Bread of your God לֶ֥חֶם אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֖ם

We are in chapter twenty-two of Leviticus with our word for today which is a phrase. לֶ֥חֶם אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֖ם bread of your God. It is used 3 times in the Old Testament. Let’s look at them. Leviticus 21:8, 17 You shall sanctify him, for he offers the לֶ֥חֶם אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ bread of your God. He shall be holy to you, for I, the Lord, who sanctify you, am holy … Speak to Aaron, saying, None of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer לֶ֥חֶם אֱלֹהָֽיו the bread of his God. From this context and the context in our chapter today we see that this was a figurative way to say that they were offering sacrifices to God not just bread. This is clear from the context of our chapter today. Leviticus 22:24-25 Any animal that has its testicles bruised or crushed or torn or cut you shall not offer to the Lord; you shall not do it within your land, neither shall you offer as the לֶ֥חֶם אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֖םbread of your God any such animals gotten from a foreigner. Since there is a blemish in them, because of their mutilation, they will not be accepted for you.” This is interesting to me that God would use our phrase instead of just saying offering sacrifice like he has in several other places. I think this is because of what we have looked at before with this whole idea of sacrificing animals to God. We know that God doesn’t want or need animals to eat because of what he has said in this Psalm. Psalm 50:10-15 For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.  What is going on is that people feel distant from God because of their guilt just like Adam and Eve did when they hid from God. When people feel guilty they try to find ways to pay for their sin or offer a sacrifice to whatever or whoever they think can help them with their guilt or improve their life. Because of our fallen nature and tendencies to do these things God met people where they were at and regulated this by setting up this sacrificial system. This also served to point toward Christ who would become our perfect sacrifice for our sins and clean our conscience. I’ll close with these great passages. 1 Peter 3:18, 21 For Christ also suffered[b] once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit … Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 9:9-14 According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify[f] for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.