Frankincense: An Offering Made By Fire

4/1/2024

LEVITICUS 24:5-9

“And you shall take fine flour and bake twelve cakes with it. Two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each cake.
You shall set them in two rows, six in a row, on the pure gold table before the LORD.
And you shall put pure frankincense on each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, an offering made by fire to the LORD.
Every Sabbath he shall set it in order before the LORD continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant.
And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place; for it is most holy to him from the offerings of the LORD made by fire, by a perpetual statute.”

The reading comes from a passage in the book of Leviticus, setting out details for the Great Feast of Tabernacles, and sets out the order for the Table of Shewbread and how the pure frankincense was to be put on the bread as a memorial and a perpetual statute.

What is frankincense? From research it seems to be a remarkable substance. When burnt the frankincense resin becomes white (which is often taken to represent purity or holiness), but research has shown that it has healing some properties — asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, osteoarthritis among others are conditions noted. Whether there is great efficacy in the substance or not, these two qualities, coupled with its rarity would be reason enough to include it among the three gifts to the infant Jesus.

The frankincense was part of what was called ‘the grain offering, and we read in Nehemiah 13:9 Then I commanded them to cleanse the rooms; and I brought back into them the articles of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense. We see that the frankincense is intimately connected with the grain offering in the tabernacle. And the grain offering is one made by fire. Fire takes the perfume, the aroma, the incense of the frankincense and makes it the sweet smelling savour, which goes through the veil into the holy of holies in the tabernacle. Remember that this offering made by fire happens in the Holy Place and is symbolic of the purification — the becoming holy — of the believer, in a walk with The Lord.

This gift of frankincense to the Holy Child Jesus was to reveal His future as holiness itself revealed in this world as a sign that God was being made manifest in His Son — that holiness was possible and indeed was in the world through the fire — the suffering of His Son and the saints. Heady scents and spices are always associated with the Spirit realm, just as are clouds, the air and anything insubstantial to our eyes.. These things reveal the Almighty in our everyday experience. We should be paying attention.

A garden enclosed
Is my sister, my spouse,
A spring shut up,
A fountain sealed.
Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates
With pleasant fruits,
Fragrant henna with spikenard,
Spikenard and saffron,
Calamus and cinnamon,
With all trees of frankincense,
Myrrh and aloes,
With all the chief spices--
A fountain of gardens,
A well of living waters,
And streams from Lebanon.
SONG OF SONGS 4:12-15

GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, MYRRH — Natalie Kendel

“The Holy Spirit is in charge here. We should write it for all to see on the lintels of every doorway we build. But since that might seem like so many words, we will do better: we will write it in our lives. And in all the lives we can reach out to and touch and inspire with the living Spirit of God.”
DAVID WILKERSON, ‘The Cross and The Switchblade’

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