Leviticus 2.
IN the first chapter, the offering was all burned up on the altar, but in this chapter, only a part, called the “memorial” of it, was burned, and the rest was eaten by the priests who attended at the altar. Understanding the Old Testament by the help of the New, we know that the second chapter of Leviticus is about the human nature, spotless and holy, of the Lord Jesus, and God’s delight in Him as a Man, and God’s children enjoying the knowledge of Jesus, as they read about Him in the Book of Books.
“Meat offering” is not quite correct; it is as we see, rather a meal, or flour or bread offering. And it was to be of fine flour, for like every other picture, or type of Jesus, the picture must be just as good as God can make for us out of what we know about, and can understand. What else could He have chosen that would so well set before our minds the perfect evenness of Jesus in all His ways, as finely ground flour?
There is hardly a person we read anything much about in the Bible that we are not told something of, which was not what it should be.
Eve unwisely listened to Satan.
Moses got angry, and spoke “unadvisedly with his lips” (Psalm 106:33).
David, afraid for his life, pretended he was insane.
Paul, the great apostle, said what he wished he had not, but these are only a very few examples of many who might be mentioned. Indeed there. have been faults in every one who ever lived in this world, except One! Never do we find Him pleasing Himself in thought, or word, or act.
As a twelve-year-old boy, in Luke 2:49, Jesus said to His mother and supposed father, “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?”
We read of Him in the temptations Satan brought to Him, after He had had nothing to eat for forty days, that He would not command the stones to be made bread, because that would not be dependence on God. Later on, when He was weary with a long walk, and as it appears, both thirsty and hungry, the Lord Jesus sat down to rest by a well. The woman. who came out for water, listened to His words, and was saved, but she seems to have forgotten to give Him the drink of water He had asked for, and He was more interested in telling the woman about God, than in eating, when His disciples came back from the city with food. He was never rude, nor rough. No one who came to Him was ever turned away, but everything we read of Him in the Bible is just. wonderfully perfect! The more we study the four “gospels” — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the more do we see the perfectness of Jesus in everything, —small things, as well as big ones.
When on two occasions His disciples disputed with one another as to which should be the greatest, the first time (Mark 9:33-37) the Lord took a child, (a little child, Matthew says) and set him in the midst of them to show them how Wrong their thoughts were; the last time (Luke 22:24-27 and John 13:2-17) He washed their feet,—the lowest kind of work, and He the eternal God!
When He touched the leper (Mark 1:41); wept at Lazarus’ grave (John 11:35); took up little children in His arms, and put His hands on them and blessed them (Mark 10:16); or walked with the two disciples from Jerusalem to Emmaus (Luke 24), His Father was looking on with the greatest delight.
So we can understand why God should use flour to express to us the ways of Jesus,—because it is so even; so free from coarseness, or roughness, such a suggestion of purity, too, in its clean, soft, fine grains.
And the Lord Jesus spoke of the corn, or kernel of wheat, as a type or picture of Himself, in the twelfth chapter of John, verse 24: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.”
With the fine flour, in verse 1, there was to be oil and frankincense. Oil is always in Scripture a type of the Holy Spirit. Here it is as the power of the Spirit by which Jesus ever acted. The incense was all burned on the altar; this tells us that the Father, who, twice opened the heavens to tell us this Person was His dear Son, appreciated most of all His Son, but the part of the offering that the priests were given for their food, shows that those who belong to Jesus love Him too, and enjoy reading and thinking and talking and, singing about Him. I wonder if you, dear reader, love Jesus?
Verses 4, 5 and 7 go further in what they are meant to tell about, than the first verse which leads God’s children to think of Jesus’ holy human nature as He came into the world. The other verses, (4, 5 and 7,) express Jesus in trial, attacked by Satan; misunderstood by all, hated by those hypocritical men who pretended to be so holy, but were ready to murder Him when they might have a chance; in the agony of the garden of Gethsemane, passing through all the shame and pain and grief of what followed, and finally the forsaking by God in the hours of darkness on the cross.
Verse 5 specially tells in the parting in pieces, of the Lord’s being tried to the very utmost, —deserted, giving up what He loved, denied, exposed to shame and cruelty.
The oil was in some cases mingled with the flour, and in others, poured on it, or on the. cakes made of flour. The first refers to the birth of Jesus: His human nature was the work of the Holy Spirit, as both Matthew 1:20, and Luke 1:35 testify. The second speaks of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus at His baptism (Mark 1:10, 11).
Leaven, as we have noticed before, is a type of sin, and in any offering that represented Jesus, there could not be any leaven, because “in Him is no sin.”
Honey is natural sweetness; not what God plants in His children when they are saved. Almost everyone has some nice traits of character apart from being saved. We can think of kind friends and generous people, some that are courteous and gentle, and so on, but except these things are the work of the Spirit of God, they are the honey that God will not accept. There was none of this honey in Jesus.
Salt was needed to express to us that the perfection of Jesus’ human nature, and the memory of His life down here, is to last forever, unchanged.
In the twelfth verse is a brief reference to a subject of which we learn much more in the twenty-third chapter. It was an offering, something like the meat offering, but it was not burned. Verses fourteen to sixteen, however, tell of Jesus as a living Man, in not quite the same way as the flour offerings earlier in this chapter. Here He is presented as of Adam’s race, but the First and the Finest of all. This is how the gospel of Luke tells of Jesus.
In the second chapter, as in the first, we see Jesus offering Himself to God; in the one case in life, in the other in death. Only One who was God as well as man could really do that. Besides, in both chapters God’s delight in the offering is shown. He has never, and could never, find such unalloyed pleasure in any man as He has in Jesus, the holy, spotless Lamb of God.
ML 12/10/1922