In the sermon text for this coming Sunday, God says that missionaries will bring “all your brethren from all the nations as a grain offering to the LORD” (Isaiah 66:20 NAS). In this context, the grain offering is a particularly powerful symbol. Unfortunately, I doubt that I will have time to bring out the rich imagery of this offering on Sunday. So here is an excerpt from a sermon I preached ten years ago on this offering. You can see the entire sermon – about twice as long – here. May we present ourselves – all of ourselves – as this type of offering, holy and acceptable to God – Coty

How should we respond to God’s love? The grain offering described in Leviticus 2 pictures our proper response beautifully.

In this offering, God shows us that we should respond to His love by offering our entire lives back to him. And He shows that a life holy and acceptable to God is not the result of our naturally sweet disposition; there should be no self-glorification, no pride in our status before God. Instead, a life offered to God needs to be characterized by prayer, infused with the Holy Spirit, and based on the promises of God

This is the picture of the grain offering. Let’s look at now in greater detail.

God gives us the first clue to the meaning of the offering in Leviticus 2:1. If you check different translations, you will find this offering is called the “meat” offering (since in the early 1600’s “meat” simply meant any type of sustaining food), the grain offering, the meal offering, or the cereal offering. But in Hebrew, none of those different descriptive words is included in the name of the offering!

Young’s literal translation captures the Hebrew well: “When a person bringeth near an offering, a present to Jehovah . . .”

You see the difference? God’s title for this offering is, in effect, the Present Offering. This offering is our gift, our present to God. We are told later that it consists of grain, and so most translators have avoided the seemingly redundant name, “Present Offering.” But in so doing they have hidden from readers this first, important clue to God’s purpose for this offering.

The other distinctives in the selection of the offering clarify its meaning.

First, the offering is of grain, which in Palestine at this time would be wheat or barley. Several differing forms of preparing the grain are allowed. In effect, God is saying He doesn’t care about the exact form, as long as the Present Offering consists of the staple food of the Israelites.

We Americans have a hard time understanding staple foods. The Israelites — like the majority of people living in the world today — consumed more than half of their calories and probably more than 40% of their protein from their staple food.

I well remember my first week in western Kenya 31 years ago, when a student asked me, “What is your staple food?” I was puzzled; the idea of a staple food had never occurred to me. I told him our staple was wheat, but that was wrong. The correct answer is that we don’t have a staple food; no one food provides a large percentage of our total calories. But my friends in western Kenya are much like the ancient Israelites: their diet has little variety, as most eat a dough made from cornmeal boiled in water — ugali — every meal, every day, 365 days a year. Indeed, the Luhya people in western Kenya have a saying: “If I haven’t eaten ugali, I haven’t eaten.”

This puts a whole new meaning to the phrase, “You are what you eat.” Many Kenyans are walking ugali — really! Their hair, their skin, their muscles — most of their substance at one point in the past was a piece of corn.

Now, the Israelites were similar. For the common Israelite, meat would have been a delicacy, eaten on special occasions but not every day. Wheat and barley, however, they would eat daily, so that to offer grain was to offer themselves, their daily life; it was to offer what they consist of.

So the grain offering pictures my giving my daily life, my usual self to God.

Even though this is a picture of our daily life, the Israelites could not bring any wheat and barley to God. In the rest of chapter 2 God lays out six requirements for the Present Offering: four items that must be included, and two items that must be excluded from the offering. Let us examine each of those in turn:

Fine Flour

First, the Present Offering must be made of fine flour. Fine flour would differ from normal flour in two ways: it would be ground longer, and thus be consistently fine, and it would be sifted to remove the bran, stones, and any other impurities.

Now, if the Present Offering pictures the offering of our daily life to God, the requirement of fine flour is a picture of our need to be holy. Like the flour, God asks for a life that is consistent and balanced, rather than inconsistent and lumpy. He doesn’t accept an offering full of stones and weevil parts; He wants a life set apart to him, He wants a life lived up to its potential, as day after day we glorify Him.

Who can live a life like that? None of us can on our own; God’s command, “Be holy, for I am holy” is a demand we cannot meet. But remember, these offerings are God’s provision for our weakness. All these offerings point to Jesus as the example for us to follow, the power within us enabling us to live a holy life, and the perfect person with whom we are identified. Jesus did indeed live this perfectly balanced and consistent life; Jesus offered up to God a life with no impurities. And when we receive Jesus as Savior and Lord, we become identified with Him, so that we can stand holy and blameless before God.

Frankincense

Second, the flour is to be mixed with frankincense. The priest is to burn this incense completely with a portion of the flour or bread, producing a sweet, pleasing aroma before God.

What does the incense picture? As always, we use Scripture to interpret Scripture. Consider Psalm 141:2
May my prayer be counted as incense before you; The lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.
We see similar images elsewhere, such as Revelation 5:8
The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
In each case, incense represents our prayers. Now that’s a wonderful image, isn’t it? Just as the smoke of burning incense rises up, filling a room with its pleasant aroma, so our prayers rise up to God, pleasing Him.

The incense in the Present Offering thus pictures prayer in our daily lives. As we offer ourselves to God, we are to have hearts that praise him in all circumstances, lives lived out in constant, conscious dependence upon him. Our contact with the Father is to be continuous — and this pleases God. When we praise and magnify the Lord, when we turn to Him in the midst of our difficulties, we please Him greatly.

Oil

All grain offerings were to include oil. Note verses 5 and 6:
And if your offering is a grain offering made on the griddle, it shall be of fine flour, unleavened, mixed with oil; 6 you shall break it into bits, and pour oil on it; it is a grain offering.
Remember that Samuel anoints Saul and David as king by pouring oil on their heads. And, as we will find out later in Leviticus, oil is poured on the priests at the time of their consecration.

What does this represent?

The oil pictures the Holy Spirit. Samuel was acting out the Holy Spirit coming upon Saul and David for the important task of kingship. Similarly, the priests need the Holy Spirit in order to fulfill their responsibilities before the Lord. Just so, if our lives are to be pleasing to God, they must be characterized by dependence on the Holy Spirit.

Salt

The fourth required element in the Present Offering is salt. Consider verse 13:
Every grain offering of yours, moreover, you shall season with salt, so that the salt of the covenant of your God shall not be lacking from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.
We use salt today primarily to flavor our food, but before the age of refrigeration, salt was mainly a preservative. Meat spoiled in a couple of days if it was not salted. So salt is a symbol of permanence.

God does not leave much to our imagination here, as he labels this as “the salt of the covenant.” Salt was used at the time of making covenants, making promises, again as a symbol of permanence.

So as we offer ourselves to God, we are to be seasoned with salt. We are to depend on God’s eternal covenant with His people, His unfailing promises to us. This is not a relationship that we flit in and out of; God has called us to Himself from the beginning, and His promises never fail; just so, we need to acknowledge that we are His forever, and that our commitment to Him is everlasting.

In addition to these four required items, God forbids the presence of leaven and honey in the offering. Consider verses 11 and 12:
11 ‘No grain offering, which you bring to the LORD, shall be made with leaven, for you shall not offer up in smoke any leaven or any honey as an offering by fire to the LORD. 12 ‘As an offering of first fruits, you shall bring them to the LORD, but they shall not ascend for a soothing aroma on the altar. (NASB)

Leaven

“Leaven” is sometimes translated, correctly, as “yeast,” but don’t think of the tiny brown balls that come out of a Fleischmann’s envelope. Yeast at this time was sourdough, usually left over from the previous baking. The baker takes the sourdough starter and mixes it with the rest of the dough. As the natural yeast feeds on the starch, spreads throughout all the dough, giving off carbon dioxide, causing the bread to puff up and rise.

In the New Testament, Jesus tells His disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees. This is explained in different passages as both their teaching and their hypocrisy. A little bit of legalism, a little bit of hypocrisy, can flavor your entire life, making it unfit for a sacrifice to God.

So leaven pictures the tainting of our lives with what seems to be small, but spoils it entirely. Even a little bit of pride, of thinking that we deserve what we have, spoils our offering to God. We must come to him completely humble, completely dependent upon God’s goodness for our standing before God.

Honey

Finally, verse 11 tells us that no grain offering is to contain honey. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with honey — God reminds the Israelites that honey is to be offered as first fruits, thanking God for his provision. And the dietary restrictions contained in chapter 11 do not forbid the eating of honey. But it is not to be offered up as part of the Present Offering. Why?

Some have suggested that honey is representative of our natural sweetness, of our natural abilities and dispositions. When we present ourselves before God, we do so not on the basis of our natural sweetness, our natural selves, our natural talents. Jesus tells us, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” If we come before God depending upon who we are, depending upon our disposition, our talents, then we are saying that there is something worthy of his attention in us. Instead, we are to come before God only in response to His undeserved love.

So the Present Offering is a picture of our responding to God’s love by offering our daily lives to Him.

Conclusion

God’s love for you is deeper and more profound than the best human love. How will you respond?

Romans 12:1 tells us how to respond.
I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
Given the great mercies of God, given His great love for us, given that He has chosen us before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight, the only logical thing to do is to respond! The only logical thing to do is to offer ourselves back to Him, to offer Him even the daily grind of our lives, to make holy every single thing we do every day, as we glorify Him in our lives.

Present your life to him, all of your self, the very stuff you are made of!

• Present Him a life bathed in prayer and praise;
• Present Him a life based on His promises;
• Present Him a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit;
• Present Him a life not based on natural sweetness or abilities, but a life lived in dependence upon Him, devoted to accomplishing His purposes for you in this world.

This is the grain offering, the Present Offering, the presenting of yourself fully to God. We are to say, “You have made me to be Yours; here I am! I have come to do your will! Take me! Use me for Your glory.”