Insightful Musings on the Scriptures
by
Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67
Hello, dear people.
I’m afraid that the demands of my time and attention today is again removing the jog routine from my plans. Among other things, I need to be ready with a bunch of cut vinyl to apply graphics to a big-rig truck at 2pm. Is it really the last day of January?!?!
I confess that I have never read the Old Testament the way I’m doing so now. Since I have my private space here in this studio in the pole barn, with no one around to bother by making noise, I am reading the text out loud…every word, every difficult-to-pronounce name. I think that approach helps me to pay attention. And one reason I’m doing it this way is for that very reason—I’ve never done it this way before.
Do you see the reversal of attitudes at large in our “stinky” world? Not only is SIN not sinful, it is praised and revered. And those seeking to please God and don’t agree with the world’s stink are the ones being labeled as stinkers!—“They’re the ones giving us so much trouble! Let’s rid the earth of them! Without them around to poke our consciences we will have peace! Right?” Wrong! If we think things are going amiss now, hang on—it’s heating up to a climax. Read Matthew 24 again.
Moving into the mundane of the day, with it’s mixture of fun and difficulty, just maintain a HEART AFTER GOD and you’ll be fine.
Love, Dad/Ray.
Is it not possible that we on the New Testament side of the cross risk succumbing to a measure of dullness when it comes to SIN? By familiarity with the Gospel of God’s love and grace and Christ’s work on the cross, our sense of the sinfulness of SIN can be reduced.
As I attempt to process these instructions for burnt offerings from God’s perspective, two principles seem important to note:
- SIN DEMANDS DEATH. Notice that these requirements are individual, personal, and voluntary. A person who seeks atonement for his own sins, brings the selected animal to the designated spot, lays his hand on the head of the sacrificial animal as a ceremonial transfer of guilt, and personally kills the animal—then butchers it under the supervision of the priests. It’s a drastic show of blood and guts! I’m sure that the ceremony, along with personal engagement, was intended to teach Israel that violating God’s standards was serious business. How casual would we be about SIN today if we had such a hands-on reminder that our own SIN calls for our own death?—which sentence is averted (atoned for) only by the substitutionary death of an innocent life? The New Testament, of course, is in full agreement—“The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
- SIN STINKS. I count seven times in these three chapters where this phrase is repeated—“…an aroma pleasing to the LORD” (1:9). So the burnt offering actually works like a deodorant. That can only mean that, from God’s perspective, the earth is crawling with a bunch of human stinkers! It is only in Christ that SIN’S STINK is removed. “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing” (2 Corinthians 2:14-15).