Recently, the Lord prompted me to read Jonah again, so I did. It's not that long, and you could read it yourself right now in less than ten minutes. A lot of Sunday school teachers have turned it into a funny little tale with cutesy cartoon whales; and on the surface it seems like a story of rebellion and punishment. But that's not what these four little chapters are about.
It is about a man who had an earthly focus where God was dreaming much bigger. It is about a man who could not stop the wonderful plans God had for him, no matter how hard he tried to stay in his own comfort zone.
If you've ever struggled with selfishness or been motivated by your own comfort, this post's for you!
You know the story: God tells Jonah to go and tell the city of Nineveh to repent of their evil deeds, but Jonah refuses and runs the opposite direction, jumping on a ship to Tarshish, "away from the presence of the Lord" (1:3). This man was not just ignoring God, but intentionally and proactively running away from Him.
Before you judge Jonah, think about the times in which he was living. Ancient people were not concerned for social justice or world peace. Life, to them, was short, painful, and cheap. They didn't hesitate to kill people. Which was probably exactly what the Ninevites were doing. Imagine every kind of abuse that can be done to the innocent, and you probably have a pretty accurate picture of Ninevite culture.
So of course Jonah didn't want to go to a violent city and tell them they should "repent or be destroyed." He was picturing a less-than-receptive audience...rotten tomatoes would have been the least of it. But God is good: so He was concerned for innocent lives in Nineveh. And so, as Jonah fled the Lord, his ship was thrown into a violent storm.
The Bible says that Jonah's travel mates found him sleeping in the middle of the storm.
So the captain came and said to him, "What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish." And they said to one another, "Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us." So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, "Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?" And he said to them, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, "What is this that you have done!" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them (1:6-10).
Jonah (revealing his flair for the dramatic) instructs the men to throw him overboard to appease God and calm the storm. This alone shows a wrong attitude of God. Jonah believes that God demands his life as sacrifice because of his disobedience. Hear this, New Covenant believers: God does demand your life. But, like Jonah, you don't give your life as a waste, a final death, a punishment for disobedience; you give your life to follow a greater plan that God has designed for you. You trade it for something so much better than your comfort and earthly perspective.
The Bible says that the storm immediately calmed when Jonah was tossed overboard, but I believe that was not because God was "appeased", but because He wanted to protect Jonah. He is not an emotionally volatile God who flies off the handle when His children disobey Him; rather, He "hedges up their way" (Hosea 2:6) to prevent them from hurting themselves. (Kind of like a baby gate.) And so the sea calmed, and God sent a "big fish" (whale, whatever) to swallow Jonah--not to punish Jonah, but to save his life.
Remember, it was Jonah's idea to get into the boat in the first place, and Jonah's idea to be thrown overboard. God's only motivation throughout the whole story is to keep Jonah going in the direction He has appointed--His plan A for Jonah's life. If He hadn't appointed a whale to swallow him, Jonah would have drowned.
There's not really much else to do when you're stuck inside the stomach of a large animal except pray, which is what Jonah does. Funny enough, he doesn't really repent for running away, but he does thank God for his life. I think his biggest revelation inside the belly of the whale was this: that God is the designer of his path, and even his own attempts at suicide were not going to thwart God's plan.
How long does it take us to realize that? Usually we have to have a "whale experience," something that submerges us in our own helplessness. There was a transformation in Jonah's relationship with God in this moment. In the belly of the whale, Jonah finally came to grips with the fact that he wasn't wise enough or strong enough to run his own life. He declared, "Salvation belongs to the Lord!" (2:9). At last, he trusted the Lord with his physical life.
But his story wasn't over. After the whale vomited Jonah up, the Lord told him a second time to go to Nineveh.
Anyone who has ever struggled with a bad attitude or rebellion against authority can probably imagine the language that came to Jonah's mind in that moment. "Are you serious, God??" Because being in the belly of a whale is no joke. According to stories about modern-day people who have actually survived it, the experience leaves you hairless, your skin bleached white by stomach acid, your eyes more than likely damaged, and your sanity lost.
Jonah probably thought, after his disobedience and the physical side effects, he was in no shape to go and preach to the people.
How many times do we feel the same way? That we're not good enough, not strong enough, to do what God has asked because of our failures or sins?
Yet that's exactly the place where God wanted Jonah. As he walked into the city, declaring the wrath of God, people probably stared at him like he was a zombie, because that's what he looked like. His own disobedience had paved the way for their belief. His testimony was a sign.
Again, we know the story: the people repented, and God didn't destroy them. But still the story is not over. Because Jonah (naturally emotionally disturbed at this point) is angry that God doesn't destroy Nineveh. After all, he has just made a fool of himself, walking around, bald and bleached, declaring destruction. So he sits down to "see what would become of the city" (4:5). I can just feel his attitude at this point: "I'm just gonna sit my butt right here and wait for you to destroy this city!"--hoping against hope that God would do it, even though he knew He wouldn't.
What an earthly attitude. How many times do we want to see others fall in order to feel better about our own failures? In spite of everything, Jonah still wasn't getting it.
Jonah says to God, "Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." And the Lord said, "Do you do well to be angry?" (4:3-4).
That question always hits me hard, because I can sometimes be dramatic like Jonah when my own earthly plans aren't fulfilled. I find myself having a terrible attitude. Nothing can please me. I complain about everything. And meanwhile God is asking, "Do you do well to be angry?"
Jonah apparently didn't learn his lesson well enough in the belly of the whale, because he gets even more dramatic. Even if he now understands that his death is under the control of God, he's still concerned about physical comfort while he's alive. To be fair, his body was probably not in the greatest shape. Even so, he was very happy when "the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over [him], that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort" (4:6).
God doesn't want us to be in physical pain or anything. We have physical needs, and He cares for those. But I think sometimes we (especially in the Western world) become so consumed with our physical comfort that it controls every decision we make. When we start living our lives that way, there isn't much room for God to work, because our first concern is looking out for #1, not God's magnificent plans of cosmic awesomeness.
Well, to add insult to injury (at least in Jonah's mind), God destroys the plant, leaving Jonah to sit (where he has chosen to sit, mind you) in the sun.
"Do you do well to be angry for the plant?" God asks Jonah (4:9). "Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die," Jonah replies.
Whoah, cool it, drama queen. Jonah is full of brazen, teenage punk sass, but God has the last word.
"You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" (4:10-11)
That question ends the book of Jonah: why shouldn't God have mercy on people, whom He created and loves, people who don't understand that they are in sin? And if Jonah cares for the insignificant plant, why shouldn't he look outside himself to care about the things of God's heart? Jonah has no reply, apparently. There is no more to the book after that question mark. And I think there's a reason for that. God leaves us to answer that question: If you care for the insignificance of your own comfort, why do you not care for the greater plans that God has for the world?
God would never have sent Jonah to Nineveh if He didn't want to spare the city. Why do we believe that God is so ready to destroy us for disobedience, but reluctant to save and redeem?
Isn't the wisdom of God a wonder? Because I seem to recall another man who slept in the bottom of a boat during a storm; a man who woke and calmed the sea with only the sound of His voice. That man also willingly sacrificed his life to save others; but unlike Jonah, Jesus redeemed the whole world. Jonah was sleeping in the relief of fleeing (or so he believed) the presence of God, but Jesus slept because He lived in the presence of God and trusted Him with his life.
And by the way, Jesus spent three days in a dark, scary, torturous place, too--and He came out the victor. Jonah exalted himself and was made humble; Jesus humbled Himself and was exalted.
And that's the lesson of Jonah. God does not destroy; He redeems. Take heart in that promise.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Sacrifice, Part Two
I want to talk to you about New Testament sacrifice.
Yes, I know that I just published a post declaring that all that sacrifice stuff was over. Jesus died as sin so that, in Him, our flesh and hearts and spirits could be made new and pure as well. But if you are reading this, you are still living on earth. And I think we'd all agree that, while our spirits have been made completely right before God in Christ, earth is still a nasty, nasty place, because "we do not yet see everything in subjection to him" (Hebrews 2:8).
As I said in my last post, because Jesus died and rose again, it is now unnecessary for anyone to die either spiritually or physically (aka resurrection bodies and heaven). But people still do. That is the reason for the Great Commission. That is the reason we don't immediately go to heaven when we become believers: so that, living this resurrection life, we may attract the broken, hurting, and dying and bring them to new life on earth and in heaven.
You can believe in Jesus and go to heaven when you die without much change on earth. You can assent to the deity of Jesus without submitting your daily life to Him. But that's half the gospel. And these days we have a Bride who has been deceived into believing that half of the cross is enough.
The fact is, you can live in as much spiritual death as you want. You can keep your mind full of worldly thoughts; you can refuse to address internal issues that cause sin; you can persist in negative, untrue beliefs. You can remain in fear.
As Paul addressed the Galatians: "You are no longer a slave, but a son" (4:7). But God will not force freedom on you if you don't want it. You can wander in the desert for 40 years if that's what you prefer. But I'm telling you there's a promised land that has already been bought by the blood of Jesus and paid for with His body, and it's got your name on it.
Jesus told an over-zealous Peter, "The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean" (John 13:10). Your spirit is completely clean if you are in Christ, and you're going to heaven. But if you want to reach a dying world with the "readiness given by the gospel of peace" as shoes for your feet (Ephesians 6:15), you have to wash them daily in the Word of God...that is, Jesus Christ and His truth. His sacrifice.
This leads me back to the sacrifice thing. Jesus was the once-for-all offering that killed sin forever. But the dust of sin's zombie corpse still clings to our feet because we live on earth. It whispers lies: that we are not good enough, that bad things will happen to us, that we will be tossed about in the world's whims. Sin--ours an other people's--argues with the Word of God in our lives. And even though we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) and not of this world (John 17:16), we often believe these lies over the promises of God.
Like any good zombie, sin inspires fear. Fear is like one of those Old Testament sacrificial lambs coming back from the dead, creeping around your house bleating, "I'm baaa-aaack!"
Gross.
Not to be graphic, but part of New Testament sacrifice is laying your own unbelief and fear on the altar every day and cutting its throat. When that offering is burned in the spiritual realm, it gives off a pleasing aroma to God.
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.--Romans 11:36-12:2
Paul is addressing the Romans here. If you recall, the Romans were the ones who nailed Jesus to the cross. They understood the cost of sacrifice.
Whoever separated the Bible into chapters divided these verses, but I think they are better read back-to-back. I think you can't understand 12:1 without reading 11:36. From him and through him and to him are all things. ALL THINGS. That means EVERYTHING that you are. The totality of this statement should make the lines following it hit you with greater gravity: present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
We tend to think about these verses in terms of sacrificing your "body" by abstaining from sin, or becoming a martyr, or whatever thousands of other ways that law-oriented preachers have parsed it out. I support keeping your body from sin, definitely, and sacrificing your time, money, and talents to the church; and my personal opinion is that martyrdom is an honor. But I think these verses go deeper. Yes, living sacrifice is something much different from martyrdom.
A while back, I tried to explain "sacrifice" to a group of ESL fourth-graders who were unfamiliar with the word. After a lengthy discussion with many examples, they concluded that sacrifice is "giving up something you want for someone else." That's an over-simplification, but it rings true.
Sacrifice is submission to the Word of God in the face of the world's scare tactics. Why? Because it costs us something.
I think that, often, we want our fear. We believe that if we give up control of our lives to God, He won't come through for us. We still think we can manage things ourselves. We think all the weight of responsibility is on us. So we hold on to our anxiety, as if worrying about something or over-thinking it gives us control. (FYI: it doesn't. Not any more than unicorns can fly in the sky.)
So to lay fear and anxiety on the altar of God every day is sometimes the hardest thing we can do because it means releasing control. And that requires humility.
I think this kind of sacrifice applies to anything--pet sins, unforgiveness, hoping in romantic relationships over Christ, etc. But I am addressing anxiety specifically because it is personal.
I have been struggling with many worries as my first year of teaching approaches. I was also struggling with a negative attitude. To be honest, my internal emo negativity is simply a by-product of pride, because in my human heart I believe I deserve to be in control of my life and that, of course, everything should be easy-peasy lemon squeezy for me (to put it in elementary terms).
But I decided that I was tired of being in an anxious state. I also concluded that my bad attitude was really a killjoy for the positive, bubblelicious woman God created me to be. I had a choice whether to accept the lies of fear and pride or to BURN THEM. Well, y'all know I can be a spiritual pyro. So I took the fear of disappointment, failure, along with my nasty bad attitude and every other zombie in my heart's closet, and burned them on the altar before God.
You can't imagine the relief I felt and the joyful intimacy with God that was born from submission to Him in these areas. Now that I'm gaining freedom, He is showing me more and more of who I am and what He can do in my life. I can't go back now. If the lies try to come back, I'll just put them back up there, fire up the blowtorch of the Father's love, and give them what they deserve as a criminal against the daughter of the King.
I think this type of sacrifice is what God really wants. Everyone struggles with anxiety and pride, but the beautiful news is that, as believers, we have the power to renew our minds every single day by completely rejecting the lies of darkness in the light of His promises.
Present your bodies holy and acceptable, Paul instructs us. The action word here is not "make your bodies holy and acceptable," but rather present. Because of Jesus, we already are holy and acceptable; it's our daily submission to that truth that makes a clean presentation. According to these verses, if we even want to know what is acceptable and good and perfect, we have to renew our minds to the truth.
The truth is Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. The truth is God's perfect love for you.
I challenge you to examine your heart to find areas of fear or negativity, then submit those areas to God in humility and intimacy. He will come through with fire from heaven to burn up the sacrifice.
Yes, I know that I just published a post declaring that all that sacrifice stuff was over. Jesus died as sin so that, in Him, our flesh and hearts and spirits could be made new and pure as well. But if you are reading this, you are still living on earth. And I think we'd all agree that, while our spirits have been made completely right before God in Christ, earth is still a nasty, nasty place, because "we do not yet see everything in subjection to him" (Hebrews 2:8).
As I said in my last post, because Jesus died and rose again, it is now unnecessary for anyone to die either spiritually or physically (aka resurrection bodies and heaven). But people still do. That is the reason for the Great Commission. That is the reason we don't immediately go to heaven when we become believers: so that, living this resurrection life, we may attract the broken, hurting, and dying and bring them to new life on earth and in heaven.
You can believe in Jesus and go to heaven when you die without much change on earth. You can assent to the deity of Jesus without submitting your daily life to Him. But that's half the gospel. And these days we have a Bride who has been deceived into believing that half of the cross is enough.
The fact is, you can live in as much spiritual death as you want. You can keep your mind full of worldly thoughts; you can refuse to address internal issues that cause sin; you can persist in negative, untrue beliefs. You can remain in fear.
As Paul addressed the Galatians: "You are no longer a slave, but a son" (4:7). But God will not force freedom on you if you don't want it. You can wander in the desert for 40 years if that's what you prefer. But I'm telling you there's a promised land that has already been bought by the blood of Jesus and paid for with His body, and it's got your name on it.
Jesus told an over-zealous Peter, "The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean" (John 13:10). Your spirit is completely clean if you are in Christ, and you're going to heaven. But if you want to reach a dying world with the "readiness given by the gospel of peace" as shoes for your feet (Ephesians 6:15), you have to wash them daily in the Word of God...that is, Jesus Christ and His truth. His sacrifice.
This leads me back to the sacrifice thing. Jesus was the once-for-all offering that killed sin forever. But the dust of sin's zombie corpse still clings to our feet because we live on earth. It whispers lies: that we are not good enough, that bad things will happen to us, that we will be tossed about in the world's whims. Sin--ours an other people's--argues with the Word of God in our lives. And even though we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) and not of this world (John 17:16), we often believe these lies over the promises of God.
Like any good zombie, sin inspires fear. Fear is like one of those Old Testament sacrificial lambs coming back from the dead, creeping around your house bleating, "I'm baaa-aaack!"
Gross.
Not to be graphic, but part of New Testament sacrifice is laying your own unbelief and fear on the altar every day and cutting its throat. When that offering is burned in the spiritual realm, it gives off a pleasing aroma to God.
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.--Romans 11:36-12:2
Paul is addressing the Romans here. If you recall, the Romans were the ones who nailed Jesus to the cross. They understood the cost of sacrifice.
Whoever separated the Bible into chapters divided these verses, but I think they are better read back-to-back. I think you can't understand 12:1 without reading 11:36. From him and through him and to him are all things. ALL THINGS. That means EVERYTHING that you are. The totality of this statement should make the lines following it hit you with greater gravity: present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
We tend to think about these verses in terms of sacrificing your "body" by abstaining from sin, or becoming a martyr, or whatever thousands of other ways that law-oriented preachers have parsed it out. I support keeping your body from sin, definitely, and sacrificing your time, money, and talents to the church; and my personal opinion is that martyrdom is an honor. But I think these verses go deeper. Yes, living sacrifice is something much different from martyrdom.
A while back, I tried to explain "sacrifice" to a group of ESL fourth-graders who were unfamiliar with the word. After a lengthy discussion with many examples, they concluded that sacrifice is "giving up something you want for someone else." That's an over-simplification, but it rings true.
Sacrifice is submission to the Word of God in the face of the world's scare tactics. Why? Because it costs us something.
I think that, often, we want our fear. We believe that if we give up control of our lives to God, He won't come through for us. We still think we can manage things ourselves. We think all the weight of responsibility is on us. So we hold on to our anxiety, as if worrying about something or over-thinking it gives us control. (FYI: it doesn't. Not any more than unicorns can fly in the sky.)
So to lay fear and anxiety on the altar of God every day is sometimes the hardest thing we can do because it means releasing control. And that requires humility.
I think this kind of sacrifice applies to anything--pet sins, unforgiveness, hoping in romantic relationships over Christ, etc. But I am addressing anxiety specifically because it is personal.
I have been struggling with many worries as my first year of teaching approaches. I was also struggling with a negative attitude. To be honest, my internal emo negativity is simply a by-product of pride, because in my human heart I believe I deserve to be in control of my life and that, of course, everything should be easy-peasy lemon squeezy for me (to put it in elementary terms).
You can't imagine the relief I felt and the joyful intimacy with God that was born from submission to Him in these areas. Now that I'm gaining freedom, He is showing me more and more of who I am and what He can do in my life. I can't go back now. If the lies try to come back, I'll just put them back up there, fire up the blowtorch of the Father's love, and give them what they deserve as a criminal against the daughter of the King.
I think this type of sacrifice is what God really wants. Everyone struggles with anxiety and pride, but the beautiful news is that, as believers, we have the power to renew our minds every single day by completely rejecting the lies of darkness in the light of His promises.
Present your bodies holy and acceptable, Paul instructs us. The action word here is not "make your bodies holy and acceptable," but rather present. Because of Jesus, we already are holy and acceptable; it's our daily submission to that truth that makes a clean presentation. According to these verses, if we even want to know what is acceptable and good and perfect, we have to renew our minds to the truth.
The truth is Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. The truth is God's perfect love for you.
I challenge you to examine your heart to find areas of fear or negativity, then submit those areas to God in humility and intimacy. He will come through with fire from heaven to burn up the sacrifice.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Sacrifice, Part One
For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.--Hebrews 10:1
A major act of worship for Old Testament Jews was sacrifice. They could not enter the temple without presenting a sacrifice for sin. This sin offering opened the door for Jews to commune with God in the more holy parts of the temple. (You can read Leviticus if you want to know all the specifications and gory details.)
We don't sacrifice animals anymore, but just imagine what it might have been like. (Sorry to all you animal lovers out there.) Imagine leading your lamb, the one that you had herded and protected from its birth, up to an altar, laying your hand on its head as a symbolic imputation of sin, and watching its throat slit for your impurities and transgressions.
To most suburban Westerners, this practice probably seems at best weird and at worst cruel, barbaric, and primitive. To a non-animal lover like me (again, sorry), it just seems nasty and troublesome. Can you imagine the sacrifices of thousands of animals burning on altars? I mean, just think about how much blood that would be. There were probably some serious smells happening in the temple courts, and none of them were pleasant. Even though the priests' methods were relatively humane (and the animals were probably going to be slaughtered and eaten eventually anyway), sacrifice is not a pretty picture.
The question you're probably asking yourself about now is, "Why would God require such a strange and bloody thing?"
So....think about all the genocides, murders, child abuse, forced labor, sex trafficking, broken relationships, oppression, cruelty, disease, disasters, hopelessness, depression, uncertainty, anxiety, failure, addiction--the unfathomable horror of our world. (As if you weren't already appalled at the animal sacrifice thing.) Consider all that chaos and terror for just a moment.
Then consider a God who is the exact opposite of all of that. Imagine a being who "is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). No dark spot in Him at all--not one atom of cruelty, not one thought of hate.
It's hard for us to imagine one so perfect in love, goodness, justice, and purity. But since we're human, we are all too familiar with sin and its consequences. We understand pain. So we can perhaps grasp the goodness of God by thinking of it as a direct contrast to everything we know.
If one so perfect does exist, it would be impossible for someone like me or you--someone who has been exposed to and has participated in the imperfection of the world--to enter His presence without first becoming clean from impurities.
For us to become clean, sin has to die.
That was what the animal sacrifice was for: to symbolically slaughter the sins of the people. Devout Jews saw this process repeatedly over the course of their lives until sacrifice became inseparable from their existence and their identity: God is good. You are not. Someone has to die. Over and over again. Were you a jerk to your neighbor? Kill a goat! Did you drop a hammer on your foot and utter a curse? So long, pet doves. You can try to be perfect next week...but I wouldn't count on that bull making it to his next birthday. The Jews became defined by the hopelessness of how imperfect they were in comparison to God.
Have you ever felt like a failure? Have you ever felt hopeless?
I want to introduce you to my friend, Jesus.
You see, the reason for all the animal sacrifice was to remind the Jews that they could never achieve perfection on their own. It was to show them that they needed a permanent sacrifice. Animals are sinless because they can't make decisions, like we do. They don't have a sense of right and wrong or a deep sense of love. (Again, sorry animal lovers...I know your dog loves you, but I promise your mother, wife, friend loves you in a deeper way.) In order to take care of our problems once and for all, we needed a sinless human.
I want you to think about Jesus on the cross. There are many graphic descriptions of crucifixion you can find if you really want to know the details. I think every believer needs to understand what Jesus went through on the cross, not so that we may be condemned, but so that we may be convinced of our holiness through the perfection of His sacrifice.
Think about the animals being slaughtered. Then think about the perfection of God in contrast to the horrors of the world. Then think this: God sacrificed Himself.
I'm not trying to be morbid. (Network TV now provides a great selection of morbidity if that's what you're after.) I'm just telling the truth. It's amazing to me how many Christians try to worship without recognizing the cross. His death is our life.
And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).
When he said above, "You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings" (these are offered according to the law), then he added, "Behold, I have come to do your will." He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (Hebrews 10:8-10).
It's hard for us to wrap our minds around sacrifice, especially literal sacrifice. As we see above, God doesn't really enjoy it either--especially not when He was the object of sacrifice Himself. Not really a fun-in-the-sun Kodak moment for Jesus. But sacrifice is a requirement that God must impose because He is perfectly good. His nature demands purity.
I could write a whole book about God's holiness, the symbolic nature of offering, and why sacrifice is required to approach Him. If you want to talk about that, send me an email. (Or better yet, read The Attributes of God by A.W. Tozer.) For the purposes of keeping this blog post shorter than War and Peace, I'm just going to wrap it up with thoughts about why Jesus said "It is finished" on the cross.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Jesus not only bore our sin, He became our sin. When He died, sin died. All the sin in us--past, present, future--died. The God-man who had never known separation from the perfect goodness of God, who was completely unfamiliar with the horrors I described earlier in this post, had to become the horror. Try to wrap your mind around that.
Sin--all the horror of the world--was separating a perfect Father from His wounded, terrorized children. For a time He was content for it to be slaughtered in the flesh of bulls and sheep. But one beautiful day, He took sin and violently destroyed it once and for all, flogging it, piercing it, and nailing it to a cross in the form of the flesh of...Himself.
We may never really understand this glorious exchange in this earthly life. It's a mystery that should leave us humbled.
All the sin in us was placed on that cross. It became unnecessary, from that moment on, for anyone to die for sin. Goats, bulls, lambs, doves never had to die again, and we don't either. Jesus died--and in Him, so did we.
But that's not all. The greater news is this: Jesus rose from the dead--and in Him, so did we. We live a new reality, one infused with hope and success and freedom.
And that's what I want to talk about in my next post. Stay tuned.
A major act of worship for Old Testament Jews was sacrifice. They could not enter the temple without presenting a sacrifice for sin. This sin offering opened the door for Jews to commune with God in the more holy parts of the temple. (You can read Leviticus if you want to know all the specifications and gory details.)
We don't sacrifice animals anymore, but just imagine what it might have been like. (Sorry to all you animal lovers out there.) Imagine leading your lamb, the one that you had herded and protected from its birth, up to an altar, laying your hand on its head as a symbolic imputation of sin, and watching its throat slit for your impurities and transgressions.
To most suburban Westerners, this practice probably seems at best weird and at worst cruel, barbaric, and primitive. To a non-animal lover like me (again, sorry), it just seems nasty and troublesome. Can you imagine the sacrifices of thousands of animals burning on altars? I mean, just think about how much blood that would be. There were probably some serious smells happening in the temple courts, and none of them were pleasant. Even though the priests' methods were relatively humane (and the animals were probably going to be slaughtered and eaten eventually anyway), sacrifice is not a pretty picture.
The question you're probably asking yourself about now is, "Why would God require such a strange and bloody thing?"
So....think about all the genocides, murders, child abuse, forced labor, sex trafficking, broken relationships, oppression, cruelty, disease, disasters, hopelessness, depression, uncertainty, anxiety, failure, addiction--the unfathomable horror of our world. (As if you weren't already appalled at the animal sacrifice thing.) Consider all that chaos and terror for just a moment.
Then consider a God who is the exact opposite of all of that. Imagine a being who "is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). No dark spot in Him at all--not one atom of cruelty, not one thought of hate.
It's hard for us to imagine one so perfect in love, goodness, justice, and purity. But since we're human, we are all too familiar with sin and its consequences. We understand pain. So we can perhaps grasp the goodness of God by thinking of it as a direct contrast to everything we know.
If one so perfect does exist, it would be impossible for someone like me or you--someone who has been exposed to and has participated in the imperfection of the world--to enter His presence without first becoming clean from impurities.
For us to become clean, sin has to die.
That was what the animal sacrifice was for: to symbolically slaughter the sins of the people. Devout Jews saw this process repeatedly over the course of their lives until sacrifice became inseparable from their existence and their identity: God is good. You are not. Someone has to die. Over and over again. Were you a jerk to your neighbor? Kill a goat! Did you drop a hammer on your foot and utter a curse? So long, pet doves. You can try to be perfect next week...but I wouldn't count on that bull making it to his next birthday. The Jews became defined by the hopelessness of how imperfect they were in comparison to God.
Have you ever felt like a failure? Have you ever felt hopeless?
I want to introduce you to my friend, Jesus.
You see, the reason for all the animal sacrifice was to remind the Jews that they could never achieve perfection on their own. It was to show them that they needed a permanent sacrifice. Animals are sinless because they can't make decisions, like we do. They don't have a sense of right and wrong or a deep sense of love. (Again, sorry animal lovers...I know your dog loves you, but I promise your mother, wife, friend loves you in a deeper way.) In order to take care of our problems once and for all, we needed a sinless human.
I want you to think about Jesus on the cross. There are many graphic descriptions of crucifixion you can find if you really want to know the details. I think every believer needs to understand what Jesus went through on the cross, not so that we may be condemned, but so that we may be convinced of our holiness through the perfection of His sacrifice.
Think about the animals being slaughtered. Then think about the perfection of God in contrast to the horrors of the world. Then think this: God sacrificed Himself.
I'm not trying to be morbid. (Network TV now provides a great selection of morbidity if that's what you're after.) I'm just telling the truth. It's amazing to me how many Christians try to worship without recognizing the cross. His death is our life.
And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).
When he said above, "You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings" (these are offered according to the law), then he added, "Behold, I have come to do your will." He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (Hebrews 10:8-10).
It's hard for us to wrap our minds around sacrifice, especially literal sacrifice. As we see above, God doesn't really enjoy it either--especially not when He was the object of sacrifice Himself. Not really a fun-in-the-sun Kodak moment for Jesus. But sacrifice is a requirement that God must impose because He is perfectly good. His nature demands purity.
I could write a whole book about God's holiness, the symbolic nature of offering, and why sacrifice is required to approach Him. If you want to talk about that, send me an email. (Or better yet, read The Attributes of God by A.W. Tozer.) For the purposes of keeping this blog post shorter than War and Peace, I'm just going to wrap it up with thoughts about why Jesus said "It is finished" on the cross.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Jesus not only bore our sin, He became our sin. When He died, sin died. All the sin in us--past, present, future--died. The God-man who had never known separation from the perfect goodness of God, who was completely unfamiliar with the horrors I described earlier in this post, had to become the horror. Try to wrap your mind around that.
Sin--all the horror of the world--was separating a perfect Father from His wounded, terrorized children. For a time He was content for it to be slaughtered in the flesh of bulls and sheep. But one beautiful day, He took sin and violently destroyed it once and for all, flogging it, piercing it, and nailing it to a cross in the form of the flesh of...Himself.
We may never really understand this glorious exchange in this earthly life. It's a mystery that should leave us humbled.
All the sin in us was placed on that cross. It became unnecessary, from that moment on, for anyone to die for sin. Goats, bulls, lambs, doves never had to die again, and we don't either. Jesus died--and in Him, so did we.
But that's not all. The greater news is this: Jesus rose from the dead--and in Him, so did we. We live a new reality, one infused with hope and success and freedom.
And that's what I want to talk about in my next post. Stay tuned.
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