5 And if ye offer a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the Lord, ye shall offer it at your own will. 

6 It shall be eaten the same day ye offer it, and on the morrow: and if ought remain until the third day, it shall be burnt in the fire. 

7 And if it be eaten at all on the third day, it is abominable; it shall not be accepted. 

8 Therefore every one that eateth it shall bear his iniquity, because he hath profaned the hallowed thing of the Lord: and that soul shall be cut off from among his people.

We shift from a recounting of some of the ten commandments to now reiterating the importance of eating one’s portion of a peace offering within the day or the day after making that sacrifice, then burning any remainder on the third day. This was something we originally read about back in Leviticus 7.

As we may recall, the peace offering was not performed for restitution from sin or uncleanliness. As verse 5 states, it was an entirely voluntary offering, presumably given when one felt a particular sense of communion with God and wanted to enjoy a meal at His table. But what was a voluntary offering could become a curse if the offeror violated its instructions and ate his portion past the days allotted to him to do so. So long as the offering was in his own possession, he could slaughter and eat of it whenever and however he pleased, but once he offered it to the Lord, it now became subject to the Lord’s stipulations, and if he varied from that then his gift would become a curse.

So it is with us and our sacrifices today. When we say that we give our lives, our passion, our work, our families to the Lord, we cannot simply mean that we want to invite Him into those, and to bless them as we continue to direct them according to our own preferences. If we truly say that we are offering these things to Him, then that means we now accept His direction overwriting our own in each of these domains.