The Holy Spirit is the enabler for us to worship God in truth.
Leviticus chapter 2 speaks about Holy Spirit in the form of oil and frankincense. The use of oil sounds like anointing, a kind of seal, that our worship is acceptable to God. The use of frankincense speaks about wellness, happiness, contentment, or just smelling nice.
Oil and frankincense.
This is amazing stuff.
While we are not going to take the text literally now since Jesus has fulfilled the Old Testament, oil and frankincense are two important ingredients in our worship. In fact, also as we prepare for worship – if you rush to the worship service, you won’t have the time to apply the oil, and your sweat becomes your frankincense. Not good. Indeed, oil and frankincense are useful guides for those who plan worship.
In fact, if you read Leviticus 2:1-3, you apply oil and frankincense on fine flour. To put it bluntly, it’s best you come in your best and bring your best gifts to God. If you want to read “Bring the best quality flour!” as a negative command, how do you read the negative statement “do not kill?” I think Leviticus is a positive instruction. Reminder from this blog that sacrifice is a common practice in those days, and these kinds of statements are positive instructions for the people to worship God.
Reading the text today, it’s probably too easy for us to miss another point.
Fine flour, or flour, does not grow out of tree (or anything), it requires human effort.
And it probably needs some determination to grind to a certain quality standard.
Fine flour, that sounds like output of highest humanly possible effort. But it’s your fine flour. You are the fine flour.
Do your best, give your best. You don’t have to attain the world’s best before you worship God. It’s your best, within your means. You can also take this to mean that you yourself is the gift to God for use in worship.
