Sacrifice

SACRIFICE
After seventy years in Babylon God’s people Israel had been in bondage in a strange land. Everything had come to a standstill for them – an enforced seventy year Sabbath to give the land its rest. The Persian King Cyrus sends the exiles, fifty thousand of them, back to Jerusalem in 538 b.c. There are parallels in this story, in Israel’s experiencing of a return and reset of their place as God’s people in the Earth, and the Church’s experiencing of a coming return and reset of taking its place as a witness for God in the Earth today.
A man by the name of Zerubbabel was chosen then to lead the exiles back, and he was announced on their return to the Holy Land as the governor of Judah and sometimes referred to as ‘Prince of Judah’, as he was from the lineage of David.
Ezra 1:1 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation… The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord.

The seventy year standstill experience of the judgment upon Israel had led to a sense of disorientation and discontinuity, and a radical break with the past. In Babylon they were in virtual lockdown and they had lost all sense of a ‘future’, and now they were heading home - but there was no home. Their temple and their city had been left in ruins.

They couldn’t pick up from where they left off. There had to be a reset. Prior to their exile they were organized as the tribes of Israel, but now they were to be gathered in families and clans, and remnants of Benjamin and Judah, with the only full tribe left being the Levites, for the priesthood. This became the transition from the religion of Israel to that of Judaism.
The first major event for them on their return was when the time of the year came for them to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, the feast of the yearly gathering of all the people as families. As for the rebuilding, they didn’t start with building the temple, or city walls or gates. They started with the very core of what God was calling for from them - the re-building of the altar of sacrifice. Zerubbabel and his clan, and the priests, led in the rebuilding of the altar on the exact place where it had once stood, and they sacrificed burnt offerings upon it, and voluntary or free will offerings. The Bible says that the foundation of the temple was not yet laid. That was next and that had to wait.

Ezra 3:1 … Zerubbabel (of the lineage of David) and his clan, rebuilt the altar of the God of Israel and sacrificed burnt offerings upon it. The altar was rebuilt on its old site, and it was used immediately to sacrifice morning and evening burnt offerings to the Lord;
And they celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles as prescribed in the laws of Moses, sacrificing the burnt offerings specified for each day of the feast… free will offerings of the people were also sacrificed… The foundation of the Temple was not yet laid.

 

I believe that our experience as the Church in the current worldwide pandemic of Covid 19 is a parallel in so many ways to the experience of God’s people back then in captivity. Life for them had suddenly come to a standstill leaving them for a long time without the same expectations and hopes and freedom and security of what used to be a normal life, plunging them into a sense of disorientation and discontinuity, and a radical break with the past – no temple worship - church for them. Today this sense of disorientation is invading the minds and hearts of people all over the world as it goes through the distress of this moment in history. Then it came time for Israel being called to a reset of their past because things would never be quite the same as they remembered and they would do a reset for their new future, and I believe we are also being faced with this same challenge. God was calling for them to return to the place where he has always met with his people – the altar of sacrifice. The first reset was to rebuild the Altar. That is what God is calling for from us. That is what our reset needs to be. The altar in our lives speaks of a life of sacrifice. A life of sacrifice speaks of a continual launching of the future into the will and purpose of God. Why?

A sacrifice involves giving up something now that will present to you something better in the future, whether it is spiritually, emotionally or materially. This is only done if you value what it is that you are sacrificing something for now. In the natural world if there were no sacrifice of time and effort and study or discipline there would be no advancement or betterment of self and character or any real life outcomes. There would be an empty future.
God calls for sacrifice for our sakes, so that we can reach the future that he has created us for. He offers them to us - the greater the sacrifice the greater the hopes and the more blessed future – but HE has to make the offer to us (missionary).

Prior to their exile they were organized as the tribes of Israel, but in their reset they were to be gathered in families. The observance of the Feast of tabernacles for them back then was the celebration of the togetherness that Israel enjoyed as God’s family in the earth, and in our reset it is our celebration of being one Body in Christ like never before, as his family under the Father.
They couldn’t pick up from where they left off. There had to be a reset.

Zerubbubel called for the offering of the burnt offerings and the free will offerings on that altar. There are many offerings, like the sin-offering, the peace offering. But the burnt offering and the free will offering had special meaning for them as it does for us today, in our time of reset.
The burnt offerings speak of total commitment of our future to The Lord, and the free will offering speaks of thanksgiving and appreciation of what we have in The Lord, even when we experience loss and disappointment and we can give God thanksgiving in that situation, that free will offering brings about the all things working supernaturally together for good for us in that situation. This heart of sacrifice has to start at an individual level before it becomes visible at a corporate level.

It is a harsh reality that pain and suffering define the world we live in. The person who wants to alleviate suffering for themselves and for those in their world make the sacrifices necessary to do this. They become part of the answer to the pain and suffering we see in people today, because being there for one another in their suffering is a sacrifice that grows bonds of love and trust and releases the supernatural power of Jesus as the fulfillment of that sacrifice ( look at your situation right now in being there as a living sacrifice for others),.. There would be less suffering in the world if there were more people who valued the virtue of self-sacrifice toward God and for one another.

The first mention of the burnt offering in the Bible was not in Moses time of the priestly sacrifices – it was when Abraham was called to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering. He gave his future back to God and put it into God’s keeping, or guardianship, and he showed mighty faith by believing that God would provide the sacrifice and bring forth a spectacular future upon the earth of all the families of the earth being blessed. Abraham’s future (and ours) was the life of his son Isaac. Then Isaac heard the words of Abraham;
Genesis 22 – God will provide a lamb for the offering my son...God said now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.
God also called upon himself to make the sacrifice of his only son and bring about the ultimate blessed future for all of us, and Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice to bring about this unsurpassable future for us to share with him here and now and for eternity. There was no other way. Paul wrote in Romans 12 for us to offer ourselves o God as a living sacrifice and When we say yes in faith to God regarding sacrifice he provides the sacrifice, his Son - and our future in God comes to pass his way. Our burnt offering for us is giving our future into God’s good will for us. Jesus is the completion of every task committed to him
2Timothy 2:12 which is why I am willing to suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed or disappointed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him until that Day.

We sacrifice when we put our hearts and minds and bodies into the appropriate hard yards that allow us to go forward in life. We persevere patiently through that slow work but then God does the quick work, the supernatural work that brings about his result, the best future. We say yes to the offering of sacrifice and just as with Abraham he says I have provided the lamb, that supernatural sacrifice of his Son, to complete the work of the sacrifice. We then rest in our faith and trust and hope in him, Jesus, and he takes us into our future, his future for us.

John 6:15-21 – Therefore when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He went back up again to the mountain by Himself alone, and when evening came he told the disciples to row to the other side ,(Matthew 14:25). His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing. So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat; and they were afraid. But He said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going.
They did the hard yards and Jesus completed the journey. We are in the boat rowing at the moment and it is scary

If parents support a culture that lets their children have everything they want and does not train them in self-sacrifice and sharing and contributing and accountability they will find themselves living in a generation that demands their rights and protests against any form of discipline and community responsibility. This is what is happening now.