Taking What Belongs To God

Taking what belongs to God.  Remember from Leviticus that the priest was to burn certain pieces of the sacrifice on the altar to the Lord, as a pleasing aroma, and all the fat belonged to the Lord (Leviticus 3:16).  In our reading today, Eli was serving as priest during this time, but his two sons did not respect the Lord (1 Samuel 2:12).  Whenever a sacrifice was being made, Eli’s two sons would come and get the meat before the fat was burned and before the meat was boiled because they wanted it for themselves to roast it the way they liked it.  The people even knew better than the priests because they said, “The fat must be burned first; then you can take whatever you want for yourself” (v.16).  However, the priests would not listen to the people; they did what they wanted.  This just describes how corrupt things were during the time of Samuel’s upbringing.  The priests, the one’s whose duty it was to performed the sacrifices and who would have know the most about God’s rules for doing so, were the ones that were taking for themselves what belonged to God.  We, too, are called to present ourselves a living sacrifice unto God.  We belong to God because He purchased us.  Yet, how often do we do what we want instead of what God wants.   Isn’t that taking for ourselves what belongs to God?