What is the significance of the grain and fellowship offerings?

The grain offering symbolized a recognition for what God had done for them and given them. It was an offering of thanksgiving in a spiritual sense and a physical sense. The grain offering indicated thankfulness to God and dedication to God for the atonement made in the burnt offering. The grain offering also indicated thankfulness to God for the prosperity God had given the people. Notice in Leviticus 2:12 and 2:14 that the grain offering was also given in connection with an offering of first fruits.

It is interesting that this offering was not merely what God had created. That is, the offering did not consist of wheat and olives. Rather, the offering included the work of the people. The offering was to be fine flour and olive oil. Wheat was God’s gift, but it included what the people’s labor had made of that wheat, which was, fine flour. Olives were not offered, but olive oil. This was God’s gift of olives combined with the people’s labor. God’s gifts plus our labor equaled God’s offering.

When we consider that Christ has redeemed us, and that everything we are and have belongs to him, then we will be able to give freely and cheerfully as an act of worship and thanksgiving to the Lord.

In the fellowship or peace offering, all parties—God, priest, and man—share the same meal and satisfaction. This shows all in peaceful communion or fellowship.

In this sacrifice Christ symbolically plays all three parts: He is the offering, sacrificing His life in service; He is the priest, serving mankind at the altar as Mediator; and He is the offeror, bringing His sacrifice to the altar. The altar, the place of meeting for all three, represents sacrificial services and devotion to God that give Him satisfaction and result in our acceptance.

The peace offering shows man, as Christ, accepted, fed, strengthened, and satisfied by sacrifice, teaching that sacrifice is indeed the essence, the heart and core, the essential element, of love whether to God or man. More specifically, it shows us that sacrifice plays a major role in acceptance before God, spiritual feeding and therefore spiritual strength, and spiritual satisfaction. Devoted people sacrifice for those they love. Thus, sacrifice indicates devotion to God (burnt offering) and devotion in service to man (meal offering).

Thus, the offering is suggesting God and man brought into fellowship, and man and man brought into fellowship. Recall that not only did sin alienate us from God, but the result of sin is that by nature we are “hateful and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). Man needed primarily to be reconciled to God, but also needed to be reconciled to each other.

The peace offering is not the Lord’s Supper. It is a life of fellowship and enjoyment of God. It is man brought into peace with God in its fullest sense, not just the absence of guilt, shame, and burden. It is the enjoyment of all the blessing which God ever intended to give to humankind. “Peace” or shalom is plural and suggests intensity, fullness.

Application Question:

“How does it make you feel to realize that Christ’s perfect sacrifice makes us right with God and gives us access to the Father, in contrast to the complicated system God gave the ancient Israelites?” Spend time thanking the Lord.

Quote:

No sacrifice should be too great for Him who gave Himself for us." – Harry Ironside

Prayer:

Lord, I thank you for helping me to understand that these offerings of the Old Testament are a foreshadow of Your perfect offering on the cross for me. Help me to live in peace with you and with one another in the family. Amen.