The other day on my commute home from work, the Holy Spirit brought to my mind the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4:1-16. He asked me a question with a slightly graphic representation in my mind and I paraphrase, “If I served your best food with a toilet bowl with feces in it, would you eat from it?” My spontaneous response was disgust, I literally cringed at the thought of it and it hit me. It hit me at that moment why God had respect for Abel and his sacrifice and He did not have respect for Cain’ and His sacrifice. In this scenario, there was a sacrifice to be offered to God, more or less food of thanksgiving to be offered to God. These sacrifices had to be served with vessels and these vessels were Cain and Abel. One of these vessels was clean and the other wasn’t clean. The unclean vessel serving the sacrifice automatically made the sacrifice unclean and unfavorable in God’s sight.
Sadly, the state of the unclean vessel and sacrifice as offered by Cain to the Lord is about the same kind of sacrifice many of us offer to the Lord to date. Today’s blog post is directed to you and me, brothers and sisters in the kingdom of God who serve the Lord. Fortunately for us, we no longer need to differ bulls and cows as burnt offerings to the Lord. Our offerings to the Lord are our consecrated lives lived in honor and worship of the Lord. Romans 12:1 sums it all up for us telling us to “present our bodies as living sacrifices, Holy and acceptable unto the Lord“. As believers in Christ Jesus who are called and ordained for a life of perpetual worship of the Father; it is important that we keep our vessels clean. It is important that we take into cognizance the state of the vessel from which our worship flows. Our Worship is more or less food to the Father; my local dialect says, “Ope ni ounje re”.
At this junction, it is noteworthy that our worship of the Father doesn’t start and end with the singing of songs and hymns. It encompasses the way we live our lives from waking to sleeping. I love how the Message Translation breaks it down Romans 12:1 – “Take everyday, ordinary life- your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking around life and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him.”
The Lord is a lot more interested in the vessel that is serving Him than the sacrifice itself; so many of us are focused on serving God without paying attention to the cleanliness of the vessel being used. When Cain approached God with his dirty vessel, the Lord said to him, “Sin lies at your door, eager to control you. But you should rule over it”- Genesis 4:7. Perhaps God is saying to you today, rule over sin in your life, clean up your vessel, present yourself Holy and acceptable to me today. Presenting ourselves as Holy and acceptable unto the Lord includes ridding ourselves of those besetting sins that may want to ravage our vessels with dirt and decay. These sins do not stop at just sexual immorality, it encompasses disobedience, malice, and harboring anger for years- the Lord says to us not to let the sun set over our anger- Ephesians 4:26-27. In summary, everything that strife with the spirit of God inside of us is sin.
With all of these said, I hope and pray we are able to identify those things that make our vessels dirty, clean it up, and remain clean. This way we can continue to serve the Lord with clean vessels.
Amen