There are too many examples in the Bible of God rejecting offerings for me to cite. The Israelites were commanded to give God the first of their flocks, but they kept of giving him sickly and lame animals instead. In other words, they only gave God the things that they didn't have much use for, and that they could easily live without. When I first read the Old Testament in high school, all of the scriptures talking the old offerings fell deaf on my ears. I thought, "This has nothing to do with me. I don't even own any cattle. And anyways, things are different now. That's just Old Testament stuff, like not being allowed to eat pork, or being ceremonially unclean." Now that I am a bit older, I am able to see the times when I give God my "lame sheep".
I don't know why, but it is very easy to buy into the lie that we should only give things to God that aren't any use to us. For example:
- We share our faith beautifully in situations where we receive praise for it, but fall suspiciously silent when we are around people who will ridicule us for what we believe.
- We carefully make sure that we have enough money for all of our monthly expenses, and that we have enough money for entertainment, before we even consider tithing.
- We are willing to give things to God, but it has to be on our terms. We give Him stipulations for our obedience. We say, "I will go where you are calling me and do you work, but you better not let me be alone!", "I'll study the Bible for an hour a day, but the rest of the time belong to me!"
- We rely on God only when the bottom falls out. We wait to be dumped or abandoned before we desire to spend time with him. We only go to him when all other options are exhausted.
I admit that a lot of the examples that I have given here are exaggerations, but the bottom line is that often times we feel like we have the right to tell God what we are willing to give Him, rather than acting out of obedience to His call.
This subject has been something that I have thought about a lot in the past two months. It is difficult to be away from the people that I love, and it is even more difficult to think about how long it will be until I see them again. There have been times when I have asked God why I have to give all of that up. The scripture that came to my mind was 2 Samuel 24:24,
"But the king replied to Araunah, 'No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.' So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them."
David refused to give a free offering to the Lord because he wanted his offering to be a sweet aroma for his God. This scripture speaks to me when my sinful nature tells me that I have given enough. It is a blessing to be able to give things to God that cost us, and I will rejoice in being able to offer him things that are hard to give.
The final thing I am going to say about giving offerings to God, is that He promises to bless us for them. This is not the reason that we give to Him, but I would be remiss if I did not mention this. He will bless every offering that we give him, and return it back to us. These blessings don't always come back in the form that we gave them, but they are always what we need. Many times he is calling us to give more to Him so that he can return to us the blessing of faith. We may not realize it at the time, but He is doing this to prepare us for something greater. If we are not able to give him the "first of our flock" during the ordinary parts of life, He will never lead us into the extraordinary.
Feel free to comment or to email me about what you think (good or bad) about any of this. I enjoy hearing different people's opinions on things.
God Bless,
-Jon
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