment he was born in Bethlehem. Then, of course, you notice that there is no unevenness.

The fineness of the flour is what's emphasized. That really means something that we put it in our way. We say that a person is very strong on something.

And it intimates that somehow he's maybe weak on something else. We would say that that's his strong point. Well, that's not true of the Lord Jesus, you know.

The Lord Jesus was perfectly even. No strong points suggesting that there was something less strong. Oh no, friend.

No, no. This fineness of flour is bringing my mind to bear upon the perfect evenness of his character. Perfectly even in every aspect and facet of his being.

How wonderful to see him in that capacity and character. And then says God, you shall pour oil upon it. Oil upon it.

First of all, the fineness of the flour and then the fluidity of the oil. Pour oil upon it. Abundance.

He giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him, says John. And here is one that was always full of the Holy Spirit. Wonderful to see the blending here of the Spirit of God.

And always remember, young Christian, to look for the small words in your Bible. And in this chapter, the word oil occurs nine times. In this chapter, nine times.

Nine, of course, is the number of the Holy Spirit. The nine aspects of the fruit, and the nine gifts, and many other things are associated with the Spirit of God through the number nine. And I think it's more than interesting that nine times the word oil occurs in this chapter.

So, we notice the fluidity of the oil. The unlimited consciousness this blessed one possesses of the presence and power of the Spirit of God on greed. My, that is wonderful, isn't it? This is something that we long to experience.

This is something the Apostle urges. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of promise. Here is something that there's an awful tendency in our hearts to do.

And yet with him, there was nothing of that whatsoever. That blessed one had such a consciousness of the Spirit of God, it is in all its fullness, ungrieved, unlimited. And then he shall put frankincense thereon.

The fineness of the flower, number one. And then the fluidity of the oil, number two. And then the fragrance of the frankincense, number three.

Because this offering is going to exude a fragrance right to the very nostrils of God, as it were. And isn't that perfectly true? In our simple, in our precious understanding of the person and character of the Lord Jesus, we long to hear those words, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. The fragrance that that blessed one exuded to God in his life is something we rejoice to hear and desire to know more day by day.

And then the fidelity of the salt, that goes right down to the verse number 13. The salt must be brought in on every offering of this nature. That is the fidelity of the Saviour.

Nothing, nothing missed, nothing absent, always in that sense ready and complete and absolute for God. Nothing lacking friend, nothing. With us there is part here, there is part there.

With us there is so much amiss, but with him there was absolute fidelity to God in every department and detail of his being. So the salt reminding us of that which was always the same with him. It wouldn't matter friend if it's adversity, he's the same.

It wouldn't matter if it was prosperity, he's the same. That blessed one went up the mount of transfiguration to be transfigured in supernal glory. The same way friend, as he went to the mount Calvary to be transfixed to the cross.

Get that in your soul. Get that in your soul. And so the salt is always there.

No putrefaction, nothing dear saint of God at all in the Saviour that would even suggest anything contrary to the mind of God. Now hasn't this person brought together some interesting things? I trust you can do this. I trust you can go to your Bible and recognize the fineness of the flower in those Gospels.

I know that you can readily recognize the blessed one being driven by the Spirit and his own references of I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then the kingdom of God is among you. And you can listen to him bringing in and referring to the consciousness of the Spirit of God. You can bring that together can't you? And you can bring the frankincense, the fragrance that he exuded to God in his life down here.

Whether it was in the day of service or the night of communion, the way into that presence ever open, never barred or debarred. And then that fidelity of the salt that we have talked about. It behove of us to fulfill a little righteousness.

No, all righteousness. All righteousness. And where we would do a little bit and do a little bit more, here is our Savior emphasizing what is necessary in our lives, the sense of God.

Now, we bring all that in. You must find it in your Bible. And as you meditate, you present it to God in worship.

That's what this man is doing. Now point number two, if we have had appreciation by comprehension, I want you to notice appropriation by capacity. Appropriation by capacity.

What's that? Well, read with me please. Verse number two, and he shall bring it to Aaron's sons, the priests, and he shall take there out his handful of the flour thereof, and the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof. Now, I'm looking at you and you're looking at me, and there's my hand.

And you know the size of your hand. When you and I would put our hand into this collection, how much would we have? How much would we have? And that amount is simply the amount we have. And you see, your appropriation is governed by your capacity.

Some people have a bigger hand than others. I know that. And yet I would pray.

What my prayer is, I know there's a lovely hymn about the hand in this lovely hymn book. But listen, it's not the empty hand that I'm concerned about. It's the size of my hand I'm concerned about.

Would you not want tonight God to increase your capacity? Increase it. That's my exercise. Would you not want to be able to put more of Christ before God? Well, He can enlarge your capacity.

He can enrich your appreciation, because your amount, you read the Scriptures, you try as it were to grasp it. And what you've got is a measure of your capacity. Now, I would want that to be increased as far as I'm concerned.

And I'm sure that would be your concern and exercise as well. But this man is governed by that. And what he takes out, that's what goes before God.

You can't give beyond your capacity, brother. And I hope you give your capacity to God. But I would pray, my exercise is in mentioning this, that God would extend, enlarge my capacity.

Make this hand bigger. Make me able to take more and present it to God in adoration of His Son. Sometimes it's very feeble.

Sometimes it's childlike to my shame. I trust my exercise. And then, the next point I want you to notice is this.

It's assimilation by calling. Assimilation by calling. Now, you must understand that we begin this as the offerer.

But then, before the paragraph ends, the priest and their sons are assimilating the meal offering. Well, we are priests. We are at once offerers.

And then there's a sense in which we are priests. So we are enabled this evening, not only to present to God, but to assimilate. Now, the memorial put upon the altar and what remained became the food of the priest.

Assimilation by calling. The priests were permitted to feed upon this coming together of these ingredients. The flour, the oil, and the frankincense.

And they fed upon it. Now, you know what it means, don't you? You and I are to be feeding upon Christ. What does that mean? It means to bring into your very being those things you're gathering from the Word of God concerning the Savior.

And you're making them yours. They become part of your very constitutional system, spiritually. So that they radiate in your life.

And they range out in your service. And they become manifested in your character. But after all, you see the little newborn child.

You know whether it's feeding well or not by how it looks. And you see its growth. And if it were not feeding correctly and properly, it would soon manifest itself in its condition.

So now, we assimilate by calling. We have been given, priesthood, we have been given the privilege to feed upon the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in this sense. To bring, what it really means is this, that what I read, what I consider, what I meditate upon, what I'm looking at in the Word of God concerning the Lord Jesus, I bring it into my soul.

It becomes part of my very structure. Just the same as you did that tonight with your meal. There it was.

Very nicely placed. Well prepared. Plenty of it.

Well friend, what good would it do you to have it sitting there on the plate, admiring it, describing it. It has to be assimilated. And you can call your Bible this and you can call your Bible that.

And use wonderful names to describe it and never assimilate it. Food is good. Thank God it's good.

It's divine. But young Christian, are you bringing it into your being? That's the point. So this point is clear, isn't it? It comes the sustenance of priestly men that know at that time peculiar nearness to God.

Granted the privilege of drawing into His presence in that limited way, but in that definite way, they had to be sustained. And you have to be sustained. You're a priest unto God.

How are you going to function for God if you're not feeding on His Son? Did you feed today? Have you famished your soul throughout the 24 hours since we last met? Where are we? What are we doing? Why the weakness? Here's the reason. Now the Israelite can go further. He has preferences.

Verse 1 to 3, it is simply the flour and the oil and the frankincense and the salt, and then it's put in the altar. But from verse number 4 down to verse number 13, He can bake it. And He can bake it or present it in three different forms.

See? He's going to do something more with this flour. And you understand this, don't you? Because I'm sure every house represented in this room tonight has something akin to what's here. You have means of preparing that food in various ways.

On the open plate, in the oven, whatever. And you know that as it undergoes this process, it even becomes more palatable and more acceptable. And that's why we have them.

So God offers the preference. You can have it bacon. And that is very, very wonderful too, isn't it? Now, let us look at this.

A bacon meal offering consists of pierced unleavened cakes and unleavened wafers are mingled or rather anointed with oil. Now that is a very, very special preparation. If you were to come to our country in Malaysia at Chinese New Year, which was actually a few weeks ago, you would see us eating a very, very fragile piece of what we would call biscuit.

And the preparation for that is about as near as what is specified here from what I can. Wonderful to see them making the skill and the time and the care that has to be exercised to make this wafer. And it's just a wafer.

Sometimes it's rolled, sometimes it's folded. And it's the only thing that I can conceive would answer to this. You see, there is skill, there is time, there is work involved.

And it goes through in this delicate sense and yet great skill needed to make it. And I wonder, Saints of God, when we read Matthew, when we read Mark, when we read Luke, when we read John, I ask myself now, come on, you ask yourself. What time, what patience, what skill goes in to my meditation upon the material offered in those Gospels that would become indicative of my appreciation of Christ? How much do we know of them? How much have we read of them? That's the big thing, isn't it? As Saints of God in assembly life, when I was a little boy we were known as men of the book, but now we're known as men of the banquet, isn't it? The time, the energy is dissipated in other things.

And when it comes to offering God worship, to offering God the glory of His Son, it's very feeble, much skill attached. And so many are so repetitive that if they drop dead while they're saying that we could finish it, couldn't. And you know, when that dear wife of yours takes time to prepare that meal and puts it in the oven, she's using time and skill and energy.

And you come and you thank her for the lovely dish. And when it comes to giving God the food of His heart, where are we? And so here this man has it, hasn't he? Because you see, if he puts it in the oven, he's not going to get in the oven to see. In that oven, that heat is going to do something to that cake that no eye sees.

And don't forget, beloved, there are sufferings the Savior suffered that we have never seen yet. Let us get that clear. You and I have absolutely no conception of what it meant for a holy person to be in an unholy atmosphere.

Or we're suited to, in this sense, we're unholy to begin with. But you think of that blessed one coming from heaven and down to this scene of time and living in a polluted air, in a polluted atmosphere, totally uncongenial to anything he ever, ever, ever knew. And that's what's here.

Sufferings that are really invisible. Only God could see. That holy life.

That holy life. After all, you know it in some measure. I know it in some measure.

I remember, I didn't like it at the time, I have to tell you, sitting in a tram in the city of Belfast with my dear mother. And a man came in and he used the name of the Lord in vain. My mother rebuked him in front of the whole tribe.

My face was as red as the morning sun. Embarrassed. But you see, there was an evidence.

In that heart of my mother was something that those people couldn't see. A sensitivity to the person of Christ. She suffered when that man did what he did.

Nobody else thought a thing about it. Well, now that's only a little picture for him. You think of that holy one coming down from heaven into this polluted scene.

How did he feel? How did he suffer? And I want to present that to God. And so I follow this preference. And I present it to God in this way.

I thank God for his suffering in this way. Then it can be baked in a flat plate. What does that mean? The undoubtedness of his suffering.

The inevitability of his suffering. You put it on the flat plate, you can see how it will react. And you think of the reproach that he bore.

And you think of all that he suffered that could be recognizable. Inevitable. Undoubted.

And then a cauldron. In the cauldron I suggest is the intensity of those sufferings. The intensity of those sufferings.

And you understand that, don't you? That blessed one knew the tremendous intensity of suffering. And yet, we thank God this evening hour that by the Spirit's help when we come to our Gospels and come to the Word of God, we can register and we can recognize in some measure the things that's presented in this offering. You think of how John puts it now.

I'll give you an example. You think of how Luke puts it. Luke chapter 12 and verse 50.

John chapter 12 verse 27. John chapter 13 verse 21. And you look at those verses.

And you listen to the Savior speaking about suffering. Suffering. You enter into what he experienced in those passages.

That's what I meant. And I trust, beloved, as you do this with your Bible, with your Gospels, you'll gather together the beauty of these wonderful presentations to God. Is it tremendous that when we come to Hebrews, which gives us the doctrine, by the way, of what we're talking about, that this blessed one who was absolutely perfect is made perfect through suffering.

Does that mean he was imperfect before? Never. Never. No, no, friend.

But the Apostle is dealing with this very point. For example now, look at the difference in the two paragraphs. The first paragraph, it's raw.

Now, you would like to go home tonight and your wife get the flour and the mixture and just put it in a mix and put it on your plate. It's got all the right ingredients. You wouldn't like it, she would.

But she does that. And she puts it into the oven or on the plate or in the cooker. And as it goes on those various means, it undergoes a change.

And it becomes no different. The ingredients are the same. Oh, friend, do you think of how that blessed one, we thank God for that manhood in that form and Bethlehem.

We thank God for that. All the essential, shall I call it, material there. But God didn't stop there.

Oh, we thank God for the babe of Bethlehem. We have come often times to the scene, haven't we? And like those wise men, we have worshipped as we looked upon him coming in. But I please God to allow that blessed one to go through this life and manhood become manifest.

Ingredients are the same. Oh, there's something, isn't there? When I hear him speak. When I see him walk.

When I watch him work. When I hear him pray. I know it's the same person that lay on Mary's lap.

Same person. But you see, the process is doing something, isn't it? Isn't it? You see the point? That's the sense of being perfect through suffering. So that he was touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

He hungered. He was thirsty. He was weary.

He was lonely. He was in poverty. And you understand that in this we have what's in these verses, beloved.

God is allowing his son to pass through these vicissitudes. That you and I may see the richness, the glory of his character emerging. We can accept it.

We can feed upon it. We feel sustained by the one that came so very near to us in manhood. So that now I can bring these and present them to God and see him in this beautiful threefold.

Verse 14 to 16, of course, is the first fruits. And they are not brought to fruition by normal growth. They are brought to fruition by the fire.

And I look on this as resurrection. And I look on the last paragraph of this chapter as the Savior in resurrection manhood and glory. And the character is exactly the same.

Exactly the same. For though he is glorified in heaven, the manhood of the Savior is exactly the same in essence. That blessed one that could not sin on earth will never, never, never do so.

If I insinuated that it was possible for him to sin on earth, I would be insinuating it's possible for him to sin right now. Far be the thought. But because it was impossible, it still is.

And the manhood of Christ in resurrection, in glory is the same, beloved, as it was brought to fruition, death. Now there are prohibitions. God says, no leaven, no honey, no burning, and no salt to be wanting.

Now those are the last few verses of the second paragraph. You got those? No leaven, the total absence of sin. The total absence of sin.

Incorruptibility friend of ever there was. Absolute perfection. Get it in your soul tonight.

Not the trace of it. Not the slightest evidence of it. And God says don't bring it in to the meal offering.

It's got nothing to do with my son. No hypocrisy, no duplicity. We all know what leaven represents.

It's absent in Christ. No honey, the total absence of the pull of nature. My we are different, aren't we? You remember the Saviour asked, who is my mother? Who is my brother? But he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Remember the first words of the Saviour? Now the Lord was not despising or disowning those natural relationships. He was honoring them. But he was indicating, beloved, that those natural relationships had no power in relation to affecting what was spiritual and what was essentially divine.

Good to God that we knew that. A tremendous amount of our testimony is affected by natural links. And that's sad, isn't it? But in the Saviour's life there was no honey.

There was nothing of natural sweetness allowed to mitigate either judgment or to mar mercy. No burning because the work has been totally accepted in what we saw last night in a finished work. And then no salt again to be wanted.

Now we have to close. We will look at the law of the offering later. But I want to finish on this point.

Because these subjects and these chapters, beloved, just offer us the detail. Now we need to go to the substance and come into the New Testament more readily and more fully and see how we're going to present this in the New Testament. And that would take another night or more, wouldn't it? Now what I want to finish with is this.

Within the compass of the Old Testament there is a tremendous amount of detail untouched. And I want you to notice something. And you take a note of this and I'm sure it will help.

We were reading it in the home where we were last week because our reading in the morning was in 1 Kings 18. Now you know 1 Kings 18. And as you read that chapter you will read of Elijah on Mount Carmel and he's rebuilding the altar of God.

When? At the time of the evening sacrifice. Now that's the point. At the time of the evening sacrifice.

That's what it says. But the brethren that taught me many years ago taught me something else. To make sure I check every word in my Bible.

And when I do that, I find that when I would have thought of the evening sacrifice according to the ministry I gave last night, according to the word that I quoted last night, in Numbers 28, a morning and an evening sacrifice was to be a lamb for a burnt offering. But when I examine the word in 1 Kings 18, you do it when you go home tonight, what do I discover? That word sacrifice is the word for the meal offering. I thought it should have been the word for the burnt offering.

That's the word for the meal offering. It was at the time of the evening, Mimcha, to give you the word. And that's the word that's used here.

Come to 2 Kings 3, it's Elijah and he's surrounded by a problem and it's just at the morning offering. It's the morning meal offering. Come to Daniel 9, that most critical chapter in all our Bible, where Daniel is interceding for the good of his people before God.

And at the time of the evening sacrifice, it's the evening meal offering. Come to Ezra 9, I sat down astonished at the time of the evening sacrifice. Ezra's in a great plight and it's at the time of the evening meal offering.

That's amazing, brethren. Here are great historical moments in Israel where really the word should have been for the burnt offering. But the Spirit of God places it indelibly.

It's the word for the meal offering. Why is that? In each of those four cases, Israel has failed. You know that.

I haven't time now to elaborate. And in the mind of God, there was something going into the presence of God at that moment of time. And God focuses on it at that point.

What is it? It's the perfection of the character of a son who never failed. And the Spirit of God changes the title that you and I on those passages may see. Israel failed in chapter 18, Israel failed in 2 Kings 3, Israel have failed in Daniel, Israel have failed in Ezra.

But just at that very moment when this was going in before God, God as it were looked at it. And what did he see? He saw a man that never failed. What did he do? He blessed his people.

Tremendous. Tremendous to me. Now I don't know about you down there.

I don't think there's anything as rich as that. That's the wealth of this book. Now I close.

Let my prayer come before thee as incense and the lifting up of my hands as the evening minka. Same word. You know what that is? Well find it when you go home.

Do I know anything of that? Well I lift up these hands in the presence of God to pray. What is the measure of my acceptance? Me? God looks on his son. He sees the perfection of him.

And he graciously blesses you and blesses me according to him. May God bless his word.