July 13, 2025; Sunday Evening Worship

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — Revelation 1:4-6
• Hymn — Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder (#286)
• Prayer of Invocation
• Heidelberg Catechism — Lord's Day 19 (Questions 50–52)
• Hymn — As the Deer (#42B)
• Pastoral Prayer
• Sermon
• Hymn — How Sweet and Awesome Is the Place (#425)
• Benediction — Numbers 6:24-26

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Sermon Title: Drawing Near — The Peace Offering and Communion with God

Scripture: Leviticus 3:1-17

I. The Peace Offering Confirms the Peace of God

A. In the ancient Near East, sharing a meal confirmed peace and covenant relationship between parties

1. Genesis 31:51-54 — Jacob and Laban confirm their truce over a shared meal
2. Exodus 24:11 — God shares a meal with the elders of Israel on Mount Sinai, confirming covenant peace after the giving of the law in Exodus 20

B. The peace offering enacts this same covenant confirmation between Yahweh and the offerer

1. After the thunder of the law and the people's fear at Sinai, the meal on the mountain signals that the Lord is now drawing near in peace
2. Meals in ordinary life serve to establish unity and fellowship — division is set aside at the table

C. The Lord's Supper fulfills and surpasses the peace offering

1. In John 20 Jesus greets his disciples three times with "Peace be with you," then in John 21 prepares a meal for them
2. In Luke 24 the disciples on the Emmaus road recognize the risen Christ in the breaking of bread
3. 1 Corinthians 11:26 — the Lord's Supper is a perpetual meal confirming covenant peace until Christ returns
4. Isaiah 55:1 — "Come, everyone who thirsts… buy and eat… without money and without price" — the only prerequisite is spiritual bankruptcy

II. The Peace Offering Celebrates the Forgiveness of God

A. Meals in the ancient world marked joy and celebration

1. 2 Samuel 6:9 — David's despair when Uzzah is struck dead: "How can the ark of the Lord come to me?"
2. 1 Chronicles 16 — after the Levites carry the ark rightly, David offers burnt offerings and peace offerings and distributes food to all the people; he dances with joy before the Lord
3. Nehemiah 8 — the people are commanded to eat and celebrate after hearing and understanding the law of God

B. The peace offering is the culminating step of a sacrificial sequence

1. Burnt offering (Leviticus 1) → grain offering (Leviticus 2) → peace offering (Leviticus 3) were offered together as a package
2. The movement is from atonement through thanksgiving to celebratory communion — a progression toward the presence of God
3. The sin and guilt offerings addressed specific transgressions; the burnt, grain, and peace offerings were the regular, general offerings of the whole people

C. The fat and blood portions reserved for the Lord celebrate the benefactor, not merely the benefits

1. Verse 16 — "All the fat is the Lord's"; verse 17 — the blood also belongs to the Lord
2. The fat was the choicest part of the animal — the Lord receives the best, as the one being celebrated
3. We do not merely celebrate forgiveness and redemptive benefits; we celebrate the one who forgives — the benefactor himself
4. Justification, adoption, and all redemptive blessings in Christ draw our hearts upward to Christ himself

III. The Peace Offering Consummates Communion with God

A. The book of Leviticus answers the crisis left at the end of Exodus

1. Exodus 40:35 — "Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting, because the cloud settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle" — a tent of meeting where no one could meet with God
2. Leviticus answers: through the sacrificial system the tent of dwelling becomes a tent of meeting; the peace offering is God inviting his people into his house for a meal

B. Communion with God is the destination of all redemptive history

1. Psalm 36:8-9 — "They feast on the abundance of your house… for with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light"
2. The burnt offering → peace offering sequence is a microcosm of the whole Bible: how do sinners return to the garden, to the presence of God?
3. Revelation 22:4-5 — "They will see his face… the Lord God will be their light" — the entire cosmos becomes the temple where God dwells with his people forever

C. The distinction between the burnt offering (male only) and the peace offering (male or female) is theologically significant

1. The burnt offering, most closely tied to propitiation, required an unblemished male — pointing to the need for a new Adam, a new male representative to stand in our place
2. The peace offering is placed on top of the burnt offering (verse 5) — union and communion with God for both male and female rests upon the male substitute
3. Galatians 3:28 — "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus"
4. The proper order cannot be skipped: substitutionary atonement (burnt offering) → thanksgiving (grain offering) → presence and communion with God (peace offering); so also in Christ