Leviticus 3

The Lord instituted a system of offerings for the people of Israel that told a single story from more than one vantage point. The subject was always the acceptable approach to God, the pleasing aroma. It was always about more than an animal that could be burnt upon the bronze altar in front of the tabernacle. To get the best picture of this one acceptable offering required more than one view. The burnt offering and the grain offering were pictures of a fully consecrated death and the goodness of a whole life of work and an entire being given to the Lord. The peace offering looked at that death and life from the vantage point of what the right offering would secure.

Israel needed peace with God. Peace was always more than just the absence of war. It was a positive condition of holy fellowship, of honest joy, and of secure relationship. The chosen sacrament to prepare the Lord's people for this aspect of the Messiah's work was an animal sacrifice that was not only offered to God but enjoyed before Him by those who worshiped Him.

God cared about the securing of shalom fellowship with Israel. That should have told Israel a lot about Him. Could the worshiper have known that God would come one day Himself to be the peace offering for His Israel? This was love, that Christ gave Himself for the securing of this peace.

The acceptable peace offering had to be without blemish, and He had to be offered before the Lord as an act of holy worship. God the Father was laying out the pathway for the Son to work out this shalom through this offering of Himself. The death of the peace offering was necessary, as was the identification of the substitute with the worshiper. If Israel wanted peace with God, worshipers had to lay their hands on the head of the holy substitute.

That substitute would be killed, and the blood of that sacrifice would be thrown against the sides of the altar, as with the burnt offering. But now, instead of burning all of the meat unto the Lord on the bronze altar, only certain cuts, “the fat,” the best cuts, were given to God.

These cuts were placed on top of the burnt offering. The base was the burnt offering, entirely consumed according to Leviticus 1. Now these extra cuts, the specified “fat,” would also be an additional pleasing aroma to the Lord. The Lord was pleased to have true peace with His people, but it would come His way, and at a cost. Who would bear the cost? That would become clearer when the One came who would not only win for us peace with God, but even peace between Jew and Gentile. See Ephesians 2:11-22.

The peace offering could be from the herd, either a bull or a cow, or it could be from the flock, male or female, either from the sheep or from the goats. This was a greater variety than was allowed for the burnt offering.

The peace offering rules were the same regardless of these various options. The acceptable peace offering was without blemish. It was identified with the worshiper by the laying of the worshiper's hands on the head of the animal. It had to be killed by the worshiper. The priests put the blood on the sides of the altar. The worshiper offered the special cuts, the “fat,” to the Lord.

Each of these facts of an acceptable peace offering were worthy of Israel's consideration:

The acceptable peace offering was without blemish. There would be no fullness of peace with God without a perfect offering. One blemish would have lost the peace that the hearts of all God's people longed for.

The acceptable peace offering was identified with the worshiper by the laying of the worshiper's hands on the head of the animal. The securing of our peace was not a disinterested process for the worshiper. He needed to see his need. Israel could not secure their own peace in their own way. The answer for Israel was not through the empires of men, or through their own giftedness or goodness.

The acceptable peace offering had to be killed by the worshiper. God would make peace through the blood of an acceptable substitute. There was no way to enjoy the fruits of peace without owning up to the cost of peace, which was borne by another.

The priests put the blood of the acceptable peace offering on the sides of the altar. God's representatives had to appease the wrath of God even for a peace offering.

The worshiper offered the special cuts, the “fat” of the acceptable peace offering to the Lord. The Lord deserved the best. It was a heinous crime against this sacrament when men took for themselves these special cuts. See 1 Samuel 2:29.

The instructions ended with these words. “All fat is the Lord's. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations, in all your dwelling places, that you eat neither fat nor blood.”

God's peace was costly. It required a Substitute who could secure shalom for us by offering Himself. Jesus did not need to lay His hands on some other head to get peace. His blood and His righteousness have become the fulness of life for us. It is a testimony to the importance of this truth, and to the achievement of these demands in the work of Christ, that so many New Testament epistles contain words like these: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Jesus is our peace.