Sacrifice

And how honor and respect is disappearing from the American landscape and can have an effect on us. And it is important for all of us to be respectful of each other and keep that in mind, that part of the way we honor God is the way we treat each other and the way we look out for each other and the way we honor and respect each other. Today I want to talk about honoring God. Honoring God, because as important it is, as it is for all of us to honor and respect each other, to honor and how we honor and how we respect God is even more important than that. You know, God has given us a very great gift in calling us and making us part of His family and letting us know what we know today. And there's many things we do to honor Him. You know, there's many words that you could come up with. If I was going to ask, how do we honor God? We would say, well, we worship Him, we love Him, we trust Him, we rely on Him, we depend on Him, we thank Him. And all those things are true. All those things are true, and all those things we should do. But there is one word and one thread in the Bible that goes from Genesis all the way to the end of the Bible that started in the Old Testament, of course, way back after Adam and Eve, sinned in the Garden of Eden, that applies for all mankind until the time for mankind's time on earth and physical mankind is up. And that word that we'll talk about today, we can find, as I said, back at the beginning of the Bible. So let's go back to Genesis 4. And in Genesis 4, we have the time Adam and Eve have rejected God, they've taken the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they've decided they want to do things their own way, they want to make their own way, their own judgments, and not follow God. And in chapter 4, they have children. Now, you remember at the end of chapter 3, they're issued, they're ushered out of Eden. God does show that there will be a Messiah. Excuse me, a Messiah that will come, that will reconcile man to God again. But in chapter 4, they have two sons. Let's just pick it up in chapter 4, verse 1. It says, Adam knew Eve his wife, she conceived and bore Cain, and said, I've acquired a man from the eternal. And then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was the tiller of ground. And in the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit to the ground to the eternal. Also brought of the firstborn of his flock and their fat. And God respected Abel and his offering, but he didn't respect Cain and his offering. Cain, as you remember, was very angry and that led to the murder of Abel.

So here, very early in the Bible, we have a concept that we see throughout it. Cain and Abel, somewhere along the line, God instructed them, when you approach me, when you come before me, come before me with an offering. Come before me with a sacrifice. You do something when you approach me. Now, when you look at the Hebrew word that's translated, offering there, it comes from Strongs 45-03. It's defined as a gift offered to a divinity, a sacrifice, often used for sacrifice that is not a bloody sacrifice. So when you see offering in the Old Testament, offering, it's a voluntary thing. It's not maybe with animals, but it's something that people are sacrificing to God, giving something of themselves, something of value to them, to God. When you read the word sacrifice, it often has to do with an animal being sacrificed and blood being spilled, and you remember what that pictures in God's plan and how Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled those sacrifices.

But here we have Cain and Abel coming before God. They both come before an offering. They know that they're going to approach God. They need to come before him with a sacrifice. Cain comes with a sacrifice of the fruit of the ground, an appropriate sacrifice when you look in Leviticus, where it talks about the various sacrifices that later God re-instructs Israel that they need to do. But God doesn't have respect for Cain's sacrifice. He does have respect for Abel's sacrifice. Abel sacrificed one of the first born of his flock. And when God looked at the attitudes, if you will, of the two young men who came before him, one, he said, you've got the right attitude in approaching me.

You sacrificed exactly the way I said, and you're coming before me with the exact attitude that you should have when you come before me. But Cain, on the other hand, it doesn't say whether it was the first fruits of what he had grown or just any old offering that he put together to bring before God because he was just going through the motions. He just thought, okay, we know that if we're going to approach God, we need to do this. I've got to bring an offering to him. Let me just throw something together, and hey, I fulfilled his requirement.

But God, more deeply than just what we physically do, he was looking for more from those two young men, as he was through the people of the Old Testament who sacrificed and who always approached God with sacrifices. And we learned something in there that when we approach God, sacrifice is something that is part of the definition. Sacrifice is part of worship. Sacrifice is part of the love of God. Sacrifice is part of the trust of God, faith in God, dependence in God, reliance on God, and all those things that we do.

Now, it's not only Cain and Abel who sacrificed. Let's go forward a few chapters here to Noah. Noah, of course, the only family that was saved through the Great Flood. God prepared an ark for them. And as they exited the ark after the flood, and all the earth was destroyed, every living thing except Noah and his family had died, obviously they were quite thankful. As well they should be, as you and I would be when we saw God naturally preserve us through such a traumatic experience.

And in chapter 8 of Genesis in verse 21, let's begin in verse 20, after they exited, it says, Noah built an altar to the eternal, and he took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and he offered burnt offerings on the altar. Now, as he got off of the ark, what he did first, build an offer, took of those clean animals and clean birds, then he offered a burnt offering.

He was approaching God and thanking God exactly the way God had taught him. You're going to come before me, even in thanksgiving, bring something, acknowledge me, sacrifice something. And as God looked at Noah's attitude, as he saw his heart, as he saw the thankfulness that that was in him, and what he had done, and how he did what he did, and how he came before God in exactly the way God had instructed him to honor him, it says in verse 21 that God smelled a soothing aroma. It was pleasant to him. It was good for him to see the complete submission of Noah, to see the complete gratitude of Noah and his family, the complete the complete yieldedness to him, and acknowledgement that everything they did and the fact that God brought them through that time was there.

Sacrifices were a soothing aroma. In the physical sense, maybe God was was doing that, but in the spiritual sense, it was a soothing aroma to God to see the attitude of Abel, to see the attitude of Noah. A few chapters later, chapter 22, we see Abraham, a man of God. An example for all of us of how he yielded to God and how he approached God, the relationship that he had with God. God called him a friend, a friend, and everything that God asked Abraham to do, he did. And through his life, you know, there were things that Abraham sacrificed.

Sacrifice was part of his life, part of his worship for God, and it came to the point where God, in chapter 22, asked him to give the most valuable thing to him to offer to him. Genesis 22, in verse 2, God said to Abraham, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. Offer that to me. I know how important Isaac is to you. I know how much you love him. Come to me and give him to me.

Offer him as a sacrifice, a burnt offering. You know, Abraham didn't even hesitate. Abraham knew what God wanted, and Abraham was willing to sacrifice even Isaac to show God how much he honored him, worshiped him, loved him, trusted in him, had faith in him, knew that he would provide, knew that he was everything and above everything, even Isaac.

He was willing to sacrifice. And so, as you go through the story, you know it. Noah was just that close, that close, to sacrificing Isaac when God said, don't do it. Now I know Noah, or now I know Abraham. Now I know Abraham that there's nothing you won't withhold from me. There's nothing that you wouldn't sacrifice for me. So, down in verse 12 is exactly what he says, and God said, don't lay your hand on the lad, don't do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you haven't withheld your son, your only son, from me. There was still a sacrifice to be given. Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horn. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. Even in that, God provided the offering the sacrifice, and Abraham willingly offered it. And Abraham called the name of the place the Lord Will Provide. Something in a name we could often remember, God Will Provide. God looked at the soothing aroma that went up from Abraham's willingness to sacrifice, to do the things that he said, the attitude that he had toward God, that I won't withhold anything. I won't withhold anything from you, because I trust you and worship you that much. Later on in Genesis, chapter 31, chapter 31, we find Jacob. Jacob is a man who by this time has left his mother and father. He's gone to Laban. He's married Leah. He's married Rachel. He's had sons and daughters, and now he's left Laban going back to reconcile or going back to his homeland. But on the way, after he leaves Laban, Laban finds out that he's left. He didn't bother telling him that he was going to leave, and there's an issue that arises between the two men as Laban comes and says, you've done this, you've done that, and everything. And there's a there's a relationship problem that's here. So in chapter 31 and verse 54, as they talk and as they've come together, it just says, Jacob offered a sacrifice on the mountain. He offered a sacrifice on the mountain, and he called his brethren to eat bread, and they ate bread, and they stayed all night on the mountain. Well, here's a sacrifice. Come before God, engage him, and then they stay and they eat, and they stayed all night on the mountain. And early in the morning, Laban arose and kissed his sons and daughters and blessed them. And then Laban departed and returned to his place. And the relationship is back in order. So throughout Genesis, we can see before there ever was a nation of Israel, before there ever was, Mount Sinai mentioned one who defined it. God is the one who made it happen. But here in Leviticus 7, Leviticus 7, after he gives instructions for all the sacrifices, and there were many of them that Israel needed to comply with, in verse 37 of Leviticus 7, he sums it up. Leviticus 7, verse 37, it says, this is the law of the burnt offerings.

Well, we've learned about burnt offerings. God instructed Israel, okay, you're out of Egypt, this is how you worship me, this is how you love me, this is how you approach me. Burnt offerings. Burnt offerings were frequent in Israel. They were a voluntary offering to show commitment to God, to show commitment to God. It could be an offering for an unintentional sin that was committed. He says there's the law of the grain offering because there was a time you could bring a grain offering before God of the first fruits of the ground. And often that was also a voluntary offering. And most of the time God said when you bring it, break it into an unleavened bread or an unleavened cake, it was for the purpose of expressing thanks to God.

Here's the grain, we thank you for the fruit of the field. Here's our offering and our sacrifice to you. We'll say thank you, but we will show thank you through this offering and the sacrifice that we make to you. The grain offering, the sin offering. The sin offering was a mandatory offering. I know that Jesus Christ was the ultimate sin offering. He sacrificed His blood that our sins could be forgiven, but in ancient Israel they didn't have Jesus Christ at that time, the forgiveness of sin. And God said, you know, there's sin between you and me. When you're going to approach me, there's a sin offering that has to be offered. You need to come there. They should have learned the lesson and they will learn the lesson when they're resurrected, that the blood, it takes blood to cover the sin. And ultimately we know that it was Jesus Christ's blood who covers our sins. And so we don't have the animal sacrifices today, but then that day they did, and sin offerings was for every man, woman in Israel. And it was a mandatory offering. If you're going to approach God, you need a sin offering to atone for that sin. There was a trespass offering. There was a trespass offering. That was also for an intentional sin. In our sins have consequences, and sometimes with the trespass offering it was there had to be some kind of preparation made to the offended part. And the priests would get involved in that, and they would handle that. There'd be a trespass offering, and something would be reinstituted for the offended party, if that was the case. And then finally, finally you had the peace offer.

You had the peace offer. You know, it was brought, that was brought, and the parties would eat together. Sometimes it was for the reconciliation, to heal arguments. Sometimes it was just a thank offering. But it's interesting that God's called it the peace offer. You know, when you look at the offerings, and what God instructed Israel to do, and why they were offering those sacrifices, He was showing them how they needed to live. You need to come before Me, and I need to heal all these things with you. I'm the one who forgives sins, not through the blood of animals, as we know.

There's consequences for your sin. There's thank offerings that you need to bring to Me, because I provide everything. And there's peace offerings and thank offerings, and all these things that you need to do. When you come before Me, I have all these offerings, and you approach Me, and I can heal it, and I can heal every aspect of your life. When you look at the offerings and the sacrifices that God commanded for Israel to have, and to bring before Him.

And there were a lot of sacrifices. There were a million people, or more, you know. Some estimates are three million people wandering in that wilderness, where that tabernacle was, and then later the temple. Think of all the sacrifices those people were bringing.

All the sacrifices those people were bringing.

Did Israel ever get the message of what the sacrifice was for? Did they ever get it?

I don't think they ever got it. You know, maybe they complied with the instructions, I'll kill the fatted calf, I'll kill the lamb without blemish of the first year.

But they didn't get what God was going after. They went through the motions, but they didn't let it hit their heart. They didn't get it. We turn over to 1 Samuel. 1 Samuel 15.

After the period of Moses, after the period of Joshua, after the period of the Judges, Israel has a king. They have their first king Saul. And you remember Saul. He was a disappointment to God. He didn't trust in God. He didn't pay attention to the detail of what God instructed him to do. And Samuel, as he's talking to him, as Saul is being rejected, in 1 Samuel 15, in verse 22, he says this, Samuel said, Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the eternal? I think that's what God was interested in, Israel. I think that's what God was interested in, Saul. Was he just interested in animals being killed? Was he just interested in grain being brought to him? Was that the thing that was pleasing him? What was he looking for in that? Israel? No, he was looking for you to obey him, to come before him, and to honor him, and to worship him for who he is. That you would bring anything before him, and you realize when you come before God, you're bringing something to him, that he's to be approached in the way that he wants. You know, obedience. He says here, you know, not to excuse, because for the rest of Old Testament times, as long as there was a temple, there were sacrifices that needed to be offered. But Samuel says, let's see, looking for, he's looking for your obedience, and obedience is the ultimate sacrifice, isn't it? Obedience to God in all the letter of the law, and all the spirit of the law, is the ultimate sacrifice. I don't know about ultimate sacrifice. It is a great sacrifice. When we obey God, today we're sacrificing to him, sacrificing our will, sacrificing our wants, sacrificing maybe what we want to do. God says, do it, we do it. Not to just go through the motions, like the Israelites sometimes did with their sacrifices. But because we do it, because we love him, because he is that real to us, because we see him as the being who can provide everything we need, who can heal all our diseases, heal all our hurts, heal all our relationships, walk us through life and see us through, and deliver us into his kingdom. If we yield to him, if we sacrifice our lives to him.

And so, Samuel says, you know, you're not getting it, Israel. You're not getting it.

So, did God abandon the idea of sacrifice at that time? They say, well, it was a nice experiment.

But here in the Old Testament time, it didn't do what I thought it was going to do.

Do we do away with sacrifice? Jesus Christ came. He was the ultimate sacrifice. There is no temple today that we sacrificed in, but a sacrifice is still something that we should be concerned with today as our forefathers were. Let's go to 1 Peter. Well, as you're turning over to 1 Peter, 1 Peter 2, let me remind you of the temple. You've all seen pictures of the temple. Maybe I should have brought one to put one on the screen before me here. But you remember as a temple, in the descriptions of the Tabernaclean temple that God gave several times in the Bible, there would be the Holy of Holies. Remember who was able to go into the Holy of Holies, where the mercy seat was, where you could approach God? That was just the high priest. Once a year, he would go into that place. And then you had the outer court of the temple with the walls around it. And as you came into the outer court of the temple, what was there when you walked into the temple?

The altar was there. The altar was there. And when you look at the description that God gave of the altar to build, He was specific in exactly how that altar was going to be built. Remember Noah built altars, Abraham built altars, our forefathers, our people, they built altars to offer sacrifices. So God was specific in how that altar should be built. And when it was sanctified, it was for seven days. It was to be purified before they could even start using it. It was that important to God what the altar would be. And that altar was there. So when you came into the outer court of the temple, what did you do before you could ever enter the Holy of Holies?

Sacrifice. The sacrifices were there. The altar was there. That was the first thing you would see. Sacrifices to God. And the high priest, no one could approach God without sacrifices. Even on the Day of Atonement, there were sacrifices made to him as he approached God. But as you entered into the outer court of the temple, sacrifices were there and they were for everyone in Israel.

God put a lot of time, a lot of thought, if you will, into that sacrificial system. It means a lot when you look at what he was doing and what was behind it all. Did he abandon it? Well, in 1 Peter 2, we see Peter speaking of this. Let's pick it up in 1 Peter 2 and verse 1. He says, Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby.

If, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, coming to him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, speaking to you and me, and everyone that God calls, you also as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, no longer a physical temple, now a spiritual temple with us as a group, now a individual temple in each of us. You also as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. Why? To offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Is sacrifice something that God wants us to think about today?

Is sacrifice something that we should be cognizant of in our life today? Peter got it. Peter understood the correlation. He understood what God is doing, what he was doing in the physical back there in the Old Testament. He's doing spiritually now.

Spiritual temples, spiritual building, spiritual sacrifices that he expects us to have, and those sacrifices are the thread that goes through our worship, our love, our trust, our dependence, our reliance, our faith. And without the attitude of sacrifice, we do not please God. Our actions do not arise as a soothing aroma to him, just like they didn't in ancient Israel.

He looked at the attitudes back then because he could see right to the heart of what Cain and Abel did, and he knew which offering and sacrifice was pleasing to him. And he looks right through to us and sees what is our attitude. Do we have that sacrificial element to our worship, to our love, to our faith, to our dependence, and everything that God wants us to have?

You know, as you look at sacrifices and you think about them, there's many things that you can draw conclusions from. I've got just a couple points that I want to talk about in the rest of the sermon today. Things that we can remember about the sacrifices that Israel should have learned, that we can learn because what they should have learned and what God built into that system back then, the lessons for them are the same lessons for us today. Number one, the sacrifices should have taught Israel and they teach us that God is first. He is first. Above all and beyond all in our lives, He is first. It's the very first commandment. Jesus Christ said, it's the greatest commandment. The first commandment is the greatest commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul. And the second is like it. Love the neighbor. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's the first commandment. God above all. God first. You look at the Old Testament, you look at the things that we talk about today. First is all over the Old Testament. You had the first born.

What were the first born? They were consecrated to God. The first born of men were redeemed to God. Remember that? He said, I redeemed those and you redeemed them to me. And they were the Levitical priesthood that He said, are redeemed to me from your first born. But the first born belonged to me. The first fruits, He said, belonged to me. Today we're called first fruits. God refers to us as first fruits. The first of those who He's working with, of all of mankind. A tremendous opportunity, a tremendous blessing that God looks at us that way and has called us. He says, your first fruits, you're reserved for me. Just like the first born, the first belong to God. We talk about first tithe. Who does the first tithe belong to? Is it ours? It belongs to God. Leviticus 27, 30 says, it's God's. It's not ours, it's His. It's His. Over and over when you see first, it's God's. Sacrifices tell us, and the sacrificial attitude tell us, I honor God first. I obey God first. I choose Him first. If I have to sacrifice my own self, if I have to sacrifice my own ideas, if I have to sacrifice my own convenience, if I have to sacrifice my own comfort, I obey God first.

It's all over. It's all over the Old Testament. And it's all over the New Testament for us today. We put God first. If we are obeying Him and loving Him and following Him in the way that He asks us to do. Well, we're going to talk about it, though. Let me just spend a few minutes on first tithes. It's been, I don't know if I've ever talked about tithes before, but since we're talking about first, let me talk about first tithes, because I know there is some confusion, not in the church, but I know there's out there that says, oh, tithing was an Old Testament thing. It was just for ancient Israel. It doesn't apply today. It's something that God gave Israel to support the temple back then. Let's go back and let's look at a few verses here and see, because what God put in the beginning with mankind, it stays there for the beginning. God doesn't change. He knew what the plan for mankind was. He knew how He wanted mankind to relate to Him. So let's go back. And again, just like we could see in sacrifice, we can go back to Genesis and we can see men well before the time of Israel and Sinai tithing. Let's look at Genesis 14. Genesis 14, we have the story of Abraham. He's gone out. There's been kings that come and have plundered Sodom and Gomorrah. Before Sodom, Gomorrah was so bad that God was going to destroy it. Lot's been carried away in His positions. Abraham went out under God's direction, and He's brought all that back to him.

And in chapter 14 and verse 18, it says this. After Abraham comes back victorious, it says, then Melchizedek. We all know who Melchizedek is, right? If you don't, look at Hebrew 7. It tells you who Melchizedek is. The Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was the priest of God Most High. And he blessed Abraham and said, blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand. It's God who did it, Abraham. You went out there and you did the work and you landed him. It was God who gave it to you. And what did Abraham do? He gave God a tenth of all. He gave God a tithe of all. Now Melchizedek didn't take him aside. We don't read this like, okay, here's what you do. Here's what you do. Abraham knew. God's given this to me. I'm going to honor him first. You know, Proverbs 3.9 says, honor God with your possessions. Honor him with your possessions.

Our money, our wealth, our income, it comes from God. Honor him first. Abraham did it well before, Sinai. Well before, that's all recorded for us in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In Genesis 28, we have his grandson Jacob.

He's had a dream of a ladder going up to heaven. He sees God. He recognizes God. He chooses God that he will follow him. And in chapter 28 of Genesis, verse 20, says, Jacob made a vow to God, saying, If God will be with me and keep me in this way that I'm going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on, so that I come back to my father's house in peace, then he shall be my God. And this stone, which I have set as a pillar, shall be God's house. And of all that you give me, all that you give me, I will surely give a tenth to you.

You've blessed me. I give it back to you. I recognize you as the provider of everything I have.

It's an act of sacrifice. You come before God. You recognize who he is. You recognize that he is our provider, that everything we have and every will have comes from him. Now, after Israel came out of Egypt and God had to re-educate them in how to honor him, how to live life and give them the way of life that would lead to their blessings and happiness and prosperity and everything else, he instructed them in all those ways, too. God was a very important part. And he told them, these are all the things you need to do, and this is how you do it. And he told them, what's it going to do? You're going to do it? This is going to be for the administration of the tabernacle, the temple, and all those things. It's my work. It's what I'm interested in. This is what's going to happen during that time. I mentioned Leviticus 27, verse 30. That specifically says, that is God's. Let's go to Malachi 3 to highlight that it is God's and that we do have a responsibility to honor God with our possessions. And when we do it, there's a blessing in it.

In Malachi 3, God asks Israel a question, will a man rob God? Will a man rob God?

Well, Israel is like, what? How do we rob you? Yet you've robbed me. And you say, in what way have we robbed you, God? Any answers? In tithes and offerings. They belong to me. You've forgotten me. You've forgotten to sacrifice to me. You know, when you look at the Old Testament, when you look at what God expected of Israel, it wasn't. It was a pretty expensive religion, if you will. There was first tithe. There was second tithe. There was third tithe. There were offerings, burnt offerings, voluntary offerings, thank offerings, peace offerings. All those things had to do with animals that they were being sacrificed and giving to God.

On holy days, they were told, don't come before God empty. Bring an offering to me. When you look at everything that God asked them to do, it was something that they were continually reminded, everything I have is from God. And I owe him the respect of showing him that what I have, I know he provided. And they were supposed to do it. You know, if they sat down and wrote it on paper, they might have thought, you know, this just can't work. This just can't work. I can't do it.

But God went on and said, you know, bring the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food. Try me now. If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it. And sometimes we can look at life and we can look at that and say, what? We can't afford that. We can't do that. No, on paper, we can't do it.

No, logically, it doesn't make sense. But we forget it's God who commanded it. And God can make anything happen. And He promises if we build the faith in Him, to honor Him first in all we do, that if we build the trust in Him, that if He says it, even if it doesn't make sense in our mind, or we just look at it and say, we can't do it, I just simply can't do it, if we do it, He will bless.

He promises He will. And those have been in the church a long time. You've heard stories where that is exactly what has happened, and things that have happened to people that make no sense physically. But God blesses. He does it. It's the law of the firsts. No, Jesus Christ from the New Testament, when He's chiding the Pharisees, He says, you know, you bring your tithe of mint and common and anise, but you do these other things, He goes, you shouldn't have left those undone.

He validates the issue you should have done. This is a law of God that was put in the beginning of man to remind man who God is and what He can do and what He does, regardless of whether it makes sense. Because when we sacrifice to God, we learn faith.

We learn trust. We learn to put Him first and put self in our own ideas and any human logic aside. You know, 1 Corinthians 9 verse 13, you can write that down. Paul is talking about the same thing that God was talking about back in Numbers 18, about the administration of that and how it works. And in Matthew 28, 19, Jesus Christ would He say, go therefore and teach all nations to observe everything I have commanded you.

Everything. Teach them about first. Teach them about all these things. Teach them about worship, love. Teach them about an attitude of sacrifice. So we have a law of firsts that is there. We can talk about that and we know about, we should know about that, and we should look at that and say, God is first, and He tells us and shows us in the Bible, He must be first.

The second thing is, like it but not the same. There's a cost to sacrifice. There's a cost to sacrifice. And I don't like talking much about money. I'm not talking about just dollars when I talk about there's a cost to sacrifice. You know, back in 2 Samuel, 2 Samuel 24, David makes a comment. David, a man after God's own heart. You know, some of the things that David did and the things that he said we can learn so much from in 2 Samuel 24, David wants to give something to God and someone steps up and says, you know what, I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you to give to God. Now, that's a noble thing. I mean, maybe we want to give something to God and someone has it and they say, you know what, I'll give it to you. You can turn it over to God and whatever. But notice what David says in 2 Samuel 24 verse 24. So as David said to Arana, no, I will surely buy it from you for a price.

For I, nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing.

I'm offering to God. There's going to be a cost to me. I'm not going to offer anything to him that doesn't have a cost to me because it's part of me that I'm given, something I give up when I come before God, something that may hurt a little bit, something may think us think a little bit, something that may be a little uncomfortable, but we offer it to God as a sacrifice.

And David said, I'm not bringing anything to God that costs me nothing. Nothing.

Over in Luke, Luke 21, Jesus Christ is sitting outside the temple, and he's just watching what's going on around the temple, and there was a lot going around the temple. Just think of all the people that were offering sacrifices day and night at the temple. The temple was a very active place. There were active sacrifices going on all the time in that temple. It wasn't just a one-time-a-year thing, it wasn't just on holy days, or anything. It was all the time there were sacrifices going on. Any number of sacrifices from all those people that were always going up before God. In Luke 21, Jesus Christ is watching the coming and goings of the temple, and people were bringing their offerings there and everything. In Luke 21, it says, Christ looked up and he saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. Here they were, they were giving an offering, and they were kind of dropping some in. That was good. That was what they should do. He says nothing wrong with that. And he saw a certain poor widow putting in two mites. And so he said, truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all. Maybe not in dollars and cents, but look what she did. All those others who put in their money, you know, they put in their money, and it's a good thing they did. He never chides them.

Never says a bad thing about it, but they weren't going to miss a meal when they went home.

They weren't going to miss anything when they went home. They gave an offering to God.

But here's this poor widow. And Christ looks at her and says, look what sacrifice she did.

She gave it all. She gave all when I'm looking at it, and the sweet aroma that goes up, look where her heart was. I'll give it all to God. I'll give it all to God and trust in Him. And he goes on and says, all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had. No, I'm by absolutely no means advocating that any of us should do that, okay? I'm saying, look what God and Jesus Christ said when He looked at what that widow did. If she sat down and she got out her checkbook or put together her budget, it'd be like, I don't even have enough to live on. How do I even give God anything?

But she sacrificed. She built trust. She built faith, and she did it anyway. It might have been whatever two mites is, I don't even know, a very small amount. But she did it anyway, even though it made no sense. Now, God isn't looking for us to do that. Like I said, He didn't shied the people, you know, the rich who put in more than that, but He's looking at the heart. Look what she sacrificed. It hurt. It cost her something. And it cost her something in dollars and cents, but not all sacrifices cost in dollars and cents. And I certainly don't want to leave that impression on everyone or anyone. Today, there are sacrifices that have a cost to us. It may not be something that we can quantify and put a dollar and a cent amount on it, but there are sacrifices that are alive and well and that God wants us to be thinking about when we go about our lives today.

And I've got several of them listed here that we'll spend some time talking about.

But we can think back to the time when we came into church, you know, when we first started coming. Maybe it was when we were younger, maybe when we were adults, whatever it is. And you know when God opened our minds, that when we understood the truth, there were sacrifices that we had to make.

It wasn't as come into the church and live your life as you always has, there were sacrifices that we had to make. You know, one of them, one of them for almost everyone, was we had to look at the law of clean and unclean meats. Remember that? All of us at some time of our lives, maybe some who have been born in the church never have, but all of us at some time in our lives, you know, there was there was there was ham and there was bacon and there was all these things that were pork or lobster or whatever, you know, your unclean food was. That was part of our life. And when we saw what God commanded in the law, the laws that he had put in place there, the law of the clean and unclean meats that we see even before Sinai, that we saw Noah, you know, paying attention to way back, even before the flood, that was something we had to sacrifice, wasn't it? And if we love God, and if we wanted to walk with him, it's like, you know what? I may really like that ham. I really might, I really like lobster, but you know what? I'm gonna have to give it up. I'm gonna have to sacrifice that for God. I love him more than I love that. Now, you might think that's a silly little thing to talk about, but this goes back years ago. It wasn't anyone in the Orlando area so you don't have to think. She never came to church. And I know Debbie and I visited her one day and she'd been, you know, she knew about the Sabbath. She knew about a lot. She'd been taking magazines for years. We went to visit her and she wanted to start coming to church.

Her stumbling block was clean and unclean meats. When she understood that, oh, oh, I have to give up lobster. Oh, I have to give up that. She simply said, I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't live without this and I can't live without that. I mean, it's kind of stunning when this happens. It's like, no, I can't do it. You know, she never came to church. She never called back. I thought you wouldn't even sacrifice that for God. You looked at that little that you can't even sacrifice what you eat. You know, it goes to the concept of obedience, right? We obey God. It's a sacrifice.

It's a sacrifice to obey God. It's not easy. The lifestyle that God calls us into is different.

You know, you heard our young man who gave the sermon at last week, our teen. He talked about what it was like and what it hurt to sacrifice the last half of that soccer game, right? It hurt to obey God. He did it anyway. It was a sacrifice. You and I did it when God called in and we looked at Saturdays. It's like, wow, Saturdays are college football games or college basketball games, Friday nights are this and that and whatever. You mean we have to give up that 24-hour period and give it to you, God? You're going to ask us to give us that you, that 24-hour period?

Ah, yeah, it's a sacrifice. Can't follow God unless you sacrifice that time. Honor Him with your substance. Honor Him with your time. You know, you talk about the Sabbath day. Some people think the Sabbath day is, if I just don't work, that's all that God wants me to do. No, this commandment is pretty clear. We don't work on the Sabbath, but there's a lot more we don't do on the Sabbath. It's time reserved for God. It's not just, don't work. Let's go back to Isaiah 58 for a minute. Isaiah 58. As you read through the Bible, Sabbath is certainly a time for rest, resting from our labors, resting from the work that we do each week. But Isaiah 58 and verse 13, he says this about the Sabbath day. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, turn away your foot, the thing that you want to do. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable. And if you will honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you will delight yourself in the Lord. And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. Now you don't read the word work anywhere in that time. God says on the Sabbath day, don't look to your pleasure. That day is not for you. The other six days are for you. The other six days are to work. The other day six days are for your pleasure. The other six days are for you to do the things. But on my Sabbath day, God says, it's my time. You offer up as a sacrifice with the right attitude toward Him. I'm giving God my time. I'm giving it the way He wants. I'm not having my foot in it. It's not my will, but His will. What He wants, not what I want. I will learn the Sabbath day, and I will keep it the way He said to keep it.

You know when we do it? It's a sweet-smelling aroma to God. When He sees the heart of a people and people and persons that keep the Sabbath day the way that He said to keep it. Not working, not finding their own pleasure, doing what He said to do, being where He said to be, following every instruction about the Sabbath that's there is part of obedience.

It's part of obedience. It's part of our sacrifice to God. Part of how we worship Him, part of how we learn to love Him, part of how we learn to trust Him, rely on Him, depend on Him, call Him our God, and do what He says.

Part of putting Him first. And there's a cost. There's a cost. Sometimes it's more comfortable to just not be where God says to be. There's a cost to be where He said to be. Sometimes we think it's more convenient. I can do this, I can do that, and whatever, and it's just as good.

Sacrifice to God. Remember, when you do these things, you're offering a sweet-smelling aroma to Him. You're showing Him your love. You're honoring Him. You're doing what He says to do.

You've got the same concept of sacrifice the Israelites should have had that we do today in a spiritual sense rather than sacrificing animals on the altar that we're supposed to remind them of their responsibilities and honor and worship of God. We sacrifice our own earn-ashainment, don't we? We talked about that back in Romans 1, the end of Romans 1, you know that chapter well, where God says because they were of a reprobate mind, they didn't want to retain God in their knowledge, they didn't want anything to do with Him, He gave them over to a debased mind, and they did all these unseemly things in life. They became depraved, they became perverted, and He lists all those things there, and He goes, and then they not only do it, but they take pleasure in them to do them, and He goes, and some of you, some of us may still look at that entertainment. God says, don't do that. Sacrifice your entertainment. Your thoughts, let His thoughts become your thoughts. Let the things that of His entertainment entertain you, not the things of the world anymore. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 6. You know, along that same line, you know, we look at the bodies that God gave us. Back in Corinth, when Paul wrote these letters to Corinth, it was a depraved society, not so much unlike the society that we live in today. It had every single thing going on in it, every perverted practice that you can imagine. Somehow they steeped it in their religion and said it was okay because their gods were okay with it. God says He's not okay with it, and as those people, the Gentiles came out of that, there was, they had some things that they had to sacrifice. If you grew up in Corinth and you had license to do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, whatever pleasure that you had or whatever pleasure you thought you might have, and you were given the green light to go ahead and do it, when you came in to God's church, when you were called, you had to sacrifice some of that lifestyle, or that lifestyle. You had to behave the way God said to behave.

It's not Latin like today. You know, for some who come in, it might be very difficult if you come out of an environment where, you know, anything has gone. Maybe in a difficult, even in an environment we live in with how rampant pornography is and some of the other things that are available to us, to come out of that and sacrifice, you know, man, I really want to do that. That's really enticing. I won't do it because I love God that much that I won't do that. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 15.

Paul says, don't you know that your bodies are members of Christ?

Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot?

Certainly not. Or don't you know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For the two, he says, shall become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

And then he says to all societies and to all people who follow him, flee sexual immorality.

That's something you have to sacrifice if you're going to follow God, if you want what he has, if he's your God, if you love him, if you worship him, if you do those things, you have to sacrifice it. There's no way around it. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.

Or don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have, which you have from God, and you're not your own. He bought you. When you accepted him and you said, I'll follow him, your body is his. You conduct it and you keep it in the manner that he said in his word. It can be a real sacrifice for some, but it's a sacrifice that must happen. It can't happen any other way. There's no way around it. That's one sacrifice. Let's look at Proverbs 14. Proverbs 14. I think I read Proverbs 14.31 last week. Let's look at it again in the context of honoring God. Proverbs 14. Verse 31.

He who oppresses the poor reproaches his maker. Well, there's a number of ways that we can oppress the poor, right? We can ignore them. We can forget about them. We can see a need. We can kind of walk by it. We can kind of ignore it like the priest of the Levite did with the Good Samaritan.

He who oppresses the poor reproaches his maker. But he who honors God has mercy on the needy.

Well, when we sacrifice our time, when we sacrifice our goods, when we sacrifice our attention, when we sacrifice our fellowship on the needy, we honor God. It can be a sacrifice.

We may not want to do it. We do it. It's a sacrifice to God. When he sees it, and he sees it come from the heart, he sees it as a sweet-smelling aroma. You can mark down Philippians 4.18.

When Paul, when he received gifts from the Philippians, he told them, basically, thank you for the sacrifices you made for me. God saw it. I see it. It's a sweet-smelling aroma to me what you have done.

Look at Romans 12.

Romans 12.

Let's pick it up in verse 9. Just read through the...well, verse 10. Begin with the sentence there. It says, Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another, not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality.

Hospitality can be a sacrifice, can't it?

And we have someone over to our homes? That can be a sacrifice of time, sacrifice of what's easiest for us. See something in need, be able to give it to God, and to be able to do it for Him because it's the thing that He wants, because again, those sacrifices, one of the things they did was bring people together. One of the things He wants is His people as one. And one of the ways we do that is by being with one another and letting the love and letting those things permeate in our lives. Hebrews 13. Hebrews 13.

Verse 16.

It says, don't forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices, God is well pleased.

Are sacrifices still alive and well today? For with such sacrifices, God is well pleased.

I think He looks at our attitudes. I think He looks at what we do.

I think He wants to see an attitude of sacrifice, not just by killing an animal and bringing it to an altar, but what we, what our hearts lead us to do. In verse 15, it says, therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise. Praise to God that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name, acknowledging Him in all He does, not taking credit for things ourselves, but all He gives us is acknowledging Him and giving Him credit for what He does.

Certainly praise, and I don't mean the empty praise that you can maybe see along street corners, or some people you meet out in, you know, in society, and all they say is praise be to God, praise be to God. And it's just an empty, it's just an empty thing. It doesn't mean anything. But God says the real praise to me, some of the real praise to me that you give in secret to Him alone, or the heartfelt praise that you might give when you're describing something that happened to you that God gave you. Over in Psalm, Psalm 142, you know, even our prayers, our prayers can be seen as sacrifice to God. I don't know, maybe I'm the only one in the room, but some mornings I wake up and I kind of just want to get on with what I'm doing, and I think, eh, I don't really feel like praying today.

And a lot of the time I catch myself, and I think, no, I can't do that.

God has to come first. And even though I don't want to do it, I will do it.

And one day is that I don't. Nothing goes right. One day is I catch myself, and I go back and pray.

Life is much better. Prayer is a sacrifice of our time, not keeping it for ourselves. Psalm 42.

Psalm 142.

Well, let me look at my notes. I know it got, Psalm 141, sorry, 141.

Psalm 141 and verse 2. David, David writing, Let my prayer be set before you as incense. Ah, let it come up before you, God, as a sweet-smelling aroma. Let my prayer be set before you as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

Even our prayers, the time we give God, the sacrifice of our time, the sacrifice of what we do, all these things, when we look at our lives, that God would have us do, that are important for us to do, and the sacrifices that He would have us make, as we have Him in mind and we honor Him, and others in mind, and not just ourselves. Let's go to Matthew 10. Matthew 10.

You can go back and you can think, and there's many more you can see in the Bible and that you can come up with when you think about the sacrifices that God wants and the sacrifices that should be part of our everyday life, or at least the concept of it and what we do when we sacrifice self for God. Matthew 10, verse 30. Let's check here before I read it. Matthew 10, verse 37. Sometimes we even have to sacrifice family relationships.

He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, God says, and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. That gets back to God first, doesn't it? Do you do what mom and dad want instead of what God wants?

Well, that's not putting God first. There's a cost to choosing God over a relationship.

Son or daughter want you to do something, but God says do this instead. It's a cost. It hurts to do that, to make the choice. God looks at it and says, to sweet-smelling aroma, they were willing to sacrifice that cost, that inconvenience, that discomfort, that relationship, perhaps for a while, because he can heal those relationships.

Romans 12. Oh, I didn't read the rest of Matthew 10, 35. There's more than just that.

We sacrifice our own ideas, as you heard in the sermonette. We sacrifice our thoughts.

We sacrifice everything about us, as it says in Romans 12, verse 2, where Paul correctly and accurately states, or Romans 12, verse 1, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. This is our reasonable service, if we understand, if we accept. If God is really real, if his promises are really real, what we're doing here is really real. If it's not just a fantasy and if it's not just a, hey, this makes me feel good to do it, but I really believe what God has called me to, then we're willing to make that sacrifice. Our ideas, our own pet, our own pet little things that don't jive with the Bible, all those things we talked about and more that you can talk about.

No, sacrifice. Sacrifice was all over the Old Testament. Sacrifice is all over the New Testament as well. It's the thread that runs through our relationship with God in everything that we do, when we worship, when we love, when we trust, when we obey, when we respect, when we honor, when we depend on, when we rely on, and when our confidence is hidden, all of them sacrifice runs through it. One last thing about the Temple of Old and the Tabernacle of Old back in Leviticus, I believe it's Leviticus 6. God says about that altar that those sacrifices were being made. He says, I want that lamp on that altar to be turned on every day and night. The light shall burn forever on that altar. There's never a time that the altar of sacrifice the light goes out on. It's the same in our lives. Be aware of what God has called us to. Let God lead us to that and keep that attitude of sacrifice alive and well and well-lit in our lives.