A Living Sacrifice

What this episode covers

Old Testament Reading Our Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 23, verses 10 through 19. Exodus 23, 10 through 19, and this is the holy word of our Lord. For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. You shall do likewise with your vineyard and with your olive orchard. Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman and the alien may be refreshed. Pay attention to all that I’ve said to you and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips. Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread. As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib. For in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. You shall keep the feast of harvest, or the firstfruits, or of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leaven or let the fat of my feast remain until the morning. The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. New Testament Reading Let’s turn now to Romans chapter 12 for our New Testament reading. Romans 12 verses one and two. Romans 12, one and two. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. The Devotion of an Athlete If you watched any of the Winter Olympics that were on a few weeks ago, I’m sure that you couldn’t help but being impressed by the talents and the skills of the athletes that were competing in their various events. Those athletes, they are truly the best of the best. But maybe the most impressive thing about those athletes is what we don’t see, what isn’t broadcast, and that is the hours and hours and hours of training each day that they put in for years and years on end. If you’re going to be an Olympic athlete, if you’re going to be an athlete at that elite level, you must be extremely devoted to the training, the preparation that it takes to reach that level of success in any given sport. And that kind of devotion on the part of athletes to their sport is a picture in some ways of the sort of devotion that God calls you as a Christian to give or to devote yourself to God. You are to devote yourself to Him in service, in worship, in obedience, not just a few hours each day, not just a few days each week, but every day, all the time, you are to give yourself, to consecrate yourself to serving the Lord, to worshiping Him, seeking Him, loving Him. And so Christ calls you not just to devote part of your life to Him, but you are to consecrate the entirety of your life to your Savior and Lord. Consecration in the Old Testament Law This has always been the standard that God has set for his people. He has always demanded their wholehearted obedience, devotion, worship, their complete and unreserved consecration to Him. God wants all of us, not just part of us. In these verses that we read from Exodus chapter 23, they give us a picture of the way in which the Lord called His Old Testament people, the people of

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