Dawn in the Desert - Part 4

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship [Romans 12:1].

The eternal Son of God temporarily laid aside His prerogatives as God. He took upon Himself humanity, becoming a man of like nature with us. He eternally is God. At a point in time He became a man, and He now remains a man forevermore. At the same time He is still God.

As a man Jesus walked the earth without exercising His prerogatives of deity. Instead He obeyed the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is one way the Lord Jesus fulfilled the Law for man.

We too are to be born again, and then we are to live in our human body according to the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. Guess what? When we describe this arrangement, we are expressing the definition of the whole burnt offering! Hallelujah! Our study is bringing us to a better understanding of the whole burnt offering.

But under the New Covenant we don’t present burnt offerings on a bronze altar. So how does all this understanding affect us today? Just this, that we are to present our body to God as a living sacrifice. Don’t you remember? And this brings us to the distinct difference between the whole burnt offerings of the Old Covenant and the living sacrifices of the New.

Muse upon the scenario we portrayed back in the wilderness in the camp of Israel. It’s dawn and the morning burnt offering is being presented to the Lord at the bronze altar. The priest did what again to that little ol’ lamb? He invited it home to meet the family? No, that wasn’t it. He fed it to the big bad wolf? Not even. I got it! He took it to the movies? Nah. Still not the right answer.

Okay. So you tell me the correct answer. What did the priest do to the lamb of the continual burnt offering? Ah, I see by the look on your face that you remember what we discussed. Yes, that’s right! The priest slit the lamb’s throat, then cut the poor thing into its constituent parts and burned them to smithereens on the bronze altar.

That was the end result of the burnt offerings under the Old Covenant. Now do you see the difference between that and the living sacrifices under the New Covenant? Yes, you got it right again! Praise the Lord! The Old Covenant whole burnt offerings were killed, while the New Covenant whole burnt offerings (aka “living sacrifices”) are presented to the Lord alive and breathing. A significant difference, wouldn’t you say?

But not so fast! The real and true burnt offering—the antitype (the Lord Jesus)—did die on the cross (the bronze altar). Even more, any true Christian also died on that cross “in Christ”. He is our substitute whole burnt offering, just as He is our substitute sin offering and every other type of offering. We don’t live because of our own righteousness. We live because He died for our sins and then imparted to us His righteousness.

I like it! Thank you, Jesus. Let’s go to Him now and do just that. We’ll finish our subject in the next study.

To further research this issue, I direct you to my book Numbers: Volume 4 of Heavenly Citizens in Earthly Shoes. To purchase my books please click on the "Shop" tab at the top of this page, where you will find a complete list of my books. Each book is available in both paperback (Createspace) and eBook (Kindle).

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