These elaborate instructions about offerings in the temple are all about that one vital gesture that puts us where we need to be in relation to God: worship. It was the prince’s responsibility to provide the offering for the worship at the major festivals as well as the new moons and Sabbaths. In like manner Jesus, our prince of peace, has provided the offering with which we come into God’s presence. Worship is our response to God’s mercy and grace (Romans 12:1). Jesus sacrificed himself for us so that we could present ourselves back to God as living sacrifices. We can be living sacrifices and not dead ones because Jesus has purified us from guilt enabling us to live in the presence of God again. Worship is a gesture that we make; it is a relational gesture in which we commit ourselves to God. It is an act of surrender. I encourage you to surrender and commit yourself to God and ask him to draw every hidden desire of your heart into submission to him. In the act of worship there is not only giving but taking. I cannot give myself unless God takes hold of me and draws me in. There is too much of myself that remains rooted in the darkness of alienation and which stubbornly digs in there. But I worship in spite of these desires so that God may draw me into the freedom of surrender. Keep giving yourself over to God until you sense God taking hold of you and then give more. The more we give ourselves to God the more he gives himself to us.
Worship God by surrendering yourself to him.
Read Ezekiel 45:13-46:24
