Last night we began talking about the sacrifice traditions in our Old Testament class. As a class we basically avoided the discussion and side-stepped by talking about Moses as an intercessor between the people and God… ANYWAY- That isn’t the point…the point is that we are uncomfortable in talking about sacrifice. It is much easier to simply discard Sacrifice as an Old Testament thing, but as I pointed out to the class:
It is a shame that we fail to truly understand Sacrifice. We have sacrifice as part of our ritual every Sunday morning in church- the offering. The early people placed an animal, their food, upon the altar. This was the most valuable commodity there was! This was not just a small thing they could do without…this was the ultimate sacrifice they could make (short of sacrificing themselves)!
This sacrifice was about keeping covenant – about their relationship with God. We will fail the people of our churches if we do not help them understand that to sacrifice is essential to understanding the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We can not just sacrifice what is comfortable, but what will be hard to do without! To sacrifice is to draw closer to our Lord Jesus Christ and to our community of faith.
When I talk about offering, I talk not just of money but also of time, sweat and prayer. That is not to say, “Oh, I would rather give my time than my money.” We could do that, but we wouldn’t grow. We must inspect, seriously, what the Lord has gifted to us and then determine a sacrifice that we will, with God’s help, endure. We are given help with that: The Bible says 10% and although it may seem difficult, I suggest we begin there!