We've arrived safely in Hyderabad to realize that James is still a 6 and a half hour bus ride southeast of here so we're chilling and resting up at the ICM base until tonight. Then we'll take another overnight bus to our final destination for now 🙂
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Last night while we were on the bus I had some time to just let my mind wander. Please bear with me as this blog is about to wander.
Even today, there are more animals sacrificed for sin offerings around the world than I could imagine. In Dakar, there would be shepherds who would herd their goats and sheep into town which would provide stink, noise and clutter and then one morning there would be silence…and that was through a Muslim ritual. Animals have been slaughtered for sins for a very long time and for many reasons.
Every covenant in the old testament would contain a "halfing" of animlas in which the two partners in the covenant would have to walk through. This signified that if either broke the covenant, than "may what happened to the animals, happen to them." It was pretty serious but blood was the price of covenant. Likewise, the bible says that "without blood, there is no remission of sins." Basically, something has to die to cover sin…
In the old covenant, a person was to make a sacrifice for any number of violations of the law and the sacrifice of choice was an unblemished, pure lamb. Year after year they made these sacrifices. The priests even often made sacrifices for the sins committed that the people weren't aware of. These were man's lambs to cover man's sin…
THEN…God did something crazy. He did something completely new…He made an absolutely new covenant with man. Yet, in order to do so, there had to be a sacrifice to be paid once and for all. So, He became human in the man named Jesus. Jesus was God's lamb who took away the sin of the world once and for all. He was unblemished and pure and died in our place and in place of all the pure lambs we were sacrificing.
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OK, I'm sure that's not completely new to most of you. But this is where my thoughts started wandering.
The lambs slain represented atonement for the sins committed. They were pure and spotless. Something pure had to die to cover the sin of something impure that we committed…That's the way the old law worked so that we would have a paradigm for what God was going to do with His own son.
I started to wonder what that would actually look like in our lives. I'm pretty confident that most of you don't kill lambs every time you do something shameful that breaks relationship with God. However, I want you to think about what you are sacrificing.
When I choose to lust, I'm essentially choosing to sacrifice an unconditional pure and untainted love from my Father in order to let my self gratification live instead.
When I choose to retaliate, I'm essentially choosing to sacrifice reconciliation and hopes of a healthy relationship so that I can let my bitterness and anger live.
When I choose to hold onto an offense, I'm choosing to sacrifice forgiveness for my offender (and partially for myself) in order to keep a distorted entitlement and chip on my shoulder…
The list really could go on and on. Are we still living in a form of the old covenant by our choices? Do you realize that we keep sacrificing the pure and the good while still allowing the same things to take us down day after day and year after year…
I'll take it another step. How many times do we choose to be in a slave relationship to God instead of a son relationship to Him? How often do we choose to sacrifice a part of our inheritance or desires or His good gifts because we think we've broken one of His commands? Let me give you some examples:
I've met some missionaries who have sacrificed the desires of their heart and have chosen to leave home to go around the world to do God's work. It's almost as if a part of them has died but they choose to spend their lives working for God to cover the things they don't want to face or some wrongs they committed when they were younger. They never fully live in the true freedom and forgiveness of being a son.
How often do we have dreams and desires that God has fashioned inside of us and let them go because we've screwed up or compromised somewhere down the line and feel as though we've disqualified ourselves from living the life that God has put inside of us? I've known what it is like to live in a false humility feeling inadequate and making myself small while laying aside or sacrificing some of the pure desires of my heart…
what about you?
do you catch what I'm stepping in?
The key is that we are to be living sacrifices and we put ourselves on the altar. The things that are crap come to the top so that they can be removed…The things that are pure that He put inside of us, get purified and those desires exponentially get better…are you willi8ng to sacrifice all of yourself and find that the good things come back better or are you settling for sacrificing the good things and holding on to the crap?
