The Grammar of Acceptable Worship Text: Leviticus 7:37-38
Introduction: God's Doxological Order
We live in an age that despises definitions, detests categories, and declares war on distinctions. Our culture has taken a sledgehammer to the very idea of a given order. The prevailing spirit of our time is that worship, if it is to be done at all, must be spontaneous, unstructured, and above all, authentic, which is usually a synonym for self-generated. We are told to "worship in our own way," as though the creature has the right to dictate the terms of his approach to the Creator. This is the very essence of idolatry. It is setting up a god of our own imagination and then congratulating ourselves on our sincerity.
Into this sentimental and rebellious fog, the book of Leviticus crashes with the force of a lightning strike on a clear day. And a passage like our text is a summary statement of a divine reality that our age finds utterly offensive. It is a summary of laws. It is a list of categories. It is a declaration that God, and God alone, defines the terms of acceptable worship. This is not a bug, but a feature. God is not a vague cosmic feeling; He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth. And because He is a God of order and not of confusion, He has provided a grammar for how a sinful people can approach a holy God.
Leviticus is the liturgical heart of the Pentateuch. It is the instruction manual for the priests who minister in the house of God. Many modern Christians, even well-meaning ones, tend to skip over Leviticus, seeing it as a dusty collection of irrelevant and bloody rituals. But to do so is to misunderstand the entire Bible. You cannot understand the book of Hebrews without Leviticus. You cannot understand the cross of Jesus Christ without Leviticus. You cannot understand what it means to be a "kingdom of priests" without Leviticus. These laws are the shadow, and Christ is the substance. To neglect the shadow is to have a flattened, two-dimensional view of the glorious substance.
This passage is a concluding summary of the first great section of the book, which details the various offerings. It is a table of contents for the gospel, written in the language of blood and fire and flour. It reminds us that our approach to God is not a free-for-all. It is a structured, covenantal, and blood-bought reality. And it all goes back to Sinai.
The Text
This is the law of the burnt offering, the grain offering and the sin offering and the guilt offering and the ordination offering and the sacrifice of peace offerings, which Yahweh commanded Moses at Mount Sinai in the day that He commanded the sons of Israel to bring their offerings near to Yahweh in the wilderness of Sinai.
(Leviticus 7:37-38 LSB)
The Divine Curriculum (v. 37)
Verse 37 provides a concise summary of the sacrificial system, a curriculum for approaching God.
"This is the law of the burnt offering, the grain offering and the sin offering and the guilt offering and the ordination offering and the sacrifice of peace offerings..." (Leviticus 7:37)
Notice the first phrase: "This is the law." The Hebrew is torah. This is the instruction, the rule, the divine directive. Worship is not an area of life where God offers gentle suggestions. He commands. This is because worship is the central activity of the universe. All of creation was made to be a temple, and man was made to be the priest. When man fell, he did not stop worshipping; he simply started worshipping the wrong things in the wrong way. The sacrificial system is God's gracious provision to restore true worship.
Let us briefly consider this divine curriculum, this five-fold portfolio of grace. Each offering reveals a different facet of the all-sufficient work of Jesus Christ.
First, the burnt offering. This was the offering of total consecration. The entire animal was consumed on the altar, ascending to God as a sweet aroma. This speaks of Christ's perfect and complete submission to the Father's will. He held nothing back. His entire life was a burnt offering, culminating in the cross, where He offered Himself entirely to God for us (Eph. 5:2).
Second, the grain offering. This was an offering of flour, oil, and frankincense, representing the fruit of man's labor. It was a bloodless offering, but it was never offered alone; it always accompanied a burnt offering. This points to the perfect humanity of Christ. He is the fine flour, without any grit or impurity of sin. His life is the sweet incense of perfect obedience offered to God on our behalf. We, in turn, are to offer our lives, our work, our substance, as a grain offering to God, but only through the fire of Christ's atoning work.
Third and fourth, we have the sin offering and the guilt offering. These were non-sweet savor offerings. God took no pleasure in the sin that made them necessary. The sin offering dealt with the state of sin, our polluted nature. The guilt offering dealt with the acts of sin, the specific trespasses we commit. Both point to Christ, who "knew no sin," being made "sin for us" (2 Cor. 5:21). He became our sin offering to cleanse our nature, and our guilt offering to pay the penalty for our trespasses.
Fifth, the ordination offering. This was the offering used to consecrate the priests for service. It was a ram of consecration, setting them apart for their holy work. This points directly to Christ, our great High Priest, who was consecrated not by the blood of a ram, but by His own blood, to enter the heavenly sanctuary for us. And through Him, we too are consecrated as a "royal priesthood" (1 Peter 2:9), set apart to offer spiritual sacrifices to God.
Finally, the peace offering. This was the joyful offering of communion and fellowship. The offerer, the priest, and God all shared in the meal. This speaks of the result of Christ's work: reconciliation. Because of His sacrifice, we who were enemies of God can now sit at His table and have fellowship with Him (Col. 1:20-22). This is the goal of all the other offerings, to bring us into a covenant meal with our God.
This is not just a list. It is a logical progression. We begin with Christ's total consecration (burnt offering) and perfect life (grain offering). This qualifies Him to deal with our sin nature (sin offering) and our sinful acts (guilt offering). His work consecrates us as priests (ordination offering), which allows us to enter into joyful fellowship with God (peace offering). This is the grammar of the gospel.
The Authoritative Source (v. 38)
Verse 38 anchors this entire system of worship in a specific time and place, grounding it in historical, covenantal reality.
"...which Yahweh commanded Moses at Mount Sinai in the day that He commanded the sons of Israel to bring their offerings near to Yahweh in the wilderness of Sinai." (Leviticus 7:38 LSB)
This is not a system that evolved over time. It was not the product of a committee of priests brainstorming effective worship strategies. It was a direct, divine revelation. "Yahweh commanded Moses." The authority for our worship comes from outside of us. It comes down from God. Any worship that originates from the mind of man is, by definition, idolatry. It is will-worship.
And where did this command come? "At Mount Sinai." Why is this so important? Sinai is where God formally constituted Israel as His covenant nation. It is where He gave them the moral law, the Ten Commandments, which revealed His holy character and their deep sinfulness. But God did not just give them the law and leave them to despair. At that very same place, in that very same covenant context, He gave them the sacrificial system. The law shows us the standard; the sacrifices show us the provision. The law shows us the wound; the offerings show us the remedy.
To mention Sinai is to remind Israel that their worship is an essential part of their covenant obligation. The covenant at Sinai was a package deal. It included moral, civil, and ceremonial law. You could not pick and choose. To reject the sacrificial system was to reject the covenant itself. It was to reject Yahweh. This is why the location is repeated: "in the wilderness of Sinai." This is not flowery language. It is a legal anchor. This happened. This was commanded. This is binding.
The command was for the sons of Israel "to bring their offerings near to Yahweh." This is what worship is. It is a drawing near. But sinful man cannot draw near to a holy God on his own terms. We cannot just saunter into His presence. The offerings were the prescribed way to draw near. They were the bridge across the infinite chasm that our sin created. Every offering brought near was an admission of sin, a confession of need, and an act of faith in God's provision.
From Sinai to Calvary
So what are we to do with this? We are not Israelites in the wilderness of Sinai. We do not bring bulls and goats to a tabernacle. Has this all been superseded? Yes, and no. The shadows have been superseded because the glorious substance has come.
Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of this entire curriculum. He is our burnt offering, our grain offering, our sin and guilt offering, our ordination offering, and our peace offering. The author of Hebrews tells us that the blood of bulls and goats could never truly take away sin (Heb. 10:4). They were promissory notes, pointing forward to the once-for-all payment that Christ would make on the cross. Calvary is the ultimate Sinai. It is the mountain where God provided the final, perfect sacrifice.
Because of this, our worship has been transformed, but the grammar remains. We no longer bring animal sacrifices because the Lamb of God has been slain. But we still must approach God on His terms, not our own. We must come through the blood of the one, true sacrifice. Any attempt to approach God on the basis of our own sincerity, our own good works, or our own emotional experiences is to bring a profane offering. It is to ignore the grammar of worship that God established at Sinai and fulfilled at Calvary.
Our worship now consists of "spiritual sacrifices." Peter tells us we are "a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5). What are these? They are the sacrifice of praise, the fruit of our lips (Heb. 13:15). They are the sacrifice of our good works and our sharing with others (Heb. 13:16). They are the sacrifice of our very bodies, presenting them as "a living and holy sacrifice" (Rom. 12:1).
But notice, all of these are only made "acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." We do not offer them in a vacuum. We offer them on the foundation of His finished work. The entire five-fold system of Leviticus is the ground upon which our new covenant worship stands. We praise God because Christ is our peace offering. We do good works because Christ is our grain offering. We present our bodies as a living sacrifice because Christ was our burnt offering. The law of the offerings given at Sinai is not a dead letter; it is the living foundation of our doxological lives. God has defined the terms. He has provided the sacrifice. Our only proper response is to draw near with confidence, through the blood of the Lamb, and worship Him according to His Word.