Numbers.29.2 As an aroma pleasing to the LORD, prepare a burnt offering of one young bull, one ram and seven male lambs a year old, all without defect. (NIV)
Nobody can outrun the power of sacrifice. No matter what you give --time, money, food, self, for as long as you have made it a sacrifice carries a place in the spirit.
In our theme scripture, it was required by the law that the Israelites gather for a sacred assembly on the first day of the seventh month and prepare burnt offering to God; the animals being without defect.
As we continue with the journey in the Bible, we realize that the heart of God was really not in the animal sacrifices made.
Isaiah.1.11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. (KJV)
When we get into the new dispensation, we are awakened to the truth that all those sacrifices described in the law were a shadow of Christ who gave Himself as a perfect sacrifice to God for all men.
Then He called us to a greater level of sacrifice, that which Samuel saw when he said obedience is better than sacrifice;
Romans.12.1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship. (NIV)
There is no greater sacrifice to offer to God than ourselves --our hearts. I am not disqualifying material sacrifice, there is a place for all those but your heart is primary.
If then, we are offering ourselves as a living sacrifice, how do we give it without defect because that is what God wants.
We must offer ourselves holy and acceptable to God. But it is possible to offer yourself with defect and call it great sacrifice.
Today we are seeing people in the church ministry: singing, pastoring, preaching, prophesying and so on but their individual lives are misaligned from truth. But they are devoted.
Sin itself is undressed and dressed on like clothes. Undressed at the church entrance and put on while exiting. And it's becoming normal in this generation. Something is wrong.
In that case, the Grace message is not the fault or cause of that. For the Grace itself came to teach us to do right not otherwise. The problem is that they view sacrifice as an obedience to a law. And here is the point;
The Law sets up men in their weakness [frail, sinful, dying human beings] as high priests, but the word of [God 's] oath, which [was spoken later] after the institution of the Law, [chooses and appoints as priest One Whose appointment is complete and permanent], a Son Who has been made perfect forever.
The only way we can become sacrifice without defect and offer material without defect as well is through Jesus Christ. And when you come to His who was without defect, whose bones were not broken to prove the perfectness of His sacrifice, you too are made perfect.
1Peter.2.4 -5 As you come to him, the living Stone--rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him-- you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Hallelujah!
0 Comments