Sermonette: A Vivid Comparison (2000)

Dogs and Offerings
#FT00-02s
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 14-Oct-00; 24 minutes

listen:

playlist:
Go to the Feast of Tabernacles 2000 playlist

download:

I thought it was interesting that in the songs that Mike [Ford] chose to lead, the last one mentioned an offering in that, “a free will offering I will bring to you.” And that is what we are going to talk about in this first message. It may seem a little bit roundabout as we get into it, but eventually we are going to get around to an offering.

There are quite a few animals mentioned in the Bible. In fact, according to those people who take it upon themselves to count these things, there are 70 different animals mentioned in the Bible. But there is also a great deal of confusion in the minds of some because so many different words are used for the same animals. For example, the Bible uses 11 different words for sheep, 8 different words for goats, 8 for lions, 10 for locusts, and 15 for cows [cattle]. It does not differentiate too much between male and female.

Now some of the animals are spoken of with a fair degree of admiration, such as the horse for its swift strength in battle, while at the same time, there is kind of derision for the horse as well because it is looked upon as being kind of dumb, even though it is elegant in appearance and strong in battle.

For the lion, there is admiration for its majesty, but there is also fear of its strength and aggressiveness. It is one of the Bible's strongest images of voracious predators. Then there is the pride of a strutting cock, and the he-goat, and the busy diligence of ants.

Then there is another animal. Today, for the most part, dogs are pretty highly thought of. Man's best friend is the way they are commonly known today, and the phrase that dog's life epitomizes the life of ease devoid of anxiety because they are always taken care of by their wonderful masters, and all they have to contribute is the unquestioning acceptance of their master.

But in the Bible things are quite a bit different. Perhaps it is a cultural thing that shines through the Bible, but the biblical dog's life is a depiction of squalor, dismal nomadic poverty, the life of a pariah at the bottom of the society. They are repeatedly depicted in terms of their disgusting and inadequate diet consisting of leftovers, crumbs, and vomit. Twice the scriptures mention a dog returning to his vomit.

There is something even worse. Of all the domesticated animals in Scripture, it is the only one shown eating human flesh. This was so reprehensible to the ancient Israelites that “May dogs eat your flesh” became a curse that one would wish upon his worst enemies.

Now, turn to page 897. It is Psalm 59 just in case you want to know (I thought maybe you would like to guess)!

Psalm 59:1-4 Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; defend me from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloodthirsty men. For look, they lie in wait for my life; the mighty gather against me, not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O LORD. They run and prepare themselves through no fault of mine. Awake to help me, and behold!

David wrote this psalm at the beginning of the differences that were there with Saul. When Saul's jealous rages began to erupt over the acclaim that David was receiving throughout the land, and he got jealous and started to try to get rid of this man. David is responding in prayer to God his own feelings about what was occurring. And as you can see here, “I haven't done anything wrong. These people are after me for nothing.”

Psalm 59:13-15 Consume them in wrath [Notice the strength of language here!], consume them, that they may not be; and let them know that God rules in Jacob to the ends of the earth. Selah. And at evening they return, they growl like a dog, and go all around the city [because they were the “garbage men”]. They wander up and down for food, and howl if they are not satisfied.

In David's prayers against his enemies, he calls them dogs. The New Revised Standard Version translates verses 14 and 15, “howling like dogs and prowling around the city, they roam about for food and growl if they do not get their fill.”

Many of us are familiar with the battle between David and Goliath. And when David went out to challenge Goliath, Goliath said, “Am I a dog that you should come after me with sticks?”

Solomon also got into the fray here. Turn to Ecclesiastes 9:3-4.

In verses 1 and 2, he shows that there is one thing that all men have in common. It does not matter whether they are good or bad, righteous or evil; it does not matter whether they are wealthy or poor, middle class, whether they wear fine clothing or not; there is one thing that happens to them all: death. Solomon considers this an evil. That is the way that it is translated into the King James.

Ecclesiastes 9:3-4 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: that one thing happens to all. Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But for him who is joined to all the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

I mean, that is quite a comparison! Knowing that the dog in Solomon's eyes was just a little bit above a dead lion, and that is about it. So thus he equates a dog with those who are on the lowest social scale.

Even the apostle Paul got into the act. In Philippians 3:2 he told the Christians to beware of dogs. What he meant was Judaizers, certain Jews who were hypocritically saying that they were converted, and trying to turn people back to the law. So he said beware of these people, and he called these Judaizers dogs. I do not know what we would say today. We would not say dogs, but we would have the same kind of sense that the apostle Paul had in this.

Jesus said, “Do not give what is holy to the dogs.” Meaning, do not attempt to give the word of God to people who prove themselves to be unbelieving scoffers, and thus the scoffers are dogs. So to the Hebrews, dogs were groveling scavengers feeding on refuse.

Now when this perception is applied to people, you can be sure that the Hebrews thought those people were for some reason objects of contempt, and therefore insignificant on the social scale for what was acceptable behavior.

Deuteronomy 23:17-18 "There shall be no ritual harlot of the daughters of Israel, or a perverted one of the sons of Israel. You shall not bring the wages of a harlot or the price of a dog to the house of the LORD your God for any vowed offering, for both of these are an abomination to the LORD your God.”

It should not come as any surprise, then, that there is something about dogs that is offensive to God. And you will see that whatever it is has something to do in this context with offerings, or a vow.

Now you should be able to understand at least a portion of the meaning here, because a dog in this context was a sodomite; the bottom of the scale in Hebrew society.

So here we see the concept Hebrews had toward dogs applied to human beings that they thought were the lowest groveling, scummiest, foulest things living off the refuse of humanity. So just like the female prostitutes, the dogs (the sodomites) charge for their services. But (and here is the important thing, we are getting around to this now), nothing that they earned was to find its way into God's Temple. It was dirty, filthy, unholy. And God wanted to have nothing at all to do with it. Their gifts were unclean then, and they are unclean today as well.

But God has the same attitude toward other things that may be offered to Him through other types of offerings. The central principle actually begins with the offering of Cain and Abel. Cain's offering was rejected, because it did not meet the criteria that God had established before both of those men. Abel’s did, Cain’s did not. Cain’s was dirty. It was the offering that was the equivalent of the dog here.

Let us go back to Exodus 12 and we will see a clear principle established in the Passover offering. We will just read the first phrase.

Exodus 12:5 Your lamb shall be without blemish. . .

Here is the foundational principle showing what is required of an offering. It must be without blemish. The offering of a dog was blemished. It was unacceptable.

Let us go to the book of Leviticus and this will suffice for all of the offerings that are in the book of Leviticus.

Leviticus 1:3 “If his offering is a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish.”

This principle extends into all the other offerings that are given within the Bible.

Now go to Leviticus 22, because I want you to see how this is expanded upon in other areas. Not all of the criteria for offerings are given in one area. There may be a specific that is mentioned here and there, and that is what we are going to look at here, a specific. The foundational one is the offering has to be without blemish.

Leviticus 22:24 'You shall not offer to the LORD what is bruised or crushed, or torn or cut; . . .

You probably understand crushed, broken, cut—you know what that meant? No castrated animal was allowed to be offered to God. It was deficient. The offering had to be whole, complete, the way that God created it. And so a castrated animal was not allowed to be used.

Leviticus 22:24-25 . . . nor shall you make any offering of them in your land. Nor from a foreigner's hand shall you offer any of these as the bread of your God, . . .

Are you beginning to see something here? The offering that you make cannot have come from a stranger and merely passed through your hands and on to God.

And so they were not allowed to make an offering, we will see this a little bit clearer as we go along, of something that a Canaanite had grown, let us say, and the Israelite then went out into the field and cut it and then gave it to God. Not good. Not good at all.

Now, the bread of your God is that which is put on the altar and burned. And of course that teaches us that what goes on the altar is seen in the imagery as though God is eating it.

Let me make a little bit of a comparison here. Would you eat maggots, worms, slugs, cockroaches, or beetles? You would not eat that. That is repulsive to you. Now, apply that same principle to God. He was pictured as eating what went on the altar. Is He going to eat something that came from the stranger's hand? Is He going to eat something that was not whole when it was offered? Was He going to eat something that was defiled in some way so that when it came to Him on the plate it was already dirty? He was repulsed by that. And the imagery is that which is of a dog.

Now the Israelites were in the eyes of God a holy people. And an offering that was not produced by them was not considered by God as being holy, and therefore it was unacceptable. An offering must be holy, and a holy offering can only be made by holy people.

I want to show you how far this extends.

Leviticus 18:24-25 'Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants.’

Would you eat vomit? Now this principle goes so far that God even considered the whole area of Canaan, as long as it was held in the hands of the Canaanites, the whole land was filthy, dirty, maggot infested. God did not want anything to come from that land. Even the very dirt that would grow the crops as far as God was concerned was defiled.

I think you can begin to see that God wants offerings to be pretty pure. And then the rest of these verses go on to show that Israel was not to allow the lands to get into that kind of a condition again by doing the things that the people who were being cast out from before them were doing.

Exodus 23:14-15 "Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year: You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt; none shall appear before Me empty).

An offering is indicated. And then He mentions one specifically. Not the Feast of Tabernacles, but the principle applies to whatever offering at whatever feast.

Exodus 23:16 And the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors. . .

Now this does not mean that you cannot work and give some money to your child to give because it came from your labor, and that is fine. A child is not expected to be working to give an offering.

Exodus 23:16 . . . which you have sown in the field; . . .

Not only did it have to be something that they reap, but also something that they have sown in their own fields.

Exodus 23:16 . . . and the Feast of Ingathering [which is where we are now] at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field.

So the offering has to come from your own labors that you have sown from your own field, and field in this context means your place of labor or work. So the offering that we make to God must be free of the taint of sin of any kind, otherwise they are blemished and unholy. The labor has to be clean labor not tainted by anything that is defiled in the eyes of God.

Now we will just say that the sodomite really worked at what he did. But was that labor clean? It was a forbidden thing. God will not accept money from some form of labor, no matter how hard the person works at it, if the labor itself is not from a clean occupation. So the question arises as to whether the church has the right, indeed, the responsibility, to even refuse money from tainted sources. The answer to that is absolutely, yes it does.

So the end, that is, the offering does not justify the means—that is how the offering was acquired. It is clear that the divine blessing cannot be on offerings gained from evil enterprises. And you know that there are churches out there in the world that accept money gained from taking advantage of people's lust for gambling. So when a church accepts money that is known to be unclean, it then cannot escape the appearance of evil in the eyes of observers of having condoned the sin, and coddled the sinner for the sake of the money. And therefore, if a church does that, it makes that which is sinful appear to be righteous—a gross hypocrisy for economic gain.

The important thing for us to understand is that to God how we earn the money we give as an offering is important. We must ensure that our wages that are gained by employment is righteous in God's eye; it is not degrading to ourselves, damaging to others, or dishonoring to God. We do not make dirty money holy by spending it wisely, even though it is given to God.

So the lesson: We all need to make sure that when we give offerings that it is honestly earned.

JWR/aws/drm