The Five Offerings Part 2

When we look at Jesus life, we don't think only of His death at Calvary, but also of His whole life where He presented Himself to the Father fully saying “a body thou has prepared for Me...and I have come to do Thy will O God. (in this body)” (Hebrews 10:5,7). Jesus never once did His own will in his body but only the Father's. This is what it means to offer oneself as a burnt offering to God.

This is what Paul exhorts us also to do in Romans 12:1. "present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God...that you may prove what is the will of God."-exactly as Jesus did. This burnt offering was presented to God and burnt completely. The Bible says this was a "sweet savour" or a "pleasing aroma" to the Lord. (Leviticus 1:17)-meaning something that God was very pleased with-"This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."

Paul said that his life's ambition too was to "please the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:9).

When we present our bodies to the Lord, it is very easy to say, "Lord, I give my body totally to You." But we don't know whether we have offered it all, until we "cut it up". We could be deceiving ourselves. What does it mean to cut it up and offer it piece by piece, as was done with the burnt offering? It means that we offer our own bodily parts piece by piece to God.

We say, "Lord, here are my eyes. I have used them for the devil and for myself for the past many years, looking at and reading many things that offended You. But I am laying my eyes on the altar now. Never again do I want to use these eyes to look at or read anything that You would not look at or read. I never want to sin with theses eyes any more."

We go next to the tongue and say, "Lord here is my tongue. I have used this tongue for the devil and for myself for so many years, speaking whatever I liked, telling lies for my own again, getting angry at people and gossiping and backbiting against others and accusing them. But I never want to do all that any more. Here is my tongue Lord. It is yours from this moment onwards -totally and completely."

We go next to our hands and our feet and our bodily passions, one by one, and say the same thing: "Lord, here are the members of my body and bodily passions, with which I have sinned and hurt You. Never again do I want to use these to please myself or to satisfy my lusts. They are all Yours."

It is only when we cut each piece and lay them on the altar one by one, that we discover whether we really are offering our body totally to God or not.

When the offering is cut into pieces and laid out on the altar fully, then you can say, "Now, Lord, let Your fire fall on the sacrifice and consume it." We read in Leviticus 9:24 how the fire of God fell upon the burnt offering and consumed it. That fire is pictured of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire that comes to consume our sacrifice and to set our bodies on fire for God. But the fire never fell until every last piece of the burnt offering was placed on the altar.

What do Christians do when they don't want to pay the price of yielding their bodies as a burnt offering and yet want to get the fire? They manufacture a false fire-a counterfeit one, what Leviticus 10:1-2 calls a strange fire. "And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, taking their censers, put fire therein, and incense on it, offering before the Lord strange fire: which was not commanded them". When we don't have the real fire of God, and we want to be a part of those who have the real fire, the danger is that we will imitate what they have so as to be able to say, "Yes, we also got the fire." God was so angry with Nadab and Abihu for imitating the real fire that He sent down another fire from His presence-this time not to consume the burnt offering but to consume these two hypocrites!