Do You OWN Christmas?

Death in the Sacrifices

The history of Genesis 2-3 established firmly that death is the consequence and penalty of sin (Genesis 2:17 & 3:19). As the result of sin, the first human lives which God created would end - and, moreover, Adam and Eve had to be cast out of the presence of God, being banished from the Garden of Eden.

Having the entire bible before us and knowing much of the plan of God already, we may miss the gravity of this situation. If you were reading it for the first time, do you know how far you would have to read through the bible before God revealed that the FORGIVENESS of sins is possible or how it can take place? 

Would You Eat Blood?

Message to the Church of God: Blame

Burial versus Cremation in the Bible

For all of the ceremony and specificity of God's law, it doesn't address how to dispose of the dead.

Obscenity in the Bible and the Freedom From Religion Foundation

You can read the original story here, or check out this list of supposed "Sex, Obscenities, [and] Filth" in the bible. Do YOU have answers for how these scriptures come from a moral and loving God?

The 3 Types of Sweet-Aroma Offerings

As I explained in The 2 Types of Sin Offerings, there are two main categories of offerings described in the bible: those that were offered because of sin and those that are a "sweet aroma" to God. These "sweet aroma" offerings often involved the sacrifice of an animal, but not for the purpose of forgiveness! They are found in Leviticus 1, 2, & 3 with no mention of sin or forgiveness whatsoever. Rather, these were pure acts of worship intended to highlight different aspects of the worshiper's ongoing relationship with God.

Jesus Christ is the one-and-only offering for the sin of all mankind, meaning that no other person needs to make a sin or guilt offering ever again. By contrast, the sweet-aroma offerings reveal elements of our walk with God that we must strive to perfect. We can and do bring burnt offerings, grain offerings, and peace offerings before our God in the New Covenant!

Before you sanitize Christmas, try this first!

A response to Kirk Cameron's convocation last month at Liberty University. He's going to great lengths to "reclaim" Christmas as a Christian holiday from those that claim it has pagan roots - I have more to say about that argument specifically, but he's really sidestepping the real issue! Look for at least one more video on this topic coming soon!

Perspective on the JMU Hate-Preacher

I caught onto this viral news story about a "preacher of hate" who was "drowned out by a song of love" last week at James Madison University in Virginia. I decided it would make for a good discussion series for Spiritual Snacks' new YouTube Channel.  Links to the original story as well as other material that helped give me perspective on this situation are given at the bottom!

Part 1: Do Christians Sin?

The 2 Types of Sin Offerings

After a two-part introduction on why we should study the offertory system (1, 2), I now want to kick off the series with a basic overview of the structure of the system and the primary purpose of each offering. The details of how to perform the 5 main offerings are presented in Leviticus 1-7, and this forms the core of the system. In this post and the next, I will give the main distinctive qualities of each offering and suggest both their Old and New Covenant significance. Also, I would like to present them in a different order than they appear in Leviticus, beginning with the sin offerings.

Offerings for Sin

The single biggest distinction in the different types of offerings is that 3 of them - the burnt, grain, and peace offerings - have nothing to do with sin! Only 2 of them - the sin offering and the guilt offering - deal with forgiveness. For this reason, those 3 are all described as "a sweet aroma to the LORD." Although it is God's great pleasure to extend mercy and grace to us when we have sinned and ask forgiveness, it is a sweet aroma to Him when we come before Him blameless to offer praise and worship. That is why, in order for one or more of these 3 sweet-aroma offerings to be given, one of the 2 types of sin offering was always made first: so that the offerer of the sweet aroma would come before God blameless, having been forgiven because of the sin offering, and the worship or praise would then be acceptable to God.

Should Christians Get Tattoos?

Why Study the Offerings? (Part 2)

In the first part ofthis introduction to God's offertory system, I briefly mentioned that the sacrifice of Jesus was much more than just an offering for sin. Meditating on this aspect of God's law reveals the depth of meaning that God has poured into the work that Jesus Christ accomplished on our behalf as well as the work that we ourselves do! Last time, I asked a question that I failed to address: is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ the entire substance of God's system of offerings as it relates to the New Covenant? 

For those in the Church of God, you may recognize that we use the word "offering" to refer to the money that we give on God's Holy Days. But have we considered the full biblical context of what an "offering" is in the New Covenant? A review of the New Testament scriptures about offerings reveals that the apostles deeply understood God's offertory system, and we will readily see that we cannot hope to grasp the apostles' meaning without studying that system for ourselves. 

Why Study the Offerings? (Part 1)

The first 7 chapters of the book of Leviticus describe the main types of offerings that God commanded for Israel under the Old Covenant. Many more chapters throughout the law provide additional instruction. Why did God direct Moses to spend so much time writing about them? Do they have significance for God's people in modern times?

If I were to ask whether there are still sacrifices in the New Covenant, hopefully you would answer yes - with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins being the chief example. But did God devote so many chapters in the law and put so much ceremony into the daily lives of Israel for hundreds of years just so that we, two thousand years later, could give mere passing acknowledgement to this fulfillment in Christ? Moreover, is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ the entire substance of God's system of offerings? I hope to not only persuade, but to convict you otherwise!

The Priesthood of God

There are a few topics concerning how the laws of Leviticus relate to the New Covenant that I'd like to write about, and I've been mulling over exactly how to get started. I finally realized that some background information was needed about the priesthood in the New Covenant in order for it to really be effective. Moreover, I found this topic to be worthy of its own discussion anyway!

If I asked you whether there was a priesthood in the New Covenant, hopefully you would know that the answer is yes. But could you answer if I asked you why there is a priesthood in the New Covenant? Moreover, why did God command a priesthood for the Old Covenant? That first question has an definite and clear scriptural answer, which I'll review. The latter two questions, however, require some thinking on our part!

Remove the Barriers

In a recent post, I wrote about encouraging each other by sharing our faith, I made the following remark:

The powerful thing that I have found is that, once one person will make that initial move, to reach across that barrier and open up and reveal something personal and meaningful, the other person will no longer be held back by that barrier either, allowing for the free and profitable exchange of the righteousness of the gospel revealed in our lives - from faith to faith.

I had the opportunity to hear a series of lectures a few weeks ago on leadership, and one of them focused on the qualities of a servant. Naturally, the example set by Jesus came up, and one remarkable conclusion about His life is the incredible level of openness that He had with people.

Be Zealous! And Other Admonitions

I just read Eaten Me Up by Jacob Mammen, and I was so glad to see one of my friends being zealous that I just had to write about it! If you look at my record as a blogger in terms of the number of articles I've written over time, you can very clearly trace my own spiritual rises and falls. At times I was focusing my efforts on other outlets, but that record more or less tells the story - to my shame in some instances and to my credit at other times.

Revelation 2:4-5
Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works.

Many will recognize this as being part of Christ's message to one of the 7 churches - Ephesus in particular. This is actually a topic that I've been studying very heavily recently, and I find it to be no coincidence that I've seen several others writing about this very same subject in the last couple of weeks - Jacob even quotes part of one of those messages in his post about zeal!

Encouraged by the Mutual Faith

At the end of my last article about not being ashamed to share your experiences about the power of God working in your life (see also: The Burden of the LORD), I related a conversation that I'd had with another counselor at Camp Woodmen where I did precisely what I've been advocating in these last two articles. I left out an important part of the story, although I alluded to it vaguely with the following comment:

God meant for us to share these stories with each other so that we can encourage each other and mutually strengthen one another's faith.

The purpose of all of this openness and sharing that I'm so adamantly promoting is not that I feel that I have some great story that everyone needs to hear. Rather, the point is that you and I, and every member of God's church, have experiences that can help us to better understand the power of God, to see His transformational work in our own lives, and to encourage each other by seeing that work in action. This is the true power and purpose of what we call "fellowship," and one of the primary reasons for which God appointed a holy convocation, a gathering, every 7th day.

Not Ashamed

My last post about "The Burden of the LORD" was, in my opinion, a fairly abstract and vague expression of the feelings and experiences that I've had since Camp Woodmen. One of the many points made in that article that I didn't take the time to elaborate on was the importance of sharing the work of God in your life with others, as I wrote:

Whenever God gives you something useful to share with someone, you should say it... it may be a story of something that happened in your life that speaks to an issue someone is having... it may be sharing how God supplied your needs or worked in your life; it may be a good work that you have done by faith and the benefit that it brought to your life or someone else's; it may be a time when you stood up for something; it may be a time when you didn't stand up for something when you should have. Whatever the case, I found myself, as a counselor, very naturally doing something that was unnatural for me: I was telling people exactly what was in my heart if I had anything at all in mind that I knew would be profitable for them to hear.

A few days after camp ended, in the midst of this epiphany about the "burden of the LORD," I came across something that Paul wrote which really hit me in a new way:

Romans 1:16-17
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

Why would anyone be ashamed of the gospel? This is something that I didn't even know I struggled with - one more heavy burden that I had put on myself that God was finally lifting.

The Burden of the LORD

I was, for the first time, a counselor at Camp Woodmen this year, and the experience has fostered some truly incredible changes in my attitude and behavior in the weeks since. One of the many great lessons for me was encouragement - about which I have so much more to say at some point - but encouragement also indirectly led me to what I now write about. After serving as a counselor for 7 days and putting every ounce of energy I could muster into maintaining the best and highest quality experience for each of my campers, I had done a lot of encouraging and had really seen the incredible power of it! But by the end of that time, I had extrapolated an even greater principle, of which encouragement is just a sub-heading.

This year at camp, I had something of an epiphany: I realized that I had many important things to say that God has wanted me to say for a long time. In particular, I had important things to say to the people who mean the most to me. How much I loved them and how much I appreciate the things they've done for me. How one person's example of faith had impacted me. How much I missed someone, and how I have failed them by not telling them this when they needed to hear it, but also how I'm ready to do better. How I've wanted to tell them this all along and even seriously thought about saying it before, but simply let those moments pass by unacknowledged. I came to refer to this need to tell these people these things as "the burden of the LORD," and I've spent a lot of time meditating on the gravity of that phrase.

Firstfruits and Pentecost: Foreshadow of Deliverance

I really did intend to have this article written around Pentecost, especially since this is the message that I gave as a sermonette on Pentecost! But now, as I find so many other articles begging to be written in my mind, it's time that I eat my vegetables first and finish this up. As I pointed out in the first part of this series on firstfruits, the firstfruits were commanded to be brought before God at two different times: once on the Feast of Firstfruits and then again on the Feast of Weeks (i.e., Pentecost). The Feast of Firstfruits occurs during the Days of Unleavened Bread, the primary theme of which is deliverance from sin, just as God historically had delivered Israel from Egypt during those days. Perhaps it should not be surprising then that the offering of firstfruits, which occurred both on the Feast of Firstfruits and on Pentecost, was also a reminder of God's deliverance:

Deuteronomy 26:2-10
“You shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground... and say before the Lord your God: ‘My father was a Syrian, about to perish, and he went down to Egypt and dwelt there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. But the Egyptians mistreated us, afflicted us, and laid hard bondage on us. Then we cried out to the Lord God of our fathers... So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand... and now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land which you, O Lord, have given me.’

While the message of deliverance in the firstfruits may be clear for the Feast of Firstfruits (during the Days of Unleavened Bread), how does this deliverance factor into the message of the Day of Pentecost as we understand it in the New Covenant? In this article, I'll examine the link between the Feast of Firstfruits, the Day of Pentecost, and the theme of deliverance that unifies their incredible message!

What Are the Firstfruits of the Spirit?

As mentioned in the introductory article on firstfruits, one of the New Testament uses of the concept of firstfruits is found in Romans 8:23, which says

Romans 8:22-23
For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

What are these firstfruits of the Spirit? I am aware of two common explanations (feel free to comment if you have another view!):

1. That believers in this present age are the first people to receive the Spirit of God, and, in that sense, represent the "firstfruits" of those who will receive the Spirit.
2. That the measure of the Spirit given to believers in this present age is only a small portion of what God intends - i.e., individuals currently have the "firstfruits of the Spirit" in their lives but will receive the fullness of the Spirit at the resurrection.

If you had asked me a few weeks ago what I thought the "firstfruits of the Spirit" were, I would probably have said something along the lines of view #1. When I came across view #2, it also seemed to make sense. After some analysis, I don't think either of them accurately describe what is being said in Romans 8:23.

Christ: the Firstfruits

As the second part in a series on firstfruits (Part 1), I'd like to focus on a scripture which links Jesus Christ to the concept of firstfruits:

1 Corinthians 15:20-21
But now Christ is risen from the day, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead.

In this post, I'll examine the role of Christ as the firstfruits of God's harvest and the connection with the wave-sheaf offering, as well as make some comments about the harvest analogy itself.

What Are Firstfruits? Introduction and Commandments

"Firstfruits" are something that the bible mentions several times, and, especially in the New Testament, it seems like a really important concept to understand:

1. Christ is the firstfruits of those who have died (1 Corinthians 15:20)
2. God's church "[has] the firstfruits of the Spirit" (Romans 8:23)
3. God's church is called to be the "firstfruits of His creatures" (James 1:18)
4. The 144,000 of Revelation 14 are "redeemed from among men, being firstfruits to God and to the Lamb" (Revelation 14:4)

What exactly are firstfruits? Why were the New Testament writers making comparisons using this idea? What did they mean by these statements? These are questions that I hope to thoroughly answer in a series of articles between now and Pentecost! In this article, we'll start with an introductory analysis of what firstfruits are and what God commanded to be done with them.