An aspect of true worship is joyful celebration of peace. Paul reminds the Philippians that joy is a mark of authentic worship when he writes in Philippians 3:3: ‘For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory [rejoice] in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.’ He also reminds the Romans: ‘For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit’ (Rom. 14:17).
What can the content of the peace offering tell us about how we should worship the Lord in order to maintain our enjoyment of the heavenly shalom of God? Here are three details.
One lesson we can take from the ritual of the peace offering is that we have to be careful about what we choose as a remedy for the sins that cause the breakdown of our enjoyment of God’s blessings. When we respond to our sins, we often have two wrong responses: the first is to make resolutions not to repeat the wrong attitudes or behaviour and the second is to try and use our repentance and confession as the means of recovering shalom.
But, taking the imagery of the peace offering, neither of them is flawless, and neither of them, even combined, can bear the weight of our sins. Imagine if the Israelite worshipper had come to the tabernacle with a piece of paper on which he had written out his resolution or holding a bottle in which he had collected his tears of repentance. If the priest had said to him, ‘Now lean all your weight on your piece of paper and bottle of tears,’ we know what would have happened. The worshipper would have nothing to lean on. Similarly, when we have lost a sense of peace and joy, we cannot look to our good intentions or our repentance in order to recover them. Instead we have to select the only perfect substitute that is available, Jesus Christ, and once again lean all our souls on him.
A second lesson for our worship from the peace offering is that we are to contemplate (observe) what happened at the cross in order for us to have peace. The Israelite worshipper noted that when he came to offer his peace offering, it was offered on an altar on which there already was a burnt offering. The devout Israelite needed several different sacrifices in order to appreciate the variety of ways by which his God should be worshipped. In contrast, the Christian recognises that Jesus fulfilled these various viewpoints, depicted in the several offerings, when he offered up himself as a sacrifice which included perfect dedication to God. The way to recover peace and maintain our enjoyment of it is by continual contemplation of the One who offered himself as the sacrifice to deal with sins and its awful consequences.
A third lesson is the reminder that we are not to forget the pleasure that God enjoys because shalom exists between him and his people. In the peace offering, God was given the fat and other items of the animal that were regarded as the choicest parts – in other words, he received the best. Even as the special parts of the animal were given to God, so the Father has particular insights and delights in the person and work of his Son. An example of his delight occurred at the baptism of Jesus when the Father spoke from heaven and said, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’ The Saviour himself said in John 10:17: ‘For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.’ And regarding the future, we can note the wonderful words of Isaiah: ‘the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his [Jesus] hand’ (Isa. 53:11).
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