Offerings

So I've become a lot more intentional about spending time in the Old Testament over the past couple years or so, and it's been super rewarding for my perspective on various seasons I've experienced since I revived this blog. There were plenty of things that I learned from the New Testament as well, but like most young Christians, I'd considered a lot of the Old Testament to be more or less uncharted territory. When I finally took the time to read through all of Scripture from start to finish, I was surprised by how relevant some Old Testament concepts were to my own life.

Probably the most impactful of those concepts that I read about was the concept of offerings.

If you've read any of the books of the prophets (or really any Old Testament book), you're at least a bit familiar with the fact that God's people made sacrificial offerings to find favor with the Lord. These were intertwined with what we know as the Law, as the biggest way that followers of Yahweh could commune with Him was by offering quality sacrifices, consistently.

A few things to clarify about the offerings that the Lord required, though: 

• The methods and offerings themselves developed over time, and there were times when additional instruction from the Lord would clarify what was to be offered, how it was to be offered, and when it was to be offered. Throughout Leviticus, God specifies the exact livestock and crops that should be offered, and in what situations. But that's not when offerings first began – Abram/Abraham [Gen. 12-13, 22:9-14], Isaac [Gen. 26:24-25], and Jacob/Israel [Gen. 33:20, 35:1-15] made offerings to the Lord long before the full body of the Israelite people was even around. There were also times when God would appoint new festivals, where additional offerings would be made [Num. 28-29].

• God made offerings possible for all people, regardless of how much they owned. Any livestock offerings that were made were scalable to what specific households could afford [Lev. 5:7-13]. Even now, the concept of tithes is built on being percentage-based (the word directly translates to 'tenth'), and this is reflected in Scripture in some of the first recorded offerings [Gen. 14:18-20, 28:20-22].

• Offerings instructed by the Lord were never innocent human sacrifices. In fact, there are many places in Scripture where God condemns this, as it was a practice of many other religions in those times [Lev. 18:21, 20:2-5, Deut. 12:31, 18:9-12]. There are caveats to that, like God's request of Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and times when God blessed the Israelites in battle against other nations. But there were many times when God's people were tested to reach the land that was promised to them, and many times when man's devotion has been challenged – no one was ever asked for an innocent human life in exchange for finding favor with the Almighty. 

Offerings were huge during the time that the Law required the Lord's people to make regular sacrifices of life – whether it be crops or livestock – to stay in God's "good graces." During the Exodus of the Israelites, the Lord laid out instructions for daily burnt offerings meant to become the cornerstone of daily routines. "One in the morning and the other at twilight," two lambs would bookend the days of the early body of God's followers. Both would be offered with flour, olive oil, and wine – goods that were fairly valuable. Making these offerings would no doubt start to add up over time, but it's pretty likely that that was the point. They were called burnt offerings, because they were meant to be burnt up in their entirety, making a "pleasing aroma" to the Lord. The offering itself was in the sign of devotion that came from the sole sacrifice of what would otherwise be considered "valuable" to their flesh. There was no other purpose for that portion of what the Lord provided, other than to be returned to Him in total devotion [Ex. 29:38-43].

Another offering made fairly regularly was the grain offering, made out of thanksgiving to the Lord. These would often accompany the burnt offerings, and were eaten by the Levites as part of the inheritance that God had appointed them. There wasn't a requirement to bring grain offerings to the altar, other than that they were meant to be made with the finest flour available to them and without yeast (as was true with the unleavened bread prepared for the Passover). And while there wasn't a set timetable that they were meant to offer them, they were still meant to be an authentic response to the thankfulness that they had for God's provision and grace. Just as He did during the first days of humanity with Cain and Abel, and just as He does now, God doesn't have a desire for offerings made half-heartedly. Either we give our firstfruits, or none at all [Lev. 2].

Other offerings were given whenever times warranted them – whether it be for peace, atonement of unintentional sin, or the cleansing of guilt. Peace (or fellowship) offerings were a means of giving thanks for peace and fellowship with God, or times when God's people were in dire need of said peace [Lev. 3:1-7, 7:11-18]. Sin offerings were given in response to sin that had been committed unintentionally [Lev. 4, Num. 15:22-29]. Guilt offerings were made for unintentional sins that required restitution. In other words, guilt offerings were offered in similar scenarios as sin offerings, however guilt offerings were made for specific unintentional sins, where there was something lost that needed to be repaid or replaced [Lev. 5:14-6:7].

And forgetting the object of our faithfulness was a big part of an Old Testament cycle that highlights a big theme of the character of man. Man's known to forget God's grace, and in doing so, betray the promises that he's made after so many generations. Obviously, that's still true on a smaller scale, since it doesn't always take us generations to forget the Lord's faithfulness – we do it within minutes – but in the large timeframe of the Old Testament, we can see the Israelites suffering the consequences to a greater extent. Reading the Kings and Chronicles starts to feel like reading the same story, over and over. And one thing that always indicates in Scripture where they were in that cycle at any given point was the quality and frequency of their offerings. How can you tell that the Israelites had forgotten God's promises? They make flawed offerings and do them less often, or even make them to idols [1 Kings 16:31-33, 2 Chr. 15:3-5 & 28:22-25, Mal. 1:8].

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Call it an educated guess that no one reading this regularly sacrifices animals or crops to the Lord on an altar (maybe don't sacrifice the animals). Still, when you try to live a life that glorifies the Lord, you end up making plenty of offerings. 

How many times a day are we praying? Most Christians would probably say at least twice a day, before meals. Not to generalize, though – everyone is at different points in the development of their prayer life. Some have learned how to build the structure and frequency of our prayers in a way that increases the grace that we open our hearts up to. Some haven't gotten to that point in their relationship with the Lord yet, and that's okay – God wants what's in our hearts before what comes from our mouths. Some prayers are deeply meditative, and some are more routine (although they should always be intentional). Some prayers are more general in the interest of time, and some are more specific in the interest of intentionality. But all of our prayers are the latter half of a lifelong conversation with God. So I think most Christ-followers understand that prayer is important, at least for the fact that it's how we communicate with God – seems pretty important just based o that alone. Still, I think if that's the only way we think about it, we're shorting ourselves on the full blessing we could be getting from it. Prayer is a means of communication, but that's not all it is – it's an offering. Think about what we're doing when we pray. We make requests and confess sin, sure – but it's also an opportunity for us to rest in God's presence out of adoration. So if prayer's only in the interest of us communicating with Him, there'd be no purpose for that. But instead, prayer's also a way for us to give back some of the time that God gives us, time that's devoted to Him and only Him. Think about it – He provides for us financially, so we pour some of those finances back into the Church by tithing. Why is our time any different? He blesses us with 24 brand new hours every day, so why shouldn't we give Him back some of that time?

Corporate worship is a pretty obvious offering – though I think we understate just how many things can be forms of worship in these settings. At its core, worship is glorifying the Lord – something every decision and action should come back to. So while there's an argument that everything should be considered worship to some degree, I understand that having a term for a shared, expressive experience with a body of believers is necessary. Song, of course, is the most obvious example – but I think that form of corporate worship is pretty well understood by most people. One of my biggest spiritual inspirations in college once told me that time devoted to worship – especially in the Church – shouldn't be confined to just singing. That word loses so much of its meaning when we restrict it to meaning only repeating words on a screen to the tune of a few instruments. Don't get me wrong – that form of worship is amazing, and it can be extremely moving. Many people find God during those moments (of which I'm one), and calling it biblical would be an understatement. Still, I'm a big proponent of using many forms of self-expression during what we consider to be "corporate" worship. Intentional body posture, for one, is a form of worship I consider to be very powerful. You'd be surprised how much it can affect the posture of your heart, even though we sometimes falsely think it should work the other way around. Reflection is a big one for me too, while I'm in a worship "service." Not much speaking, maybe standing, maybe sitting. But most of the moments that I feel the most surrounded by God's presence are when I'm simply resting in Him, and perceiving the voices being lifted up around me and the words they're lifting up with them. Those are only a couple examples, but this concept of corporate worship is just as broad as it is powerful. You probably won't find me personally busting it down during a worship service or speaking in tongues, but hey, if it's out of divine devotion and isn't bothering the people worshipping with you – go crazy.

Serving others is one that's been sacrificed for the sake of putting up "boundaries," that in reality are only an excuse for laziness or comfort. It also happens to be one that Jesus really put in bold italics. This can mean serving people we don't know [Luke 9:16-17, 46-48, the countless instances of divine healing in the New Testament] or those we know well [John 13:4-8,12-17 ]. Jesus used serving others as a way to act out the message of the Gospel that He was sent to deliver – that God was actively putting Himself below man (!) out of His great love for him. As we follow suit, it's good to understand that a people that's consistently making an effort to put themself below the people around them is one that ultimately looks closer to Heaven than anything we've personally seen.

Some things that we idolize can be considered forms of worship – our careers are a big one. Idolizing work can be easy when we give progress, merit, or money too much authority over our lives. That doesn't mean that those things are evil – how we misplace our identity says more about the posture of our own hearts than it says about whatever we place it in. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't give our work any thought at all. For most people, our workplace is where we see lost people the most consistently – I can't imagine a more effective way to show people Christian values than doing work that people generally don't want to do, doing it just about every day, and doing it with an attitude that goes beyond what's required. Don't ask me how consistently I do that myself.

Our finances are the same – at risk of mentioning what can be talked to death in the Church sometimes. Money gets villainized a lot, but again, how we identify with our finances says more about ourselves than it does about money. Money's a man-made concept, and while nothing man-made should be worshipped, you can bet something man-made can be used to the glory of God. "Tithing" is one of the biggest ways we give back to the church, and when that started, the concept of currency looked a lot different. The earliest example of tithing comes from Abram giving a tenth of his spoils of war to a priest of the Lord, purely out of obedience towards an oath he made to God [Genesis 14:18-20]. Our money is just money, yet stewarding it obediently can be one of the most genuine ways to be "in the world but of the Kingdom."

All of these, in one way or another, are forms of authentic worship. So in short, worship means offerings, and offerings that are offered for God's glory keep us rooted in the purpose of our very existence.

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Don't let that give you the impression that our offerings have ever been for God's wellbeing, though – He doesn't need a thing from us. No, our offerings are a response to His grace that just so happens to improve our own spiritual well-being. When we offer things up to God – our time, our finances, our relationships – we put our lives in a position that's most conducive for blessings (another facet of those "good graces" I mentioned earlier). Of course, God already knows exactly how He'll bless us, but from a limited perspective of man, to withdraw ourselves from blessings in pursuit of comfort only feeds our flesh. I know that seems like a selfish way to think about it, but the only person we really hurt when we try to "withhold" things from God is ourselves. The routine, action, or even the end result themselves aren't even the true purpose of our offerings. In fact, sometimes breaking out of the normal routine of our offerings and presenting a different kind of offering that comes from the most authentic space in our hearts at the time exercises the intentionality that the Lord wants from us – after all, a "faithful" lifestyle that's forgotten who it's faithful to isn't devoted to anything but the lifestyle itself [Amos 5:22-27, Isa. 1:10-15]. The value of an offering comes from the desire itself to glorify God – and a by-product of acting authentically on that desire will serve us better than anything else could.

A big reason that that idea is important is because when we inevitably need to discipline ourselves into a routine of offerings, we start to get this notion in our heads that it makes them less valuable or genuine to God. That couldn't be farther from the truth, though. Recently, I've been *trying* to wake up early to read my Bible, instead of doing it later in the day. That way, I don't forget by the end of the day, and it puts me in a better mindset to start the day. And let me tell you – it freaking sucks. I hate waking up early so dang much. But when I get myself to do it, it's out of love for the Lord and knowing that giving Him control over what was His provision in the first place is the wisest thing that I could do with it. So no, I don't think that discipline sacrifices authenticity. I wholeheartedly believe that forcing ourselves to make offerings when we don't want to is the most authentic way we can give them up – and when we form habits of doing that with righteous motives, a genuine desire will always follow genuine discipline. God has never wanted our offerings themselves, and He's always wanted a relationship with us that's strengthened as a result of them.

And that concept ended up being one of the most impactful things that I had gotten from the Old Testament, simply because it led me away from reading the Old Testament only as a book documenting history. A problem I (and I think a lot of Christ-followers) have is that I read the New Testament as if it's directed at me personally, but I don't read the Old Testament the same way. Just because the Old Testament contains more historical content than the New Testament doesn't change the intended audience of it. Every word of Scripture is and was always meant to be a love letter from God, to Man. Stop reading the Old Testament like it’s only written about someone else – start reading it like it's written to you. While it's undeniable that there was definitely a shift between the Old and New Testament, that shift is specifically in regards to how we connect with our Heavenly Father – and it’s completely and solely hinged on the Christ. At its core, our relationship with Him remains the same as it has since the fall of Man. Mankind in its depravity falls short of the glory of God, and not only requires His intervention to be made holy, but also exists with the sole purpose of glorifying Him who is holy. The stories aren't exclusive from one another, either, since both testaments make up one continuous story. There was perfection, then there was sin. There was sin, and then there was a Law that revealed that sin. There was a Law that revealed that sin, and then there was a Savior that fulfilled it. There was a Savior that fulfilled it, and now there's a Spirit and a promise that He will return.

If we believe that, there’s so much more to living our lives than just living them for ourselves, or even living them just to follow rules. Instead:

"... present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."

Romans 12:1 (ESV)

Our lives are lives lived for the Lord, and as important as it is to reflect His love to those around us, it’s even more important to stay devoted to who we're reflecting. Offerings are a means of God’s grace in our lives, and so ultimately, they benefit us. Still, they’re not for us – they’re for a good God, and that keeps us centered and balanced on an authentic faith that’s much tougher for the enemy to fell. All of these "small" sacrifices we make for God compose a body, a heart – a life – that itself is a moving, breathing offering to its Creator and Guide.

Living our life as an offering is scary, but our heart is the only offering that God has ever asked us to bring to Him. If the state of our heart reflects the condition of our offering, how good of an offering do we believe He deserves?