Gory Sacrifices??

I'm reading through the Old Testament right now and I just finished Exodus and am currently in Leviticus, the book that happens to be filled with all the specific instructions describing the way to present multiple burnt offerings, grain offerings, sin offerings, etc. to God. And it can be quite wearying for the reader. I mean, it repeats itself so many times.

I started getting sick of hearing about "burning the entrails" (not a very nice mental picture...) and "sprinkle its blood all around on the altar." I can see people reading that and going, "If God is some bloodthirsty dictator that needs constant sacrifices to be appeased, then why would I want to 'serve' Him?"

But then I started thinking about the possible reasons that God would have the children of Israel do that. First of all, God is holy. Completely unblemished and set apart from us. He can't be near sin. So, for us to be able to be in communion with Him, so to speak, we have to be made holy. The sacrifices of lambs and doves and bulls (and everything else that was killed in the Old Testament :P) was a temporary form of atonement for their sins, and it allowed them to come before God with a priest - the person who oversaw all the offerings and acted as a interceder between God and the people - to be their holy mediator. This requirement of blood to make us holy has been forever satisfied by Christ's death on the cross! This is why burnt offerings are no longer required from us (praise the Lord for that).

Also, think about how much people would have hated bringing an offering before the Lord every single time that they sinned. I don't know about you, but I sin an awful lot. Imagine having to kill a ram every time you lied. Maybe it wasn't quite that extreme, but even so, it would make the whole process very distasteful, and I think that we would be less apt to sin outwardly. We'd think more about what we were doing.

These thoughts all led me to the conclusion that God didn't make up these rules just to make us suffer. He made them so that serving Him and doing His will wouldn't just be a flippant thing. During the time of the Old Testament, a person's riches were shown by their herds and flocks - their livestock. If you were continually killing your livestock because of what you were doing, I don't think that you would be very flippant with coming before God. It was all about reverence, realizing that you couldn't just come before God whenever you wanted to, that He wasn't just some friendly deity who could be appeased or whatever and you could get what you wanted from Him.

I really think that we Christians today are not reverent enough towards God. We focus on what He can and does do for us, instead of how we can honor and glorify Him! It's awesome when we can see His hand in our lives. Indeed. But our lives - yes, even our lives - are not about us. They are about Him. Our purpose and life-goal is to glorify God! When we pray, how does it begin? "Dear Lord, thank you for this beautiful day you have given me, please help my friend to get well, show me how to love my brother, amen"? Where, in all of that babble about us (and I'm not saying that I don't do the same thing; I do) is there a speck of desire to glorify Him with our whole lives?!

If this is what you want, if this is what you need - and you do need it, because I am convinced that this is what we all need - then I suggest digging into the Word and discovering for yourself how you can best glorify and seek Him with ALL OF YOUR HEART, SOUL, MIND, AND STRENGTH. Reading Jon Piper's "Don't Waste Your Life" is also very, very helpful and thought-provoking, and contains multiple references to the Bible.

We are living sacrifices to God; we are on this earth to glorify Him, and we know that He will do what is necessary to bring Himself that glory from the whole earth, in the end. So we can trust that He will use us if we wait upon Him. I offer myself up to Him, "a sweet aroma to the Lord" and I am content knowing that this is the real me: when I come before Him on bended knee, and serve Him as my one all-consuming passion.