I was reading Leviticus 1 tonight. It describes the burnt offerings given at the Tabernacle. It talks of killing the animals, skinning them, draining the blood and pouring it on and around the altar. It talks about burning the entrails and dumping the craw and feathers of birds to the east of the altar. As I was reading this, I was thinking about how it must start to stink after a day of baking in the sun and much worse if they stay in the same location for a while. Then I noticed, at the end of the description of the burnt offering for each type of animal, it says, “an offering by fire as a soothing aroma to the Lord.” That does not sound like a “soothing aroma.” That isn’t how I would describe it, but God sees things differently than we do. We see the outside and the physical. God sees the heart of sacrifice of those who love, obey, and trust Him. I think it is really the sacrificial heart that is the real “soothing aroma.” #biblestr #Bible #Jesus #grownostr

We were studying Luke 11 in church and in our small group Bible study and got in a discussion about this verse: “The Queen of the South will rise up with the men of this generation at the judgment and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.” (Luke 11:31) She (called the Queen of Sheba in 1 Kings 10) traveled a long distance by camel just to hear the wisdom of Solomon. I used Open Bible to determine that Sheba was most likely Yemen. I then used perplexity.ai to determine approximately how far it is from Yemen to Israel (1373 miles). I then asked it how far you can reasonably travel in a day on a loaded camel and it said “~18 miles/day.” Doing the math, that would suggest the Queen of Sheba traveled 76 days on camelback to listen to Solomon speak. That is a lot of effort. Today, we have access to the words of someone much wiser than Solomon. We have access to the Bible (the God breathed Scriptures) and the actual words of Jesus from His time on earth. How many of us would travel on camels for 76 days (3.5 months) to hear God’s word. How many of us will even put in 30 minutes/day reading God’s word? God’s word is so readily available today and we rarely reference it. Why? Will we be condemned by the Queen of Sheba in the last days? #biblestr #Christian #biblestudy #bible #christianity #jesus