Our Offerings

It’s always a neat connection when something I plan to talk about actually comes up in a conversation, as it did yesterday, at the reception for Wade & Amanda’s wedding. I was talking with members of Chad’s family (Chad’s got some great family)

We were talking about what a difference it makes when you have personal buy-in, when you have to give of yourself towards something - whether it be financial, time, energy, etc. This person was talking about this in regards to Samaritan’s Purse, he was involved in helping to build homes for those who had lost theirs from the tornadoes in Mayfield, Kentucky. But it made me think about my experience with Habitat for Humanity.

If you don’t know exactly how Habitat operates - their mission is to provide simple, decent homes for people in need, and that starts with raising funds for the materials to build the homes. Most of the labor is provided by volunteers.

What people often miss - they assume the homes are given away to the families in need - but they aren’t. The families pay for the homes. In fact, the biggest hindrance for many families is bad credit - it’s the biggest reason people who apply to become homeowners and are turned down.

Habitat makes homes affordable by providing interest-free loans. Without the interest that compounds over the 20-30 years, these families in lower income brackets can afford to pay for the houses.

Over the years, Habitat has learned exactly what we were talking about - without personal cost, there is little buy in. If those involved don’t have to pay something - in terms of time, effort, funds, if they don’t bring anything to the table, they aren’t invested.

That’s true for the homeowners - who are required to do what’s known as sweat equity hours, hours they must spend working either on Habitat homes or in the Habitat office or Restore - before work begins on their home. And it’s significant, 250 hours if you’re single, 500 as a couple. That’s over six weeks of full-time work.

They must attend classes covering such topics as home maintenance and personal financial management. And, of course, they have to pay the loans - they are buying the houses. So, lots of personal investment - time, energy, learning, financial.

Habitat discovered this was true for volunteers as well. Our local affiliate, which covers Kanawha & Putnam Counties, had a surplus of funds at one point due to selling its loans. Banks are required by federal law to carry a certain percentage of loans to people with low income - so banks will often purchase Habitat’s loans because the loans have a low default rate.

So funds that normally would be paid out to Habitat over 20-30 years (and used for materials for the future homes) are available all at once.

So the affiliate decided to use those funds to pay for labor on the homes, subcontract more of its construction, to increase the speed of building homes.

But here was the problem - they lost donations as a result. Turns out one of their biggest sources of funds were the construction volunteers, who were often regular monthly donors. As they reduced the need for construction volunteers, the giving dropped as well. Because these were the people who were the most invested, they had bought in, not only with their time, their work - but with their money as well.

This truth, this dynamic of human nature, helps us to understand the why of sacrifices, of offerings, in worship. Why bringing offerings to the god you serve is such an essential part of worship, and has been throughout history and across different cultures and religions.

Because what you choose to invest in, when you offer what you have - including yourself, that’s the thing that will grab your heart. You will become more and more devoted to that. Jesus said it beautifully this way in Matthew 6, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

If I give long hours and effort to my career, then I’m going to be deeply devoted to my success in that career. If I spend lots of money on myself, my whims, my wants, I will become more and more self-centered. Where I put the treasure of my time, of my affection and care - there my heart will be also. This is the nature of who we are - that’s what Jesus is teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, that’s what Habitat has discovered in terms of its homeowners and volunteers.

This brings us to our Scripture this morning, as we start the third book of the Bible, Leviticus, in our journey through the story of the Old Testament.

We’ve covered a lot so far - throughout Genesis, God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, including humanity, sin entering in, wickedness of humanity prevailing to the point where God destroys the earth through a flood, sparing only Noah and his family. The promise of a great nation established through Abraham, then his son, Isaac, and then on to Jacob. This family ending up in Egypt.

And that brought us to Exodus, where this family grew into a nation but was enslaved by the Egyptians. God raising up Moses to lead his people out of slavery, then God establishing a covenant with his people through the Ten Commandments as they made their way through the wilderness towards the Promised Land. We finished Exodus looking at God’s instructions for the tabernacle, the sanctuary where he would dwell among them.

Up until this point, most of what we’ve been looking at have been narratives, stories of God and his people. But, as we got a taste of last week with all the detailed instructions about the construction of the tabernacle, we’re going to get a lot more of that here in Leviticus - the sacrifices and offerings the Israelites were to offer, specific laws dealing with purity and morality, the festivals they were to celebrate. Not exactly enthralling reading - unless you’re a fan of that. This is often where people fade out when trying to read through the Bible.

So, over the next two months, as we make our way through Leviticus, rather than go into the details of these things, we’re going to cover broad themes to try to show the main ideas God is trying to teach his people through his instructions.

Here’s the difficult part - and why Leviticus is so hard to understand today - the covenant (Old Testament) we find here was made between God and the Israelites. It was specific to them in that time and period. And only to them in that time and period.

In other words, these things that do not apply to us today - at least not everything. We are under the new covenant (New Testament), the one established through Jesus Christ. So you may wonder why we’re studying these books, these laws, these instructions.

We’re doing it because there are some things here in the old covenant that still very much apply to us today as followers of Jesus Christ (first and foremost being the Ten Commandments themselves). And one of the things we’ll spend time doing is separating out the two, seeking to determine what we can glean from these books for us today - as well as how all of it consistently points us toward Jesus himself.

Today, we’re going to start with Leviticus 1-7, which covers the five main types of offerings the Israelites were to bring before God at the tabernacle in their worship of him. I want to read through just one part of the instructions for one of the offerings, to give you a better sense of what the Israelites were to do, and then provide an overview of the offerings.

Leviticus 1:1-9: The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. He said, 2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When anyone among you brings an offering to the Lord, bring as your offering an animal from either the herd or the flock. 3 “‘If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, you are to offer a male without defect. You must present it at the entrance to the tent of meeting so that it will be acceptable to the Lord. 4 You are to lay your hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on your behalf to make atonement for you. 5 You are to slaughter the young bull before the Lord, and then Aaron’s sons the priests shall bring the blood and splash it against the sides of the altar at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 6 You are to skin the burnt offering and cut it into pieces. 7 The sons of Aaron the priest are to put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. 8 Then Aaron’s sons the priests shall arrange the pieces, including the head and the fat, on the wood that is burning on the altar. 9 You are to wash the internal organs and the legs with water, and the priest is to burn all of it on the altar. It is a burnt offering, a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.

Three types of offerings

First offerings were offerings of consecration or devotion, voluntarily made as an expression of devotion or praise of God. These were the burnt and grain offerings. Burnt offerings were offerings of an animal that would be, as the name suggests, burnt, wholly consumed in the fire. For the grain offering, only part of the flour would be burned, the rest would given for the priests for food to eat.

The second type of offerings were the fellowship offerings. These, too, were voluntary acts of worship, offerings of thanksgiving. These could include animals or bread, and here the internal organs and the fat were offered to God, the rest was eaten as a fellowship meal.

Finally, offerings that deal with sin, which included the sin and guilt offerings. These offerings were mandatory, they had to be made to be atoned for sin, this included unintentional sin. These offerings included both animal sacrifices and flour offerings.

Interesting aspect of God’s instructions regarding the offerings - even though some of the offerings were voluntary (burnt or grain offering) they were all very specific: bring this type of animal for this type of offering. Now, it may vary depending on whether you were a priest or a leader or just an ordinary Israelite, or based on your income level - if you’re poor you would bring a dove or pigeon as opposed to a bull or goat - for the very poor, flour. But what you were to bring and how the sacrifice was to be made was explicitly laid out in these instructions.

And this is why this is so important, so essential - because it addresses the issue of offerings - and the nature of who or what you’re making the offerings to. What do I mean by that? Let me give you an example.

A couple of years ago we made a family trip down to Belize where we visited the ATM, the Actun Tunichil Muknal. It’s a cave where the Mayans made sacrifices to their gods - and it’s an absolutely amazing place to visit, because the archeologists who’ve been studying it have left all the artifacts in the cave, it’s virtually exactly as they originally found it, as the Mayans left it.

The artifacts in the cave reveal a lot about the nature of sacrifices - because the further and deeper you go into the cave, the more extreme the sacrifices become. When you first come to the part of the cave where the sacrifices were made, there are remains of grain and food offerings - plates and jars that held the food, and then the jar would also be broken in some way after the offering was given, so it wouldn’t be used again.

As you move further along, deeper into the cave, there are artifacts that reveal sacrifices of blood letting - where priests would take the bones of stingray tails and stick it through their tongues and let the blood drip. They were offering their blood to the gods - and this was a more extreme sacrifice, your own blood.

And then, in the deepest parts of the cave, human remains. Children who were sacrificed to appease the gods.

It’s a curious thing - why the extremity, why does it go all the way from grain, from fruits, to sacrificing their own children - that’s a huge leap! And this wasn’t unique to Mayans, we find offerings and sacrifices becoming more extreme in the Bible as well - there’s the priests of Baal in 1 Kings trying to get the attention of Baal on Mount Carmel. They begin with shouting, with prayers and when that doesn’t work, they start cutting themselves with their swords.

And we know from the Bible that the Canaanites engage in child sacrifice as well, and from time to time, the Israelites were drawn into those extreme and horrific sacrifices.

But here’s why this happens - it happens when you can’t trust the nature and character of your god, the being or thing you’ve devoted yourself to.

If your god is not good, trustworthy - if your god is angry, unpredictable, chaotic - you are forced to go to extreme measures to appease and please your god, it’s a no-win situation.

What if you made your offering to your god - and good things result, don’t you have to give more next year? Otherwise you’re not being properly grateful - so, out of fear that your god will be angry, you give more, make a bigger sacrifice, because you don’t know how your god feels toward you, if he’s pleased or not.

Reverse is true - make a sacrifice, then there’s a drought or pestilence, a bad harvest. Clearly your god is not pleased with you. Your god is angry, You have to up your game, your sacrifice has to be bigger and bolder, more extreme.

Move from fruit of the land to the blood in your veins and if that’s not enough, you sacrifice your very children. Which is exactly what happened among the Mayans in the land of Belize - things were not going well for them so they kept moving to more and more extreme sacrifices in a vain effort to appease their gods.

But what if your God is good? Trustworthy. Merciful. Compassionate. Knowable. Present, with you. Slow to anger. A God who would reveal exactly what sort of sacrifices his people are to make that would please him. That would atone for their wrongdoing - and all would be well between them.

Remember what it said at the end of the passage we read from Leviticus 1, “It is a burnt offering, a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.” We see phrases similar to that scattered throughout the instructions. In other words, if you do this, exactly this, as I tell you, I will be pleased with your offering. You don’t have to keep guessing and wondering, I’m telling you upfront. This will please me.

Again, at the end of the instructions for the sin offering: “In this way, the priest will make atonement for the leaders sin and they will be forgiven.” Do this, make this type of sacrifice in this way, and atonement will be made. You can know that I have forgiven you. You can trust that I am not angry.

These instructions for offerings were not burdensome - they were a gift, a revealing of God’s heart. He is not unpredictable, chaotic, angry, god you have to work harder and harder to appease (and never knowing whether or not you can or have). God makes it clear what pleases him, what he asks of us, so we can come freely and fully before him.

Now, to be clear - we don’t live by these instructions any more, we don’t have to bring these specific offerings, we are not under the old covenant. In the new covenant, God himself has provided the offering, he has brought the sacrifice. His son, Jesus, laying down his life for us. We’ll talk more about that in a couple of weeks. But this morning I want you to see how even these seemingly laborious instructions are a gift from God. He wants to make it possible for his people to come to him in faith.

So, where does that leave us, since we’re no longer under the obligation to bring these specific offerings to God? The New Testament makes clear there is no set criteria - except one. God wants us. All of us. In the same way Jesus made himself the sacrifice for us, we are to offer ourselves fully and freely to him: Romans 12:1 - Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

I want to finish this morning with where we began - this idea that where we give of ourselves, that’s where we’re going to have buy in. We’ll be invested. As Jesus said, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Jesus bought all in on us, he treasured us enough to die on our behalf - we have his heart, his heart is with us. And in worship, in offering ourselves as living sacrifices, we can do the same. So we will be fully bought in to Jesus, our hearts belonging to him.

Spiritual Disciplines - Discipline of Worship

1 Peter 2:4-5: As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

What is a spiritual sacrifice - what kind of offering can we make that is acceptable to God? The Scriptures are full of examples:

Hebrews 13 - talks about making a continual offering, a “sacrifice of praise.” It also speaks of God being pleased with sacrifices of doing good and sharing with others.

Psalm 51:17 speaks about the sacrifice of a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.

So here’s my challenge to you this week, make a sacrifice, an offering to God this week, an intentional act of worship: A sacrifice of praise (Sunday morning!)…an act of service or a financial gift, a blessing to others…a time of confession, bringing your heart before God in repentance…pray the offering of yourself, your devotion, commitment. Find some way this week to offer yourself to God in worship.

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