The old sacrifices are past and done for ever. There are no more smoking altars or bleeding beasts; but that which they represented still remains, and will remain so long as man and God are child and Father to each other. The giving up of the life of man away from himself to serve his true and rightful Master, the surrender of his life to Another, self-sacrifice, which is what these burnt-offerings picturesquely represented, is universally and perpetually necessary. It is not beasts, but lives, that we offer. Can the life, too, be offered now as the beast was offered of old: with song and trumpet? Can self-sacrifice be a thing of triumph and exhilaration? Can it be the conscious glorification of a life to give that life away in self-denial?
I. The different forms of self-sacrifice stand around us with their demands. There is the need that a man should sacrifice himself to himself, his lower self to his higher self, his passions to his principles. There is the need of sacrificing one's self for fellow-men. There is the highest need of all, the need of giving up our own will to God's. All these needs a man will own and honour. He will try to meet them all his life. But when you come to talk of joy in meeting them, that is another matter. Self-sacrifice seems to him something apart from the whole notion of enjoyment.
II. The words of our text, however strangely they sound at first, are literally true, as the history of many a man's life.
From the moment that it began to live for other people, the nature which had no song in it before became jubilant with music. The soul that trifles and toys with self-sacrifice never can get its true joy and power. Only the soul that, with an overwhelming impulse and a perfect trust, gives itself up for ever to the life of other men, finds the delight and peace which such complete self-surrender has to give.
III. There is another reason why it would seem to be absolutely necessary that man should have the power of finding pleasure in his self-sacrifices, in the actual fulfilment of his completed tasks, the actual doing of the necessary duties of his life, and that is found in the fact that joy or delight in what we are doing is not a mere luxury; it is a means, a help, for the more perfect doing of our work. Joy in one's work is the consummate tool without which the work may be done indeed, but without which the work will always be done slowly, clumsily, and without its finest perfectness.
IV. The man who really lives in the world of Christ's redemption claims his self-sacrifices. He goes up to his martyrdom with a song. To live in this world and do nothing for one's own spiritual self, or for fellow-man, or for God is a terrible thing. There is no happy life except in self-consecration.
Phillips Brooks, Candle of the Lord,p. 22.
References: 2 Chronicles 29:27 Homiletic Magazine,vol. xv., p. 105; A. B. Evans, Church Sermons,vol. i., p. 361. 2 Chronicles 29:31. J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 373.