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Okay. You know, if you are a teacher in here or you know, any teachers, all teachers know this. Nighttime is the hardest time to teach. And especially after a good meal with dessert, I got a friend right there yawning. It is always the hardest time to teach at night. And so I'm gonna try to. I don't have as much personality as Molly, but do you want to thank her again? She's done great. I don't even know if she's still in here. Molly's been fantastic. While you guys are getting back to your seats, I did want to add two of these slides that I missed earlier. Point number two. True sacrifice is deeply personal. And this is back from the burnt offering, just for anybody that wanted. I had a number of people ask me about this. In Leviticus 1, verse 4, speaking of the burnt offering that gets completely burnt up, the priest is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering so it can be accepted on his behalf. To make. I'm sorry, the person to make atonement for him. He is to slaughter the bull before the Lord Aaron's sons. The priests are to present the blood and splatter it on all sides of the altar. That is at the entrance to the tent of meeting the dad, the husband, the man that comes in, brings the offering to the tabernacle. He puts his hand on the head of the animal that's to be slaughtered. And there's a sense in which he's identifying my sin with where I deserve death is being placed on this animal. And this is like a transference of. I know that it's my sin, and it involves the one giving the offering, not just the priest. Not just the priest. So it's very personal. Imagine if some of you have pets at home. I don't know how many of you have pets. I have two cats. And there was no clapping to that. And I know why. Cause I have two cats. Anyway, if you have pets, you know what it's like to take care of animals. You get a little bit affection toward them, and you care about them. And you bring up an animal a year old, and then you take that animal to the tabernacle, you put your hand on the head, you realize this animal's done nothing wrong, right? Unless it's a goat, maybe this animal. If anybody that understands, you know, goats and pigs, they're horrible. But this thing, this animal's done nothing wrong, and it's very personal. Then he is to skin the burnt offering and cut it into pieces. The sons of Aaron, the priest will Prepare a fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. Aaron's sons of the priests are to arrange the pieces, the head and the fat on top of the burning wood on the altar. Aaron. It's very interactive. The burnt offering, which is not the same as the other offerings. The other five offerings, again, just to clarify, you have, in order of the book of Leviticus, in the way that it presents it, the burnt offering, the grain offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering. Really, the sin and the guilt you offer first. You'll see that later in the book if you read through Leviticus. But God doesn't start with sin. He actually started with the burnt offering to say, I want you to know my desire for you is that you will belong completely and wholly to me. I want to be with you. This is my desire. Then he gets to the grain offering, because offerings in the Old Testament, these five offerings, which are the only offerings in the Old Testament, they're not just about sin, but like this offering, the grain offering, it's for celebration and joy and thanksgiving. And so you have the grain offering, these first three, if anybody's using the King James version, if you read the first three chapters of Leviticus, it says that they're a sweet savor. Sweet savor offerings. If you've heard of the imagery of God saying, it's a pleasing aroma, these three are a pleasing aroma. A sweet savor aroma to the Lord is how it says it in Leviticus. But this one in particular is not a blood offering. There's actually no sacrifice with the second offering, the grain offering, it's actually a voluntary act of thanksgiving. The idea of the grain offering is God, thank you for the grain that you're providing for us. Thanks that you are the provider. And we are offering this back to you in gratitude with thanksgiving. And today I want to consider four truths based off the grain offering, the burnt offering, that's about sacrifice and relationship and belonging to God. I actually had a friend earlier during the afternoon. He said, you know, you mentioned Romans chapter 12, that we are to present ourselves as living sacrifices, which is our true act of worship. This is how we worship God. And he said, man isn't Jesus the sacrifice? And I was like, yes, all five of these sacrifices point to Jesus. And he's like, but you didn't say that. And I was like, that's a good catch. I want to make that clear. Even in Romans 12, when Paul is mentioning this, the foundation, the history, the background is they all understood these five sacrifices, but all of These point to Jesus. Jesus is the fulfillment of all of these. And this is meant for people to see. You know what Jesus gave his all. He was a living sacrifice. He gave himself for us. We are called to pick up our cross and follow Him. This is our act of worship. This is how we come to God as someone who's in a relationship with Him. This is our whole lives belong to Him. And so we say no to sin, we say no to fleshly desires, we say no to temptation. Because we are like burnt offerings to the Lord as an example that Jesus set for us. This is how we commune and fellowship with God. How do you grow in your relationship with God? Well, you know John 15, you abide with Jesus. You hear his word, you obey him, you listen to Him. All that the burnt offering was a reflection of that. It was pointing forward in time to Jesus Christ. Life, death, burial and resurrection. That he was the fulfillment of this sacrifice. And then Jesus showed his disciples. Now follow me. Pick up your cross and follow me. You want a relationship with God, abide with me. Say no to self, say no to pride. Follow me. And so that's burnt offering, grain offering is totally different. There's no blood. It's just a freewill, volunteer offering of God. I want to bring you thanks today and you could give thanks to God every day. And so here's the four truths that are reflected in the grain offering that teach us about gratitude. Number one, gratitude is expressed, not assumed. And so In Leviticus, chapter 2, verse 1, when anyone presents a grain offering as an offering to the Lord, it is to consist of fine flour. He is to pour olive oil on it, put frankincense on it, and bring it to Aaron's sons, the priests. I want to break this down. When anyone, in verses one through three, if you're taking notes for Leviticus, chapter two, in verses one through three, it's when anyone, and it refers to any Israelite making this grain offering, a thanksgiving offering, a freewill offering to God. Verses four through seven, you'll notice in your Bibles as you read verses four through seven, begin with now, when you present, who is the you? It's actually the priest. Cause if you remember before God is saying, and he's telling Moses, I want you to speak to Aaron and the priest, I want you to tell them this. So it's speaking to the priest. So that's just a little clarification if you're into a deeper study there. So you have these three things, fine flour, olive oil, and frankincense. Fine flour. If you're not familiar, in this day, when people made flour, it was coarse. It's actually still coarse in some of the places Molly's been in the 1040 window. She probably has experienced this. If it's homemade, the flour is not fine. It takes a lot of sweat and work to make flour, fine flour. There's a difference between flour and fine flour. They didn't have machines like we have today. And so that took extra work that was extra special. And so fine flour being special means that people made their bread and it was more expensive. So if you sold bread that was made with fine flour, it was worth more than regular bread. And then you have the olive oil, which was valuable because you had to take the olives, you had to press them. There's an olive press. You can probably Google this. I think most of it should be accurate. But imagine like a stone and this idea of a crushing weight where you press olives. Or if you've ever seen this depiction, this is also true. It's just a different construction. You would have a vat, like a wine vats. They usually make wine this way. You'd put the grates and you would literally step on it and it would be a higher level. Like imagine a concrete tub that was shallow and you step. But it had little grooves in it for juice to flow out. The juice would flow into a lower level vat and then they would filter that out. And then you would have one wine, juice, just by stepping on it. And so olive oil was different because olive oil, as you know, is slippery and like totally different with that. And so they would press the olives and this was very difficult to do. They would use it for food and medicine. Back then, olive oil was what's considered a salve. It was very nice to have and it was useful for the skin for lots of different reasons. And so olive oil was expensive. And then frankincense. Frankincense is this really wonderful smelling tree resin. I've never tasted it, but I have seen it and I have touched it. It's this gummy residue. Now, in the Middle east, where this is, there is different kinds of resins based on the tree, based on the age of it and all that stuff. But frankincense smells amazing. This is like the Axe body spray for teenagers in this day. But you could eat it. It was something that they would eat. It was considered nutritious. I've never tried it. I don't know anything about how it tastes, but it was really nice. They would take this, these three items, and they would add it to a grain offering because it cost you, it was not cheap, and you had to bring it, you had to prepare all this. What's interesting for this offering is you didn't just bring a raw animal or raw ingredients to the tabernacle, you had to prepare all this yourself. All the work and cost was on you. So if you were gonna give thanks to the Lord in this day, with this law, which the whole law reflects God's character. Now, Jesus is the perfect image. He is the image of the invisible God. But the Old Testament, the way that God uses it is this is still a reflection of his character, his, his will, what's considered moral and holy and right. All this is meant to be a reflection. Even still today, there's these truths that we see from it which are fully explained in the New Testament. So you would have to bring all this expensive stuff that's been prepared by you in order to tell God thanks. It takes effort. Gratitude has to be expressed. You know the story of Jesus and the ten lepers he heals? Ten lepers, they jump for joy. He tells them, now go show yourselves to the priest. That's also in Leviticus, but that's in later chapters if you have leprosy. So go show yourselves to the priest. And they're like dancing, they're jumping up and down, going to the priest. Now let me ask you a question. If you're joyful and you're dancing and you're obeying Jesus and you're going to the. To the temple, is it obvious that you are grateful? Wouldn't it be obvious that you're grateful? Of course you're grateful. If I just got healed and I'm like, woo hoo, this is the best ever. And I start walking to the temple. It's not that I'm not happy, it's not that I'm not grateful, but what does Jesus do? Weren't there ten? Where are the other nine? There was only one of them that came back and directly expressed gratitude and worship to Jesus, thanking God for what he did. That is a lesson that has to be ingrained in human beings. It's easy to think, but I am grateful. The question is, but did you show it right? How many have been through marriage counseling? I've only been through marriage counseling a dozen times, so I know some of you, we all need it. Even the best relationships. It's a great help. You can have someone who's like, but I am grateful. But you didn't say it. Well, why should I have to say it? I said it when I married you. Didn't I like it? You know, you have that kind of attitude of, didn't I make it clear? Aren't my actions enough, or is it? Listen, whatever is enough is what's expressed and received. That's enough. But gratitude has to be expressed all throughout the Bible. The design of what God intended is show your gratitude, show your Thanksgiving. Gratitude's gotta be expressed, not assumed. When people think, and this is true for me, when people think we are ungrateful, it's usually not because of our attitude, it's because of our silence. When someone thinks that you're ungrateful, it's usually not because you have an attitude of, I don't really care. It's probably because you didn't express it. You didn't take the time to say thanks, you didn't write the card. You didn't turn back and say, man, this means a lot to me. If people think you're not grateful, it's because you didn't express it. And it's not really because of what's in your heart. This is a skill where God is inviting us to learn. If you want to show gratitude to me, it should cost something. It should be expressed. It should take effort. I want you to show your gratitude and I want you to do that with each other, and I want you to do it with me. That's a reality of gratitude from Genesis to Revelation, but especially in Leviticus. So they bring it to Aaron's sons, the priest. And they bring it to verse two. They bring it to Aaron's sons, the priest. The priest will take a handful of fine flour and oil from it, along with all its frankincense, and will burn this memorial portion of it on the altar. A food offering, a pleasing aroma to the Lord. So this memorial portion is actually one word in the Hebrew. Askara comes from the Hebrew word that's just Z, K, R. All Hebrew words have a three consonant root. And so it means to remember. And what it does is it indicates that the person offering the grain offering the person that's offering. This is being mindful of God's grace and providing him with food. It's a memorial portion. It's something that you do to say, God, I don't want you to think I don't remember that it's you who's giving this to me when I do this. It's to set this point. I want it to be clear, I'm giving thanks to you. And so that's the purpose of it. But the rest of the grain offering will belong to Aaron and his sons. It is the holiest part of the food offering to the Lord. And so it's meant to be holy. Holy means set apart. That idea of this is set apart. It's set apart for God and he provides for Aaron and the priest through this. If you learn later, after you get through Leviticus, once you get into Joshua, it plays out. But the Levites, the priests, they're not allowed to own any property. Really. They don't own land. The land is distributed amongst the other tribes, but not the Levites. They have to live off of the people. And so this is a way that God works. And there's reason for that. There's New Testament speaking of this, but it's holy. And set aside then verse four, when you present a grain offering baked in an oven, blah, blah, blah, prepared on a griddle, and I shouldn't say blah, blah, blah to God's word, you just have to read it. And I'm limited on time. These are the three ideas. It's either baked in an oven, prepared on a griddle, or prepared in a pan. And here's the main idea and I'm going to translate it into today. Baked in an oven, a thin crust pizza prepared on a griddle, crispy thin wafers. Imagine a thin waffle and then prepared in a pan. Think a pancake. And so there are different ways that God is allowing them to prepare this because everything is fine tuned with detail. And then when you bring to the Lord the grain offering made of any of these things, it is to be presented to the priest and he will take it to the altar. The priest will remove the memorial portion which we talked about. This is a sign of remembrance. God, I'm remembering you. This will not be forgotten. Almost like when you set a holiday or like with Joshua with the stones or, you know, a pillar, Ebenezer, when you decide to set up something to say, hey, this is going to be remembered amongst our people. The grain offering is meant to be a way that you personally can say, God, I want to do something in which, you know, I'm remembering that you were the provider and I'm giving thanks to you, you're ultimately the one. And so gratitude is meant to be expressed. And the idea, the reason why, it is the holiest part of the food offerings to the Lord. This memorial portion goes to Aaron and the priest is the grain offering provided the main source of food for priests and their families in this day. For Aaron and his sons. If you look at all the offerings, all the other offerings are meat. I'm all about protein maxing and keto diets and all that. But these people lived and walked in a desert. And so carbs were no problem for them, right? They weren't struggling with weird processed stuff and enriched flour and all that stuff. They needed carbohydrates. And so this was their main source of carbs in a desert, while traveling and wandering throughout the desert. And so this provided their main source of bread for their families, for Aaron and his sons and their kids. Imagine if you didn't have Walmart, you didn't have Dylan's, you didn't have Kroger, you didn't have Meijer, you didn't have Target, you didn't have any of those places. You didn't have the local grocery store for your kids to eat. Other people had to give thanks to God. For them to have bread, they had to give thanks to God. Now, I know this is the promised land, this 39 years later, because they're all eating manna right now, but this is preparing them for where God's bringing them. But this is important. Here's the main truth idea. I don't have a slide for it, but this is the wording. Gratitude is meant to be expressed. The reason why this is the holiest part, what is given to the Aaron and the priest. Gratitude is meant to be expressed because only when it is expressed is it a blessing to others. Only when your gratitude is expressed and it's visible are other people blessed by that. And we see that with Aaron and the priest and his sons. Every detail, every instruction. And I want to tell you, all five of the sacrifices, they're not the same. They do not have the same instructions. You read Leviticus, chapters one through seven, you will know what I mean. They're all very different. And God is not wasting ink on pages. Every detail of these sacrifices are meant to draw us to these truths that these offerings point to. So gratitude is meant to be expressed because only then it's a blessing to others. That's taught in the New Testament. Part of why, you know, we love clapping for the staff, and we're so grateful for all that, you know, we get. We want people to know that we're grateful. You know, we're not stubborn, selfish people that don't know, you know, when other people serve us, we're grateful. We want to express that in 1st Corinthians 9:13. Don't you know that those who perform the temple services Eat the food from the temple. Now let me just tell you Paul, the Apostle Paul in the first century is writing to a group of believers in Corinth, a very immoral town. Think of it like the Las Vegas of today. Very immoral town. He's writing to them. Some of them are Jewish, but they're living in a very immoral place. So imagine Christians living in a really raunchy, immoral city. And he's telling them an example from Leviticus. He's reminding them, don't you know that those who perform the temple services eat the food from the temple? And those who serve at the altar share in the offerings of the altar? In the same way I'm using the Old Testament to teach a New Testament truth to you. In the same way the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should earn their living by the gospel. That those who serve that are ministers. And one of my favorite books in the whole Bible about supporting missionaries like Molly is Third John, Third John, verses five through eight. I wish I could preach that at every church. And giving to those brothers and sisters that are working for the gospel. The town isn't paying them to share the gospel with them. So we as believers need to take up a collection and offer this to them. 3 John, verses 5 through 8. But Paul is telling the Corinthians the same idea. We're meant to express gratitude, and we do this by offering it. And just like in the Old Testament with the grain offering with the priest, they lived off of the people. The same is true for ministers today, those that share the gospel. And so this principle isn't meant to be lost or kept in the Old Testament. He draws it into the New. And this is the most relevant one. So gratitude is expressed, not assumed. Number two, gratitude is corrupted by sin. Once you get the verse 11 in Leviticus, chapter 2, no grain offering that you present to the Lord is to be made with yeast. Without going into all the background, if anybody wants to know more, I'll talk forever about the Bible. Just not keeping people at dinner time. Yeast became symbolic, the symbolic picture of sin, just like leprosy and other things. So no yeast is made in it. For you are not to burn any yeast or honey as a food offering to the Lord. It symbolizes sin in the Bible for a reason. Jesus tells his disciples, beware the what of the Pharisees. The leaven. Beware the leaven or yeast. Yeast and leaven is the same thing. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. Why? Because leaven yeast in bread, it spreads a little bit in a lump of dough, spreads, and it grows. And then you break that bread apart, put that in other dough that doesn't have yeast, and then that whole roll of dough ends up having yeast, and it spreads. He uses it in Galatians 5, 9. A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough. Today we use cancer as symbolic to sin. Cancer is invisible. You can't necessarily see it without a microscope, without testing. You don't necessarily see cancer, but it grows within the body. You want to catch it quickly, all that. Just like yeast. Yeast is like that symbolic imagery. Don't put any yeast in the grain offering, because gratitude is corrupted by sin. And how does that work? So Romans 1:21. For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. One of the issues of people living as if they're rebels against God is that they don't show him gratitude. They don't give grain offerings in the Old Testament or today. They don't express thanksgiving to the Lord. They don't freely give this kind of thanksgiving to God for a portion you've received. Instead, their thinking became worthless and their senseless hearts were darkened. Sin will stop us from being grateful, and it offers nothing to be grateful for. Sin will give you nothing to be grateful for. In 1 Corinthians 13:6, love finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. There's no joy in unrighteousness. So if you have the love of God in you, if you have the spirit of God in you, you're not going to have any joy in unrighteousness. Sin will keep joy out of your life. So here's a question, or here's a statement. Sin will stop us from being grateful, and it offers nothing. Here's the question. Am I having a hard time in my life in this season right now? Am I having a hard time being grateful? And if I am, ask the Holy Spirit, is it because sin is stealing my joy? Sin will steal your joy. A grain offering is meant to be gratitude, but sin's gonna corrupt that. No grain offering, verse 11. No grain offering that you present to the Lord is to be made with yeast, for you are not to burn any yeast or honey as a food offering to the Lord. What a strange instruction. Why are there strange instructions in the Bible that always meant to make you stop, look and listen? Kind of like the stop signs outside of the MC that kids need to still be told to watch out for. By the way, I Don't know if any. Your kids are perfect, but other people's kids are definitely not looking left and right. But why would he give this strange instruction? Okay, why no hungry or honey. The Hebrew word for honey, Devash. Remember when God told Moses, I'm gonna bring you into a land flowing with what? Milk and honey. Right. Milk and honey. Sounds sticky. Sounds like I don't wanna go to that place. Right? A lot of cleanup in that promised land. Milk and honey is affluence. It's riches. Milk, meaning you have goats, you have animals, cattle. They're producing milk. You can live off milk. Milk is great honey. This is not bee honey, by the way. I used to think this when I first, you know, started reading the Bible as a college student. Really? And I was like, man, honey. There must be a lot of bees in Israel. Not technically true. This is honey from dates in Israel. In the Middle east, you have a lot of date honey. You have date trees. And what they would do is they take the dates. They'd let them basically cook in the sun, then they would boil them in water because they'd be dehydrated. They would let it simmer until it cooked down. And. And if I were a chef, I'd know the right terms for this. When you cook it down, what's that called? Reduce. Yeah, they reduce the dates, and it takes a long time. It makes this sweet, dark liquid, and they call it honey. Honey was not gold and like, you know, like what we have in jars at Walmart. Honey is date honey. But it's so sweet. It offers a lot of calories and people love it. It's very valuable. Well, why say, I don't want you to burn any honey? In other words, I don't want you giving to the Lord something you think you had to work for. This idea of honey that you produced, that you did. Gratitude is spoiled by pride. You're not to burn any yeast or honey as a food offering to the Lord. I don't want you adding your sweetness to it, falsely believing you have provided what you are giving thanks for. I'll never forget a conversation I had. I was in. I was at my end of my first senior year of college. My first senior year. I was at the end of my first senior year in college, and there was this debate, you know, Bible college is fun because everybody thinks they know everything and we know nothing and we're learning stuff. And there was this guy, and this conversation is like, okay, when I tithe, should I tithe off my gross or my net? And then one guy was like, okay, when Jesus saves you, do you want him to save you net or gross? Like, how do you want him to? Like, how grateful are you are to the Lord? But there was this attitude of, okay, how do we give thanks to God? Where it doesn't seem like, hey, I'm really the one. Or like, you know. You know, if you've ever seen someone proudly give in the New Testament, you have the stories of Jesus where he's like, he sees rich people giving from their surplus in the offering. And then you have the widow. You have that widow's mite. She goes and drops basically nothing into the bucket, right? The ach fee would take it out. I mean, there's nothing. It's going to become negative. She throws her widow's mite in there, and Jesus says, you see that woman? She gave more than everyone else. Why? They technically gave more. Yeah, but they gave out of what? Out of their affluence, out of their leftover. It cost them nothing. They thought, this is nothing. I'll just get rid of this. They felt like they were the ones that were really funding God. If you ever get so rich that you think you are a gift to God, you cannot be grateful. If you ever feel like you are the one that God needs, you walk in a room, right? I don't know where Ambush is. Well, Daniel's not here tonight, probably. If you walk into a room and you think you're the big whale that funded Jonah, and you come in and you're like, yeah, I'm big stuff, and go, lake couldn't make it without me, and look at all the things that I'm doing. Or you walk into your church and you're looking at other people like they don't really contribute at college students, all they do is take and eat. That's all they do. I'm the real giver here. This church should really serve me because I'm the one funding it. If you have the attitude that you are the one producing and giving and you are the source and you're really the gift, you cannot be grateful. It is impossible for you to be grateful if you feel like you are the one adding to it. So gratitude is spoiled by pride. And there's a lot of different verses in the New Testament about this. First Corinthians 4, 7. For who makes you so superior? Why do you have. What do you have that you didn't receive? If in fact you did receive it? Why do you boast as if you hadn't received it later he writes in verse 6, chapter 5, verse 6. You boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough? It's no coincidence that he goes back to leaven and yeast. And this connection with the grain offering, the offering with yeast in particular, this idea, don't let this creep in. Don't let pride creep in. Because the prouder you are, the more ungrateful you will be in your life. So either sin or pride is gonna clog the pipe of God's joy and blessing in your life. It's gonna ruin gratitude in your life. This is shown in Proverbs and throughout the Bible. But in the second offering, God's will for you is to give thanks first. Thessalonians 5, 8. Unless I pass. I did pass something. Okay. Number four. Gratitude preserves our relationships. Leviticus 2, 13. You are to season each of your grain offerings with salt. You must not omit from your grain offering the salt of the covenant with your God. This is the only of the five offerings. This is the only one that talks about the salt of the covenant. So this is significant. Again, each word in the Bible, significant. There's a reason for these connections. I want you to offer salt. It's the salt of the covenant with your God. You're to present salt with each of your coverings. Salt had to be added to the grain offering. And it's called the salt of the covenant, because when two parties made a covenant with each other, a lot of times in this culture, even still today with the Bedouins, they do practice like this. It's not the same thing, but it's very similar. Desert dwellers, Bedouins are those that still dwell in the desert, live off the desert. When they would do this, they would have a meal together and they would offer a portion of salt. Because back in this day, salt was like money. Salt is valuable. It's like currency. They would add salt to their meal, and they would call it the salt of the covenant, because salt represented preservation. You preserved meat, they had no refrigerant. Right. Frigidaire didn't exist in 1400 BC you had no way to preserve meat or even some other food items, other things. Salt was very precious. It was used for many different. It was kind of like the baking soda of today. You ever see a baking soda ad or commercial thing where it's like, this is going to take all the smell out of your refrigerator. This is going to take all the stains out of your clothes. This is going to rid your Kids of bad attitudes, like just pour baking soda on everything. It just fixes everything. Salt in this day is like this. But it was mainly symbolic of preservation. So salt is a preservative. And in the ancient world, it symbolizes that the covenant cannot be destroyed by decay. And so when the two parties would have their covenant meal, they would have the salt of the covenant. And. And the salt represented this covenant. This contractual agreement between us cannot be destroyed by time. We're not going to allow this to destroy. We're preserving this covenant. This covenant's going to last. And so that's the idea of a salt of covenant. In the same way, gratitude brings durability to a relationship. God intends for your gratitude to. To preserve your relationships, not just your relationship with him, but your relationship with other people. If you want a relationship to last, express gratitude. No show of hands. But how many of you have been married to a spouse that was not grateful and that caused a divide in your relationship? And sometimes it can happen for years and you just feel like your spouse is not grateful. That hurts a relationship. But when you're constantly giving gratitude, expressing gratitude, it's meant to preserve that relationship. The grain offering represents this between the people and God. And it's still true in the New Testament today. If you want your relationship with Jesus to be enriched and fuller, take time to give thanks, take time to praise his name. The whole idea of raising hands is not a charismatic movement. It's in the Old Testament, it's in the Psalms. It actually comes from Leviticus. There's a Hebrew word that means to raise up. You've heard a word like it. It's called praise. The word praise comes from a root Hebrew word that means to lift up your hands. The priest would lift up the offering, the grain offering, this memorial portion, and they would give thanks to God. And by lifting it up, it was an expression of, you are the one, and I'm expressing thanks, I'm giving thanks. In the New Testament, Paul mentions this, but a lot of people miss it. He doesn't want men to raise hands with what in their heart. Anybody know this? First Timothy, chapter two. Sorry. It's anger. They don't want anger in their hearts. Men that are fighting with one another. Because if you have those kind of divided relationships, First Timothy two, if you want to look it up later. He doesn't want men raising their hands in an unholy way with this kind of stuff in their relationships. The grain offering is a beautiful picture and teaching image of be grateful if you want to die. Withhold gratitude. If you want a relationship to die, withhold gratitude. Sorry, little slip up. That's an important noun. If you want your relationship to die, withhold gratitude and don't express it. Is there a relationship in your life where you need to express your gratitude? Don't expect the person to appreciate a cheap or insincere thank you, but look to the grain offering as an example, as a teaching lesson from God. It should cost you. You prepare it, you bring it, you express it. Sin corrupts it. You've got to. It's meant to preserve your relationship. Express gratitude and that's God's will for you. First, Thessalonians 5:18. Give thanks in everything, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. All five offerings are meant to point to Jesus and to give a basis and a foundation for what God expects of us to do in our relationship with Him. We no longer have to give grain offerings in Israel at any temple. There is no temple today. Not a. Not a real temple, there's no real temple. We no longer have to offer sacrifices. But in the New Testament, we are commanded to give thanks and to be grateful. The grain offering gives a lot of lessons and teaches that, and I hope you're able to see it. The other four offerings are also meant to teach you, or the other three are meant to teach you truths that still live on today in your Christian life. And it's such a privilege and honor for me to be able to share Leviticus with you. Thank you. I'm going to pray and I think we're done. Father, I thank you for this time. I thank you for your word and I thank you for the wonderful meal and all these staffers, these leaders that serve with all their heart to make this a great week for us and our kids. I pray that you bless them. I thank you for the leadership here for hoedown and ambush. I pray that you would bless the rest of this week and that you would draw us into a deeper relationship with you. We are grateful to you. You are worth every offering that we have to offer. Our complete offering of ourselves to you. Thank you for your love for us. Thank you for being a God that is gracious and generous and paves the way of what generosity looks like. We love you and pray all this in Jesus name, Amen.