Prophetic Sacrifice
Therefore, I urge you,
brothers and sisters in view of God’s mercy
To offer your bodies as
a living sacrifice.
There is a running theme throughout the bible of
sacrifice. The most obvious types of sacrifices are found
in the old testament with regards to the Hebrews when they take possession of
the land of Canaan. These sacrifices and
offerings of various types involving animals and grain are detailed in the book
of Leviticus and set forth the protocol of worship of the Lord. The sacrifices are also, indicative of when
one has a call of prophetic significance there is a sacrifice of a kind which
differentiates it from that of the world.
The Israelites spent many years in Egypt and would have been familiar
with the religious system of the Egyptians, but once they were delivered from
their bondage the Lord makes a distinction between his requirements for
sacrifices and that of the Egyptians. To
be a peculiar people and a priesthood nation, the Israelites would have to go against
what was arguably the greatest spiritual wisdom of their day and would have to
endeavor to be distinctive from the other nations who surrounded them so that
their sacrifice was to leave the ways and mindset of the popular opinions of
their day. The apostle Paul expresses
it thus in his letter to the Romans “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and
approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2) .
This world has a pattern and it is one that is in direct opposition
to that of the kingdom of heaven. In
American society, there is always this agenda, that trend or this fad which is
plastered in the media everyday and more often than not it contradicts the
wisdom of God which is foolishness to the world. But a prophetic people will not let itself be
sucked into the ever changing opinions and wisdom of this world. It is a sacrifice that they swim against the
tide and not with it. This mission of
sacrifice can be seen with several key biblical figures such as Abraham,
Joseph, Moses and Jesus. Abraham as
the progenitor of the faith lived among pagans and likely practiced the
religion of his habitation being that he was from Ur of Chaldeans. When the Lord called Abram, he told him, “Get
out of your country, From your kindred and from your father’s house to a land
that I will show you…” (Genesis 12:1)
Here we can see that God is telling Abram to leave everything he has
ever known and has been familiar with to go to an unfamiliar place. I think Abram must have surely wrestled with
this call for it is not easy to forsake a known way for that which is
unknown. It is indeed a sacrifice and
Abram having a prophetically significant destiny stepped into the challenge of
it.
When considering Joseph, his sacrifice is not readily
discernible but it manifest itself in that Joseph as a slave in Egypt spent
many years in prison because his master’s wife falsely accused him of trying to
sleep with her. As it so happened,
Joseph refused the wife’s request to sleep with her because it would have been
a sin against God. (Exodus 39:9) Joseph
sacrificed the convenience of flesh for the integrity of God and I tend to
believe that the reason God gave Joseph the dream is because he had a spirit of
integrity and faithfulness to Him.
There are not many men who would resist the request for sexual relations
with a woman even if it is adultery and it is perhaps why Joseph’s brother’s
were not chosen for his prophetically significant task. Moses grew up as Pharaoh’s grandson.
He was surrounded by the wisdom and luxury of Egypt but his sacrifice
was that he could not deliver the Hebrews from slavery from a position of power
but one of lowliness.
When the Lord called Moses he had been keeping the flock of
his father-in-law in Midian so that
basically he was a shepherd. Moses had
probably given up on the notion of being used by God to help the Hebrew people
given that he was no where near Egypt let alone in the palace of Pharaoh. He probably thought like any of us would that
his best position was in the house of Pharaoh and that God would use his
position as a means to deliver the Israelites. Once he ruined his position by
killing an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew and fled after being found out, he
may have thought his chance was gone.
The Lord let forty years elapse before he would appear to Moses not in
the grand palace of Egypt but in a desert as a flame in a bush. The elapsing of forty years also allowed the
men who sought Moses life to die so that he could return to Egypt and could be
the primary reason for Moses forty year exile.
In any event we see that like Joseph Moses had to go down before he
could rise back up. It is very often the
case with prophetic callings that one will be in prisons, wildernesses and
obscurity before the Lord uses that person.
The life of Jesus is the epitome of sacrifice. In a previous post The Ultimate Call, I
discussed his prophetic significance and it must be noted again that Jesus
wilderness experience was being tempted by the devil for forty days. To say the least he passed with flying colors
but one can see how he had to eschew what the world thinks is a primary stamp
of validation and that is having outward prestige with accompanying money and
power. If Jesus had accepted the world’s
criterion for what a success is he would have lost the power that allowed him
to best the spiritual forces of darkness.
In the kingdom of the spirit where things really mattered he was an apex
spiritual predator--The Godzilla of his spiritual domain, the lion of his
spiritual jungle. At the end of the day
Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice by laying down his life for the world, but it
wasn’t a vain sacrifice for as it is stated in Hebrews 12:2 “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the
cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne
of God.” Jesus
indeed performed the ultimate in going down, but he also experienced the
ultimate in being raised up as the Son of God exemplar.
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