The Modern Sacrifice

We often read about long ago when the Jews went through extreme rituals for sacrificing to the Lord. They had the burnt offering, the sin offering, the peace offering, and so many more. In fact, Ezekiel 46:23 tells them, “You shall daily make a burnt offering to the Lord…you shall prepare it every morning.” Whenever I read this, it makes me feel unmitigated gratefulness that Jesus has made the ultimate sacrifice, and that I am not required to do all that.

But sometimes I get an “off the hook” attitude. I tend to forget that although I’m not required to give God a burnt offering every day, there are other sacrifices He asks me to make. He says to present my body as a living sacrifice by not conforming to the world (Romans 12:1-2), and to offer up the sacrifice of thanksgiving (Psalm 116:17). These are just a couple things.

I’d like to just think about what a Jewish man’s day would look like during the time of Moses. The man would wake up in the morning, go outside, and collect the family’s manna for his wife to cook. After he eats breakfast, he goes out behind his tent to where the animals are, and goes straight to the area where he has placed all the perfect ones. Maybe he calls it the ‘Sacrifice Section’ or something. So he picks out a little sheep, and goes through the process of sheering it, then butchering it, then gathering all the required parts for the sacrifice. Putting it in a bag, he walks about a mile over to the tabernacle, where the priest offers it to the Lord. By the time he gets home, it’s lunchtime, and after that he “goes to work,” probably sewing curtains for the tabernacle. In the evening, he comes home again, but as dinner is finishing, he remembers that today is Wednesday—his day to give his weekly sacrifice. It takes him until late at night to finish, and as he walks home he makes a mental note to remember that sometime this month he will need to do his monthly offering, and also that the yearly offering is coming up soon.

This man’s life is practically consumed the Lord’s offerings (I did not mention the fact that he sacrifices separately for his wife and children’s sins as well). He is focused on serving the Lord. He didn’t have a chance to think he was “off the hook.” I shouldn’t think that either. A few questions to ask myself are, Is my life consumed with offering up sacrifices to God? Am I focused on serving God every day of my life? If not, what can I do to get that way? Even though our salvation is a free gift, God doesn’t want us to live a lazy life, He wants our thoughts and actions to be totally concentrated on His will.

Leave the Testing for the Teacher

The Israelites experienced some of God’s first miracles that He did in all history of mankind. And those miracles were amazing! Besides that, they were practically a daily occurrence for them. In Egypt, they saw the 10 plagues, and the Red Sea parted in half. Their very existence thrived on God’s miraculous provision all throughout their years in the wilderness, with the bitter waters at Meribah turning sweet, and the water coming out of the rock, and the nations opposing them being defeated.

But despite all that, they continued to question God day after day. When they got hungry, they complained to God so He sent them manna. When they got tired of manna, they grumbled and God sent them quail. When God promised them Canaan, they said it was too hard to get. They just kept testing God, even though they were almost daily experiencing the incredible works of the Lord!

Psalm 95:9 says, “When your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they saw my work.”

That really displeased God. The verse before it tells us why God didn’t want them to test and try Him. It says, “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers….” God is saying that when they questioned Him, and tested Him during the ‘day of trial’ (or ‘hard times’), that caused them to develop hard hearts, and bring them to rebellion. When we do the same thing, those are steps to becoming hard-hearted and rebellious like the Israelites were. In the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and all those prophets, we read over and over again how God pleads with them not to be hard-hearted, and punishes them because of their rebellious hearts. And yet, if we let it, it can easily become a habit to always test God when something goes wrong.

Make it a goal not to test God. When you feel like circumstances are just NOT the way they should be, praise God, ask Him for strength, tell Him you’re having a hard time—anything like that. But don’t test Him. Don’t let yourself become hard-hearted.

A 1930's get-together

It's the day when all the 30's celebrities come together and.......eat! I don't have any pictures of the food, but I have the people.


Marilyn Monroe


We told Brandon Groucho Marx was a creepy little man, so this is his creepy man look.


Jimmie Hendrix is the one who actually killed Jerry Oilman. I can beleive it by the look of him.



Forget what history tells us--Jimmie and Groucho were great friends with Fred Austaire!




Here's everybody! (Rita Hayworth, Bruce Lee, John Wayne, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland, Lucille Ball...)

Knocking Filling and Opening

I read two verses yesterday that seemed very similar to me. The first is Psalm 81:10, which says, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it,” and the second is a very familiar verse, Matthew 7:7. “Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” These are both beautiful promises, and I have seen several times in the past where God has fulfilled them.

Some of our family’s friends, the Lucases, were missionaries in Mexico for several years. One day, they felt like God wanted them to invite 2 families over for dinner. But they had practically no food in the house, certainly not enough to feed all the people that were there! So Jim prayed. Pretty soon there was a knock on the door. One of their neighbors had brought them a watermelon! After they cut that up, and while everyone was eating it, somebody else knocked on the door and said, “We felt like we should give you this bread and this soup.” God rewarded them for their trust in Him, and provided for the need they had!

A while ago, I was going to babysit some kids, but I was pretty stressed that morning before I went, because I always had a hard time babysitting these kids. They never liked any of my ideas for things to do, and I didn’t want to go babysit a bunch of bored kids all day. So I prayed about it, asking God to help me and giving my day to Him, and I ended up being able to think of some ideas that the kids really liked, and we had a lot of fun that day. I think God gave me those ideas.

In both these instances, God’s promise was fulfilled. With Jim Lucas, he opened his mouth wide, and God filled it. With me, I knocked, and the door was opened. But if a baby doesn’t open its mouth, how can someone put food in it? If a person doesn’t knock on the door, can it be opened to them? If nobody asks for anything, they won’t get anything, and they don’t look for anything they won’t find anything. Hence, I think these two verses are saying something a little more to us, than just the fact that God promises these things to us. We need to not just skip over the beginning of those verses. Knock… ask… seek….

So what are some ways we can ‘open our mouths’ or ‘knock on the door’? Well, Mr. Lucus had to ask God to fill his need, and I had to give my day over to Him and ask for help. There are lots of other things too. If you want God to give you wisdom for a situation, read Bible verses about wisdom, or stories about wise people in the Bible.

These are just some things to think about if you have a problem or need or anything like that. Imagine God saying to you, “Open your mouth and I will fill it. Seek and you will find. Knock and I will open the door for you.”

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

I got this from Melody's blog. It's supposed to be celebrities you look like.

Oh dear.

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Family name origins - Genelogy