Today’s Devotion: Leviticus 2

Bread. My parents had an eight track tape that I remember listening to called, “The Best of Bread.” My favorite song on that album was the song, “If.” The first line of that song was, “If a picture paints a thousand words, than why can’t I paint you. The words will never show, the you I’ve come to know.”

The offerings in Leviticus speak of the person of Christ and of the work of Christ. The burnt offering in chapter 1 was a picture of Christ in depth as well as in death. The meal offering reveals the humanity of Jesus in all its perfection and loveliness. Somehow, some way, the song lyrics I haven’t heard for decades comes back to me and reminds me of my relationship with Christ, “The words will never show, the you I’ve come to know.”

Perhaps that is what God is doing in this book. He’s trying to take the picture of his son Jesus and describe him, or paint a picture of Him, in a way that we can conceptualize who He is. He’s complex and no one ever walked this planet who what like Him. How do you put that into words. Then to put another twist on it, “It’s prophesy!” This was written thousands of years before Jesus even came to earth.

This is evidence of the trinity – God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I used to get all hung up on this, “How can God be three persons in one?” God created the earth and then Jesus shows up and then the Holy Spirit enters the picture?… NO! They were there all along. God is revealing them to us in the Old Testament and Leviticus 2 is describing it here.

Have you ever imagined trying to explain Christ to someone? Sure there is the Sunday school version, “All you have to do is ask Jesus into your heart and you’ll go to heaven,” but it’s not that simple is it?

God is using a word picture and this chapter happens to be a meal offering that God is describing. There is no shedding of blood, so that alone makes this one different and there are two important aspects of this offering: the ingredients which are included and the ingredients which are excluded. Essentially it is the picture the perfect humanity of Christ.