Sacrificial Lamb

Chuckle: "How old were you on your last birthday?" "Eight." "How old will you be on your next birthday?" "Ten." "I don't think that's possible." "Oh, yes it is -- I'm nine today."

Good Quote: "I believe there are thousands of men who could go to the stake and die, or lay their necks on the block to perish with a stroke for Christ, who nevertheless find it hard work to live a holy, consecrated life." -- Charles H. Spurgeon

    "When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood" (Genesis 22:9 NIV).

I ran across this story which sets the stage for our lesson today. "When telling his young daughter the story of Abraham and Isaac, a father related how God had finally told Abraham not to kill Isaac and provided a sacrificial lamb/ram instead. The little girl looked up with a sad expression and said, 'I don't like killing lambs.' The father was speechless for a moment and then realized how traumatic such sacrifices were -- how serious was the killing of a lamb and how destructive was the reason for the sacrifice, sin. If the killing of a pure white lamb seems horrendous, how immeasurably more so was the crucifixion of the Lamb of God!"

The mistake we can easily make in studying the story of Abraham and Isaac is that the ultimate thing God wants from each of us is to sacrifice our lives to the point of death. But God's miraculous intervention in this story shows that the taking of a human life for His sake is not what God wants from us. He wants us to sacrifice ourselves while living for Him. The only life God demanded for our sins was that of Jesus, the ultimate blood sacrifice.

I think Oswald Chambers said it right as he describes what our attitudes should be toward sacrifice: Lord, "I am willing to go to death with You, but -- I am willing to be identified with Your death so that I may sacrifice my life to God." He goes on to say, "It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. He wants you to be a 'living sacrifice,' to let Him have all your powers that have been saved and sanctified (made holy) through Jesus. This is the thing that is acceptable to God." The apostle Paul put it this way: "Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God -- this is your spiritual act of worship" (Romans 12:1 NIV).

In Old Testament times, God required the sacrificing of animals for the sins of the people. Every morning and evening a lamb was sacrificed in the Temple (Exodus 29:38-42). This may seem cruel and barbaric to us today, but this requirement was a part of life in those days. However, that all came to an end when Jesus came as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). Such sacrifices are no longer required because the sacrificial death of Jesus, the Lamb of God, on the cross fulfilled, once and for all, the requirement for animal sacrifices (Hebrews 10:10). The New Testament shows the need to give ourselves and all we are to God as our act of worship. Now self-giving is the acceptable attitude of worship.

Love, Jerry & Dotse