What have you offered up to God lately?

Lately I've found a new found love for the Old Testament. Particularly the first seven chapters of Leviticus. Now, any sane person reading the first seven chapters would probably fall asleep by the 2nd page. But, with the help of my God goggles, I found the whole seven chapters fascinating!

Its all about offering sacrifices to the Lord. So it's pretty old school. But I reckon we can learn a lot from it. When I was reading these chapters I wrote down this "It doesn't matter what, or how we make our offering, as long as it is of high sacrifice it is pleasing to the Lord. Slaughter it at the entrance of the place of worship, allow others to pray over it and then give yourself as a clean offering, without defect, to the Lord."

So, because we are not bound by the laws of the Old Testament no longer, we do not have to sacrifice cows, or grain, or anything like that. But there are bits of our lives we need to sacrifice/offer up to God.

There is an offering called the Burnt Offering. Your going to have to excuse me if I get this wrong, but a Burnt Offering was when every part of the offering was burnt in the sacred fire and symbolized the total dedication of the offering to God, being completely consumed by the fire so it was not available for anything else. The smoke was the offering to God in heaven. Three times in the first chapter, which is completely about Burnt Offerings, it says "It is a burnt offering... an aroma pleasing to the Lord."

What I learnt with this offering is that our lives need to be like the Burnt Offerings. Completely consumed by the Fire of the Holy Spirit so it cannot become available to the clutches of Satan or this world. It is when we are completely consumed by the fire that nothing else can touch us. Just like Job, Satan is not allowed to harm even a single hair on our heads if we belong to God.

Now the next offering, the Grain Offering, gives lots of examples of how you can present this to the Lord. But one thing is the same, grain (or barley of wheat) is the staple diet of the people God is talking to. As Westerners I don't think we can truly appreciate what this offering meant. They had to offer up the food they ate everyday. Meat was a delicacy, where as grain was an essential. If they did not have their grain, if it did not rain, if it wasn't a good harvest, then they would not eat. So essentially, grain was what they were 'made out of'.

So really, this offering is asking them to offer up their daily life, themselves, what the consist of. We can learn so much from this offering! We need to offer up OUR daily lives. Again, this is "an aroma pleasing to the Lord".

Now, I don't know much about the Fellowship Offering. All I know is that it is a time of celebration with friends, family and fellow believers. It is also the third of the 'pleasing aroma' sacrifices.

How often do we forget to celebrate what the Lord has done in our lives. We forget that every blessing comes from Him. Praise the Lord!

The next offering is the Sin Offering. In this offering the Lord asks you to take the blood and fat and then dispose of the rest. This may not sound strange, but think about it. What part of the animal is the most important when it comes to sacrificing? The meat and the hide. Yet, it was the least important bits that were offered up to God while the meat was left for the Priests to eat. It sounds like an easy sacrifice to make. Offer up the useless bits of the animal. But it'd be like melting the chocolate of scorched almonds and just eating the almond. Your missing the best bit! Your WASTING the chocolate! For this offering you had to offer up one of your best animals, to waste the meat and give the blood! This is a big ask. Just like in John 12vs. 3-5 when the lady poured the perfume over Jesus' feet, we would have to say "What a waste" to all the meat that wasn't used.

But how applicable is this to us! What do we do when we sin? We take the best animal (the life God has given us), us the useless parts (sin) and then throw away the meat (the new life God has given us). We throw away the NEW LIFE God has given us! What a waste! We should really, like the burnt offering, be offering the WHOLE animal to God. The useless and the prized bits. Everyone has seen the wonders God can do when we offer Him even the smallest and insignificant parts of our life.

I've only written down four offerings, there is one more which is the guilt offering which I know hardly anything about. I apologise if any of this is wrong, I don't know much about the Old Testament. But I found all this fascinating and I'm still mind boggled about it all.

I want you to sit and think for awhile... What have you offered up to God lately?