Roses in bloom, jasmine in the morning, honeysuckle at night. Sweet, intoxicating scents reminding me of my childhood lead to floral wonderlands in my memory. My love of flowers is hereditary. Stemming from my grandmother and her affinity for roses and carnations down to my mother who named all her daughters after flowers, we love the scent of fresh flowers. A gentle fragrance fills the air and for a slight moment, flowers can make everything better.
Now take that sweet scent and contrast with with the stench of a high school locker room. Or a Cheveron gas station restroom in Barstow. Or a crowded Italian subway in the middle of July. One is a sweet scent while the other is a putrid stench.
As dichotomous at those comparisons are, sometimes we can be the same way. When there is sin and impurity in our life, there is a putrid, repugnant, recoiling odor emitted when we offer a sacrifice. When we harbor sin, when we cover sin, when we "lift up holy hands" and try to offer our sacrifices to the Lord while struggling with impurity, we offer up a repugnant stench, rather than a sweet aroma of praise.
Whether you are a mother and your children look up to you, a student on campus who people know is a Christian, a leader in ministry, a person of prominence in your field of work, a recent divorcee who is struggling keep balance in your life, WE MUST NOT BE LIKE THE PHARISEES who believed they were fragrant flowers, but were nothing more than stinky socks: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness (Matt. 23:27).
Stop faking the funk. We smell and no amount of Dakkar Noir or Cool Water (aka scents of the ghetto) can cover the odor. Be washed with Living Water and anointed with fragrant oil. It is then and only then we can be a sweet aroma unto the Lord (Lev. 3:5b).
