Sacrifices We Must Make to God

Well, Happy Feast Day, everyone! I'm used to saying that and hear everybody say it back to me. So on three, I want everybody to say Happy Feast Day. So one, two, three. Happy Feast Day! So he said it to each other, and it's nice to be able to be here. As Mr. Fritz said, it's sad that we have this crisis that just seemed to take over the whole world, and just taking everybody out of their routines of what we normally do.

And it's just a very sad thing that's happened. But we will make do, and we will continue on. Christians have faced a whole lot worse than this throughout history. This is minor compared to what some people have had to go through. And we need to recognize that. I told my wife yesterday, I said, I went out to the grocery store and bought some groceries, came home to my nice house in my nice car, and with all the food you can want, running water, this really isn't that big of a trial, compared to what real trials are.

I mean, I think of Lori Breedlove. That's a trial. This isn't. This is bumping the road. In fact, it is a way for us to take some opportunities here. And I'm going to talk about some of those opportunities here today.

But I received from the Fushis, after the Passover, a little thank-you text with pictures of the whole family that were together, keeping the family and their kids. And I wrote back and said, boy, I miss just seeing everyone. And they wrote back, yeah, we can't wait till we get back together again. And I think one of the things we can learn from this is how much we appreciate each other, how much we miss being part of the family.

I mean, the church isn't just a group of people, get together and worship on the Sabbath. If that's all we are, we're not fulfilling the biblical commands. We are the family of God. And maybe this is going to help us appreciate each other more. Maybe appreciate and understand that we need to use this time to draw close to God. Sometimes I think God allows things in our lives to strip other things away so that we are centered on Him.

Now, if we're centered on this virus, you know, I was reading the other day, and as I've said before, Daris McNeely always makes fun of me because some of the things I read, but I was reading Procopius, who was a fifth-century Greek historian. But he was writing about one of the first cases of bubonic plague that went through the ancient world, and especially through Byzantium, in fact, all of Europe and the Middle East, and how at one point in Constantinople, 5,000 people a day were dying and didn't reach 10,000 people a day.

And this is maybe a half a million people in a community. And they couldn't bury them. They had to dig giant holes and just throw the people in the holes, and how people were fleeing the cities trying to get away from it. And you realize, wow, compared to that, this is minor. So I'm not trying to take away from our suffering and the people who have it.

It's serious. The rest of us know that we could get it. But what we're looking at is, compared to other times in history, this is good. This is not overwhelming. So we could get our focus right and take this as an opportunity that God has given us, maybe, some extra time to spend with Him and to get our focus on what He wants us to do, instead of being just involved in all the other things we do, making money in our jobs, and running to school, and going back and forth from activity to activity.

We have time to zero in on Him. Just two nights ago, we did observe the Passover, and here we are, the first day of Unleavened Bread. And throughout the days of Unleavened Bread, the Israelites in the Temple period and the Tabernacle period were told to bring a daily sacrifice during this entire time. Now, there was two sacrifices done every day, but there was a special sacrifice that was to be done every day of this seven-day period.

And of course, then you had the Passover sacrifice. So the giving of a sacrifice was a very important part of what these days were to those people then. Of course, we just commemorated the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us, and we celebrated that all those sacrifices of the Old Testament, the Temple services, were all simply types of Him and what God is doing through Jesus Christ His Son to bring about salvation to humanity.

So let me ask you this question. Are there sacrifices you and I in appreciation and understanding what Christ's sacrifice really is for us? Are there sacrifices you and I are to bring to God? We don't think about that much. Well, we don't do sacrifices, but are we to do sacrifices?

You know, Romans 12, how many times we've read this, but let's look at this one verse.

And then we're going to explore how we can actually do this.

Here, the Apostle Paul writes in verse 1 of Romans 12, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Okay? We are to present ourselves as sacrifices to God. You know, it's interesting how that has been interpreted through the years. What does it mean to give a sacrifice to God? And this is an interesting way he puts this. It's an oxymoron. You know, an oxymoron is like sweet sorrow. Okay? In other words, it's two opposite things combined to explain something. They're contradictory terms. Okay? And living sacrifice is a contradictory term. I mean, sacrifices were killed. They were offered. They were burned. You know, they were bled out and burned. That's what you do with sacrifices. And he's saying we are to be a living sacrifice. We're to be living and dying at the same time. Well, what does that mean? I mean, Christ died for us. That was the sacrifice. So you and I are a living sacrifice, living and dying at the same time.

It's very interesting that in the second and third centuries, Christians were being persecuted, and actually, many times they were being killed by the Romans. And that Romans didn't care what kind of Christian you were. I mean, there were different Christian groups in the second and third centuries. The Catholic Church hadn't totally formed yet. And there were just all different kinds of Christian churches doing all kinds of different customs and observances. Some people were keeping Sunday. Some people were keeping Sabbath. It was a confusing time in Christianity. And the effects of people being killed. You know, everybody knew of somebody that was dragged out and put in prison and never returned home. Or somebody who was killed by a pagan mob. Or someone who was taken into, you know, the court and condemned and actually put into an arena where many times they were either crucified or they were torn apart by wild animals. And what happened during this time period is that you will find for a couple hundred of years, the second and third centuries, you will find a fascination with becoming a sacrifice for God. That your response to Jesus' sacrifice was to be a sacrifice yourself. And so people actually looked forward to at times that they were going to be martyred. We have one second century writer, Ignatius. He was from Antioch. Not the Antioch that you read in the Bible most of the time, which is Antioch in Syria, but the Antioch in, what is modern day, Turkey. And he was a bishop there. And here, listen to something he wrote in a letter. Suffer me to become food for the wild beast. Now what he means was the wild beast in the arena. Through these instruments, it will be granted to me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God and am ground by the teeth of the wild beast, that I may be found to be the pure bread of God. Well, later in the letter he says, may I enjoy the wild beast that are prepared for me, and I pray that they may be found eager to rush upon me, which also I will entice them to devour me. This was not entirely an unknown viewpoint. I mean, one of the writers we know of from the second century, his name is Justin Martyr. Well, that's not really his name. Justin was his first name. He became known as Justin Martyr because he told everybody to pray for him that he would be martyred, that God would not protect him, so that he could become the sacrifice. By the third century, the idea that you became this sacrifice, this is what God wanted you to do, became so popular that an entire doctrine formed, and it was the baptism by blood. That you went through a water baptism, but there was a greater, a better baptism that Christians should desire to have. Cyprian, who was a Carthaginian bishop, he was from North Africa, he wrote about this baptism of blood. It is a baptism greater in grace, more lofty in power, more precious in honor. A baptism wherein angels baptize, a baptism which God and His Christ exalt, a baptism after which no one sins anymore. In fact, some would say that the baptism of martyrdom was so wonderful because, you know, if you had committed sins since your first baptism, this was one way in which God could wipe away your sins. Or if you had slipped away from Christianity and become sort of this non-Christian again, if you could go seek to be martyred as a Christian, in this sacrifice, God would accept you during the third century. And this was a widely accepted viewpoint.

In the third century, Origen, sometimes you'll hear him arygen, but Origen is a fascinating person. Origen was brilliant, even as a child. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, which was a learning center for the entire Roman Empire, an intellectual center. And he was brilliant as a child, and his parents were Christians. So what Origen decided was he wanted to die as a sacrifice to Jesus Christ. So he would go out as a teenager, and whenever he would see someone being arrested, you know, dragged off by some Roman soldiers to be brought before the magistrate, he would run up and hug the person. He would keep picking fights with Roman soldiers by declaring that he was a Christian. And they were ignoring him because he was a child, but his mother was afraid. So what his mother would do is hide his clothing so that he couldn't leave the house. Then he would scurry around, and he would find the clothing, and then he would run out and try to get himself killed. He kept encouraging his dad to be killed, and one day they came and dragged his father off, and he was martyred. And so he felt bad. He couldn't get martyred. And at age 17, he was actually made the principal of a school. He was a very smart, very brilliant man. But he kept trying to get killed, visiting Christians in jail, which nobody would go visit them when they were put in prison, running up and kissing them. More than one time, there were Christians being either mobbed or dragged off by Roman soldiers, and he almost got stoned. But he always managed to survive. Nobody killed him. And he was just despondent that he couldn't sacrifice himself to God. And so what he did as he got older, in his late teens, his twenties, he decided that he had to sacrifice his body in a different way. He didn't sleep much. He didn't eat anything. He went for years where he didn't wear shoes. He destroyed his health. And this was a part of a new movement that would go off into the fourth century. You know, once you had Catholic emperors, they weren't persecuting Christians anymore. And so what they did was, well, I got to sacrifice my body. So you have a large movement, which once again isn't that big today, but up through the Middle Ages, this was a huge movement in the Catholicism throughout Europe, was that you become monks and priests. I mean, the most important thing you could be was a virgin. Because, you know, not having sex meant you sacrificed your body. You could not eat food. You could sleep on a hard bed or sleep on the floor. You had monks that would go around and just live in the deserts, die in the deserts. You had one man who literally lived on top of a column, on top of that column for decades, never came down. They would send up food and take down waste. He would actually have to scrape the food and take down waste. The worms off his body, as he sat up there, and thousands and thousands of people traveled from all over to come to honor this man because why? He was sacrificing himself. He was this living sacrifice. Is that what God wants from us? Is that what God means? Well, what we're going to look at today are some ways in which the Bible talks about being a sacrifice or offering a sacrifice. We're going to look at what that means. Because I'm going through so many different points, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on each point. Here's what I would like you to do.

During these days of 11 bread, take time to think about Christ's sacrifice and then think about these sacrifices as our response to Him and to God who sacrificed His Son. These are the sacrifices we are to bring to God. So once again, each one of these points could be a sermon in itself. In fact, I know every once in a while some of the men who give sermonettes or sermons or split sermons will say, boy, I had a hard time coming up with an idea. Or if you ever have a hard time coming up with an idea, I hope all of you will write down these ways. You can present these sacrifices to God. And if you guys can't come up with an idea, use one of these. You can create a sermonette out of each of these very easily or even a split sermon because these are important ways in which we are to respond to God. These are our responses. Remember, we are to be a living sacrifice. Daily there are sacrifices we are to bring to God, just like in that temple. There were daily sacrifices and special sacrifices on the Holy Days and during the Holy Day seasons.

Let's go back to Romans chapter 12. And let's look at that verse again. Romans chapter 12.

Romans 12 verse 1, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. So we are to present our minds, our actions, our very bodies are to be given to God in sacrifice.

And do not be conformed, verse 2, to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And this is the first way that we bring sacrifices every day to God, is that we sacrifice our lives for the work of God in us. We're sacrificing our lives for the work of God in us. So we may not go join a monastery where you live totally alone with a vow of silence for 30 years and eat nothing but bread and water and a few vegetables you get to grow. I mean, that's not what he's asking here. But we're not going to be gluttons. We're not going to be getting drunk. We're not going to be committing fornication and adultery. We're not going to be doing those things because we're sacrificing those things to be right before God. Really, when you talk about this sacrifice of ourselves so that God's work can be done in us, what we're talking about is obedience. We have a sacrifice of obedience that we bring to God. So we talk about that all the time. We're doing the Days of Unleavened Bread, where we're picturing taking out leavening, right? Taking out leavening and becoming unleavened. That's the sacrifice that's supposed to happen in our lives every single day. Every single day we are to be having sin taken out and the mind of Christ coming in. That's the most important. That's the number one sacrifice we bring to God. And it's a daily sacrifice. We can't take the week off, oh well, I just spent the week partying, working, you know, hanging out with my friends. But yeah, I came to Sabbath services. And I was so exhausted I slept the rest of the Sabbath. That's not what this is about. This is about daily sacrificing our will, daily sacrificing what we know is wrong, being unleavened, having it removed, and the mind of Christ putting in us. Now that's a whole sermon in itself right there.

Our second point I want to bring out is in Psalm 51.

So it's a...now usually I try to break a sermon down in about three points and spend lots of time on these three points. I'm going to have a few more than three points because I'm going to challenge all of you to spend some time filling out the details here. Psalm 51 gave a whole sermon on this a couple years ago. How this attitude is what we should have before the...well, all the time, but especially before the Passover, where we come to grips with our human nature as David did. Remember, Psalm 51 was written when he had committed adultery and killed a man. And he was afraid God was going to remove his spirit from him. And this absolute attitude of repentance that he had. And he's...you know, he wonders, how many sheep can I kill? You know, how many bulls can I kill to receive God's forgiveness? How much blood do I go out and pour into the temple? And he makes this comment here in verse 16. He come to this realization, for you do not desire sacrifice or else I would give it. He says, I would give everything I have. You know, he would use his entire wealth as king to do nothing but do sacrifices every day for the rest of his life, if that's what God wanted. But he realized the sacrifices themselves could not buy God's favor. You know, that was a pagan idea. You brought things to the gods and then they gave you something back.

And David realized that's not how this works. You know, you can't bribe God. It comes down to, we do things in response to him and then we wait for his grace. I mean, what are you going to give God? He could give him every sheep and bull in Israel. If God did not forgive him, he would not be forgiven. He says, you do not delight in burnt offerings. Verse 17, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. These, O God, you will not despise.

He didn't say, what you want is an oppressed person with no purpose in life.

And this is the sacrifice we have to bring. The first one is that we sacrifice ourselves, so the work of God is done in us. We are obedient to God. But we have to be humble before God. It is a sacrifice of humility that we understand we are nothing before God. One of the greatest problems that we can have as Christians is because God has given us special understanding, special knowledge, special miracles in our lives. We've become haughty with our own importance and we tend to look down on others. What we see here is that we must bring this sacrifice of humility. I've come to the conclusion after, you know, soon to be 64 years here of living. And I know God was in my life at age seven, in the little way that he interacts with a seven-year-old. But I know, I have memories, I understand that. I've come to the conclusion, and this is something Fred Keller and I have talked about, that when it's all said and done, it all comes down to how humble we are before God.

So it comes down to how humble we are before God. Without that humility, we can be trying to do the right things, and yet we don't have a proper relationship with God. David understood that. He says, I could do all the right things. I could go into the temple. I could do all the sacrifices. But if you don't forgive me, and if I don't have this absolute humility before you, that I am nothing before you, you're the creator of God. It's your greatness. It's your love. It's your wisdom. It's your genius. That's what this is all about. And I have nothing, I bring nothing here into this transaction except me. And there's nothing to it. There's nothing I have to give you except me. And without you, I am nothing. Without God, we are nothing. This is a daily sacrifice we must bring to God. We bring this sacrifice of obedience. But the sacrifice of obedience without humility, pretty soon we think we're doing this ourselves. So our first one is the sacrifice of obedience, the sacrifice of allowing God, submitting to God to work in our lives. And then the second one is we bring a sacrifice, as David said, he called it a sacrifice, of humility. And this brings us to our third one because these are all connected together, as we're going to see. Let's go to Hebrews 11. So I know I'm not giving a lot of detail. I am challenging you to go through this, to study these concepts. If you just write down the point and these scriptures that gives you a starting point on all of these, and then share it with each other. We can get together. We have a Facebook page where you can share this. You can share it through email. You can share it through calling each other. Do this study and share it with each other. Encourage each other.

Hebrews 11, the faith chapter, verse 4. By faith, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testifying of his gifts, and through it he being dead still speaks. We still learn from Abel. What do we learn from Abel?

His sacrifice was accepted by God because it was delivered in faith.

That's our next. That's the third of these sacrifices. We have to sacrifice in faith.

We have a sacrifice of faith that we bring to God. Without the sacrifice of faith, then why are we going through the motions? What is it we're expecting from our Christianity?

Let's go back to Genesis 4 and let's look at the story here of Cain and Abel and his sacrifice.

Genesis 4.

Let's go to verse 1. Genesis 4, verse 1. Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, I have acquired a man from God. Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought the first fling of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. There's something important to understand here. Giving of sacrifices, bringing offerings to God, has always been part of worship, starting with Cain and Abel. All through the Old Testament, whether it's the Temple of Tabernacle, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn't have a temple or tabernacle, but they brought offerings and sacrifices to God. You and I are expected in our worship to bring offerings and sacrifices to God. And I want you to notice something. It wasn't just that God accepted Abel's sacrifice. It says He accepted Abel. God just didn't reject Cain's offering of sacrifice. He rejected Cain. In other words, our worship of God, how we come before God, is, and how He accepts those sacrifices, is very personal, because it's how we're actually having a relationship with God. And we can have a barrier between us and God because of our lack of response and sacrifice. And, you know, it's hard to sacrifice in today's world.

You know why? We have so much. Sometimes it's easier for people who are poor and have nothing to sacrifice obedience, to sacrifice faith and humility. And it's really hard for us because we have so much. But notice, He accepted Abel because of his sacrifice.

The difference between these two sacrifices is, of course, Abel brought a sin offering.

There was blood involved. But he also brought God the best he had. And we know from Hebrews, he was giving it in faith. We don't know what Cain's reason was. But there was something wrong with the reason Cain brought this. And, of course, Cain then felt rejected by God. He didn't say, there's no humility. There's no humility. There's no faith. God, okay, how do you want me to do this? I am sorry. And let me do it right. Verse 6, so the Lord said to Cain, why are you so angry? Why has your accountant fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? He said, this is very simple, Cain. All you have to do is do what I ask you to do. Bring the right sacrifice. Acknowledge that I am God. Now, that God has the right and is worthy of being worshiped the way He wants to. We don't have the right to make up how we worship God. God has the right to tell us how He's going to be worshiped and appreciated and loved. I mean, He made us. He is everything.

And He tells Him, but all you have to do, I mean, God's not even punishing Him. He's just saying, all you have to do is worship Me the way I want to be worshiped. And if you do not, well, sin lies at the door and His desire is for you, but you should rule over it. He says, you're going to sin here if you're not careful. So you're going to sin. He says, so you need to think about what you're going to do next. Verse 8, now Cain talked with Abel, his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and he killed him. You see, this tells us something about human nature. Abel brought in this humility and this faith and this obedience to God a sacrifice.

And in giving the sacrifice and doing the sacrifice, he was accepted by God.

Cain saw someone whose sacrifice was accepted and immediately saw him as the one keeping him from being able to have a right relationship with God. See, we zero in on other people. When we're bringing these kind of sacrifices, we don't spend a lot of time judging others. I mean, we judge things as wrong. We judge things as sin, but we just don't go around judging other people all the time. We're too busy sacrificing to God. We're too busy living our lives towards God. Abel didn't even go, as far as we know, he didn't go correct Cain.

He didn't go to Cain and say, you know, yeah, brother, that just shows you don't know what you're doing. No! Abel committed to his relationship with God. God went to Cain and Cain would not listen to God. And he blamed Abel. He had anger towards God. A lot of times we're angry towards God or upset with God, but you know, we know you can't be angry towards God. See what we do? We take it out on somebody else to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. Cain felt better about himself when he was killing Abel. He probably didn't afterwards. He was justified in what he was doing because Abel was keeping him from God. If this guy thinks he's so good, you know, well, boy, why does he think he's better than me? I get rid of him, then it's just me and God. Now, that's a strange way of thinking, but emotionally sometimes we're not a whole lot different than that. We're always putting down other people instead of bringing our sacrifice to God in a proper way. So we have the sacrifice of God in our lives, submitting to God in our lives, the sacrifice of obedience, number one, the sacrifice of humility before God, and the sacrifice of faith. These all come together, but you and I have to be doing this daily. Now, these are sort of concepts. We're going to have to break this down into practical things we can do.

The fourth, what I'm going to talk about, and we'll go to Philippians in just a minute, but give you the context in which Paul writes this.

The apostle Paul was traveling all over the place, starting up churches, and then he would travel back to the churches where he started. Then he'd go back to Jerusalem. He was constantly traveling and living a pretty tough life in this traveling he's doing. And he would work as a tent maker in many places he went in order to make enough money to eat. He wasn't living in the Hilton. He wasn't living a pretty luxurious lifestyle. But he also had to receive help from different churches. Without that help, he couldn't do his work. So there were tithes and offerings that were being given to Paul so that he could do the work that God had given him to do. So let's now go to Philippians chapter 4.

Philippians chapter 4.

And verse 15.

No, I'm in Ephesians. Let me get to Philippians.

Now you Philippians, he says, know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church shared with me concerning giving and receiving, but you only. He said there was a time in his ministry where the only people that were sending him financial help were the Philippians. And he was making a go as far as he could, traveling by boat, traveling by wagon, traveling by donkey or horse, and a lot of times probably just walking long distances, staying at ends when he could. Many times it's probably sleeping out under the stars. In ancient world hospitality, some people would take him into their house, especially when he got to a place where there was a Christian church. But also Paul many times came to a town, met with the Jews, and they became hostile towards him. So this wasn't an easy life, and the Philippians were helping with their tithes and offerings. For even in Thessalonica, you sent aid once and again for my necessities.

Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that abounds to your account. He says, not that I wanted your money so that I could have an easy life, because he says I needed that to do the work of God. So this fruit was born in what God was doing, and they could see what he was doing. They saw God working through him. Paul never teaches the health of wealth gospel, you know, that the sort of the higher you get in the service of God, the wealthier you get. That's not how it works. I mean, there's wealthy people in the church, and there's poorer people in the church. And, you know, ministers aren't supposed to be all the wealthiest people in the church. He says, not that I seek the gift, that was verse 18, verse 18. Indeed, I have all abound, and I am full, having received from you aphroditus, the things sent from you. Now, notice what he says now. There are tithes and offerings that come to him. A sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God. This is one of the practical ways and obvious ways that we sacrifice. We are to take our tithes and offerings, and we're to give them to God so that God's work can be done. And that work is in a lot of different levels. In an organization like ours, that includes hall rentals, it includes ABC, the Ambassador Bible College, it includes camps, it includes ministry, it includes preaching the gospel, whether it be on the Internet or through the magazine or through the television. You know, there's all these things we do.

That is a sacrifice to God. You know, I've actually sat down with people that are, and they said, knew in the church, he said, well, do you, does your church teach tithing? Yes. So, do you expect me, and you know by the way they said, for me to send my tithes to your church? My answer always is, no, God expects you to send it where you believe He's working.

That's the only answer I'll give them. God expects you to send it to where you believe He's working.

And I've seen people come to the church and say, you know, I think I'm going to start giving my tithes to the United Church of God or whatever. I don't tell them, no, send it to us. I tell them, you find out where you believe God's working. Now, there's more than one place God's working on the earth too. So, we are to pay our tithes and our offerings, but remember, there's sacrifices to God. I've seen people get all upset because, well, you know, my tithes and offerings went in and they wasted a thousand dollars on this. You know, well, you know, I send in my tithes and my offerings. And I mean, I don't think there should be wholesale waste because that's not proper care.

But nobody's perfect. And as long as the attitude's right, occasionally a little money here and there is going to be, you know, spent on something that wasn't needed. That hasn't upset me. It's not my money. When I send it in, it's my sacrifice to God. It's His.

And I think we, once we see that as our sacrifice to God, and Paul said he thanked those people because he didn't say, thank you just for sending it to me. Notice he didn't say that. He said, thank you for your sacrifice to God. So we need to understand that there is even a physical sacrifice we give in our tithes and our offerings. Now let's go to Hebrews 13. We're going to look at the fifth of these Hebrews 13. So once again, you see, I'm not spending a lot of time on each one.

And the reason is, I want you to study this. I want you to put some time into this.

You have some extra time. Most of you do. Many of you are working, you know, I've talked to some people, said they're working more than they usually do. You know, there's a few people that have told me that they're staying at home. Mr. Puckett said his life hasn't changed much at all. Mr. Moss said the same thing. You know, he just works from home anyways. And I've told both of them that when this is over, they need to get out more. Okay, that's not real healthy. That, you know, there's a world crisis and you don't even know it. Nothing in your life has changed. So maybe you need to, you know. And I know Mr. Puckett is sent all over the world by Microsoft, but let's look at Hebrews 13 and let's pick it up in verse 10. He says, we have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. And he's talking about how in the tabernacle, you know, there was an altar there in which animals were sacrificed. And some of those the people would eat, but some of them only the priests could eat. Occasionally there was one that was just burned up. You know, every sacrifice had its way that it was supposed to be done that was totally explained in the book of Leviticus. He says, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin are burned outside the camp. Now, this is very interesting. He's saying, okay, you know, there's sacrifices done and there are certain things that were actually removed from the area outside the camp. And he's bringing this into a focus here. Therefore, Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate.

Jesus died outside of Jerusalem. He wasn't in the holy city. He wasn't in the temple, you know, where the sacrifice was made to God. He was humiliated and dragged outside with common criminals. And there He died outside of Jerusalem. He's going to make a real important point here. He says, for here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.

The writer of Hebrews tells the Christians, look, and remember this is written to Jews. It was written specifically to Jewish Christians. And he says, look, Jerusalem isn't your city anymore. That's not the center of what you're looking at. Because remember, you're not looking at that temple. The temple still existed, at least the way he describes things. The temple still existed at that time. And he says, you don't look to Jerusalem in that temple anymore.

The reason you don't is because Jesus didn't die in that temple, and He's the Messiah. He's the real Passover. He's all those sacrifices are pictured in Him. Where was He taken? Outside.

So you don't live in the Jewish world. Jerusalem was everything. To the diaspora, all over the world. Everybody looked to Jerusalem. That's where God had set up His people. That's where God had set up the center of His worship in the world, and they were right.

And it wasn't probably long after the book of Hebrews was written that the temple was destroyed.

Paul tells the Jewish Christians, you're not centered on Jerusalem anymore.

You're living for the new Jerusalem, the city that is to come. And that's outside. Jesus was outside.

The city when He died. So he's pointing towards Jesus' sacrifice here. He says, verse 15, therefore, by Him, by Christ, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God.

That is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name.

So He sent us back. Remember I said this is all centered on our response to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And here Paul does this very specifically. We're not looking at Jerusalem as the center of what God's doing. We're looking at the Jerusalem in heaven, the throne of God. And we are to offer a daily sacrifice of praise.

You know, that's something that may not be easy for us to do. It's not in our society. Some people do that easily. Others do not. But this is prayer. We are to praise God in our prayers. We are to thank Him. It says we're to do it with our lips. This can't be just a thought, oh yeah, I'm glad God did this for me. No, this is an actual action. Just like giving of your tithes and offerings are an action. We talked about obedience. There's actions and obedience. We talked about humility. That's an entire attitude. We talked about faith. That is your trust in God. Then we talked about giving of tithes and offerings as a sacrifice. These are all sacrifices. You and I are to bring a sacrifice of praise to God. We should be doing that every day. Now, praise can be given through prayer. That's probably the number one way we give praise. Praise is given through song. Do you ever just sing to God? Nobody else around? Now, song is not the only praise that we are to do just at Sabbath services. It's part of it. We had beautiful special music. I appreciate it. Mr. Fritz is doing that. I appreciated that so far, our three services, we've been able to have special music all three times. And we're hoping that some other people will do some that we can hook up. They'll send in to Mr. Puckett their special music and we'll be able to show it. We bought the license, so we now have the ability to webcast a fairly large amount of music that is available. Not everything's under this copyright law, but a specific license, but many things are. So we want to be able to present that form of praise. When you get up and sing, you know, I appreciate, even though there's only three of us in this room, I appreciate the songs. And I'm singing. Fortunately, you can't hear it, but, you know, we can hear the three of us. And, you know, we're singing to God. We're praising Him. You praise God in the way you talk to people about God. Do you ever go through a whole week and never talk to anybody about what God's done in your life, except maybe on the Sabbath?

We praise God by our example. We praise God by how we talk to people. We praise God by not backing down when people bring up religion. Now, there's times you back down because they just want to start a fight. But, I mean, that's not backing down. It's just saying, why do this? You know, you just want to fight. But if there's a real legitimate reason and say, no, God's, I know God exists because He's been involved in my life. Well, I don't want to say that. I don't think I'm sort of weird. You know, a lot of people are like, I'm not even involved in my life. I don't know what that means. And you may have an opportunity to teach them just a little bit about God.

The sacrifice of praise. And here, Paul says, the sacrifice of praise is because we understand the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We have an appreciation at the core of our being for what it means to be a Christian, for what it means to be called by God, for the terrible price paid for us, and that we are being de-leavened. And this unleavened bread, which symbolizes the mind of Jesus Christ, is being put into us. Are we thankful for that? Or are we worried all the time about money, about, you know, these unimportant things in life that keep us totally distracted? You know, we spend 16 hours a day distracted with a bunch of stuff. You know, you spend 12 or 14 hours a day working, then you spend a couple hours in mindless entertainment because your mind isn't capable of anything else. Then you try to get some sleep and you start it all over again. That's not what this is. We are to be praising God every day. Now, sometime when you're alone, no one else is around, sing a song to God. You know, put on a song, sing it to God. No one else will know, because that's, the sacrifice of praise isn't about showmanship. The sacrifice of praise is about praising God. You bring the sacrifice. You thank Him all during the day. You thank God. Whenever you see something, you think, well, thank you, God. You think it. You praise Him for it. That's the attitude that we're supposed to have. New Testament. You can't get away from what it says here. We are to bring the sacrifice of praise. Now, the next of the sacrifices we bring is actually in the very next verse. So it's in the same context. Let's go down to verse 16. But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices, God is well pleased. Do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices, God is well pleased. This means that our sixth sacrifice is that we sacrifice by giving ourselves to the service of others. We give ourselves to the service of others.

I brought this out during the Passover service. If anyone had the right to say to someone during a Passover service, I will not wash your feet. It was when Jesus washed the feet of Judas.

I mean, if He would have looked at him and said, I'm not going to wash your feet, you're about to betray me, you're a man of sin. Who could blame him?

But Christ didn't.

His character of sharing and doing good to others was such that He washed the feet of the man who was about to have him killed. That's so different than the way we think. It is the sacrifice. Now, remember, Hebrews calls it a sacrifice, the sacrifice of doing good and sharing. In other words, doing good to others and sharing with others. That we look at other people and see them as those whom we should do good for, that we should share with, whether it's our goods or how many times, you know, we find reasons not to do good. We find reasons not to share.

And here He says it's one of the sacrifices we were to bring to God. Can you imagine going through life every day and you looked for nothing but opportunities to do good and share with others? I don't mean just fellow members of the congregation. I mean your neighbor. I mean when you're out doing things. You know, I find myself when I'm out like going through the grocery store, you know, I'm sort of walking with my head down. And everybody else is too. We're all staying so far away from each other and we're all, you know, just sort of people have masks on. And I was at the post office here last week. Had to take some things. I had to send out the DVDs for Passover so everybody could have a DVD. And I'm at the end. Everybody's once again, everybody's standing far apart. Nobody's talking. I'm talking to the girl beyond the plexiglass. We're having a great conversation. Nobody else is saying anything, you know. And as I walked out, there was a woman that was coming out behind me and I opened the door and smiled. And he would have thought I'd given her $100. Thank you! She said. She walked by, you know, and, you know, kept her distance or whatever. But the simple, and I thought at the time, have we stopped just treating each other civilly?

Is that what's happening to us as Christians? No. We are to seek and give God the sacrifice. She said, that person doesn't deserve it. Well, you're not sacrificing to them. You're sacrificing to God.

Jesus was sacrificing to God when He washed Judah's feet.

That's a hard sacrifice, isn't it? Start in Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians chapter 5.

Now, I know there's people that we're supposed to avoid. There's things in the Bible that, you know, you're not supposed to go seek out the den of iniquity and go into it. That's what we're talking about. Just taking the opportunity every time we can to help somebody, we have the means of the ways to do it, that we do it. Because that's who we are. Ephesians 5. And let's go to verse 1. Now, John says this in another place, but I wonder if there's a thought here that Paul completes I want to get to. He says, therefore be imitators of God as dear children. Okay? Imitators of God as dear children. If we're your children, we want to be like dad, right? But I don't know how to be like dad. Dad is enormous. You know, how do I even try to understand the Father? I want to understand Him. I pray to understand Him. But, you know, the more you understand God, the more small you feel. And rightly so. Yet the more you need Him, the more you understand you need Him. But notice the rest of the sentence of verse 2. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. Wait a minute. I imitate God by imitating the sacrifice, the love of Jesus Christ exhibited in His sacrifice. Now think about that again. We're to imitate God. How do you do that? You understand the love exhibited in Jesus Christ and you imitate His sacrifice. Origin had it wrong. You don't go try to get killed. You offer all these sacrifices every day. Every day we are looking at the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And we're living our lives in a sacrificial way, giving, caring for whomever we come in contact with because that's what He did. You know, Christ died for the world, right? So we can't just say, I'm supposed to do good to the household of God. We start there. We do good to our families. But if that's all we do, we are not fulfilling this verse. We're not being imitators of God in which we, as He says, walk in love as Christ also has loved us and what? And sacrificed Himself. So love is exhibited in this sacrificial attitude towards others. Living in a monastery, beating your body, and there were some monastic orders that actually would take whips and beat themselves in the Middle Ages. Living in poverty, never being outside your basically your monastery. Just you pray and you do physical labor and you go to services and you read the Bible and other books about the Bible. And that's all you do 24 hours a day. I mean, some monasteries used to wake them up at three o'clock in the morning.

Okay, you're getting too much sleep. Go pray. Then you go back to sleep for a while. You know, so you keep beating this body. No, this is a sacrifice of love for others.

It is not self-absorbed. It is a sacrifice of love for others because that's what Jesus Christ did. That's a tough one, isn't it? The last, the seventh of the seven sacrifices I want to talk about here is based in something that's in the Old Testament tabernacle. And in the tabernacle, and then in the temple, there was the altar of incense. There was actually an altar built. It wasn't the altar which they killed the animals on and which there was incense burning. And you know, how many times do we read here this morning where it talks about the sacrifice of a sweet aroma? Now, if you've ever butchered animals, it can smell pretty bad, right? And they're killing animals in this place all the time. And yet, there's this sweet smell. There's this aroma that's coming out of the tabernacle that is in, you know, the animals were slain outside the main tabernacle and the main part of the temple. And so what happens is that these come in and there's this aroma that represents, you know, what God is experiencing from what's going on here.

And on the Day of Atonement, there was something very important that the high priest had to do. Let's go to Leviticus 16, because this is interesting.

You have to understand some of these sacrifices and holy day rituals that they did to even understand the New Testament. Let's go to Leviticus 16 and go to verse 12. 16-12. He says then, and he's talking about what the high priest had to do, so we're breaking into the middle of the ceremonies that he's doing. Then he shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from the altar before the Lord with its hands full of sweet incense, beaten fine, and bring it inside the veil. So he had a censer, and he was supposed to take coals from where they had, you know, the altar, and then he was supposed to take this fine incense and mix it in here. And something very interesting would happen as he walked into the Holy of Holies. Verse 13, and he shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of incense may cover the mercy seat that is on the testimony lest he die. So he goes before, we know that only once a year during the Day of Atonement that we will keep, of course, in the fall, did the high priests go into the Holy of Holies. But he went in there also with a censer with these hot coals. And when he put this incense, it would form this cloud of incense and smoke that would come out of it, and it would cover the mercy seat. He was bringing something to God. What was he bringing to God? Then you think, well, sort of a strange ceremony. He's bringing an offering to God. What would that even mean?

Now, we look at all the sacrifices. We know what that means. We look at so many of the things that they did. We understand leavened bread and unleavened bread. The New Testament explains that. We say, what's this thing about a censer filled with coals and creating a cloud of incense that comes before the mercy seat? It actually covers the Ark of the Covenant with the mercy seat that sits on top of it. Why would he do that? What's the purpose? It's good revelation. I guess the last place you'd think of to go to to explain a Levitical priesthood function. Better revelation chapter 8. And here John, of course, received some images or some visions of the throne of God in heaven. The New Jerusalem is going to come down to earth. The city that in Hebrews he says, we're looking for.

When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God unto them were given seven trumpets. Then another angel having a golden censer. And it's interesting, the censer that was used during the day of atonement was a gold one. A golden censer came and stood at the altar. And he was given much incense that he should offer it up with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar, which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints ascended before God from the angel's hand.

What the high priest was bringing was an offering, a sacrifice, that pictures the prayers of the saints. Before the throne of God every day, your sacrifice of prayer comes before him.

Prayer is literally coming before the throne of God. With Christ sitting there at his right hand, and angels coming back and forth, and thunderings, and lightnings, and all the things that's in that realm that it's not physical. So we can only try to imagine what this is. And in this realm, what that ancient priest did was he did something that symbolized a real sacrifice. Remember, all those sacrifices symbolized a real sacrifice. He was symbolizing the sacrifice you and I do every time we pray. My daily prayer is so important. All these sacrifices are to be done daily. Just you bring your sacrifice of prayer to God. And that has to come in humility and faith. You see all these fit together? But they're all specific things that we just read are called offerings and sacrifices. And most of the scriptures we read today are in the New Testament.

You see, these are the sacrifices and offerings that you and I are supposed to bring to God every day of our lives. Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for us. And there's a sacrifice he expects from us. Abel brought a physical sacrifice of a sheep. Moses did sacrifices to God.

Abraham did sacrifices to God. When Jesus walked the earth, the Jews were doing sacrifices to God. There are different kinds of sacrifices. Grain offerings, drink offerings, an incense, or a censer full of incense. These are all offerings and sacrifices to God. They all symbolize that there are sacrifices and offerings that Jesus did and there are sacrifices and offerings that you and I are still required to bring. It is part of our worship of God. He didn't give up. No sacrifices. The sacrifices He has us do aren't all physical, but they come from our inner being. They come from our mind and our heart and our relationship with God. Think about what we went through today. The sacrifice of our lives to the work of God. The sacrifice of obedience.

The sacrifice of humility before God. We must do these or our outward signs of obedience mean little.

If we do it in self-righteousness, if we do it in self-will like Cain, it doesn't mean anything. The sacrifice of faith that we come trusting Him and submitting to Him. The sacrifice of giving our material goods to God's surface. That's a sacrifice. You know, sometimes people say, you do what? I mean, every time I go in and have my taxes done, the woman doesn't have our taxes. She doesn't say much, but it's like the first couple years, it was like, oh, you gave quite a bit to your church. Now she just expects it. You know, oh, okay, where's what you gave to your church? And you give her the receipts or whatever. Of course, that's only part of what we give, isn't it? We give of our time. We give of our resources, and it never gets receded. You know, of your money or whatever. Of your goods. You know, when you give food to people or money to people, it's not receded. Now there are certain things that, okay, it's receded, although it doesn't mean anything anymore. Unless you make a lot of money, you know, you can't claim that anymore because the standard deduction is so high.

The sacrifice of praise. And he says it's the sacrifice of our lips. Now that doesn't mean you have to move your lips. It can be in your mind, but we are to be praising God with what we say, how we say it. We're to be saying thanksgiving to God. You know, we need to thank God for everything that we have and everything that He's given to us. Songs and how we talk to each other.

You know, God did something in my life today. When was the last time you heard that? We need to say these things to each other. The sacrifice of giving ourselves to the service of others. The way Christ did. And that was tied in and what the passage we read to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, even for His enemies. So we are to have this service attitude, this giving attitude, and we're to spend every day just looking. You don't have to go out of your way to do it. You just look for Him. You pray about it, and you'll have those opportunities. And then there's the sacrifice of prayer. And every before the throne of God, our prayers rise up like the incense in that censer that the high priest brought. Jesus Christ brings our prayers as the intercessor to God. As we observe the Days of 11 bread, contemplate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we just celebrated and the removal of sin from our lives. But I want all of you to spend some extra time this week thinking about your response to that. Thinking about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and your response by bringing before God daily the seven sacrifices that He wants from you.