Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome & Prayer

Welcome.

It is good to be together tonight, Amen?!?! Brothers and sisters are here tonight from several different congregations and it is only because of the Crucifixion that we now have much in common and have much to celebrate tonight!

The nursery will be open and available.

We are not staffing it tonight, but audio and video should be on in case you need make use of that room.

Please stand and let’s worship God through prayer..

Dear Heavenly Father,

your servant David wrote in psalm 22...

22 I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:

so, Lord, please now cause whatever might be preventing our worship, and praise and adoration to right now be put away and settled.

David went on to write,

23 You who fear the Lord, praise him... and stand in awe of him!

27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.

28 For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

31 they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.

So tonight, we praise you, for you have done it!

You have done the thing we could not do ourselves.

You have loved us and saved us and moved our stubborn hearts to praise you and we love you so much for this.

May we succeed tonight in creating a tremendous noise that will bless you.

In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Please remain standing as _____________ leads us in a Scripture reading.

Introduce whomever will be doing the Scripture reading.

SERMON

How many of us feel like we sacrificed something to be here tonight?

Maybe you gave up the pile of dishes in the sink, or that pile of laundry.

Maybe you gave up a hobby, or movie night, or a night out with the guys to be here tonight or to spend extra time baking cookies, or cleaning the church, or preparing music, or enabling someone else to be here tonight.

At some level, we all believe the sacrifice to be here tonight was worth it!

But when we talk about making a “sacrifice”, we rarely mean we shed our own blood for someone else’s eternal benefit.

Listen to how Heb 9:22 defines the word “sacrifice.”

That verse says...

Hebrews 9:22 (ESV) “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”

If you have your Bible, please locate Leviticus chapter 4.

While you are turning there… could you raise your hand if you have ever taken CPR, or if you are a nurse, doctor, or first responder?

If not, you might have seen a person in a movie who was severely wounded.

A person who is bleeding out and has a small chance of surviving, but then someone takes a large cloth, places it over the wound and applies pressure to try to stop the bleeding.

That was the image in my mind this week as I was preparing for this message.

Humanity was bleeding out...

Sacrifices became necessary to keep us (humanity) from bleeding out! (Rom 5:12; Heb 9:22)

Romans 5:12 (ESV) “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned”

Because of Adam’s sin, all humanity began bleeding out.

Bleeding, broken people can only reproduce more broken and bleeding people.

Broken people deserve condemnation and cannot have fellowship with God, so our merciful God provided a way to restore our fellowship with him through sacrifices.

Under the Old Testament law, it is impossible to estimate how many gallons of blood might have been spilled every single day at temple altars.

We just know, it was a lot of blood!

All that blood was an object lesson that humanity was bleeding out!

Death was inevitable: There was no hope for us, but then!

our merciful God applied a tourniquet and then put pressure on our wound to keep us from bleeding out.

Any first responder knows that if someone is bleeding out, specific steps must be taken to save that person’s live.

So, God, very specifically prescribed the remedy for sin in Leviticus 1-7 that prepared for Jesus’ perfect sacrifice.

(dont read) Sacrifices were very specifically prescribed.

(Lev 4:27-35)

If you have your Bible open, let’s read Lev 4:32–35 to get an idea of that specific prescription of Old testament law to stop sin from bleeding us out.

verse 27 “If anyone of the common people sins…

skip to verse 32 “If he brings a lamb as his offering for a sin offering, he shall bring a female without blemish 33 and lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and kill it for a sin offering in the place where they kill the burnt offering.

34 Then the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering and pour out all the rest of its blood at the base of the altar.

35 And all its fat he shall remove as the fat of the lamb is removed from the sacrifice of peace offerings, and the priest shall burn it on the altar, on top of the Lord’s food offerings.

And the priest shall make atonement for him for the sin which he has committed, and he shall be forgiven.

Try to imagine what it might have been like in that age to arrive at the temple to make your own sin sacrifice.

Imagine that you are leading your own, carefully raised lamb, maybe you also have a bull to offer as a burnt offering, maybe you are also carrying grain or bread, or turtledoves for other offerings.

As you enter the courtyard, you notice that people and animals are everywhere and your senses immediately become overloaded!

(Slide: Temple Mount w/ locations of altar,etc)

It is loud.

There are bellowing animals everywhere!

Your animals begin violently resisting you.

They are tugging to get away from the smell and sight of blood because they instinctively know that the temple is a dangerous place for them!

Brother Harrower, the temple mount would not have smelled like not like your grill on a Sunday afternoon!

Your nose would have been immediately accosted by the scent of burning flesh and bones.

The animals were alive and not pre-drained of blood.

The animals’ heads, skin, fur, entrails, dung were burned on the ash pile while the meat and bones were burned on the large altar that animals were led up to be slaughtered and prepared for sacrifice.

(Slide: altars)

As you near the large altar or one or the smaller altars, there was blood everywhere.

Blood was running off the altar.

blood was being sprinkled on the sides of the altars.

Blood stained the priests hands and arms and garments.

You hear a squish and realize you stepped in a puddle of blood, staining your feet and sandals.

Then you watch the person ahead of you lead his bull up the ramp, gently lay his hand on the bull’s head, then take a knife and slay his own animal.

Then it is your turn and you are overwhelmed by the emotion that your lamb had to die by your hand.

Your sin caused its death to be necessary, so you are overwhelmed by emotion as you carve up your animal for the priest to place on the altar.

I’m sorry if that is too graphic, but we cannot get through this weekend without being graphic.

We cannot study Levitical sacrifices without thinking about gory, bloody, stomach churning, revolting images.

Jesus’ Christ’s perfect sacrifice becomes so much more impactful when we consider the mess and gore THAT WE CAUSED!!!!

So we come back to...

Hebrews 9:22 (ESV) “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”

This should not be the only time of year when you have to be reminded of gore.

Those priests of old touched the gore, and saw the stains, and smelled the stench every single day of the week, and yes, even on the Sabbath.

Imperfect Sacrifices teach us three profound, overwhelming truths.

First,

Imperfect sacrifices teach us that....

...sacrifices were deeply personal.

(Lev 4:33, Jn 1:29)

If your Bible is still open, look at Leviticus 4:33 again.

It says the person guilty of sin shall, “lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and kill it for a sin offering”

The sin sacrifice was deeply personal.

If that was me walking up the huge bronze altar,

It would have been MY animal!

that I raised and cared for or purchased for a costly price.

It would have been MY touch!

I would have rested my hand on my own animal’s head in a final caring and loving gesture.

It was about to die because of me!

It was to die For MY sin.