Warning! No “strange incense” (Ex 30:9), “strange fire” (Lev 10:1), or “strange gods” (Deut 32:16), KJV.
Surely the God who made us with the ability to enjoy at the same time the aromas of good cooking and the perfume of roses would know how to blend two complementary fragrances. There was not only the anointing perfume discussed in our last lesson; God also instructed Moses, “Take sweet spices, stacte and onycha and galbanum, and pure frankincense with these sweet spices; there shall be equal amounts of each. You shall make of these an incense” (Ex 30:34-35). The aroma from this would be decidedly different from the perfume, yet both were designed by the Lord to expend their substance for the blessing of others. Is this Paul’s idea when he wrote, “Walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma” (Eph 5:2)? The first time we hear of this, Noah made a sacrifice after the flood, “and the Lord smelled a sweet savor” (Gen 8:21, KJV) where the words could be translated “a savor of rest.” Christ’s sufferings are pictured when we read, “you shall beat some of it very fine” (Ex 30:36). Aaron was to “take a censer full of burning coals of fire from the altar before the Lord, with his hands full of sweet incense beaten fine, and bring it inside the veil” (Lev 16:12). Can you see the two on the Emmaus road, when “Jesus Himself drew near and went with them” (Lk 24:15)? How disheartened they were! But then the High Priest placed incense beaten fine on the censers of their hearts: “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” He said, and “expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (vv 26-27). “And they said…‘Did not our heart burn within us while He…opened the Scriptures to us?’” (v 32). This is true worship.