The Acceptable Offering

Passage: Exodus 9; 10:1-3; Genesis 4:1-7

No sooner has God finished teaching his people how to make sacrifices than they get a chance to try it out.  Aaron the high priest, assisted by his sons, follows God’s detailed instructions.  In the sight of the people he carries out each step, dividing the offered animal, properly disposing of the rejected parts, placing the accepted parts on the altar, pouring out the blood, and using it to mark the horns of the altar.  They complete each step, rejoin Moses and the other leaders some distance away from altar, and wait.  Did they do it right?  In response, we’re told, God’s glory appears to all the people.  And fire falls from heaven and consumes the offering.  God is pleased.  Moses and Aaron are relieved.

And Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, are enthralled.  They want to see it again.  As soon as the crowd has dissipated, they grab a couple of censers, fill them with live coals from the altar, and place incense on the coals.  They fan the incense into flame, and then wait for the fireworks.  The fireworks come, but when they do, it’s not the offering that gets consumed.  It’s Nadab and Abihu.  

Their story is reminiscent of the very first sacrifice.  Genesis 4 tells the story of Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve’s first children.  As they grow, they develop vocations: Cain, farming, and Abel, herding sheep.  One day, Abel offers the best of his lambs to God as a spontaneous gift.  God is pleased.  Cain sees this, and wants some of the attention.  So he hastily grabs a handful of whatever vegetables he’s got lying around, and brings them to God.  Cain is incensed when God responds to his offering with indifference.  God sees Cain’s bitterness.  He says,

Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.

What causes God to accept one offering while rejecting another?  Is it the quality of what’s presented?  Does God prefer lamb to broccoli?  How can anyone predict how God is going to react to what they do for him?

Here’s what the two disastrous sacrifices have in common: they were offered as a means to an end.  The two young priests wanted God to perform for them.  Cain wanted God to affirm him.  The offerings were made not for God, but for those making the offerings.  God refuses to be treated as a means to anything but himself. 

In Romans 12 Paul says,

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Our instinct is to ask what it takes to get God to do what we want.  What prayer do I have to pray to get that person to love me?  What ritual do I have to perform to get that job?  To sell that house?  What do I have to do to make God do for me?  We treat religion, and God himself, as a means to an end.  God responds to this the way you and I respond to anyone who treats us the same way.  The only difference is that God’s anger is deadly, and his rejection is death.  We need him.  God says, “Pursue me for me.  I’m the goal.  I’m the prize.”  If this is the way we see God, then any expression of our devotion is acceptable.  But if this is the way we see God, we will also never hesitate to offer him everything.