What comes to mind when we think of sacrifice today? I think of blood, lots of blood…and fire. I cannot personally remember a time in my life where killing animals, butchering them in a specific way and then burning them on an alter was normal. I assume that it wasn’t normal for you either. In ancient times, it was not uncommon for animal and even human sacrifice. In modern times, such things are considered primitive and barbaric. The question is, are we still required to sacrifice to our God? Before I answer the question, let’s explore the past and work our way up to the answer.
Sacrifices Before the Flood
A history of sacrifice goes back to the very beginning of time. The first explicit sacrifice to God is recorded is in Genesis 4:3-4 where it says:
In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering...
As often happens with humans over short periods of time, we tend to corrupt what is good. We are so efficient at corruption that the first human offspring fell victim to sin. We see this in the first two sacrifices ever recorded. Cain offers the fruit of the ground and his brother Abel offers the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. The narrative continues with God in favor of Abel’s offering and against Cain’s offering
...but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
If all that we had to go off of was this narrative, it would seem as though God, for no particular reason decided which offering to accept and which one to reject. But as we see in Hebrews the difference was how the sacrifice was brought. Abel offered his sacrifice by faith. It is implied that the opposite was true of Cain.
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts.
And in 1 John it is further clarified:
We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.
Hopefully you see. Cain was proud and his heart was evil. His brother Abel, however, was humble before the Lord.
One commentary says “Cain fell to the prey of the crouching evil and eventually went out to form a godless society, rejecting God’s way. The “way of Cain” (Jude 11), then, is a lack of faith which shows itself in envy of God’s dealings with the righteous, in murderous acts, in denial of responsibility, and in refusal to accept God’s punishment.” It goes on to say that “Cain’s lack of faith shows up in his response to God’s rejection of his offering of fruit (Gen. 4:5). Rather than being concerned about remedying the situation and pleasing God, he was very angry. 4:6–7. Cain was so angry he would not be talked out of his sin—even by God.”
As time continued beyond the flood, humans went from sacrificing animals in honor of God, to dishonoring him by worshiping false gods in a number of ways culminating with the sacrifice of their first born children.
As any good teacher does, God began to lead his people from the known to the unknown through his servant Abraham. The ancients understood physical sacrifice and God led them to the unknown, spiritual sacrifice.
Sacrifices After the Flood
In Genesis we see a different story. Abraham, a faithful man, was commanded by God to sacrifice his first born son, Isaac. Though it must have broken his heart to do it, Abraham did as God commanded. Except as we find out in the story, God was never going to allow Abraham to complete the task. Rather, God was testing him to see if he would be faithful even at the cost of his own Son. At the very last moment, right before he was going to kill his son, an angel of the Lord appeared, stopping him and instead provided a substitutionary sacrifice. No god, had ever provided their own sacrifice. Nor could they. This would have certainly eradicated any doubt from Abraham’s mind and would have put a powerful image in his mind regarding the kind of God our’s is. So moved by what God did, Abraham called the place where this happened, Jehovah Jireh meaning “The Lord will provide”.
The Sacrifice of Isaac
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.
Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together.
And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.
When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.
Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven
and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son,
I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”
Genesis 22:1-18
So you can see that God told him to do something that would have been known in the ancient world, that is, human sacrifice. To the unknown, God himself providing the sacrifice. Abraham was considered righteous and a friend of God because of his belief, trust and obedience to God, no matter the personal cost.
God continued to work on his people, bringing them from the known to the unknown. In Exodus, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law. He also gave him instructions on how to build the Tabernacle where God would dwell with his people and where they would offer certain types of sacrifices to him for various reasons. In Leviticus, God instructed Moses on rules and procedures for conducting sacrifices.
These sacrifices were a way to acknowledge God’s holiness, for the people to remember their sin and to offer a substitutionary agent to bear the consequence of their sin. These sacrifices were burnt on an alter and the smoke would rise and God said that the aroma of the burnt sacrifices was pleasing to him.
“and burn the whole ram on the altar. It is a burnt offering to the Lord. It is a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord.” Exodus 29:18
Of course, it was not the smell of the burning animals that was pleasing to God. It was the heart of those who were offering the sacrifice that was pleasing to him. Later, the people began to only go through the motions with the sacrifices as more of a duty rather than something they wanted to do out of reverence for their God. Their hearts were far from God and often set on evil just like Cain’s was. Eventually, this caused God to reject their sacrifices. Not only did he reject them, he even said that they became detestable to him. Consider the words written in Isaiah:
“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.
When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations—I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.
Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
God at this point was fed up with evil people offering sacrifices with impure hearts and therefore wanted nothing more to do with them.
What did he want instead? He wanted them to turn from evil and walk in righteousness. But also, he was continuing his instruction. He was about to show his people that it isn’t through the Law and its sacrifices that they are saved. In the book Hebrews it says:
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. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins...But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.
No matter how closely we follow the moral law through obedience, no matter how many animal sacrifices, we cannot atone for our own sin.
A physical substance, such as blood, cannot remove a spiritual problem. The old covenant was designed to picture forgiveness; it was not designed to bring it. The Old Testament saints were forgiven their sins, but it was based on faith and God’s grace, not because they had paid a big enough price or earned it. Forgiveness was available, but it was not through the covenant rituals. The sacrifices had a shadow of forgiveness — they spoke about forgiveness and they pictured forgiveness — but they were not the way that forgiveness actually comes.
So, how does forgiveness come? What cast this shadow in the background of history? The shadow of good things to come was from the savior Jesus Christ.
Jesus as the Sacrificial Lamb
Jesus entered the world and lived a sinless life. Just as God provided a lamb in place of Abraham’s son Isaac (the shadow of good things to come), God provided us with his own son, Jesus, as the sacrificial lamb for our guilt. In fact, Jesus appeared in Jerusalem at a very specific time of the year. It was passover week and the day he arrived in Jerusalem was on lamb selection day. This was a day when the men would go and find a lamb for his family that was without blemish. The lamb would be offered to the Lord for the forgiveness of sin and in remembrance of the Exodus and Passover in Egypt. Here is the command regarding that day:
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household...Your lamb shall be without blemish...
Jesus was our spotless lamb, who God offered up as a sacrifice on our behalf to wash away our sins. John the Baptist knew this the moment he saw Jesus and he said:
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
What Does the Lord Require?
It is time to bring this to a close. To reach far back to the beginning of time and remember Cain and Abel. One of them offered a sacrifice that pleased the Lord and one offered a sacrifice that the Lord rejected. We can discern that the rejection of Cain’s sacrifice was not the object that he sacrificed but rather the heart behind the sacrifice he offered. He was proud, angry and evil. And God warned him that sin was crouching at the door and its desire was to have him. He told Cain that if he did right that he would be accepted. However, Cain’s response to God’s warning was not repentance and humility but rather full of wickedness.
So what does the Lord require? Let’s look at a word from the prophet Micah.
“With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
There is nothing that you can offer to the one who created everything! The firstborn of the corrupt cannot save the corrupt. Only the firstborn of perfection, Jesus Christ, can perfect the impure and corrupt.
Our Sacrifice
Now we answer the question. What is the sacrifice required by God?
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.
How do we present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God? What is spiritual worship? Who are we and how should we live? Click on each tab below to see.
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.
Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Ephesians 4:17-32
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for
“All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
1 Peter 1:13-25
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.
Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Ephesians 5:1-21
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
1 John 2:15-17
So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.
Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Romans 6:11-14
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.
Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.
Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.
Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.
Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:9-21
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 2:4-5
There is so much more I could say and many more scriptures to teach, but these say enough. We are called to be different. We are called to be holy and set apart from the world for the kingdom of God. We are to transform our thinking and our practices. We are to become royal priests and yes we are even called to offer spiritual sacrifices!
It is with all sincerity that I hope this has been a blessing to you. I pray that by God’s mercy, you walk the path of righteousness and that you endeavor each hour of every day to honor the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. To honor our Lord who helped us, the helpless. If you are a Christian, let this stir you into further sanctification. If you are not a believer, I pray that you will find value in this teaching and I ask that you consider where else in the world you can find such an act of love and hope for humankind.
Thank you and until next time may “the LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
Thank you Chris for taking the time to write and share this with us. Surely the Spirit of God is upon you and working through you for this good work.
It was my pleasure. I agonize over these projects hoping that they will be useful to the church. Edifying and not shrinking from the truth of what it means to be faithful. I pray that the Sprit guides me and my readers as we continue the work of teaching God’s word.
Great read! Thanks for sharing this!
Glad you enjoyed it!