Pure Holy Incense - No Strange Incense (Daily Devotional)

Greetings! Thank you for the opportunity to come to you today and spend these few moments with you in God’s word and prayer. This week, we have been looking very closely at the pure and holy incense that God had instructed the high priest to offer in the holy place. We have been looking at the composition of it and how God instructed the high priest to handle it, how it should be offered to Him. Today, I want to bring our attention to another important aspect of the altar of incense. In Exodus chapter 30, verse 9, God said, ‘You shall not offer strange incense on it, or a burnt offering, or a grain offering; nor shall you pour a drink offering on it.’ God is very specific in what was to be offered on the altar of incense. He said, you cannot make any other kind of incense and bring it to me, no! Only this what I have given you - four ingredients with salt, that is the only thing that’s got to be burned on the altar of incense. Don’t bring any other strange incense. Not only that, but on the altar of incense, you cannot offer any other kind of offerings. So, there were offerings that were made on the bronze altar of sacrifice which was in the outer court. They used to bring burnt offering, grain and drink offering which was made there in the outer court on the altar of sacrifice. He said, that offering you cannot put it here on the altar of incense, God was very specific. So, what is God saying? First of all, we cannot bring strange incense. We cannot bring things to God that He doesn’t receive or want. These other offerings, the burnt, grain and drink offerings, they served a different purpose, that was already taken care of and we don’t put that on the altar of incense. We will look into the details of those offerings another time, but they had a human element to it. It was for sin and it had their efforts, when they brought in grain offering it represented first fruits of their labor and so on and so forth, but that you don’t bring here. This is pure, divine, something to be acceptable and pleasing to God. So, when we come to worship God, we need to bring to Him things that He told us to bring. We need to bring to Him spiritual sacrifices. God is not interested in things that we think we want to offer to God. But give to God not fleshly sacrifices but spiritual sacrifices, things that He wants us to give to Him, offer to Him- praise, worship, prayer in the Spirit, not rituals, not things that are done as unto man but things that are pure, in spirit and in truth. No strange fire, no strange incense and no other kind of offering. Let’s be careful in how we worship our God. Let it be in spirit and in truth. Father, we thank you for the insights we glean and we ask that you will help us apply these in our service and worship unto you, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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