Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 30:7-10

7 And Aaron shall burn thereon sweet incense every morning: when he dresseth the lamps, he shall burn incense upon it.

8 And when Aaron lighteth the lamps at even, he shall burn incense upon it, a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.

9 Ye shall offer no strange incense thereon, nor burnt sacrifice, nor meat offering; neither shall ye pour drink offering thereon.

10 And Aaron shall make an atonement upon the horns of it once in a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonements: once in the year shall he make atonement upon it throughout your generations: it is most holy unto the Lord.

Yesterday I compared the offerings of incense upon the altar inside of the tabernacle to the silent, personal adjustments that we make each day, rejecting temptation and choosing the higher road. That comparison is further reinforced by today’s verses which say there was to be a perpetual offering upon the incense altar, constantly being replaced every morning and night, just as many the disciple has found that he must perpetually recommit himself to the Lord every morning and night.

We also learn from today’s verses that once every year the blood from an atonement offering would be applied to the horns of the incense altar. Periodic, deep sacrifice would be used to maintain the quieter, more perpetual ones. This, too, often happens in the path of discipleship, where the occasional great sacrifice renews and invigorates our smaller, daily commitments.

God also makes clear that they must not offer any “strange incense thereon,” nor any other kind of non-incense offering. Even approved animal sacrifices were forbidden from being performed upon this altar. Every offering had to be made in the correct way. Such is the rule of the rightly ordered life. For example, it is right to offer our worldly goods to sustain and improve the lives of our children, but we must never offer them the worship that is only for God.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 30:1-6

1 And thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon: of shittim wood shalt thou make it.

2 A cubit shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof; foursquare shall it be: and two cubits shall be the height thereof: the horns thereof shall be of the same.

3 And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, the top thereof, and the sides thereof round about, and the horns thereof; and thou shalt make unto it a crown of gold round about.

4 And two golden rings shalt thou make to it under the crown of it, by the two corners thereof, upon the two sides of it shalt thou make it; and they shall be for places for the staves to bear it withal.

5 And thou shalt make the staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold.

6 And thou shalt put it before the veil that is by the ark of the testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the testimony, where I will meet with thee.

We begin this chapter by learning of another piece of furniture for the tabernacle services, the incense altar. As the name suggests, this is where incense would be burned to provide a pleasant scent.

It is referred to as an altar, and just like the altar of sacrifice, it would be adorned with horns. Where it differs from the altar of sacrifice, however, is that would be overlaid with gold, instead of brass. Gold overlay, of course, was used for the ark of the covenant, the candlestick, and the table of shewbread. Those were all placed within the tabernacle itself, and as we see in verse 6, that was where the altar of incense was placed as well, so a matching gold overlay makes sense.

To me this suggests that the offerings made upon the altar of incense, though less dramatic, were considered more sacred. They were silent offerings, made within the holy place, out of view of the rest of the world. That sounds just like the sacrifices that are most sacred in the life of a disciple today. That isn’t to say that the public and dramatic turning of one’s life isn’t of value, it absolutely is, but lasting discipleship is defined far more by all the multitude of silent sacrifices that follow thereafter.

The incense altar represents the battles that take place only within our own heart, such as when we renounce temptation, and no one even knows we ever considered otherwise. It represents the quiet good that we do, such as leaving an anonymous gift for the family in need. It represents the giving up of our time to align with God, such as when we spend hours in secret prayer when no one to witness it. These moments define us best because they are the times we choose the right purely for our own conscience. They are moments just between us and God.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Commitment to the Ideal: A Richer Soil

A Difficult Requirement)

Yesterday I spoke of the trouble in having all of our relationships and commitments based purely on the attributes of the other person. If we only show love and devotion to those who love and are devoted to us, then we are not following Christ’s mandate to “bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

How do we offer such blessing, and good, and prayers, to those that are unpleasant to us. And how do we “give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver?” (2 Corinthians 9:7).

Love for the Ideal)

The answer that I have found is that we must have a love for the principle and ideal, one that is even more foundational to us than love for the individual. As I consider our society today, I see a great need for people who are not just devoted to their spouse, but to the very idea of marriage in-and-of-itself. We need people who are not just committed to taking care of their children, but who are committed to the role of fatherhood or motherhood itself. We need people who are not just supporters of their friends, but who are supporters of friendship itself.

If people loved marriage, loved parenthood, loved friendship, and loved neighborliness, then they could continue to act in those roles even when the other side of those relationships turned cold. If, instead, when companions turn from us, we abandon our relationship with them, we reveal that marriage, parenthood, friendship, and neighborliness never really meant anything to us at all. We just wanted to get, and if we couldn’t get, we wouldn’t be had.

Of course, I would advise anyone that they should marry someone that they genuinely love, and raise their kids to be people that they genuinely like, and build friendships with people that are genuinely good for them, and settle down in a neighborhood that is genuinely inviting. I believe it is right and wise to plant one’s relationships in promising ground, but sometimes the topsoil erodes, and roots must cling to something deeper if the relationship is to survive.

A Choice of Who to Be)

If one does not care whether the relationship survives after the initial excitement has worn off, then they hold a very shallow view of what it means to be a spouse, a parent, a friend, and a neighbor. They will never have a relationship of true depth and meaning. They will live petty and forgettable lives.

If, on the other hand, one remains committed to a marriage, a parent-child relationship, a friendship, and a community, through good times and bad, then that is a person whose bonds actually mean something. That is a person who is living a life of value.

At the end of the day, we are temporal, transient beings, and also the other people in our lives, so our commitment to them is naturally temporary and dynamic as well, ever shifting from moment to moment. We can, however, have a deep, abiding, and overriding commitment to an ideal. We can always believe in marriage, in fatherhood and motherhood, in friendship, and in neighborliness. We can be devoted to those ideals even when the relationship to the other person grows stale. We can continue giving of ourselves to those ideals with a passionate and cheerful heart, no matter how we feel about the person receiving on the other side. It is our commitment to the ideal that will see us through every drought and flood, every change of season, and every passing year.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Commitment to the Ideal: Transient Devotion

The Hardest Love)

One of the hardest instructions Jesus gave to his followers was that they were to love their enemies:

32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.

33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.

35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

Luke 6:32-33, 35

I cannot imagine a time or culture where this mandate wouldn’t go against the grain. I believe it is inherent in our humanity to value those that are good to us, and to despise those that are not.

How, then, are we meant to overcome this basic nature and live another way? It would be one thing if Jesus had said to “put up” with our enemies, or to “resentfully tolerate” them, but he didn’t. He said to love them, and that suggests having cultivated a state of mind and heart that is totally unnatural.

I could easily do an entire series that explores multiple answers to this question. For now, though, I will just take two posts to examine one way in which people fail this mandate, and one solution to that failing. The failure is this: commitment to the person, and the solution is this: commitment to the ideal.

The Failure)

I hear many times in our culture when a person expresses his love, commitment, and devotion to another person, and he gives as his reasons a positive attribute that applies to that person today. Consider these examples:

“I always listen to my wife because she believes in me when no one else does.”
“I need to be a good neighbor because they’ve always been good to me.”
“I’ll always give everything to my children because they bring me such joy.”
“I’ll always be there for my friends because they’re always there for me.”

I think statements like these are popular because they are flattering to the person in question, but they also establish a culture in which devotion is conditional. Implicit in all of these is that the speaker’s undying affection is dependent upon the other person continuing to show up in a way that is positive.

What if the wife stops believing in him? And the neighbors become indifferent? And the children make disagreeable choices? And the friends let him down in a time of need?

These statements of devotion are very transient and weak. They essentially communicate that “I will be dedicated to you, so long as you remain as someone that I like.” Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, the behavior seems to follow the words. Even in our most sacred of mortal relationships, that of marriage, a man and a woman will separate themselves from one another for no other reason than, “we just don’t get along anymore.” Their commitment to one another was based on nothing more than personal delight, and once that delight is gone, so is their commitment.

In addition to being unhealthy for our society, this sort of transient devotion flies in the face of Jesus’s teaching. Our love, our commitment, our devotion was never meant to be dependent on the personal attributes of those we associate with. We were supposed to be able to love and be committed to the wellbeing of everyone, even our enemies.

Just how exactly can we foster this sort of unconditional love and devotion within us? I delve into my answer in my next post.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Invited Blessings

In my study of the Old Testament, I have been reviewing all of the labor and rituals that the Israelites had to observe in order to secure the Lord’s promised blessings. They had to build a holy place where the Lord could reside, they had to give the best of their flocks in offerings, and they even had to give up a portion of their people for a priest class. Also, everything had to be prepared according to a very specific design, and in the right order, with some rituals repeated a precise number of times.

In the end, the Israelites did secure the blessing of the Lord’s presence, and all others that followed. After all of their labor He accepted the house, and “a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34).

So, does that all mean that accessing God and His blessings is based upon making specific sacrifices and following a specific recipe? In my experience, not exactly.

I would say that I have clear instruction for what I need to do to invite God’s presence into my life generally, but not so much for specific blessings that I might want. This creates an interesting contradiction where I feel His presence, but often cannot achieve the transformation that I desire. Take for example my desire to treat my body as the temple of God that it really is, or my wish that I could better maintain my stamina for the works I feel He has called me to do, or my struggle to let go of the anger and bitterness that I hear Him asking me to lay on the altar.

I hear you Lord, but I don’t know the way.

Further complicating things is the fact that I believe most of God’s blessings are never guaranteed, at least in this life. He might bless me with a sudden passion for always doing the right, or He might consider it wise to let me struggle so that I become stronger. This same uncertainty applies on a larger scale, too. I believe that those who rely upon the Lord have more blessed lives on the whole, but that does not mean that any specific blessing is guaranteed for any specific individual. And we must not forget that in dark times, being a believer has actually meant being more persecuted and afflicted on the whole.

There is no formula that if you do X and Y, then you must receive Z.

Sometimes that is hard for me to accept, but at the same time I realize that if this wasn’t the case, then there wouldn’t be grace. If I knew exactly what levers I had to pull to get exactly what outcomes I wanted, then my path would be in my hands and not the Lord’s. There would be no room for Him to lead me into something I never considered before. There would be no falling to my knees overcome by gratitude when I receive a gift that I don’t feel worthy of.

When we do good, it only invites blessings. If they come, what they are, and how many of them is out of our hands. Each one that comes to us is an unpredictable miracle. Thus, all we should concern ourselves with is making ourselves into a better vessel, then leave it up to God to decide how to fill it.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 29:45-46

45 And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God.

46 And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them: I am the Lord their God.

To conclude this chapter God makes the very special promise that He will dwell with the Israelites, a constant presence in the midst of them. God will not only be some outer concept, but their own neighbor, living in a house that the community had prepared for Him, somewhere that they could go and visit throughout the year.

God further promises that the people will know that He is, indeed, their God, even the same one that brought them out of Egypt with such tremendous power and miracles. That seems to suggest that they will see such power and wonders coming from the tabernacle that they will be able to identify the presence there as the same that had been within the pillar of smoke and fire. We will hear how this promise is fulfilled at the very end of Exodus, in chapter 40.

This brings us to the end of the preparations for the priests. There yet remains two more furnishings for use in the tabernacle, however. We will hear the details of them in the next chapter.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 29:42-44

42 This shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord: where I will meet you, to speak there unto thee.

43 And there I will meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory.

44 And I will sanctify the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar: I will sanctify also both Aaron and his sons, to minister to me in the priest’s office.

The Israelites would make a continual offering to the Lord, morning and night, and now God promises that He will respond by coming to the doorway and speaking to them directly. He states that He “will meet with the children of Israel,” and that His glory will sanctify the tabernacle, the altar, and the priests.

This is the overlap of two worlds, a special place where man and God would be in the same place at the same time. These are precious portals between heaven and earth, very rare and only ever attained by the condescension of God Almighty. We may have our spiritual experiences, but they are generally invisible and immeasurable, occurring only on a spiritual plane that resides within us. What makes these world-overlapping moments so special is that they are times where the things of Heaven are physically and tangibly perceptible by the denizens of the Earth.

Records of such special worlds-overlapping moments including Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Moses at the burning bush, and the voice of God at Jesus’s baptism. Of course, the greatest of all the world-overlapping events was the entire life of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

As I said, these moments are very rare, and I think it is fair to say that most people live their entire lives without experiencing this sort of occasion even once. It may well be that there will not be any such large overlapping moment until the second coming. Suffice it to say, if ever such a moment does occur in your life, be sure that you attend to it!

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 29:38-41

38 Now this is that which thou shalt offer upon the altar; two lambs of the first year day by day continually.

39 The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning; and the other lamb thou shalt offer at even:

40 And with the one lamb a tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil; and the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering.

41 And the other lamb thou shalt offer at even, and shalt do thereto according to the meat offering of the morning, and according to the drink offering thereof, for a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto the Lord.

We have heard of the sacrifices necessary to consecrate the priests and the altar, and we will hear of many more ritualistic sacrifices that would restore the Israelites back to unity with God after all manner of dividing circumstances. Today, however, we read of a constant ritual that was ongoing in perpetuity at the tabernacle. Aside from all the other offerings, there was a perpetual sacrifice being given to the Lord every day. A lamb, a measure of flour, a measure of oil, and a measure of wine every morning. A lamb, a measure of flour, a measure of oil, and a measure of wine every evening.

Many people speak of their conversion to the Lord in terms of key, pivotal moments in their lives where a specific and great sacrifice brought them into harmony with the Lord. But underlying and between these key moments there is also the constant, daily sacrifice that we make to keep ourselves on the straight-and-narrow. A man may renounce his evil ways in one, great moment of conviction, but then he must make innumerable micro-sacrifices as he turns down every following temptation to return to his old ways.

The life of the disciple is one of constant sacrifice and work, and I believe that that is what is being symbolized in these daily sacrifices. Just each individual is expected to perpetually subjugate his will to the Lord every day, so would the nation of Israel as a whole.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 29:35-37

35 And thus shalt thou do unto Aaron, and to his sons, according to all things which I have commanded thee: seven days shalt thou consecrate them.

36 And thou shalt offer every day a bullock for a sin offering for atonement: and thou shalt cleanse the altar, when thou hast made an atonement for it, and thou shalt anoint it, to sanctify it.

37 Seven days thou shalt make an atonement for the altar, and sanctify it; and it shall be an altar most holy: whatsoever toucheth the altar shall be holy.

Today we learn that the seven days of sacrifices is not only to sanctify the priests, but also the altar being used for the sacrifices. By being employed repeatedly in holy rituals, the altar itself would become holy.

This is a good opportunity to consider the question, what is it that makes something be sanctified? Is it our works or is it God’s grace? Can we make something cease to be carnal by our carnal labors? If not, then why do the labors at all?

I would argue that sanctification is a door with two locks. One that we have the key for, and one that God has the key for. We turn our key by our sacrifices, because that which we sacrifice most for becomes that which we hold in the highest regard. When we give up our greatest loves for a thing, then that thing becomes our greatest love. It becomes sacred to us. Regardless of the thing’s inherent nature, because of all we have given to it, it is now an item of worship.

But none of that forces God to hallow the thing also. We might have turned our key on the door of sanctification, but we are not able to make God turn His. And God does not hallow everything that we do. We often sacrifice to our appetites, to our greed, and to our vanity. We make those things sacred in our own eyes, but God will never join us in sanctifying those things. If we are ever to meet God, we must be trying in the right places.

So, is it grace or works that makes something sanctified? I would say both. Our works are important in that they make a space where God is invited, but it is still up to Him to grace us with His presence. In the case of the tabernacle altar, the seven days of repeated would have made it hallowed in the minds of the Israelites, and because it was an approved vessel, God hallowed it from His end also.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 29:32-34

32 And Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that is in the basket, by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

33 And they shall eat those things wherewith the atonement was made, to consecrate and to sanctify them: but a stranger shall not eat thereof, because they are holy.

34 And if ought of the flesh of the consecrations, or of the bread, remain unto the morning, then thou shalt burn the remainder with fire: it shall not be eaten, because it is holy.

“If any portion remains” suggests that the Lord would provide for the priests even to the point of overflowing. Those that dedicate their lives to the Lord will receive as much blessing as they can receive, and the rest will have to be let go simply because there is no more room for it. Excess blessing was not to go to another unsanctified, though, but returned back to the Lord by the fire. This seems to suggest that God has blessings enough for everyone, without having to balance the load lest He run out.

Thus, in this offering ritual we see that the life of the disciple is defined on the one hand by sacrifice and surrender to the Lord, and blessing and providence on the other. One would think that sacrifice would cause want, but thanks to divine intervention, it would actually yield surplus.