This seventh installment of the Lectures on Leviticus transitions from the blood sacrifices to the Grain Offering. While the Burnt Offering focuses on atonement and devotion, the Grain Offering is an expression of deep, heartfelt gratitude. We explore why fine flour, oil, and frankincense are used and how this ancient ritual translates into a lifestyle of thanksgiving for the modern believer.
1. Grain Offering is our thanks-offering to God
Grain offerings are given to God not with the blood of an animal, but with fine flour. Leviticus 2:1 says, “Now when anyone presents a grain offering as an offering to the LORD, his offering shall be of fine flour, and he shall pour oil on it and put frankincense on it.”
Other verses that follow say that they gave grain offerings as a handful of fine flour itself or with it baked in an oven or cooked in a pan. They gave crushed grains roasted in the fire when they were first fruits.
If a grain offering had been offered to God in Korea, we might have made the offerings with rice because it is main crop and more valuable than any other crop. But people of Israel gave grain offerings with wheat or sometimes barley.
The grain offerings now have significant spiritual meaning in being a continual thanksgiving offered to God. If we believe and love God from the bottom of our heart, we will be thankful in all circumstances. In Malachi, God says He will give us overflowing blessings if we give proper tithes and offerings. Above all, we should give thanks to God for His grace in sending His one and only Son, Jesus, and to give us true life through Him. If Jesus had not been crucified for us, we all would have fallen into hell. So, how grateful it is to be saved and go to heaven only by the grace of God!
We should also give thanks to God for giving us daily bread because He is the Master who blesses us at harvest by giving us sunlight, rain, wind, and all other things necessary for growth. However hard a farmer works by the sweat of his brow, his toil will come to nothing if storms flood the field or drought withers the crop. We cannot gain anything to eat if we are not under the protection of God.
Additionally, we should always give thanks to God who answers to whatever we ask with faith and blesses us in everything. However great the difficulties we may face, God leads us to stronger faith through trials. He leads us to enjoy good health and blesses us to be prosperous in everything as our soul is prosperous.
In fact, everything in our life is something to be thankful for. Therefore, we should always give thanks offerings to God who gives us His mercy. We should thank God not only with our words but also with actions in truth. Just as Matthew 6:21 says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” we must show our thanks to God with offerings.
Exodus 40:29 says, “He set the altar of burnt offering before the doorway of the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, and offered on it the burnt offering and the meal offering, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.” Grain offerings were given to God together with the blood sacrifice given as burnt offerings.
Therefore, it is a complete spiritual worship service to God when we bring our thank offerings and attend Sunday services. Just as there was the way to give burnt offerings, there is the way to give grain offerings as thanksgiving offerings.