Living Sacrifice

Oh Lord, how precious is Your name. You are the King, the Lord, the Messiah, the Love, the Hope, the Redeemer. You are everything to a lost world and everything to a found world. There is no one above You nor is there anyone who can measure up to Your greatness. We praise You as our Father, our Lord, and our King. Because of Your grace, we will one day get to experience Your ultimate presence once again. For in adam all die, and in Christ, we are made alive. We thank You for Your sacrifice, we thank You for Your love, we thank You for Your many names, and above all, we thank You for who You are. In Jesus name, may we reflect Your glory. Amen.

As I read through the Old Testament, hoping to find something to write this blog post on, I came across a passage that read "And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who had assembled before him, were before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered" (2 Chronicles 5:6). As you might expect, that italicized statement took me by surprise. I would venture to guess that some people may be so surprised by this statement that they would conclude "What? No way, that is just an exaggeration." Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. There is one thing that can be drawn from this passage without argument: there were A LOT of sheep and oxen being sacrificed.

I began to meditate on this piece of scripture and I thought "Why do they need to sacrifice so many sheep and oxen?" Do you have the same question? Well I think the question goes even deeper than that; Why did they sacrifice any animals? After-all, the sacrifices didn't cover their sins, Jesus did. There are some who hold the view that Jesus only covered the sins of those who came after him, I'm not one of them (Hebrews 10:4). So what was the point of all this seemingly pointless killing? Did the Jews even know or was it just a blind tradition that was being followed?

The Jews didn't sacrifice animals because it was a covering or atonement for their sins. They didn't sacrifice because Jesus' sacrifice just wasn't enough for those before him. The Jews of the Old Testament sacrificed animals without blemish as a way to worship and acknowledge God's godliness. They sacrificed animals to God because he was God and they weren't; this exercise reminded them of that. The sacrifice of animals reminded the Jews that they were the creation, not the creator. The sacrifices also showed their repentance of their sins to God. It represented a turning away from unrighteousness and a acknowledgement of their unrighteousness.

If then, these people who were followers of God were making sacrifices; not so that they would be redeemed, but so that God would be acknowledged as God, what sacrifices do we need to make in our lives today? You see, we don't sacrifice our time, our money, our whole lives to God because it redeems us and grants us salvation but because it reminds us that we are the creature and God is the creator. When we sacrifice ourselves to God, we must remember not to do it out of a prideful heart, because this defeats the purpose of the sacrifice. God is sacrificially glorified because he is the creator and we are to be sacrificially glorifying Him because we are the created.

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." - Romans 12:1