Leviticus 2
This post is a part of a series of articles looking at the book of Leviticus. The aim of these articles is fore Christians to have clarity when coming to the book of Leviticus and have the Word of God come alive for them as they see Christ in all of Scripture.
A sermon on Leviticus 2 will soon be available on the church’s youtube page.
The grain offering of Leviticus 2 seems strange to us. The burnt offering makes sense in chapter 1, because the picture of sin needing atonement by blood is a consistent biblical picture. Yet how are we to differentiate between it and the grain offering?
Well if the burnt offering pictures God’s forgiveness for sins, the grain offering pictures God’s provision for sinners. And this provision is not simply a provision of Jesus to cover sins, but also a provision of what Jesus calls “daily bread” in the Lord’s prayer.
Consider how the grain offering depicts the following three ideas:
1) The grain offering is a picture of God’s provision.
The grain offering comes up from the ground, is refined by the people of Israel, and then brought back to the Lord. When the grain offering was given, it was a worshipful offering of thanksgiving, thanking God for the wheat that sprung up in the fields. God causes the rain to fall and the grass to grow, so giving a grain offering was a declaration that everything the Israelites came, first and foremost from God himself.
It is important to note that while the burnt offering was remarkably expensive, the grain offering was less so. In a day and age when food was more difficult to come by than it is today, this offering presented a wholehearted trust in God to provide.
You might have grown up in a house where mom and dad wouldn’t let you waste food. In reality, the way to be least wasteful of what we have been given is to be most thankful to God in gratitude. This offering pictured God’s provision and thanked him for providing abundantly for the physical needs of the Israelites.
2) The grain offering is a proclamation of God’s aseity.
In Leviticus 2:14, there is an offering introduced which is called the first fruits offering. The word “fruits” is provided to make sense of the text, meaning that this is the first thing the ground brings forth. This offering is given to God at the beginning of the harvest season.
This offering is a declaration of God’s independence. Though we as humans have seasons of plenty and seasons of less, God has no seasons. God is always rich and abounding in every quality of his character. There is never any change in God for any reason or for any length of time. Aseity is a wonderful doctrine that actually grounds other doctrines like God’s love, mercy, patience, and justice.
Theologian James Dolezal gives helpful commentary on the doctrine of aseity when he says the following:
Misunderstanding can sometimes arise over God’s aseity and independence. First, it should be noted that aseity does not mean God is the cause of Himself. He is from or of Himself in that He is the perfectly adequate reason for His own existence, essence, and operation. This is not the same as saying He causes Himself. As the absolute first cause of all created things, God is not to be counted among the things that are caused to be. If He were, He would not be the absolute first cause; something would precede Him in being. It should also be noted that a thing cannot be the cause of itself in any strict sense inasmuch as causing is an operation that requires the existence of the operator as a necessary precondition. One cannot do if one is not.
Second, divine aseity does not mean that God is independent of external causes though somehow existing in dependence on internal causes. Some modern theologians assert that aseity means only that God does not depend on causes outside Himself, while leaving open the possibility that He is composed of parts and thus somehow dependent on the parts of which He is composed. Suffice it to say, if God were composed of internal parts, He would still require some external agent to supply unity to those parts, and thus the problem of external dependence would not be avoided. Aseity means that God is independent of all causes, whether from within (as parts) or from without (as a composer or efficient cause).
Finally, one might be concerned that divine aseity somehow cuts off God from a meaningful and intimate relationship with His creatures. If God is truly independent in every aspect of His being and life, how does that not result in the distant god of Deism? Christians certainly ought not to think of God as remote or distant from His creatures. In Him we live, move, and have our being (Acts 17:28). Aseity means the inverse is not so. God does not live, move, or have His being in or from the creature. He is as near to each of us as the very act of being by which we exist because He is the immediate cause of that act. But He is not near to us in such a way that He derives anything from us. It is because He is “I am,” and so a se, that He can supply everything for us—existence, essence, and activity. These are conveyed to us from God’s own perfect plenitude of being. So far from removing God from us, His aseity is the very reason that He can be so near to us in such exquisite superabundance and provision. He is near us as Giver, not as Getter.
- James Dolezal, “Aseity and Simplicity,” Tabletalk Magazine
Aseity is not a status God has attained. It is who God is. Therefore, when we go through season of plenty or season of little, we can be reminded that the same God stands above and behind them all.
3) The grain offering is a reminder of God’s covenant.
An interesting little verse filled with meaning is Leviticus 2:13
Leviticus 2:13 (ESV)
13 You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.
Salt is always to be present in the grain offering (and supposedly all other offerings as well). Why? Well apparently it is because salt is the way God’s people remind themselves of God’s covenant. Even as salt preserves things and keeps them from going bad, God preserves His people by way of covenant.
What it meant to belong to the Lord is to belong to the Covenant God made with Abraham. As Christians, we understand that in Jesus Christ the New Covenant has come, and so we relate to God by those precious promises (See Jeremiah 31:31-34). The New Covenant is the greatest blessing of Christ, given for all Christ’s people. This is why Jesus says that the New Covenant is given in his blood when he institutes the Lord’s Supper (Matthew 26:26-28).
Application:
1) Trust the Lord. He is faithful and able to provide. You can trust him fully.
2) Praise God for His aseity. God is not like us! What good news!
3) Remember the covenant.
Just as God desired His people in the days of Leviticus to always remember the Old Covenant when they came to worship Him, the Lord desires all His people to remember the New Covenant every time they worship Him. This is God’s means of sustaining, forever, the people he has saved by the precious blood of His son Jesus.