Numbers 7 : 20

Numbers 7 : 20

One spoon of gold of ten shekels, full of incense:

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. What do I bring my incense to God in, for that matter what is my incense? Do I even need incense?

I have heard it said that our worship is offered as an incense to God. Does that meant that only when I sing am I offering it up? Can I offer, as in this offering, my incense up once to God in bulk then be done with it? Just wrap it up in an expensive box and I am done?

Of course not.

In this situation the Israelites were offering up the initial offerings for the tabernacle. The priests then took these offerings and offered them before God. I assume that when these offerings were used up the people brought more to the priests.

Seems very impersonal – like having God on a payment schedule. Oh, I guess I need to make another incense payment this month. Is that really what God wants from me?

I believe God wants me to bring a continuous supply of incense to Him in this earthen vessel I call Rod. He is not looking for payments based on commitments and rules alone. He wants my honest and continuing incense.

My worship is to be offered to him not just on Sunday and once and again during the week but on a continuous basis. In the days of the tabernacle the priests were responsible to have incense burning before the Lord constantly.

How can I do this? By offering my life as a continuous offering of incense. Not just now and again but 24/7/365.

How do I make the incense? Can I just whip it up in the sink out of whatever I have laying around? A prayer here, a song there, and just ignore the other things I am putting into this earthen vessel? If I am the "spoon on gold" what is in me?

How does that nasty old TV show I watched mix into the incense? What about the picture on the internet or the off-color or raunchy joke I read or heard? My bouts with anger and self pity? What do these do to the incense mix?

It is like taking incense and mixing it with pig manure and then offering it to God. I hope that the good smells overpower the smell of the burning poop while knowing that it really can't. God notices. In the OT God was very specific when he told the Moses how to make incense and I am certain that unclean things were not part of the mix.

How much of my incense is unclean? Can this vessel even be cleaned enough to ever hold the incense? On my own the answers are – all of it – and NO.

BUT I have a high priest that stands before God on my account and makes me clean before God. He cleanses my vessel and makes it into a spoon of fine gold and purifies my incense so it is a fitting offering. Does this mean I can just go on sinning and thank Jesus for doing all the work? NO. I must let God cleanse me and then live a cleansed life. I need to not fill the "spoon of gold" Jesus renders me with pig poop. I need to offer a pure incense to God, not because Jesus hasn't purified me but because it is my duty as a child of God to do so. Do I bring more honor to God by offering pig poop and asking Jesus to purify it or by offering pure incense and then letting Jesus purify it even further. Which is more honoring to God? This reminds me of where Paul writes about some that say that we should sin even more so Jesus' power can be more displayed. This is not the way it works. As Jesus is shown strong in my life I want to do more and more that demonstrates how he has cleansed me and by living my life in a manner more and more pleasing to God. I know I can never be a pure offering of incense and that there will always be some pig poop to be purified but I want to daily offer more and more pure incense to God. The incense of my life offered from this spoon of gold to God on a daily basis.