Leviticus 7

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:32:10utc

d. The Guilt Offering 7:1-10.

The sacrifices are given here in the order of importance accorded them by the priest; for example, the sacrifice of which the largest portion was given to the priest is mentioned last. That is why the order is not the same as in the first six chapters. This treatment is at the same time beautiful and ironic, since the more the sacrifice has to do with sin, the more the priest profits from it. However on exception is that the last sacrifice mentioned in this series is the fellowship offering which is a sacrifice that is brought voluntarily as man's answer to reconciliation with God. But we could say that the priest's salary is largest where atonement is most clearly expressed. Both the sinner and the mediator live by grace! This is a defeat for the devil.

The unity among the various sacrifices is emphasized again in the fact that all are brought to the same place as the burnt offering. The place of the altar of the world is the place where the Lamb of God was slain, on the hill of Golgotha. The burnt offering shows us the deepest meaning of the cross. Everything else is included in this.

The procedure of the sacrifice of the sin offering is the same procedure as the fellowship offering and as the guilt offering. Only in the fellowship offering is the largest portion of the meat left to the person who brings the sacrifice.

The instructions here given to the priest are that the blood had to be sprinkled around the altar and all the fat, kidneys, and the covering of the liver had to be burned on the altar. Here too, the emphasis is on the unity of the sacrifices. They all portray the sacrifice of the body of Christ. The five sacrifices in these seven chapters are five facets of the same sacrifice.

I wonder why only the male members of the priest's family were allowed to eat these offerings. We do read in ch. 10:14 that the daughters, too, could eat of the meat of the fellowship offering. The verse reads: "But you and your sons and your daughters may eat the breast that was waved and the thigh that was presented. Eat them in a ceremonially clean place; they have been given to you and your children as your share of the Israelites' fellowship offerings." Atonement for sin, however, was the affair of men, because the man bears the greater responsibility for sin in the world. The share of guilt for Adam was greater than that of Eve. It was through his disobedience that death came into the world. That is why it is reasonable that the man eats part of the sacrifice that atones for sin.

Vs. 7 links the sin offering and the guilt offering directly. They both form the corner stones of reconciliation. Vs. 8 refers back to the burnt offering and, as such, it could just as well fit in ch. 6. It fits here too because it is part of the bonuses the priests receives from the sacrifices. The skin of the burnt offering is the only part that is given to the priest. Evidently, the first sacrifice that was brought in Paradise when man had fallen into sin must have been the burnt offering, because by it Adam and Eve were saved from their feeling of shame and nakedness. The prophetic meaning of this sacrifice was also fulfilled literally when the Roman soldiers divided the clothing of Jesus Christ among themselves. They were the priests who sacrificed the Lamb of God as a burnt sacrifice.

The art of leather preparation must have been widely practiced among the priests. After a handful of the grain offering had been put on the altar, the priest also received the larger portion of the grain offering, both in baked and dry form. So, in a community where people took the atonement of their sins seriously, the priest never lacked meat and bread.

e. The Fellowship Offering 7:11-38.

An interesting distinction is made between fellowship offerings that serve as a thank offering (vs. 11 - 15) and those that represent a vow or a freewill offering (vs. 16 - 21).

The thank offering becomes an act of praise by the symbolic giving of oneself to the Lord in death and, secondly, the sacrifice serves as a symbol of surrender in the making of a vow. The contents of the vow is not specified. It implies that the person who brings the sacrifice promises to do something for the Lord, some kind of service, either for a life-time, or for a limited period of time.

The fellowship offering is the logical result of the atonement and of the forgiveness of sin which was received in the sin offering and the guilt offering. For us, it means that we give ourselves to God because He has saved us.

All three forms of the grain offering which were specified in chapter two had to accompany the fellowship offering. This means that the fellowship offering was actually a combination of two kinds of sacrifices. Our praise and gratitude demonstrates the joy of our forgiveness and of the fact that God, as our Creator, has a right to the body, soul, and spirit of the man He created.

We fall easily into the fault of thinking that, if we praise God out of gratitude, we just pronounce certain words. Here it becomes clear that the essence of praise is insight in the meaning of atonement and of our raison d'être as humans who have been created by God: an insight which translates itself in a complete surrender of ourselves in all the aspects of our life. The three kinds of the grain offering (the fine flour the cakes made without yeast and mixed with oil, the wafers made without yeast and spread with oil) all symbolize the various aspects of our life. The cakes without yeast stand for the purity of our human nature, the oil for the influence and fullness of the Holy Spirit, and the fine flour for the broken spirit before God. This kind of perfect purity of a spirit that is broken and filled before the Lord is an ideal that is not found in men, except in our Lord Jesus Christ. It should also be clear that, without the presence of the Holy Spirit there can be no real fellowship offering.

It is surprising that the man who brings a thank offering should, at the same time, bring a offering of cakes made with yeast as an offering that had to be lifted up before the Lord. The Hebrew word used here is teruwmah or terumah, which is defined by Strong's Dictionary as "a present (as offered up), especially in sacrifice or as tribute." The KJV translates it with "gift, heave offering." There are, to my knowledge, only two instances in which bread with yeast was allowed to be brought before the Lord: the one here and the other at Pentecost, in ch. 23:17. At the occasion of Pentecost the bread with yeast is a symbol of the church in which sin has done its work and has been conquered by the fire of the Holy Spirit. Or, if you want, it is a reminder of the imperfect condition of the church on earth. The same principle is present here but on an individual level. Yeast symbolizes sin but bread baked with yeast is tastier than unleavened bread. In the process of baking all the germs have been destroyed; therefore, bread with yeast is a fitting image of man in whom sin has been conquered by the power of God.

The meat of the sacrifice had to be eaten on the day on which the animal was killed, and none was to be kept till the next day. Praise has to be fresh. Yesterday's praise is not enough for today.

Of the votive or free will offering we do not read that it has to be accompanied by a grain offering. We suppose that the votive offering and free will offering are identical. The occasion for the sacrifice is a vow to do something specific for the Lord or to give something to Him. The principle is that of surrender of a person or something belonging to that person to serve the Lord. The fact that this act takes the form of a fellowship offering indicates that it costs us everything we have. After all, the sacrificial animal was killed and the one who brought the sacrifice identified himself with the animal through the imposition of his hands. There is no such thing as "part time" service. Even if we give part of what is ours to the Lord we imply that He has the right to all and that we borrow from Him what we use for ourselves.

Contrary to the law concerning the thank offering, the meat of the votive offering could be eaten on the second day, but not on the third because by that time the meat would have started to spoil. A vow does not have to be renewed daily, but we have to watch for corruption. Our vows and resolutions are subject to corruption also. We must examine our motives from time to time and ask ourselves if what we do is born of the Holy Spirit or of ourselves. If a man ate the meat of the sacrifice on the third day, he forfeited the grace God had given him. We do not read that he must be cut off from his people, as vs. 21 says, but that "the person who eats any of it will be held responsible" (vs. 18). The first punishment for eating spoiled meat was, of course, indigestion or sickness; but, added to this, the person in question lost his pardon that was his as a result of the sin offering and guilt offering which he had previously brought. He had to start over again.

We should remember that in the Jewish way of reckoning time "the third day" could start as shortly as twenty-four hours after day one. Jesus' resurrection took place on the third day before decomposition had set in.

Contrary to the effect the meat of the sin offering had upon objects it touched and made holy, (6:27) the meat of the votive offering became desecrated by contact with impure objects. This sacrifice did not emphasize symbolically the resurrection power of Jesus Christ as the sin offering did, but it laid the stress on the nature of the man who served God and who could be polluted by outside influences. The prohibition to eat meat on the third day and the warning against pollution by impure objects spoke of two kinds of sources of pollution: one from the outside and one from inside. This gives us a complete picture of the danger that threatens our service for God.

On the other hand, it was impossible for unauthorized people to serve the Lord. If a man was impure, he forfeited his life when he ate the meat of a votive offering. In that case too, a distinction was made concerning the source of his impurity. The cause of a person's impurity could be something within himself, such as a bodily discharge (ch. 15:2 and following verses), or normal sexual intercourse (ch. 15:18) or leprosy. Or the contamination could be caused by touching unclean objects or persons. We cannot serve the Lord if we do not take our sanctification seriously.

We have already seen that there is a series of three prohibitions to eating fat and blood. The verses 22 - 27 are the second in this series, and the others are found in 3:17; 17:10 - 16. The prohibition here is the first instance in which we are told that the person who does not obey this commandment shall be cut off. Later, in ch. 17:10 we read: "Any Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood-- I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people." The Lord says: "I will set my face against that person who eats blood." So, evidently, it was not a matter of a public execution.

There is probably a hidden reference to a healthy diet in these commandments. Although eating fat and drinking blood are not good for a person's health, the main issue in the prohibition of drinking blood is that the person who trespassed this commandment demonstrated a lack of spiritual understanding regarding the pardon of his sins. A man who drank blood despised the altar and committed a sin against the Holy Spirit. The shedding of Jesus' blood should, obviously, bring a drastic change in our attitude toward animal blood. From a spiritual viewpoint animal blood has no longer any value and whether we drink or eat it is of no spiritual importance. It may be, though, that from a medical viewpoint consumption of blood is not advisable.

Verses 28-38 form the conclusion of this section and deal with the share the priest received from the fellowship offering. The person who brought the sacrifice had to lift up and wave the breast and the right thigh of the animal before the altar and give it to the Lord, after which he would hand it over to the priest who burned the sacrifice. The meaning of the waving consisted in the acknowledgment of God's right to all of the sacrifices. It illustrates what David says: "Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand."[ 1 ]

The reality of the atonement of our sins is brought home to us in the understanding that God has a right to our very being and to everything we possess. This is expressed in the bringing of the fellowship offering which symbolizes our praise and service to God.

God Himself acts in accepting the breast and the thigh of the fellowship offering and He gives it to the priest. He takes and He gives. What we do is nothing more than carrying out God's act. This double emphasis on what we do and what God does teaches us a deep lesson. Vs. 30 tells us that the person who sacrifices has to bring the offering with his own hands, and, at the same time, it is God Who takes and gives. This unity of action is characteristic of the fellowship offering.

Vs. 36 says that "the LORD commanded that the Israelites give this to them as their regular share for the generations to come." The KJV states this more emphatically by making it a perpetual institution. We read: "Which the LORD commanded to be given them of the children of Israel, in the day that he anointed them, by a statute for ever throughout their generations." Yet, the practice has long been abolished. Not only have the Israelites ceased to bring bloody sacrifices in our modern days, but the Bible states clearly that God was never interested in animal sacrifices other than as a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of the body of Christ. Quoting from Psalm 40, the author of the Hebrew writes: "Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: 'Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ''Here I am-- it is written about me in the scroll-- I have come to do your will, O God.' ''[ 2 ] There is, however, an eternal principle expressed in the wave offering which is valid for today. The first lesson is that when we realize what our salvation means we also understand that God has a right to our lives. The sacrifice was, actually, a triple surrender: in the imposition of hands upon the head of the sacrificial animal and the subsequent killing, the redeemed man gave himself to God. The waving of the thigh and breast expressed anew the right God has upon the whole of our lives and, finally, this portion of the sacrifice is handed over to the priest. Man gives himself to God, and God gives him to his fellowmen. The marvelous side-benefit is that in the process the priest's needs were provided for. The "Mission Dollar" is the by-product of our surrender, based on the reality of our redemption.

Vs. 35 and 36, where the right of the priest is repeated, make clear that this right is included in his unction. The unction is the guarantee that God will provide for his material needs. This guarantee not only counts for the fellowship offering but also for all sacrifices consumed by fire described in the preceding verses. The support comes in daily life from the person who brings the sacrifice, but the fact that God Himself takes responsibility for the support means that the priest is, in principle, not dependent upon human benevolence. He is not obliged to go around begging. Even if his fellowmen forget him, the divine "I have taken … and have given," remains. (vs. 34). It is probable that this portion of the law was given to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai, although the book of Leviticus opens with the statement "The LORD called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting."

[ 1 ] I Chron. 29:14

[ 2 ] Heb 10:5-7; see Ps. 40:6-8