Most often, the “echos” of repetition I encounter in Scripture take me a bit by surprise. Most of the time, when I detect an underlying drumbeat of something being emphasized through multiple iterations of the same word or phrase, it feels like a first-time observation. Not so when my reading plan has me enter the book of Leviticus. There I anticipate the echo, I look forward to the drumbeat, I find myself almost always in wonder as I noodle on a pleasing aroma to the LORD.

Seven times I encountered the phrase, a pleasing aroma to the LORD, as I read the first four chapters of Leviticus. Seven times in 95 verses. Three times in Chapter One’s 17 verses, twice more in the next 16 verses of Chapter Two, then repeated as a mind-renewing reprise both in the third and fourth chapters. To miss it, I think, is to be snoozing at the wheel.

Back in my King James days, I learned it as a “sweet savor.” A soothing, quieting, restful, and pleasing smell, scent, wafting fragrance — a pleasing aroma. To whom? To the LORD.

Kind of a funny phrase to be associated with burned up cows and sheep. Not what I think of when I think of bread left too long in the toaster. Not what I would think of as a divine reaction to an animal slaughtered, often disemboweled, and then incinerated. And yet, to my God, it’s a pleasing aroma.

How come? That’s a question worth chewing on.

Perhaps, above all other reasons, sweet because each of the different sacrifices pointed to a Person. Every offering a foreshadowing of the promised Messiah, the blessed Son of God in whom the Father is well-pleased — the once for all atoning sacrifice for the sins of men and women, sufficient to cover transgressions through the ages and for eternity.

Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

(Ephesians 5:2b ESV)

Perhaps because it pointed to a posture. When offered as the sacrifice should be offered, it demonstrated not just the outward actions of men and women but reflected something of their inner hearts. It wasn’t the smoke of the sacrifice which created the quieting, sweet scent, but the faith and obedience which accompanied the offering. It wasn’t the ritual of sacrifice that broke earth’s ceiling to enter heaven itself, but the humbled, sin-grieved response of those who so welcomed God’s presence that they would worship Him, welcoming atonement for anything that would interrupt their worship.

O Lord, open my lips,
 and my mouth will declare Your praise.
For You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
 You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
 a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

(Psalm 51:15-17 ESV)

A pleasing aroma, too, because it pointed to a people.

“For on My holy mountain, the mountain height of Israel, declares the Lord GOD, there all the house of Israel, all of them, shall serve Me in the land. There I will accept them, and there I will require your contributions and the choicest of your gifts, with all your sacred offerings. As a pleasing aroma I will accept you, when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered. And I will manifest My holiness among you in the sight of the nations. And you shall know that I am the LORD.”

(Ezekiel 20:40-42a ESV)

As Paul describes it, God’s people, those rescued from sin’s bondage and gathered together as an outpost testifying of God’s grace in a foreign land, are “the aroma of Christ to God” (2Cor. 2:15). Living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, emitting the sweet savor of spiritual worship (Rom. 12:1).

A Person. A Posture. A People. 

A pleasing aroma to the LORD.

By His grace. For His glory.