When I mention the word offerings, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Maybe you get a mental picture of your billfold, your purse, or checkbook. Maybe the image of an offering plate circulating around comes to mind. But I wonder if a different image comes to mind when I add the word “sacrifice.” A sacrificial offering. Maybe now the idea of animal sacrifice surfaces. We are, after all, undertaking the study of the Old Testament, and much is said on the topic of sacrifice. As we think about sacrificial offering the concepts of value and cost begin to emerge. There is a cost associated with offering and sacrifice. Ultimately sacrificial offering finds its fulfillment in the greatest and most perfect offering and sacrifice of the Lamb of God, the life of Jesus Christ. And as glorious as his sacrifice is, are we done with topics of offerings and sacrifice? Is there anything more for us to think about for the New Testament church, living under the New Covenant? When we take the Lord’s Supper together we are proclaiming the death of the Lord Jesus and He has charged us to do it in remembrance of Him. So I think the biblical understanding of sacrifice and offerings continue to be important. It is relevant for our lives today, and it is especially relevant for our worship. We do not want to worship in ignorance. As Jesus explained to the woman at the well. “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:22–24) It is absolutely necessary that we get both aspects of this right for us to worship God. And recall that it didn’t take the new nation of Israel very long to mess up in worshiping a false god, going so far in fact to create the golden calf. Someone might think, “Yeah that was a pretty stupid idea.” But yet, how easily do we become distracted, giving other things in our lives more priority in our hearts, essentially worshiping some other thing, or idol, in our lives? We were created to worship. More accurately, we were created to worship our Creator! We will worship someone or something. We will adore the world, ourselves, or we can worship God and do so rightly, as He has prescribed. God chose the Levites to help his people worship properly. God created us, and He created us to worship him. He gets to say how that worship is to be conducted. And the key we must remember, is that worship does not begin with us. It is not about our felt needs, or otherwise. Worship begins with God. Once we understand our place, (He is God, we are not, He is the Creator, we are the creatures) then we will understand that we are fallen creatures and we are of unclean lips as Isaiah said. He is Holy, Holy, Holy and we are not. Worship is to be focused on God, not on man. If you come away from worship thinking what a great time you had, how funny the sermon was, how entertaining it was, then you’ve got it wrong. If you come away from worship service, with a greater appreciation for how glorious, how magnificent, how wonderful our God is, how Holy He is, then your worship has its proper focus. And if you are a child of God, then you need to pay attention to lest you worship in ignorance, and not in spirit and truth.