Sacrifices to God

1000 Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching (Love Transcending)

Celeste Campbell, age fourteen, needed a kidney transplant. Every member of her large family offered to donate a kidney. But it came down to Gregory, her brother, a senior at Saint Paul’s School in Garden City, New York,

He was captain of the football and swimming teams at St. Paul's School in Garden City, N.Y.

He said doctors have told him he will be able to continue swimming and playing baseball, but may need special equipment to play college football.

He had been accepted at Dartmouth.

Robert Weiss, assistant director of the Children’s Kidney Center of the Einstein Division of Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, said of the forthcoming operation, it “is an excellent tissue match.”

When asked if this meant giving up a football career in the Ivy League, Gregory replied, “If I can’t play, I can’t play. It’s a small sacrifice for what’s going to happen to Celeste.”

One dictionary define sacrifice as:

: sacrifice; an act of slaughtering an animal or person or surrendering a possession as an offering to God or to a divine or supernatural figure.

Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Sacrificial Lamb

When telling his young daughter the story of Abraham and Isaac, a father related how God had finally told Abraham not to kill Isaac and had provided a sacrificial lamb instead. The little girl looked up with a sad expression and said, “I don’t like killing lambs.” The father was speechless for a moment and then realized what traumatic and memorable events such sacrifices were. How serious the killing of a lamb for sacrifice and how destructive the reason for the sacrifice: sin. If the killing of a pure white lamb seems horrendous, how immeasurably more was the crucifixion of the Lamb of God!

9762 Our notion of sacrifice is the wringing out of us something we don’t want to give up, full of pain and agony and distress. The Bible idea of sacrifice is that I give as a love-gift the very best thing

I have.

Oswald Chambers

I am to offer the following spiritual sacrifices to you:

1) the sacrifice of thanksgiving (Psa. 116:17 “17 I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, And will call upon the name of the Lord.”

It is clear that a sacrifice must consist of praise and thanks, or must at least not be without praise and thanks, if it is to please God. And if it is without praise and thanks, He neither wants nor likes it, as indeed He says (Isaiah 1:11): What is your sacrificing to Me? I do not want your offering of incense. We cannot give God anything; for everything is already His, and all we have comes from Him. We can only give Him praise, thanks, and honor.

Source:Martin Luther, from What Luther Says. Christianity Today, Vol. 34, no. 17.

The act of sacrifice is not as important as the spirit in which it is done.

Leon Morris

2) my body as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1 “1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

What’s a living sacrifice? It’s weirder than it looks, because the word sacrifice in Greek is actually the word for killing. Therefore, what it’s saying is, “Make your life a living killing.” It’s deliberately paradoxical.

Timothy Keller

Turning Points with God: 365 Daily Devotions December 7: The Precipice

The degree of blessing enjoyed by any man will correspond exactly with the completeness of God’s victory over him.

A. W. TOZER

Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Dedication

The only problem with “living sacrifices” is that they keep crawling off the altar.

All along the Christian course, there must be set up altars to God on which you sacrifice yourself, or you will never advance a step.

Alexander Maclaren

If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.

C. T. Studd

3) the sacrifice of good deeds (Heb. 13:16 “16 But to do good ...for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.”

One way we do good - is sharing the Gospel

SO GOOD - The sign of our professed love for the gospel is the measure of sacrifice we are prepared to make in order to help its progress.

Ralph P. Martin

4) the sacrifice of sharing what I have with others (Heb. 13:16) the sacrifice of sharing what I have with others (Heb. 13:16 “...and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.”

Communicate means - participation fellowship - the act of sharing in the activities or privileges of others.

The Greek work is Koinonias - fellowship

Many of the English translations translate this word as “share” or share with others or share with others in need.

Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Commitment, Cost of

A hen and a pig approached a church and read the advertised sermon topic: “What can we do to help the poor?” Immediately the hen suggested they feed them bacon and eggs. The pig thought for a moment and said, “There is only one thing wrong with feeding bacon and eggs to the poor. For you it requires only a contribution, but for me it requires total commitment!”

5) the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of my lips giving thanks to your name (Heb. 13:15 “15 By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.”

Several years ago, there was a song on Christian radio that said, "We bring a sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord." It had a happy, upbeat tune. Listening to it, I had the feeling that the singers were intrigued by the words but had not personally experienced the message.

A sacrifice hurts. The original readers of Hebrews 13:15, on which the song is based, were on the verge of shedding their own blood to remain faithful. They were suffering. Hebrews 13:12 refers to Jesus suffering outside the gate and shedding His blood. Hebrews 13:13 encourages the readers to share His reproach. Sometimes we hurt while praising God.

Messengers one after another told Job that his livestock, his crops, his riches were gone, that his servants and children were dead. Job replied, [read slowly] "The Lord gives... the Lord has taken away... Blessed be the name of the Lord."

When you've heard that before, you've probably heard it as I just read it, with a slow, thoughtful attitude. Can you imagine someone reading it with a happy, upbeat attitude? [read quickly] "The Lord gives, the Lord has taken away. WOO HOO! Blessed be the name of the Lord." You would think the person did not understand or, worse, did not care. Sometimes we hurt while praising God.

If you satisfy yourself with a blessing from God, it will corrupt you; you must sacrifice it, pour it out, do with it what common sense says is an absurd waste.

Oswald Chambers

In his talk entitled "The Sense of an Ending," Jeremy Begbie tells a story about attending a worship service in a poor South African township. I was told, immediately before the service, that a house around the corner had just been burned to the ground because the man who lived there was a suspected thief. A week before that, a tornado had cut through the township, ripping apart fifty homes; five people had been killed. And then I was told that the very night before, a gang hounded down a fourteen-year-old, a member of the church's Sunday school, and stabbed him to death. The pastor began his opening prayer: "Lord, you are the Creator and the Sovereign, but why did the wind come like a snake and tear our roofs off? Why did a mob cut short the life of one of our own children, when he had everything to live for? Over and over again, Lord, we are in the midst of death." As he spoke, the congregation responded with a dreadful sighing and groaning. And then, once he finished his prayer, very slowly, the whole congregation began to sing, at first very quietly, then louder. They sang and they sang, song after song of praise—praise to a God who in Jesus had plunged into the very worst to give us a promise of an ending beyond all imagining. The singing gave the congregation a foretaste of the end. Christian hope isn't about looking around at the state of things now and trying to imagine where it's all going. It's not about trying to calculate the future from the present. It's about breathing now the fresh air of the ending, tasting the spices and sipping the wine of the feast to come. Source: Dallas Willard, editor, A Place for Truth (InterVarsity Press, 2010)

Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire, To work, and speak, and think for thee, Still let me guard the holy fire, And still stir up thy gift in me.

Ready for all thy perfect will, My acts of faith and love repeat, Till death thy endless mercies seal, And make the sacrifice complete.

Charles Wesley