The Thank Offering [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Oh, thank you, Lord, for these groceries that you brought me. And he jumped out from behind the bushes and said, aha, that didn't come from the Lord. I went to the grocery store and brought it to you. And she turned her head towards heaven and said, thank you all the more, Lord.

Not only have you brought me some groceries, but you made the devil pay for it. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in our series called Moses, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It'll be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, we encourage you to go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Many, many, many years ago was flying with his brother Bill, a small plane, and they didn't have good equipment on the plane. They were surprised to find the darkness was settling in quicker than they had planned to get to their destination. They had limited fuel, and it became dark, and all they knew was the general area where they thought there was a landing strip and a rural location. So they began circling, wondering how in the world they were going to be able to land. All of a sudden, runway lights came on beneath them. They were like, thank you, Jesus, pulled in safely on this grass runway, jumped out of the plane, and ran over to the man at the little airport and said, thank you so much for turning these lights on for us. I guess you heard us circling overhead. The man said, no. He said, I don't know what you're talking about.

He said, these are just temporary lights that we use from time to time, and tonight was the night I had brought to lay them out and test them. Stanley and Bill said, could you tell us where the closest church is, please? Because if your life was about to end and then you got miraculously saved, you can't help yourself. You've got to give somebody thanks. You just got to thank God. You just have to thank him.

Gratitude is so important because it is more important to the person that is giving the gratitude than to it is to the one who is being thanked. My kids, I liked them when they were little to thank me. What do you say? Thank you, daddy.

Okay. Doesn't that just warm the parent's heart after you've given your life's blood for them and you say, what do you say? Thank you, mom. Yeah, it just warms your heart, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. What you're doing is you're trying to teach them to be thankful because gratitude is essential for a soul's well-being. It's the one sacrifice that remains because it is essential for you. Let me tell you the first thing that was absolutely unique about the peace offerings, the thank offering of which was one of the peace offers, the thing that was different about this than any other offering. There were some offerings like the burnt offering. You came, you presented the animal, and it was consumed on the altar.

Nobody ate any of it. But along with your grain offerings, when you brought your thank offering, and if you brought a lamb, then there were portions of the fat and entrails that were burned up as a sacrifice to the Lord. There was a part of the thigh, some other parts that the priest would be able to eat, and then the rest of that lamb, the worshiper ate. Yeah, you bring yourself in a lamb or something on a thank offering, and you and your family eating filet, I mean, eating leg of lamb and lamb chop that night.

What I'm saying is it was the one offering in Israel that the worshiper was nourished by. Every other kind of sacrifice is for somebody else, but the sacrifice of praise is for you. The thank offering is delicious to the one who gives thanks. God loves your praise, and He inhabits the praise of His people, and He mandates your praise, and He mandates your thanksgiving to Him, but it's not because God is needy. Thank you, God. It's because you are wired, designed to find joy and peace only when you are grateful.

You see, gratitude causes a cycle of peace and joy, whereas entitlement causes resentment and depression, because when you are grateful, by necessity, there is someone to whom you are grateful. Some wit has said, the atheist's darkest hour is to be thankful and have no one to thank. I've told you one of my favorite funny stories at least once a year, and I got to tell it again.

The lady who didn't have much, but boy, she loved Jesus, and she'd go out on her front porch every day and sing songs of praise and just thank the Lord. Thank you for this day. This is the day you've made, and I rejoice in it. Thank you for you've been so good to me. Well, the next door neighbor was an atheist, and he grew weary of all this, coming over and telling her all the time, why are you thankful? You don't even have very much, and there's no such thing as God. You're just thanking nobody, and she'd keep thanking the Lord anyway, and one day, she came out and got on her front porch, and the neighbor was hiding behind the bushes, and he heard her praying, and she was saying, Lord, I got no food in the pantry.

Please bring me some food. Well, the atheist's neighborhood decided he was going to play a trick on her, goes to the grocery store, gets her a big bag of groceries, sneaks over, puts it on her front porch so that when she comes back out, there's a big bag of groceries, and she steps out, and she said, Oh, thank you, Lord, for this groceries that you brought me, and he jumped out from behind the bushes and said, aha, that didn't come from the Lord. I went to the grocery store and brought it to you, and she turned her head towards heaven and said, thank you all the more, Lord. Not only have you brought me some groceries, but you made the devil pay for it. Somebody gets filled up with gratitude. You can't stop them from being happy because they're so thankful.

When you're grateful, it means you're grateful to a person. Now, let me move on to tell you why this offering in the life of Israel is so fascinating. It's fascinating because in the first place, it was the only offering that the worshiper would eat a portion of it, but secondly, and this is the more intriguing thing, it was the only offering listed in anywhere in Leviticus 1 through 7, the only offering of all those five categories and all the different kinds of, everywhere you look, if you were to read in Leviticus chapter 2 all about all the grain offerings, what you're going to see over and over and over is that none of the breads, none of those grain offers could have any leaven in them.

Why? Because when the people experienced the Passover and they were coming out of their Egyptian slavery, the instruction of the Lord was to roast this lamb, but for their bread to put no yeast in it. He said, you're going to leave quickly. You don't have time to wait on the bread to rise.

So be ready to leave in haste. And so there was no leaven in the bread. So when the Passover is celebrated today, it is with unleavened bread, matzo. Leaven becomes this really important symbol of sin and corruption.

It's a really important symbol because it's a vivid image. You put a little bit of leaven or yeast into some bread and it works its way into the entire loaf. Once you put it in, you can't get it out. And it works its way all the way through it. That's what sin does. It's like it's in, I can't get it out. And it's touching every part of my being. Another analogy that has often helped me when I think about the nature of our sin is if you had a glass of water and you drop one drop of red food coloring dye into it, it taints the entire glass of water. Every part of it's touched. You can't get that drop back out and it's touched everything.

That's the way leaven does. So the Reformed theologians said that the picture of our sin is total depravity. It doesn't mean that everything you do is depraved. It doesn't mean that everything you do is sinful by no means.

But what it means is that even the best things that you do are at least a little bit tainted by sin. This is the nature the Bible teaches of the human condition we're born into the world. We're born in sin. We're born and we have as if we have these sin tainted spectacles on and everything we look at is through this lens of our own brokenness, our own selfishness. So we see everything through this. This is why it's so important to understand that God goes first. This is love, not that we first love God, but that God first loved us. If I've got sin tainted spectacles and everything I see is through the filter of my sin, how could I ever choose that which is good and godly and holy and wise and true and noble and right? God's got to come with a light into my darkness. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Ever feel like something's holding you back as if you lack an important key that could change everything?

Is there someone you love who seems stuck? You'd like to help them, but how? What's missing? Blessing. We all need a positive faith-filled vision spoken over our lives. You can learn how to embrace the biblical practice of blessing through Pastor Alan Wright's new book, The Power to Bless, which quickly became an Amazon number one bestseller after its recent release. Until now, the hardcover book has only been available through retail sales, but this month, Alan Wright Ministries wants to send you the book as our thank you for your donation. Make your gift today and discover the power to bless. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries.

This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. Well, because leaven becomes such a symbol, you'll see it over and over throughout the scripture mentioned as no leaven allowed. In fact, versus seven days leading up to the Passover feast, Israel would celebrate the feast of unleavened bread. And what this means is that for seven weeks in the spring, they would have the original spring cleaning that every single crumb in that house had to be swept out of there. It had to be completely spotless because you didn't want to have one single bread crumb that had yeast in it.

It gets your house clean. And what would happen on the eve of the, on the eve of Passover is they play a little game. They hide a little crumb of leavened bread somewhere and send the children out to go look for it. And the children go look for the crumb. And when a child finds it, he doesn't touch it, but he comes and he reports it to the father. And the father goes symbolically to remove it. But what he takes with him is a wooden spoon and a feather. And he goes down with the wooden spoon and he feather dusts that little leavened crumb onto the spoon. And he takes it outside of the house and burns it. The child can't get rid of the sin. The father feather dusts it, takes it outside of the house and burns it.

So it's all gone. No leaven. And all throughout the Old Testament, leaven is this picture of inward corruption. So in all the grain offerings in Leviticus 2 and all the other offerings that you would offer, any bread offerings, no leaven. And all throughout the Feast of Unleavened Bread, no yeasted cakes, no muffins, no sourdough bread, none of that just drowled matzo.

Because it's a symbol. And you get to the New Testament and the symbol of leaven continues. Jesus talks about the leaven of the Pharisees.

He's talking about their hypocrisy and how it works its way inside the soul. He talked about the leaven of the Sadducees who were so rationalistic, who had it all figured out. He said it's like a leaven, it's in the soul. But even in the New Testament, it talks about the leaven of Herod, King Herod, and those that would follow Herod, the Herodians.

And it was like a leaven because they were so enmeshed in the things of the world. Paul talks about the leaven of the Paul talks about leaven. And he comes to the point in Galatians and he compares leaven to the legalism that he saw in the Judaizers.

And he said, you get a little bit of law in your gospel and it spoils the whole thing. So no leaven except in the thank offering. For some reason in the thank offering that we read today in Leviticus 7, you'd have hardly noticed it. You're just reading all this tedious information about the offering. In the thank offering, the worshiper is told to bring not only the animals that be sacrificed, but to bring unleavened bread and also to bring loaves of leavened bread.

Bring some rolls or something that's got some yeast in it. Why in the thank offering all of a sudden would this image of sin and corruption be on display when every worshiper would bring his thank offering and have some leavened bread along with the unleavened bread? Because of everything I've said today, gratitude only grows in context. There's no such thing as being grateful for the gospel unless you realize how much you need the gospel. The leavened bread, the picture of sin and corruption, sins in me and I can't get it out and it's affected everything.

That's the picture of leaven. That is brought alongside of the unleavened bread. My unrighteousness is brought alongside of the righteousness of Jesus. My sin is the reason that I'm so grateful that this high priest is going to be able to take the unleavened bread and offer it unto the Lord. In other words, the picture of the thank offering is to remember how much I deserve God's displeasure, the leaven, and that's what makes me so thankful that he has found me through Christ pleasing in his sight. There was something fascinating in the attire of the priest. The high priest had this turban and across it there was a gold plate at the forehead that said, Holy unto the Lord. And Charles Spurgeon and his famous devotional wrote about this amazing symbol in reference to a text, we won't turn there, in Exodus chapter 28 that refers to the iniquity of the holy things, which is a reference to even in the holiest of offerings that someone would bring, there's still the taint of iniquity with it, but it's given to the priest who's holy unto the Lord.

What avail Spurgeon's right is lifted up by these words and what a disclosure is made. Our work for the Lord is emulation, selfishness, carelessness, slackness, unbelief, what a massive defilement there is. Our private devotions, their laxity, coldness, neglect, sleepiness, vanity, what a mountain of dead earth is there.

If we look more carefully, we should find this iniquity be far greater than it appears at first sight. Dr. Payson writing to his brother says, my parish as well as my heart very much resembles the garden of the sluggard and what is worse, I find that very many of my desires for the amelioration of both proceed either from pride or vanity or indolence. I look at the weeds which overspread my garden and breathe out an earnest wish that they were eradicated, but why?

What prompts the wish? It may be that I walk out and say to myself, in what fine order is my garden kept? This is pride. Or it may be that my neighbors may look over the wall and say, how finely your garden flourishes. This is vanity. Or I may wish for the destruction of the weeds because I'm weary of pulling them up. This is indolence. So that even our desires after holiness may be polluted by ill motives under the greenest sides, worms hide themselves.

We need not look long to discover them. How cheering is the thought that when the high priest bore the iniquity of the holy things, he wore upon his brow the words holiness to the Lord. And even so while Jesus bears our sin, he presents before his father's face not our unholiness, but his own holiness. Oh for grace to view our great high priest by the eye of faith. In other words, the thank offering was the one offering in which you acknowledge, even if I brought my best sacrifice to you, I have to admit it be tainted by my own unrighteousness. And I remember that, but I focus instead upon the righteousness and the right standing of the priest. And I bring the unleavened bread and the high priest will take and represent this before the great judge. And it is only because of this that I am spared and therefore I am thankful. Here's what Christian gratitude is. I've got the leavened loaf. Yeah, I know that I justly deserve God's displeasure.

I know that even at my best moments it's still tinged and tainted by the selfishness that worked its way into me before I was ever born into this broken world. But praise be to God, I got a great high priest who came and he is my offering. He is my Passover lamb. He is my sacrifice. He is everything. He's every one of Israel's offerings. The only thing left for me to do is give him a sacrifice of praise.

There's nothing left. So how do you become a grateful person? Do you sit around all day and just go, well, I'm a miserable old sinner. I'm just stuck like this. Might as well keep sinning because I'm just such a miserable sinner.

No. You just take your awareness of how much you've messed up and you just say, okay, there it is. Leavened all the way through, but unleavened Jesus. Righteousness of Jesus. I would have died, but he came and died in my place. And what he's done, beloved, is that he has made God favorable towards you when you should have experienced his disfavor. He has made God accept you perfectly when instead you should have been punished. And so you don't have any sacrifice that makes any good before the Lord. All of them have been satisfied in Jesus, except this one thing. Keep on giving him thanks because if your life has been spared, it's mandatory to give him praise.

And that's the gospel. Alan Wright and today's teaching on the Think Offering. Key that could change everything.

Is there someone you love who seems stuck? You'd like to help them, but how? What's missing? Blessing. We all need a positive faith-filled vision spoken over our lives. You can learn how to embrace the biblical practice of blessing through Pastor Alan Wright's new book, The Power to Bless, which quickly became an Amazon number one bestseller after its recent release.

Until now, the hardcover book has only been available through retail sales. But this month, Alan Wright Ministries wants to send you the book as our thank you for your donation. Make your gift today and discover the power to bless. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries.

This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. As we come to the conclusion here of the series on Moses and today's teaching, this is often that part of Christian teaching that we might think, Alan, this is going to make us look so weird. This is the peculiar part of sometimes in the deepest of despair that we're going to praise and be thankful even with the lot we've been given.

It does. It makes the Christian absolutely countercultural to think of thanking God in all circumstances. Remember this, that in the midst of all these descriptions of the offerings of Israel, the emphasis on most of them was that they be unleavened. Leaven becomes a picture of sin in the Bible. But on the thank offering, the worshiper would bring both leavened bread and unleavened bread. You would bring in your gratitude to God both the symbol of the lack of sin that's in Christ, but also you'd bring a symbol of leavened bread, sin that's tainted my own life, my own heart. Because my gratitude is always rooted in this, that my sin should be punished by God.

But instead, I have been blessed with eternity for Him forever and forever. And that, no matter what you're going through, is the source of Christian gratitude, God's redeeming love in Christ Jesus. Daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.