“Sacrifice a bull each day as a sin offering to make atonement. Purify the altar by making atonement for it, and anoint it to consecrate it.” ~ Exodus 29:36
“Sacrifice the other lamb at twilight with the same grain offering and its drink offering as in the morning—a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the LORD by fire.” ~ Exodus 29:41
“… I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” ~ Romans 12:1
I’m not fond of stringing together unrelated passages (especially when lifted out of context) to prove a point which may or may not exist.
But I have to wonder if there is a connection between the daily sacrifices God required of His people under the Old Covenant and the daily sacrifices He gives us the opportunity to make under the New Covenant.
The sacrifices of the old pact were bloody, messy, and made by fire; morning and evening.
The sacrifice which sealed the new pact was bloody, messy, and put the Son of God under fire from Satan; He perished in the evening and revived in the morning.
We are to be like Him.
We are to sacrifice ourselves, morning and evening, perishing to self in order to display revival, resurrection of our lives from bloody, messy purposelessness and self-centeredness here and now.
In the context of the passage from the New Covenant, Paul is instructing that this kind of worship transforms us; enables us to “test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” ~ Romans 12:2.
Daily sacrifices.
They never really went out of style.
Keith it is my understanding, that Jesus said , under the new covenant, he brought mercy without sacrifice, am I wrong, again!
Mat 9:13 But go ye and learn what [that] meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Mat 12:7 But if ye had known what [this] meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.
Keith, Ray Vander Laan has a beautiful understanding of the morning and evening sacrifices as pleas from Israel to YHWH to remember the promise He made to Abraham – the promise that He would accept the punishment for Israel violating the covenant.
For so many years, those sacrifices were sent up, morning and evening, day after day after day, until one afternoon, at the time of the evening sacrifice, a young Jewish prophet, meditating on Psalm 22, cried out from His cross, “It is finished!” Or, more likely, the last phrase of Psalm 22 – “I have done it!”
Three parts to our sacrifice: Deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow Jesus.