Offer What God Has Asked For

A gift can arrive with an invisible invoice. We may give money and quietly expect a deciding vote. We may serve faithfully and begin to believe that God owes us an easier year. When the hoped-for outcome does not arrive, our disappointment reveals a bargain we never stated. The service may have helped real people. The money may have met a real need. Yet underneath the gift, we were trying to purchase control.

That is an invitation to honest repentance, not an invitation to despise giving. God receives the worship of his people.

Scripture calls us to generosity. But worship begins by listening to the God we approach. We do not establish the terms of his acceptance by announcing how much our contribution cost us. Nor can a congregation measure a person's standing with God by the size of a donation.

Leviticus 22:17–25 gives us specific instructions about Israel's sacrificial animals. It includes requirements we must take seriously and an exception we must read just as carefully. We will misunderstand the passage if we turn it into a slogan about always donating the most expensive thing. We will harm people if we transfer its descriptions of animals to the worth of human bodies. Let us hear the actual words before deciding what faithful response looks like.

The passage in full

Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,

LEV 22:17 (WEB)

“Speak to Aaron, and to his sons, and to all the children of Israel, and say to them, ‘Whoever is of the house of Israel, or of the foreigners in Israel, who offers his offering, whether it is any of their vows or any of their free will offerings, which they offer to Yahweh for a burnt offering:

LEV 22:18 (WEB)

that you may be accepted, you shall offer a male without defect, of the bulls, of the sheep, or of the goats.