SACRIFICE: THE OLD AND THE NEW
‘With such sacrifices God is well pleased.’
What do we mean by the word sacrifice? We look back to the dawn of history, sacred or profane alike, and everywhere we find the same belief, the same practice, not resting, so far as we know, on any external revelation, but with roots which seem to lie deep down in the human soul. Man—such as we still see him in many savage tribes—feels himself in the presence of a mightier power. A voice within him or without him bids him place himself at peace with or in union with that power. He takes something of his own and offers to his god.
I. There was a stage in human history in which sacrifice, literal sacrifice, seemed to be the only form of worship into which the human mind could fully enter; it seemed to represent the elements, so to speak, of prayer, praise, adoration, thanksgiving, penitence, trust, affection, the readiness to give one’s very best, the yearning to be at one with God which lies at the very roots of all true religion; and we may almost, as we look back on those far-off days, hear God’s Spirit say to those early worshippers words which our Saviour used to His own disciples: ‘I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.’ Let us never pass, as we sometimes do pass, a Jewish synagogue without remembering that it was in these synagogues, ages ago, that our Lord first began, and so often repeated, His own teaching; that it was in these places that His apostles found, in city after city, wherever a handful of Jews were settled, a seed dropped to bear witness to the Word of God.
II. We know how in the very fulness of time there came One in Whom the highest and noblest ideas of the rite of sacrifice found their fulfilment. In that full dedication and self-offering to God of a sinless life on that cross of Calvary which consummated that sacrifice, the days of the old bloody sacrifice of the earlier world were ended. And the effects of that far-reaching sacrifice have extended far beyond the limits of the Christian Church.
III. There are still senses in which we can offer to our Father Which is in heaven a sacrifice which will be pleasing to His fatherly heart, and the offering of which may help to draw us nearer and nearer towards Him. We think of the complete and entire surrender of our own being to His service, of which St. Paul speaks in Romans 12 : To do good and to communicate.’ We know how large a place this surrender of what is ours to aid those who sorely need it filled in our Saviour’s teaching—in the teaching of Him Who went about doing good. ‘Sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven,’ He said to one. Very startling words they were to him, and also to us. ‘I was an hungered, and ye gave Me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink.’
—Dean Bradley.