March 7 – Numbers 28-30

Below are my thoughts from the daily Bible reading of the West Side Church of Christ. Today’s reading comes from Numbers 28-30. Before reading I invite you to pray and asked God to speak to you as you read his word.

When you give an offering to God how do you view it? ““The Lord said to Moses, “Give these instructions to the people of Israel: The offerings you present as special gifts are a pleasing aroma to me; they are my food.”  Numbers 28:1-2 NLT. Do you consider your offerings as food for God? God does. The things we give him in our time, our worship, our possessions God views as his food. He views it as worship. Remember he created us to worship him. It is pleasing to him when we offer ourselves to him. Since he does not need the substance of physical food, he thrives off of our offerings to him.

This understanding should shape the way we view the things we give to God and the way we choose to give to him. Remember when you give of your time, your talents, your possessions and simply your life you are feeding God. Is it a pleasing meal or just something you threw together? Meals simply thrown together might feed the stomach, but the pleasing meals are the ones where the flavors have had time to simmer, have had time to come together and form an overly satisfying meal.

Another side note … as we read chapter twenty-nine we saw a lot of sacrifices of animals taking place. Just on one single day two (2) young bulls, one (1) ram, and seven (7) one-year-old male lambs plus the grain offering and liquid offering were given to God. We really see this prescription amplified during the Lord’s Passover. When I read this it tells me there is a lot of death taking place in the animal world of the Israelites. Let me remind you, as I had to remind myself, in our reading yesterday that there were 23,000 Levite males a month old or older counted in the census of chapter twenty-six. These offerings provided much of the food for the Levites and their families. There might be a lot of death but it is being used for two purposes … offerings to God and food for the Levites.

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