February 3, 2012 … Living Sacrifices

Passage of the Day: Reference of Today’s Chronological Bible Study: Exodus, Chapters 13-15 … To study these chapters, go to this link -

Exodus 13: 6-9 … 51-52: … [Remembrance Through Sacrifice] ... 6 For seven days eat bread made without yeast and on the seventh day hold a festival to the Lord. 7 Eat unleavened bread during those seven days; nothing with yeast in it is to be seen among you, nor shall any yeast be seen anywhere within your borders. 8 On that day tell your son, 'I do this because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.' 9 This observance will be for you like a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that this law of the Lord is to be on your lips. For the Lord brought you out of Egypt with his mighty hand. 10 You must keep this ordinance at the appointed time year after year.

My Journal for Today: Orthodox Jews – to this day – observe the festival of unleavened bread to remember the day God delivered them from Egypt and to have themselves set apart from other peoples as God’s chosen and delivered children. God ordered and ordained this festival to Moses, who imparted the remembrance to God’s people in the Torah, … the Book of the Law, from which I’ve take today’s focus passage from Exodus 13: 6-9.

And as I read through Chapters 13-15, in my chronological reading plan this day, I chose to focus my journal comments because the passage copied above seemed to be asking of me, “Bill, what marks your life in a regular, recurring way which remembers the New Covenant sacrifice which allowed you to be drafted into God’s people, … as an heir to God’s throne of grace?” And as I meditated on that question, which came to me through the passage above, two New Testament passages bubble up out of my consciousness.

The first is one I’d bet many of you know by heart; and it is a command directly from Jesus in John 13: 34-35, which exhorts Christians … “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

And I believe that this command from Jesus is saying to the New Covenant believer much the same thing God was saying to believers of the Old Covenant in our focus passage above; and that is … remember ME, your loving Redeemer by the way you live your lives, loving others the way I AM has loved you. And you may already be remembering the other passage, which came from the Apostle Paul from God in Romans 12: 1-2, which is probably rolling off your tongue from memory right now, saying, … I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

For any reading with me today, don’t you agree that we – as believers in the same God worshipped by those in the days of Moses … and as believers in the Lord, Jesus, Our Deliverer and Redeemer – should be living our lives as festivals of remembrance, … lives which brand us as living sacrifices, showing off the love of God for us by the love we show to others, especially fellow believers? Our lives should be living witness to the God Who delivered us from the slavery of “our Egypt,” which is the bondage all mankind has to our sinful nature.

Jesus shed His blood as God’s perfect Lamb of sacrifice so that we, who declare belief in that atoning work on the cross, would be freed forever from slavery to sin; and now it’s time that we declare – by the living of our lives, sharing the love of God with others – that we are His forever.

I hope that you, who read along with me today in God’s word, are feeling the need to live more as “living sacrifices” of love. That is my prayer today. Will you join me?

My Prayer Today: … Lord, I live for You. Help my life to be a festival of remembrance to/for Your love in/through my life. Amen