Tag Archive | God

Leviticus 2 – Grain offering

Good evening y’all. Today we are studying Leviticus 2.

Be blessed 🙂

Today’s chapter focuses on grain offerings. This offering doesn’t use animals and no shedding of blood. It uses produce from the ground – flour, wheat, cereal.

Let’s see what we can glean from the chapter.

1) Only Fine or choicest flour can be offered – We are to give God our best. Not just any left over.

2) The flour could be brought either uncooked, oven cooked, griddle cooked or pan cooked – We can present our offering/service to God in diverse ways. The key thing is to make sure it is unto God and we are giving Him our best. Ecclesiastes 9:10 and Colossians 3:23 says

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might….” (Ecclesiastes‬ ‭9‬:‭10‬ AMP)
 
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people”. (‭Colossians‬ ‭3‬:‭23‬ GNT)

3) No yeast is to be included when cooking the grain offering – Yeast is likened to sin in our lives. A small amount of yeast in dough can make a massive difference (the dough rises and becomes bigger), so it is with sin in our lives. A small sin, if not nipped in the bud immediately, can grow to become a mighty stronghold. We need to examine ourselves to make sure there are no traces of sin in our lives, so our offering can be acceptable before God.

4) This offering wasn’t a whole offering to God like the burnt offering was (all the parts of the burnt offering was offered to God, none was taken by the priests). Some part of the grain offering is given to the priests for their upkeep. The part given to Aaron and his sons is considered the most holy part of the offering.

“The priest will take a representative portion of the grain offering and burn it on the altar. It is a special gift, a pleasing aroma to the LORD. The rest of the grain offering will then be given to Aaron and his sons as their food. This offering will be considered a most holy part of the special gifts presented to the LORD”. (‭Leviticus‬ ‭2‬:‭9-10‬ NLT)

What we give willingly as service to others is deeply appreciated by God. What came to mind was scripture in matthew 25:34- 46 where Jesus said if you do this to the least, you have done it to me. We shouldn’t get so carried away, that we forget to serve others around us.

5) The offering must be seasoned with salt. 
“Every cereal offering you shall season with salt [symbol of preservation]; neither shall you allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your cereal offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt”.(‭Leviticus‬ ‭2‬:‭13‬ AMP)

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“salt is THE TYPE OF PURIFYING POWER and with all our sacrifices we have need to bring a greatdeal of this salt. The salt eats into the meat. It drives away corruption. It preserves it. We require a deal of this. Brothersand Sisters, if we come before God with holy things while we are living in sin, we need not deceive ourselves—we shall not be accepted! If there is any man of whom it can be said that he is a saint abroad and a devil at home, God will esti-mate him at what he is at home—and not at what he is abroad. He may lay the sacrifice upon the altar, but if it isbrought there with foul hands and an unholy heart, God will have nothing to do with it! “Without holiness no man shallsee the Lord” and, certainly, without holiness can no man serve the Lord. We have our imperfections, but known andwillful sin, God’s people will not indulge. From this God keeps them. As soon as they know a thing to be sin and theirattention is called to it, that which they have committed in inadvertence causes them grief and sorrow of heart and theyflee from it with all their souls. We must, dear Friends, bring with all our oblations thatsalt in ourselves which shall purify our hearts from inward corruption and which shall have a power about it to purifyothers. Know you not that the saints are the salt of the earth? And if we are salt to others, we must have salt in ourselves.How can we conquer sin in others if sin is unconquered in ourselves? How can we give a light we have never seen? Howcan we have seed as sowers if we have never had bread as eaters? There must be a holy,sanctifying power about the child of God, making him to be as salt, or else he cannot act upon the putrid masses roundhim as the salt ought to do. With all your oblations, then, bring this salt. God give it to us! Let us cry to Him for it!” (extract from http://www.spurgeongems.org, Volume 33, Sermon #1942)

I will leave us with these thought’s –

Am I giving God my best or does He get my left overs?

Are there little sins in my life that will contaminate my offering thereby making it unacceptable before God?

Let’s repent and ask Holy Spirit for help today.

Thanks for joining today.

Have a blessed evening 🙂

***With God all things are possible***

Exodus 34 – A ‘Do Over’

Good evening y’all.  Today we are looking at Exodus 34.

Be blessed 🙂

God is such a loving God. Though the children of Israel had sinned against him by bowing to the golden calf, He was willing to forgive and give them a ‘Do Over’. He gave them a new promise.

God promised to do so much wonder and mighty miracles for the Israelites, that through the miracles, other nations will tremble and fear Him and know that He is the God who has done all this marvelous things. But notice there was a condition to the promise – They had to obey God’s commands fully and be totally devoted to Him.

“The Lord said: I promise to perform miracles for you that have never been seen anywhere on earth. Neighboring nations will stand in fear and know that I was the one who did these marvelous things. I will force out the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, but you must do what I command you today. Don’t make treaties with any of those people. If you do, it will be like falling into a trap.  Instead, you must destroy their altars and tear down the sacred poles they use in the worship of the goddess Asherah. I demand your complete loyalty—you must not worship any other god! Don’t make treaties with the people there, or you will soon find yourselves worshiping their gods and taking part in their sacrificial meals. Your men will even marry their women and be influenced to worship their gods.    Don’t make metal images of gods”. (Exodus 34:10-17 CEVUS06)

Don’t make treaties with the people, if not you will fall into their trap… This got me thinking: Am i in any way making treaties with the world around me? Am i compromising here and there because everyone is doing? Have I started following the world’s way of doing things without even realising it?

God clearly told them if they made treaty with the people of the land, they will find themselves worshipping their gods. They will be polluted and no longer loyal to God.

This reminds me of King Solomon. He started great but he got carried away and ended up marrying so many pagan wives that they turned his heart away from God.

“Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaoh’s daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. The lord had clearly instructed the people of Israel, “You must not marry them, because they will turn your hearts to their gods.” Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines. And in fact, they did turn his heart away from the lord . In Solomon’s old age, they turned his heart to worship other gods instead of being completely faithful to the lord his God, as his father, David, had been”.(1 Kings 11:1-4 NLT)

Paul in his letter to the Romans also stressed the fact that we shouldn’t be influenced by the world around us rather we should fix our attention on God.

“Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you”.(Romans 12:2 MSG)

We cannot have one foot in Gods Kingdom and another foot out in the world. We have to choose which camp we belong to. God said to the israelites – “I demand your complete loyalty—you must not worship any other god!”. God is a jealous God.

God is saying same to us today. He demands our complete loyalty. He will not share us with any other god.

Today is a new day and God is offering us a ‘Do Over’. I pray we will accept His offer and make the decision to be totally devoted to Him and serve Him wholeheartedly. Amen.

Thanks for joining today.

Have a blessed night 🙂

***With God all things are possible***