A Living Sacrifice

       1 Kings 9:3-9 This is after Solomon had prayed and dedicated the temple. The Lord is speaking to Solomon.

“I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before Me; I have consecrated this house which you have built to put My name there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.

“Now if you walk before Me as your father David walked, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and My judgments, “then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, ‘You shall not fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.’

“But if you or your sons at all turn from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, “then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them; and this house which I have consecrated for My name I will cast out of My sight. Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

“And as for this house, which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and will hiss, and say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?’

“Then they will answer, ‘Because they forsook the LORD their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore the LORD has brought all this calamity on them.’ ”

How long did Solomon's pledge to serve the Lord only last? Look at chapter 11. Verse 6 says "Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not fully follow the LORD, as did his father David." He was warned not to take foreign women as wives but he just couldn't help himself. Well I take that back, he could've helped himself he just chose to give in to temptation.

It doesn't take long to forget huh? In 2nd Chronicles 6 Solomon is praying to the Lord and you would think Solomon is a man of God and would never disobey Him or worship an idol. Read Solomon's prayer after he dedicated the temple to God.

Compare the Law of Moses to Christ. We don't have liberty to sin as some might think. We're not "once saved always saved". We do not have to go to a temple and be part of a bloody ritual of animal slaughtering sacrifices to atone for sins. Just look at the Feast of Tabernacles and the daily bloody rituals carried on. The bulls alone added up to 70. I would throw up watching one bull get it's throat cut and it's guts and all ripped out and burned on an alter etc.

Christ made atonement for the Jews and Gentiles. Romans 6:10 ""For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.""

After Christ was sacrificed there was no purpose anymore for bloody rituals. That doesn't say we have freedom to sin, it means we have freedom to live to God just as He does.

Romans 6:11-12 ""Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.""

Romans 12:1 What is our reasonable service? ""I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service."""

What would you rather do, spend the entre year observing bloody sacrificial Feasts to remember who you are, or follow Christ and live as a Christian? All we have to sacrifice is our sinful ways and that's how we present these mortal bodies as living sacrifices. That's how we are holy and acceptable to God. And instead of going to a temple to have the priests hack up bulls and goats and turtle doves and hens etc, look at how much better our New Covenant is in having to have our sins forgiven from Christ shedding His blood Once for All. 1 John 1:8-10

"""If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us."""