The promises and principles of Scripture are comforting and directly applicable. They don’t take a lot of work to relate to. Leviticus has to be read in a different way. It’s like a manual from a different age, but it helps you to visualize scenes of devotion and worship that can help you relate to God in ways that other Scriptures don’t explore so clearly. The grain offering shows you how to express your love to God.
An opportunity to express your love
The grain offering usually followed the burnt offering, the substitute animal sacrifice that Christians are more familiar with. The worshipper has just offered a lamb from his flock and felt the forgiveness and acceptance of God. He feels clean inside and at peace with the Lord. He’s moved to respond. He wants to communicate to God something of what he feels inside. With the grain offering, God suggests that he bake a cake. The grain offering is essentially an offering of cake. It became a personal way of saying, “Thank you.”
Bring a gift with some personality
There was a lot of variety with this particular gift. It was possible to just bring flour and pour oil and frankincense on it (Leviticus 2:1), but often it was baked in an oven (Leviticus 2:4), fried in a pan (Leviticus 2:7), or cooked on a griddle (Leviticus 2:5) – pancakes anyone? The point was that you could bring some personality and flair to this offering.
No hypocrisy in this relationship
When you baked a cake for God, there was one thing you had to remember to exclude and another that you had to add. While you’d be tempted to add yeast or leaven to make it rise, God repeatedly warns not to (Leviticus 2:4, 5 11). It was often used as a symbol of sin and hypocrisy and God wanted to make it clear that He wants neither. Honey was susceptible to fermentation, so it was excluded for a similar reason (Leviticus 2:11).
Preserve our relationship
Salt, on the other hand, had to be added (Leviticus 2:13). Salt was a preservative, but ancient treaties were often symbolically salted to express a desire for the covenant to last. By adding salt to the cake, the worshipper was saying, “May you sustain this relationship forever!”
But God doesn’t eat cake!
What’s amazing about this offering is that God needs nothing, and He doesn’t eat cake. In His divinity, He’s never been hungry, so it’s not as if He’s craving the taste. And yet twice it says that the fragrance of this offering is “a pleasing aroma to the LORD” (Leviticus 2:2, 9). That tells me that God is pleased with my heartfelt expressions of love for Him, no matter how inadequate they might seem. If they come from a place of sincere worship and covenant relationship, they bring a smile to the heart of God.
The grain offering reminds me of when I was in kindergarten. I was walking home through a field and picked some dandelions for my mother. When I got home, I handed them to her as if I had just given her a bouquet of roses. And she took great delight in them! Not because of what they were but because of what they meant.
God invites us to offer our lives not our cake
Leviticus is from a different time. It teaches that responding to God’s forgiveness in tangible acts of love and devotion is appropriate. Today, instead of cake, God says to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” He calls this our “spiritual worship” and tells us that it’s “holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1). We might not bake literal cakes for God, but we can offer Him something even more meaningful. Whether it’s taking time to care for a neighbour, setting aside extra time to pray, or giving something extra to support God’s work, these acts are like the grain offering—simple, heartfelt ways to show God our love. And He takes pleasure in them. He’s never thinking, “What did you do that for?” He sees them and notices.
Take time today to offer God a piece of your life – a prayer, a kind gesture, or a word of testimony—and know that it’s a pleasing aroma to Him.
In awe of Him,
Paul
