Leviticus 3:6

"And if his oblation for a sacrifice of peace-offerings unto Jehovah be of the flock; male or female, he shall offer it without blemish. If he offer a lamb for his oblation, then shall he offer it before Jehovah; and he shall lay his hand upon the head of his oblation, and kill it before the tent of meeting: and Aaron's sons shall sprinkle the blood thereof upon the altar round about. And he shall offer of the sacrifice of peace-offerings an offering made by fire unto Jehovah; the fat thereof, the fat tail entire, he shall take away hard by the backbone; and the fat that covereth the inwards, and all the fat that is upon the inwards, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, which is by the loins, and the caul upon the liver, with the kidneys, shall he take away. And the priest shall burn it upon the altar: it is the food of the offering made by fire unto Jehovah."

"And he shall lay his hand upon the head ... and kill it ..." This action was to stress the substitutionary nature of the sacrifice, which was killed in place of the worshipper, who, by this indication, confessed his own unworthiness deserving the penalty of death, and that the sacrifice was actually slain in place of the worshipper.

"The fat tail entire ..." If this regulation were applied to an American sheep, it would be very surprising, but the mystery disappears when we learn that in the species of sheep common in the Biblical times and places, the tail was very large, reaching a weight equivalent to 15-20% of the weight of the whole sheep, and that it was held to be particularly delicious and desirable as food.[13] Herodotus (5th century B.C.) tells of the little carts used by shepherds to support the tails of their sheep!

"Sprinkle the blood upon the altar ... an offering by fire ..." Inherent in this meeting of the sinner and his God in an attitude of peace is the awesome prophecy of how that peace must ultimately be accomplished "by blood and by fire!" The death of our blessed Saviour and the propitiatory value of his precious blood are most surely prefigured by all of these sacrifices. Yes, peace between God and man is possible, but the price is blood (in the death of Christ) and fire (the ultimate judgment of God upon all sin and wickedness).

"Food of the offering ..." The Hebrew word here rendered "food" is also translated "bread," and again, in this chapter, there surfaces internal evidence of the great antiquity of Leviticus, "A sign of the great antiquity of the ritual is the word here used for food; it later came to mean only bread."[14] The fact of this offering being called "the food of God" does not mean that God is represented as being also a Partaker of the communion or fellowship inherent in the feast that always followed, but it shows that God was the host or provider. In this distinction, there was a vast departure from the pagan conception. Kellogg gives us this inscription by Esarhaddon who described his palace at Nineveh, saying:

"I filled with beauties the great palace of my empire, and I called it, `The Palace which Rivals the World!' Ashur, Ishtar of Nineveh, and the gods of Assyria, all of them, I feasted within it. Victims, precious and beautiful, I sacrificed before them, and I caused them to receive my gifts."[15]

Thus, in paganism, men fed the gods, but in the true religion, God feeds people. We must therefore see that God is undeniably the host in the feast that followed the peace-offerings. Herein is one of the fundamental divergences of error from the truth. In all the ethnic, pagan, and so-called "natural" religions, it is man who pays the penalty. It is Prometheus, a man, who is bound to the rock forever; it is always the fairest maiden that is bound over to the dragon, and the bravest warrior that gives his life to save his people. But in Christianity, Jehovah-Jireh (God will provide); it is God in the person of His Son who pays the penalty of all human sin upon the Cross.

This conception of God as the host is not denied by the truth that the worshipper indeed himself brought the offering to the door of the tent of meeting, for prior to that God had given it to the worshipper. And besides, in the first act in laying his hand on the victim's head, and in killing it, the worshipper had offered it (all of it) to God, and afterward no part of it was his. Therefore, when the priest issued to him his portion for the feast, it was a gift, absolutely, from God Himself.

This conception of "food for God" was subject to gross anthropomorphic misrepresentation, and Psalms 50 has this protest against such views:

If I were hungry, I would not tell thee;

For the world is mine, and the fullness thereof.

Will I eat the flesh of bulls,

Or drink the blood of goats?

Offer unto God the sacrifice of thanksgiving;

And pay thy vows unto the Most High:

And call upon me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

- Psalms 50:12-15