Levitical Journey
Blessings to you this wonderful Sunday afternoon. Today we started our new series entitled:
The corporate worship was absolutely incredible. As always, I pray that our offering was acceptable to God. Speaking of that offering, God has really been speaking to me lately through, of all books, Leviticus. The Creative Arts teams have heard reference to this a couple of different times over the last few weeks. So, I thought I'd share those thoughts with you as well.First of all, I realize that we are no longer living under Levitical law...THANK YOU JESUS! Literally, I give thanks to God for sending His son as the ultimate atoning sacrifice. However, I still believe that there is much to be learned in the study of the old testament sacrifices. They were so incredibly specific about the ways in which each sacrifice was made. Rightfully so considering the "instructions" came directly from God Himself! Can you imagine if God spoke to us regularly like He did Moses? The very thought sends a multitude of emotions through my tiny skull. WOW, what it must have been like. I digress.
Anyway, God has really been speaking to me lately about how incredibly messy the Levitical offerings were. To put it mildly, LOTS OF BLOOD & GUTS! Check out the link above to read it for yourself. I mean, there was blood everywhere. Shouldn't our offerings today be at least a little messy. Can you honestly say that your offerings to God have been in any way a sacrifice? Instead, are we offering up half-hearted laughable "trinkets", that more than likely don't make it past the ceiling! Whoops, sorry for meddling.
But here's where God really put the whammy on me. On several occasions God instructs the priests to "scrub the entrails & legs clean". Why, in the midst of such slaughter, were they to scrub the sacrifice clean. Now I know that I'm making a bit of a generality here, but God really spoke to me through this. In the midst of the act of sacrificial offering, God wants to bring purity. Once again, do we really want the "stuff" of our lives to be made clean through our offering? Or would we really rather throw up our little trinkets & be done with it.
To wrap up this Levitical journey, I wanted to share with you the best (in my humble opinion) & most frequent phrase in Leviticus...
A PLEASING FRAGRANCE TO GOD.
This simple yet profound phrase comes at the end of each sacrifice. Can you imagine the stench each sacrifice must have had?! Not to mention that multiple sacrifices were made at a time. To man...a foul smell. To God...a pleasing sacrifice.
Pretty heavy stuff from a book that most simply skim through. As He is still speaking to me, I pray that all of our offerings will forever be changed. May we all soon be lifting up a "pleasing fragrance" to the heavens.
On a different note, I told several of you that I would hopefully be posting a video of last week's choir piece "Miracle". Unfortunately, for some reason, my macbook won't read the DVD. It has a little scratch on it & my fine-tuned machine is a bit cranky that way. I will continue to post videos & audio as they become available. Hopefully, I will be posting some audio from this morning's service soon. We shall see after I edit the service tonight for our podcast. Speaking of the podcast, don't forget that you can always download each week's service from the FBC website.
Until next time...
posted by Me at 2:53 PM
4 Comments:
I agree that our corporate worship was incredible today! I'm starting to expect that. (Is that good or bad?)
I love the way you branded the new series, and Darrell must have liked it, too, because at one point he walked over to the junk heap and preached from there!
I'm floored that you actually read Leviticus, but I'm not surprised God spoke to you through it, because you've always had a passion that we would bring a a pure offering to our worship services.
That's pretty mind-boggling about scrubbing the entrails, though. It reminds me of Jesus saying (in Matthew in The Message),"You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony...Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something."
I certainly don't want maggots on the inside of me, so scrubbing the entrails makes sense--sort of!
What I really can't understand is how stuff that's stinky to us can be a pleasing fragrance to God. I guess it's like Mother Theresa probably being beautiful to God while she was washing filthy dying people. Love and obedience.
I thought of you awhile ago as I walked into the sunset (literally--the weather was perfect for a good walk). I knew you were up in that dark sound booth like a mole editing and posting that podcast. You always do that so faithfully!
When my friend Sue moved here from Santa Barbara, her dad started listening to the podcasts to see what Sue had gotten herself into. He's a staid Presbyterian, as I understand it, but guess what? HE LIKES THEM!
Keep posting stuff here, ok? Just because people don't comment doesn't mean they don't come here.
My Dad listens to every podcast now & really enjoys them! He quit going to church after my mother passed away so I'm very grateful! My stepmother, Peggie listens with him which is alway a blessing since she lived in a convent in China when she was a young girl & had enough religion as she put it. They just couldn't understand why I wanted to move to Arkansas after Josh but they do now!
Please keep up the podcasts!
See, Pastor Mark, Arkansas is a nice place to live! I've always told you it was better than Texas (not that you ever agreed), and turns out, it's better than California, too! Francis Chan said something similar when he was here, too, remember?
BTW, I posted the pictures I took this morning and the lyrics from "All I Need" on my blog, ok? It was a HOOT!
This morning I was reading Psalm 5, and I remembered the song you wrote using those words. (I love how you turn scripture into songs.)
OK, THAT reminded me of the time in worship when you said, “I’m going to teach you a song. I know you’ve never heard it before.”
I probably shouldn’t admit this, but that offended me! I thought, “Well, I know a lot of songs. What makes him so sure I’ve never heard it before?”
Of course, months later when I was filing your music, I discovered that I couldn’t have heard it before because you had written it! I felt like such a JERK!
I never presume anymore. :)
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