Do you bake every day? I know I don't, even though I much prefer baking to cooking! Today's blog has everything to do with baking, but not the kind that you and I are thinking about right now.
While reading in Ezekiel 46 I came across a "family recipe," one that is as old as eternity past. It is not your ordinary kind of recipe, but one that will produce the sweetest aroma you can imagine, and it reaches to the highest heavens!
As God is concluding His instructions for His chosen people through the prophet Ezekiel regarding the Millennial Temple and the ministry to be carried out in it, He speaks to Ezekiel about the daily sacrifices that will take place in the future. Ezekiel 46: 13-15 describes the sacrifices as daily . . . morning by morning . . . a continual burnt offering. On the surface it sounds like the offerings God spoke to Moses about when the very first temple (the Wilderness Tabernacle) was being initiated. How strange to think about that offering as one that will also be taking place in the Millennial Reign of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, after tribulation!
As I pondered this sacrifice, my thoughts turned to the here and now. Was there a way for me to offer this kind of sacrifice to God . . . now? I went back and read the verses again and the Spirit began to open my eyes to this passage's relevance to me today. This is what He showed me.
The first and most important sacrifice is the sacrifice of the spotless Lamb, without which I have no reason to offer a sacrifice to God. Jesus is the focal point of my worship, worship which should be happening every single morning, on a daily basis. With my eyes firmly fixed on the altar of His sacrifice, the old rugged cross, I can see Christ the Lamb as who He truly is, and I also can see myself in light of the that, humbled in my sin and need of Him daily.
Now I will be able to bring God my proper and true worship, the grain and the oil. When you "moisten the fine flour" of the Word of God, which is the truth God has given us, with the "oil" of the Holy Spirit, you only have a sticky, gooey dough. But when you bake it in an oven (Ezek. 46: 20), you create bread, baked daily, as you bring the right ingredients together!
Our daily life is the oven in which the bread bakes. Even as the priests took the flour and the oil, mixed them together, and baked them outside of the temple, so we, the chosen, royal priesthood, are to take the flour (the Word) and the oil (the Holy Spirit) and mix them together. . . daily, morning by morning, for a continual offering! As we take that "dough" out into our earthly walk, it bakes in the heat of this world and becomes bread. This bread is the fruit of our walk, which others can then partake of! This is true worship!
John 4:23-24 says this:
Isn't it time for the body of Christ to begin to take BAKING a little more seriously? Make a plan for yourself. Determine that you are going to mix up a batch of dough every morning as an offering to the Lord. Then take that dough out into your daily life, and watch how it bakes! It is time to feed the hungry, but we cannot feed them if we are not, in our own lives, mixing up the batter of the Word and the Spirit and sticking the batter into our lives. We cannot feed Christ to the world if we are not baking bread!"But an hour is coming, and NOW IS, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in SPIRIT and in TRUTH; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him MUST worship in SPIRIT and in TRUTH."
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