Giving Myself or Withholding?
Psalm 84; 2 Chronicles 29:1-11, 16-19; Hebrews 9:23-28
Hebrews is one of those pieces of Scripture that is difficult to understand. Largely because contemporary Christians don’t know the Old Testament very well. We also don’t know the context and the importance of the role that the Temple played in the life of the people of God before Christ.
In almost every faith tradition before the coming of Christ the offering of sacrifices with animals was commonplace. It was simply the way that things were done. But, now things were different. This was transformational.
But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:26b, NIV)
There was no longer a need for an ongoing sacrifice. Christ through his self-sacrifice offered a perfect sacrifice. Christ gave himself and therefore fulfilled the needed offering for sin forever.
As I process this, this morning, it strikes me that the reason people offered sacrifice was so that they could be connected with God. They didn’t want anything to be between them and their God.
Christ has now cleared the way for us to never be separated again.
What’s fascinating to me though is the connection that we find between this conversation about Christ and Paul’s command in Romans 12 that our spiritual act of worship is to offer ourselves to Christ.
You see, we follow after the way of Jesus. He offered himself as a sacrifice to deal with sin. We now offer ourselves spiritually as an act of worship.
What I’m wrestling with today is, “Am I offering myself as an act of spiritual worship or I am withholding myself from the one who gave everything on my behalf?”