I finished reading Leviticus today! This is probably a terrible thing to say, but...WHEW!! :-) There's lots of good stuff there, but it does get a little tedious to weed through!
I was talking to my mother-in-law today, and she mentioned something that my father-in-law had been musing on while he was reading through Exodus. When Moses was up on the mountain, receiving the law from God, the people grew tired of waiting for him for so long, and decided to build an idol to worship instead of the true God. They brought all of their gold jewelry to Aaron, who melted it down and built the infamous golden calf. Obviously...not a good choice! My father-in-law, however, pointed out something that had never occurred to me before. A few chapters later, Moses led the people in building the tabernacle in the way that God had instructed him. God told the people to bring all of their gold jewelry and other precious items to Moses for the construction of the tabernacle. How many people found themselves with no gold to offer to God for the construction of the tabernacle, because they had already offered all of their gold for the building of the idol? Many of the Israelites who had been involved in the idol worship had already been killed for their rebellion (Exodus 32:26-28), but it seems implied that others had repented, chosen to follow God in the future, and had their lives spared. Did they have anything left to offer God when the time came?
That thought really hit me. As a believer, how often do I give what I have to offer to something that God would consider idolatrous? How often do I squander my time, my energy, my interest, my money? And then, when God comes calling, what do I have left to offer? Am I too busy, too tired, too distracted or too financially strapped to be involved in what He's doing? How sad! What a waste!
"Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to covetousness. Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in Your way." ~Psalm 119:36-37
6 comments:
Most insightful. If you read my post from this last week you will see that I am dealing with this issue some. I sight a very old church building, Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, that caught fire. The building is 134 years old. The repairs are potentially 16 million dollars or more. The questions that flow from this situation the Catholic church finds itself in are profound as it pertains to the true mission of the Body of Christ. I used the Roman Catholic Church only as an illustration as Holy Name happened to catch fire this week. However, I am clear that I am not picking on them as if they are the only believers that find themselves serving something that was to be a blessing and "maybe not" serving Christ.
You have brought some good biblical insight into this same matter. I am again reminded of Christ's admonition about where we are to store up our treasures. Certainly there is a balance. We do benefit long term from material things we build and take care of. Yet, how often, in our personal and corporate lives do we tip that scale towards things that rust, are eaten by moths, are stolen away? God is never diminished only we are made less by our poor decisions.
Feel free to comment on my blog as I would appreciate your input. Mr. K often makes comments himself which I find most encouraging.
Mark said to watch out for Numbers and Deuteronomy! :) Don't give up!!
Hey McCutcheon's!
Thanks for the encouragement! (and I mean that in both a sincere and sarcastic way!) :-) Even though it's a little dry to muddle through, I'm still learning stuff. It's all good!
Yay you. And thanks for sharing the musings on what we offer, and to whom... Very good food for thought!
These become especially hard questions for me--because I'm wondering what it does mean to offer my resources, my time, my energy to God. Maybe it has not much to do with the local church. God didn't say--give to the local church, did he? Our offerings are for Him--and where does that happen? Lots of places--lots of choices. How many people give to the local church (which often can be mostly benefited by the Christians using the building, although of course, it is sometimes drawing non-believers in), but then don't have resources (time, energy, money) to give spontaneously to those in need outside of that building. Hmmm. Now I'm really going to get myself on the black list. Oh well. The Holy Spirit convicts me.
Kristi - I won't attempt to "play God" and answer that one! :-) In my case, I haven't yet reached the level of spiritual maturity where I'm deciding between worthwhile God-honoring things within the church, or worthwhile God-honoring things outside the church. I'm still stuck at the level of worthwhile and God-honoring at all, or just plain worthless and worldly!
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