The Sacred Portion

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Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come before him! 1 Chronicles 16:29

Last week we looked at God’s desire to be first in our lives. He deserves first place, beloved. After all, you and I wouldn’t even be here without Him. He gives life and provides every good thing.

I think you’ll find that He will never agree to be second.

And He has established by His Word that those who honor Him first will walk in the bounty of His blessing.

Is He first in your life, dear one? Does your life center around Him and His purpose?

Perhaps you’re wondering how to put God first. It’s simple, really. We put God first when we honor and trust His Word.

When you and I seek to know and understand God’s heart through His Word and choose to live by the principles He reveals, we begin to live by faith. And faith, dear one, opens the door to His marvelous grace.

Today we’ll focus on one particular principle woven throughout scripture: the sacred portion.

Let’s begin by establishing a truth I pray you already know.

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. Psalm 24:1

As the Creator of all things, everything belongs to God. Yet He chose to do something remarkable.

The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man. Psalm 115:16

God created a world by the breath of His mouth, and then gave it to the people He formed from the dust of its surface. He handed us authority (Genesis 1:26), allowing us to choose whether we’d walk with Him and live in His promises, or whether we would discover the hardship of life lived apart from Him.

He desperately longs for us to choose fellowship with Him and trust His Word. He wants our believing lives to become evidence of His truth. And one way He ordained that we can honor Him is by returning the sacred portion to Him.

You see, although He has given His creation to man, He has set aside a portion of everything for Himself. He allows us to live on His provision and enjoy it, but He has set apart the first of everything His hand brings forth and marked it as holy.

The sacred portion belongs to Him, dear one.

And He promises that if we will offer Him the first of everything, He will bless all the rest for our use.

Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. Proverbs 3:9-10

God has also claimed the first of everything born.

“You shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb.” Exodus 13:12

Mary and Joseph honored this decree when they brought Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord” Luke 2:22-23).

Ezekiel 44:30 reveals the benefit of living by this principle.

And the first of all the firstfruits of all kinds, and every offering of all kinds from all your offerings, shall belong to the priests. You shall also give to the priests the first of your dough, that a blessing may rest on your house.

God promises His people that if we will honor Him by returning to Him the first of all He provides, He will bless the rest.

You may be tempted to argue that these principles were a part of Jewish law that we are no longer bound to. I would challenge that thinking by pointing out that this principle shows up long before Israel or its laws had been established. We only need to venture into the fourth chapter of Genesis to find it.

Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. Genesis 4:2-5

I used to wonder why God seemed to regard Cain unfairly. I mean, if Cain worked the ground, isn’t it only right that his offering would come from its fruit?

Then God showed me the principle of the first.

You see, Cain brought an offering of some fruit to God in the course of time. Abel brought from the firstborn and the best portions.

Abel returned to God what was rightfully His, honoring Him with his first and best. Cain took the best for himself and offered to God what was left over. Abel received the blessing of God. Cain did not.

Perhaps we should consider God’s words in Malachi 3:6.

“For I the Lord do not change.”

You might be interested to read the context of that declaration.

“Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.” Malachi 3:8-10

God’s challenge is simple. Return to God what is His, and ours will be blessed. Take from what belongs to Him, and He will remove His blessing from what is ours.

You and I are not bound to the law, dear one. But we are bound by the principles God has declared in His Word. And He has declared that the first of everything is sacred and His.

Will you trust God by returning the holy portion, full of faith that He will provide more?

Then you shall say before the Lord your God, ‘I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, . . . Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people. Deuteronomy 26:13a, 15a

 

The First and Only

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“You shall have no other gods before me.” Exodus 20:3

God has this thing about being first.

You can’t blame Him, really. After all, He is the First. And the Last. And He’s everything in between.

“Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last. My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together. Isaiah 48:12-13

The God who IS —who existed before time and created all things—longs for us to recognize His preeminence. And to honor it.

“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” Psalm 46:10

God created us to live in relationship with Him, fully dependent on Him as our source.

Source of what, you may ask? Of everything.

God gives life and He takes it. He commands the sun and the moon. He spins the earth on its axis. He created and governs time. He is our source of love, joy, peace and security. He gives and maintains health. He causes the rain to fall and the ground to produce so we can have food to eat. He gives us the ability to prosper.

Beloved, God simply asks for us to recognize His role.

Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. James 1:16-17 NIV

Every good thing we long for can only come from God. And He longs to bless us with those perfect gifts. But to receive from God, we must acknowledge Him as our source.

This, dear one, is where the deceiver wreaks his havoc among us. He convinces us that we’re responsible for providing our own good. He whispers the same lie he offered Eve in the garden, suggesting we don’t need God. No, we ourselves can be like Him.

So we strive and toil to build the life we desire instead of learning to trust God and receive.

Wise King Solomon had a few things to say about that.

What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. Ecclesiastes 2:22-23

Have you ever noticed that the harder we work, the more miserable we become? And we never seem to attain the goal we seek. We may get close, but satisfaction remains elusive. Because even if we reach the goal, it changes on us like a shifting shadow. Suddenly what we thought we wanted isn’t enough.

And our hearts can’t rest.BlogPosts_TheFirstandOnly

Solomon saw the answer to this vain struggle.

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? Ecclesiastes 2:24-25

Do you see it, dear one? Every good and perfect gift comes from above, even our ability to enjoy our work. You see, joy is a gift. We can’t manufacture it. We must receive it from its source. And God is the only source of everything good.

Just in case we missed it the first time, Solomon repeated the concept in chapter 3.

. . . also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. Ecclesiastes 3:13

God wants us to find pleasure in our work and in our lives, but that pleasure can only come from Him. Otherwise, it will be fleeting, changing and shifting. Never resting.

That’s why He invites us to come close and trust Him. He declares, I AM the First and the Last, and He asks us to live like we believe it. He calls us to put Him first so His blessing can flow into our lives and out on this earth.

Is He first in your life, dear one? Do you run to Him first to share good news? Do you offer your grief to Him before you transfer the burden to one of your loved ones? Is He first in your thoughts when you wake in the morning? Do you recognize He is your only true Healer?

Our enemy would have us believe we can extract our own good from life. If we work hard enough we can prosper ourselves. We can find healing through physicians and medicines.

God may use physicians, but He alone is Healer. Asa, king of Judah, learned that lesson the hard way.

In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians. And Asa slept with his fathers, dying in the forty-first year of his reign. 2 Chronicles 16:12-13

Asa was a man of God. He rid Judah of its idols and won great battles by the Lord’s hand. Yet after so much success, he began to rely on his own strength instead of continuing to depend on God.

It cost him dearly.

Nothing the world offers is an adequate substitute for God. He asks you, dear one. Will you live like you believe it?

Soiled Garments

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Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. Revelation 3:4 ESV

You might be surprised at how many times scripture references clothes. Particularly washed clothes.

We find our opening scripture in Jesus’ address to one of the seven churches in Revelation, penned by the apostle John. John opens the book with a blessing included in no other book of scripture.

Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near. Revelation 1:3

I don’t know about you, but I could handle a little blessing. After all, the opposite of blessing is still cursing. And God declared that those who hear and keep His words written in Revelation are blessed.

Are you listening?

Since God has captured my attention with garments, we will focus today on Jesus’ words to the church in Sardis.

He begins His address with some unsettling words.

“I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” Revelation 3:1

Do you know your reputation, dear one? What do those who know you believe about you? Does it match what God sees?

I can’t help thinking of Jesus’ words to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:27-28.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

Jesus shows great concern that our outward appearance matches our inner reality. That shouldn’t surprise us, really, when we consider that Jesus is the Truth and His enemy deceives.

Yes. Jesus desires authenticity.

I know this from experience, dear one. Several years ago, God used Revelation 3:1 to get me to deal with an area of sin in my own life I’d been trying to ignore.

At the time, God was in the midst of opening doors and expanding my borders in ministry.

Yes. God still uses imperfect people.

And to the outsider looking in, God’s hand was apparent. I had dedicated myself to earnestly living my faith, and God was actively using me to reach people and awaken them to His truth.

But God desires far more from us than our service, dear one. He wants our whole hearts. And He requires us to freely offer them so that He can transform them into the likeness of Jesus. That means holding nothing back.

So one day during my study of scripture, He spoke straight to my heart through His words to the church at Sardis. “I know your works, and I know your reputation. You have a reputation for being alive, but in this area, you are still dead.”

His next words through those verses brought me straight to my knees in repentance.

Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Revelation 3:2-3

Jesus spoke these words to one of His churches, beloved. And He spoke them to me.

I wonder, dear one. What does He desire of you?

Repentance is the precursor to every blessing available to us in Christ. Without sincere, repentant hearts we will never transform and become His righteousness. And that leaves Jesus unable to use us to pour out His blessing on this desperately needy earth.

Jesus is asking us to trust His Word, dear one. To believe it and live according to it so that He can manifest our faith as righteousness. When we don’t live by what we have received and heard from Him, we soil our garments.

Thankfully, scripture also reveals that what Jesus requires of us is absolutely possible to accomplish, even in our humanity. It’s possible because God Himself provides the power to succeed when we choose to trust Him.

“Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Revelation 3:4-6

What will you choose, dear one? Will you overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of your testimony? God longs to see it, beloved, to make you a living witness to His glorious power.

And consistently throughout His Word, He offers an unbreakable promise. God fights for and rescues the righteous.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands . . . These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. …Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Revelation 7:9, 14, 22:14

Are You Getting Dressed?

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I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. Isaiah 61:10

Today we press in close to Jesus as He tells the parable of the wedding feast. I’ll warn you, dear one. You may want to prepare your heart. Our story takes a rather unpleasant turn.

Jesus begins by comparing the kingdom of heaven to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. Only when he sent his servants to call the invited guests, they refused to come.

The patient king then sent additional servants commanding them to tell those invited,

“See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.” Matthew 22:4

Again the king received a disappointing response.

But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. (verses 5-6)

The invited guests were too busy with their own lives to bother with what the king had planned for them. They rejected him, ignoring his invitation, and focused instead on their own means of prospering themselves. Some of them even mistreated and harmed the people the king had sent to bless them.

Put yourself in the story, beloved.

I can’t help wondering how many times our King has invited us to dine with Him but we’ve denied His request. Think about it. He hand delivers an invitation marked with your name, only you’re too busy building your own kingdom to even pay attention to Him.

But here’s the thing about God’s plans, dear one. Our refusal to participate in what God is doing doesn’t stop Him from doing it. It just causes us to miss the blessing we would have received from Him when He passes the offer along to someone else.

Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests. Matthew 22:8-10

Here’s where the story really gets interesting. The time for the wedding has come, and the hall is filled with guests. The king enters the room and makes a startling discovery.

“But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless.” Matthew 22:11-12

Apparently one of the guests wasn’t properly dressed. When the king questioned him about it, he had no answer. So the king did something the man didn’t expect.

“Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.” Matthew 22:13-14

Something pierces deep in my heart when I consider Jesus’ words. This man was sought out by the king’s servant and given an invitation to the wedding. He accepted the invitation from the king and entered the hall with the others.

But he didn’t bother to get dressed.

His negligence got him bound and cast out from the feast into the outer darkness.

I have to ask, beloved. Are you getting dressed for the wedding feast? Have you put on the clothes that the King has provided for you to wear?

. . . he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness . . . Isaiah 61:10

You and I aren’t responsible to provide the wedding clothes, dear one. But we are responsible to put them on.

Consider the people in the parable. The king’s servants found them out in the roads and invited them in off the street. It’s unlikely these guests would’ve had proper clothes. The passage implies that the generous king provided them with garments when they accepted his invitation. All the guests had to do was put on what was given them by the king.

Only this gentleman refused. And it cost him dearly.

I can’t help thinking of Hebrews 12:14,

. . . without holiness no one will see the Lord.

Jesus is our righteousness, beloved. God has gifted Him to us in His grace, and He is asking us to put Him on.

. . . put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:22-24

Putting on Christ’s righteousness isn’t something that we do by the strength of our own effort. We receive it by faith as we submit to Jesus and allow Him to make us like Him.

But it is necessary.

You see, righteousness is the true gift of your salvation, beloved.

For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face. Psalm 11:7

Only righteousness will usher us into the blessings and promises of God. It’s time we put on the garments Christ made available to us. After all, we do have a wedding to attend.

“Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. Revelation 19:7-8