The Wagley GroupFebruary, 2026 – Faithful Living® ~
February 2026
Faithful Living®
Joe Wagley
All of it…
I don’t know about you but I love the aroma of meat cooking on a charcoal grill. Even if I am not cooking outside but get a faint scent wafting through the air of someone else playing outdoor chef, I smile and inhale deeply! What is it about that particular smell? Maybe it takes you back to when you were a kid and your dad was the outdoor grill virtuoso on a camping trip or you remember times when you caught the smoker smoking your way… Any meal enjoyed in the outdoors, just tastes better!
The Bible records that the first cookout was not because the air was filled with the wonderful smells originating from the main course, but rather when Noah [Genesis 8] and his family are saved alive through the flood. As an act of complete surrender and devotion to God who saved them, Noah offered up ‘clean’ animals as an act of worship.
It is even postulated that Abel may have offered the first and best of his flock as a total burnt offering to the LORD in gratitude for how God had blessed him. Using this possible example alone, giving the first and best to God is the favored posture in adoration and praise to the One who provides our every need.
Additionally, the LORD commanded Abraham to offer his only son Isaac as a sacrificial burnt offering to God [Genesis 22]. El Shaddai was testing him to see if he was ‘all in.’ By faith, Abraham remained completely obedient in this trial. What is God’s response? At the last moment before Abraham rises to kill his only son Isaac, God provides a ram caught in a thicket to be used as the offering. God wants to know if we are ‘all in’ in our dedication and worship of Him and Him alone.
At this time, I need to make a confession: In my limited thinking in reading the book of Leviticus for years, I assumed that the sacrifices made on the altar, emitting a ‘pleasing aroma,’ were only because God loved the smell of the sacrifice, like I do the smoke rising from a grill. This is only partially true. God is Spirit, and why was I assigning just the olfactory sense alone to Yahweh as if He was human like me?
Believe me, I’ve asked for forgiveness. Isaiah 55: 8-9 ESV reminds us: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
As AI overview notes, “The Hebrew word for ‘burnt offering’ actually means to ‘ascend,’ literally to ‘go up in smoke’.” As the smoke rises allowing the heat of the fire to completely destroy the animal offered on the altar by these rituals; today, this signifies as presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice in honor and respect to our God. In rededicating our whole lives in this way, we renew our daily relationship as sinful men and women in relation to our perfect and Holy God.
These burnt sacrifices were also made to consecrate the individual, by actually anointing the altar with some of the animal’s blood. Hebrews 9:22 ESV, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Traditionally, the burnt offering had to be a perfect, unblemished male animal that was one year old from the flock or herd. God wants our perfection. “Be holy, for I am holy” Leviticus 11:44,45; 19:2; 20:7,26; as well as 1 Peter 1:16. God always wants our best as we pursue in earnest to be conformed more and more into the likeness of Christ.
These ritualistic sacrifices were offered every morning and evening in the Tabernacle and later the Temple. Then Jesus, by the single sacrifice of Himself to complete the requirement laid down by His Father for the forgiveness and redemption of humanities collective sins, Christ literally ended for all time, the animal sacrifice adopted over hundreds and hundreds of years in the ancient world.
I wonder if Jesus enjoyed the smell of roasting meat on the fire, like many of us. A more sobering thought however, is the notion that when He shared such a meal with His disciples and friends, was He ever reminded of the eventual destruction of His physical body by torture/crucifixion on Good Friday? If so, maybe we were on His mind even at these times, leading up to His full and complete ransom for our very souls.
Time and time again, all the bloodletting of the animals offered on the altar foreshadowed the ultimate sacrifice of our Lord on the cross for all of us.
Therefore, with grateful hearts, may we figuratively and faithfully offer our lives [‘all of it’] daily on the altar in pure dedication and love by giving God our very best!