The Story of an Indian family, some Arabs and the Fragrance of Christ and our Favour-filled Life!
I’m going to write about the story of an Indian family.
Okay, I’m not racist. At least I try not to be.
Well, there’s just this Indian family that happens to be my neighbour. Only a staircase separates my apartment from theirs. I just have one problem with them. I really don’t know what they cook or what kind of oil they use but there’s just this intensely strong odour (they can beat Hugo Boss’s Intense for the longest lasting scent) that emanates from their flat.
And not only does the scent or smell emanates, it diffuses and every time the wind blows (and since we are having the Northeast Monsoon right now), the smell just smacks into your nose.
It’s really too over-powering!!!
I have had nasty thoughts flashing across my mind before - like: should I write a complaint letter to the Town Council, or should I just confront them about it.
The other day I was dressed very well, perfume and all, to go to church. And in stepped the mother and her daughter from that family while the lift door was about to close. You can imagine the expression on my face.
Okay, again, I’m not racist. But some things do try my patience.
Then last week, while I was reading the first chapter of the book “Finding Favor With The King” by Tommy Tenney, a small excerpt just caught my attention. Basically the author described his experience while staying in a London hotel. He wrote: “When I stepped into a hotel elevator…the full power of the fragrance instantly flooded my senses. That was when I realized it wasn’t the hotel that smelled so good. The elevator was already occupied by two veiled Middle-Eastern ladies and their husbands. They were the source of the indescribable fragrances.”
The author than commented on the fragrance to a hotel staff member who was with him inside the elevator after the Middle-Eastern couples have stepped out.
To which he was told: “You should see inside their room! They bring the fragrances from the Middle East to their rooms.
“The women lay out their clothes on a little latticework device before they wear them. They light trays of fragrant incense burners underneath the latticework frames so the fragrance saturates their clothes while they bathe or tend to other duties.”
And the author later went on to relate his experiences to the story of Esther.
Remember how she beat more than a thousand women to become Queen of Persia, and later we know, she helped save the children of Israel from an evil plot to annihilate them. She spent an entire year in preparation before she was allowed to meet King Xerxes, then King of Persia.
And the culture in Persia is such that the women were known to place spices and fragrant oils in incense burners and let them saturate their clothing. And it is a known historical fact that fragrant oils and spices were major exports of Persia.
Can you imagine what Esther, who, for one entire year, bathes, clothes and walks around in fragrant oils will smell like?
Just like the Indian family mentioned earlier, okay, maybe not, the Middle-Eastern couples described above!
After reading that chapter, I proceeded to shower and change for an appointment later.And God asked me this question during the shower: “Do you know favour also works like that?”
“Works like what, Father?” I asked.
And He said: “What you have just read…” My attention was brought to a verse I recalled reading about before in the Bible which says: “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.
For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.” (2 Corinthians 2:14-15).
Praise God!!!
We are the fragrance of Christ, among Christians and non-Christians, the verse says.
It is the fragrance of Christ that attracts the favour, that gives us favour with the people surrounding us. And we know that when we accept Christ, He is in us and we in Him.
The Bible says in Ephesians 5:2 that “And walk in love, as Christ has also loved is and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.”
Christ qualified us for all the favours, the grace and the blessings of God. He becomes our fragrance, the Bible says, that reaches to God as a sweet-smelling aroma.
I remembered Pastor’s teachings on fragrances in the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament.
I’m sure you guys know that in the Old Testament, the ordinary people cannot enter the Holy of Holies because they will die. Only the Most High Priest, that is Aaron, will enter into it, and the Bible says in Exodus 30:7-8: “And Aaron shall burn fragrant incense on it. Every morning when he dresses the lamps he shall burn it, and when Aaron sets up the lamps at twilight, he shall burn it, a regular incense offering before the LORD throughout your generations.”
Do you realize that your parents are doing the same thing to their gods every morning and every evening but they do not know what they are doing?
Because to them, it is but a ritual, that they saw their parents practice when they are little children, and therefore they now do.
But Praise Jesus, that today, he is our continuous incense, the sweet-smelling aroma that reaches to God’s throne, and qualifies us for all His blessings by His one-time offering on the Cross.
If you continue to read from Exodus 30, you will come across the passage about how Aaron and his line of priests should be anointed with fragrant oil and incense. And then it goes on to describe the fragrance that God instructed Moses to make to put in the Tabernacle where Moses will meet with God.And this is where Pastor taught on the compositions of the fragrances. They are a blend of sweet spices, stacte, onycha, galbanum and pure frankincense, seasoned with salt. And these are the root word (in Hebrew) and the meanings of the ingredients.
Ingredient: stacte
Root word (in Hebrew): nataph
Literal meaning: aromatic gum resin drop
Figurative meaning: to ooze in drops
Ingredient: onycha
Root word (in Hebrew): shacheleth (derived from “shachal”)
Literal meaning: an ingredient used in making incense
Figurative menaing: to roar, like a fierce lion of Jehovah
Ingredient: galbanum
Root word (in Hebrew): chelbanah(derived from “cheleb”)
Literal meaning: fat of humans or animals
Figurative meaning: choicest or best parts
Ingredient: frankincense
Root word (in Hebrew): labownah
Literal meaning: white resin burned as fragrant incense
Figurative meaning: pure, without blemish
Can you see the characteristics of Christ in all the ingredients just described above?
If we are indeed, as 2 Corinthians 2:15 says: “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.”
This means we ooze of Christ – He is the Lion of Judah, the Son of God, His Most Beloved Son, pure and holy without blemish.
Yet he became a sacrifice, an offering for us, that we might also become children of God, that we might come boldly before the throne of God with the righteouness of Christ.
If only secular Christian religiosity and Roman Catholicism have not depicted priests as the essential interceding authority between God and his children, many Christians nowadays are not aware of their priesthood status, and not just priests, the Bible calls us, but ROYAL priests.
Because the Apostle Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
But there are some of you who may ask, why then do we not necessarily have favour with everyone?
Since according to what I’ve just described, we oozed of Christ, we are a walking fragrance of Christ. We always have this perfume called Christ splashed on ourselves.
For two reasons – one, that we constantly lose awareness or consciousness of our priestly status in Christ as mentioned above, and two, the Bible says, continuing from 2 Corinthians 2:15-16: “To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life.”
In the New Living Translation, the same verse reads like this: “To those who are perishing we are a fearful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved we are a life-giving perfume.”
It’s the life of Christ in us, that is the life-giving perfume, which convicts sinners but gives life to those with a receiving heart.
For our Lord Jesus says in John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
Blessed people, we exude Christ, we ooze Christ!
Because we have the life of Christ!!!
And it’s His life that gives us favour with all around us. It’s not magic nor supernatural. It’s Christo-natural! You shall find favour everywhere you go, blessed people, because you are constantly carrying the perfume of Christ as sons and daughters of God!!!
Hallelujah!!! Praise Him!!!
In His Fragrance,
weiwen
posted by weiwen @ 4:56 PM
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