A Better Sacrifice

 

"By faith Abel presented God a better sacrifice," (Heb.11).

You know God's next in these last days? A better sacrifice. If you knew a better way of worshipping God, would you do it? We often spend, time, money and effort tiring ourselves out to give God a better worship. Some do it long, some non-stop. Yes, they look attractively spiritual, but why do we them? Are they really weighty in the spiritual realms? Why do we think it's through them that we can touch God's heart? Because we fail to see what's a better sacrifice in God's eyes.

Photo above by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash.

Better (and radical) sacrifice pleasing to God. Click here.

You can worship much better without "worshiping." I mean, going through the rigours of what we call worship today. Seriously, you should always settle for nothing less than the best worship. The highest worship. But what we think is highest doesn't bear much in the spirit realms. The best worship is far from being through man's efforts. It's far from anything we do today--or anything conceived or made possible by man. Man, even in "born-again" condition (or what church people think is "born again"), is fallen.

A Better Sacrifice is by Faith

Of course, we all know this, right? But we seldom get the point, really. If we want a better worship for God, then live Jesus' Life everyday. Simply live by faith! The key words here are "live" and "faith." God looks for life, not just a worship activity. Worship with no life (the Jesus Life in the believer) is self-worship or idolatry--exactly what Cain did that ended up with a curse marked on his forehead. Worship is a LIFE. If you worship God without the LIFE, you're marked. And the devil will see that mark even from a far distance. He'd know that your worship is fake. It can't hurt him.

Better sacrifice is better life, which is Jesus' Life. The best worship is the best LIFE--seeing face to face, not anymore through a glass darkly. Not anymore from a distance that necessitates shouting and making noise. No more need for grandstanding. It's making music in your heart, which is possible only with the best Life.

Don't think that a worship with "life" means you make it lively and expressive and loud and long and repetitious and accompanied with cries and wailing. Don't make it like that (some churches just formulate these things). In fact (listen to this), DON'T MAKE ANYTHING. Let the Holy Spirit do the making. Be led, period. If there's anything that should be taught in church today, it's how to be genuinely led by the Holy Spirit. Yup, God's next move is increasing our signal strength to more accurately and speedily catch the frequencies of the Spirit, like what 5G or fibre optics does to our Wifi.

A better sacrifice should have this. Click here.

Genuine Faith

Living by faith means, first, depending solely on God. This means giving up everything and surrendering them to God. Giving up (often, this means you totally just forget about them) what you can do and have, including your "grand plans" for God, and relying solely on his leading. Anything derived from the flesh is zero in the Kingdom. The flesh counts for nothing.

16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. [1 John 2]

It's also giving up worship not empowered by the spoken WORD. You may sing or play instruments all you want in church (even sing good and expressively). Yet, if you don't meditate the Word day and night (the Word that proceeds out from the mouth of God), it's all useless. A person who sings well in the worship team but has no deep love for the Word is just a singer, not a worshiper. 

True worship is giving back to God what He's given us. God did not come so we can have church programs, activities, church music or fellowship, though these are good. He said, "I have come that you may have LIFE, and have it more abundantly." It's abundant spiritual LIFE that God's given us, so it's what we should offer back to him in worship. Only the life of Jesus in you is the best and highest worship. 

"For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” [John 6.27]

Therefore, true worship--and a better sacrifice like what Abel did--is offering God our abundant spiritual LIFE during worship and everyday of our lives. This is real worship and genuinely living a life of faith.

Offer God the Jesus Life in You

Hannah, Samuel's mother, knew this so well. She asked the Lord for a boy, and after giving birth to one, she gave his life back to the Lord. Life for life. The life God gave you is what you should offer back to him in worship. She declared:

I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. 28 So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there.

True worship involves life.

It's like the talent given to the servant. When the master came back, the good and faithful servant grew his 5 talents 5 times more. What pleases God is faith or spiritual life that grows and multiplies. And faith like that means abundant spiritual life that increases each day. 

"...inwardly we are being renewed day by day."' [2 Corinthians 4.16]

Fighting deception in the land of the enemy. Click here. We must make sure we are building where God wants us to build, not where the enemy wants to use us. Beware because the enemy is a master of deception, working hard to deceive even the elect, if that were possible. Learn more from this e-book.

Our Way is Not a Better Way

The WORD is eternal [Psalm 119.89]. It didn't start when Moses got the 10 commandments. He (the Word) is the Alpha and Omega because the WORD is Jesus, says Revelation 19. So, before the time of Abel and Cain, the Word was already there. And God had placed the Word into their hearts. God also does that to folks who haven't read the Word yet:

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.[Romans 2]

They weren't exactly "gentiles" but Cain and Abel didn't have the law yet. But they had the Word. The requirements were put in their hearts supernaturally. So this principle applied to them. They hadn't read the law but it was put in their hearts. And the law said that God was pleased when the required animals were sacrificed to him--when life with blood was offered and sacrificed. Abel did that. He knew how to please God. Though Cain also knew it, he insisted on offering fruits.

Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord.4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering,5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. [Genesis 4]

Cain should have traded his fruits with some of Abel's flocks and offered animals to God instead of fruits. He didn't. He insisted his own way. So God told him:

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.

The principle hasn't changed. God still requires life offered in worship today, but not anymore the physical bodies of animals. Paul says we present our bodies (our lives) as pleasing sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God which is our spiritual worship. This is made possible by what Jesus did with his physical body on the cross. 

Often, we still follow Cain's example. We worship in our own ways. We prefer giving God the fruits of our hard labors instead of offering God the Jesus Life he gave us. We have the propensity to insist on what we have or do and ignore what God prescribes. We see this in a lot of church ministries today, doing a lot of programs and activities but severely lacking God's supernatural power.

They will act religious but reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that! [2 Timothy 3.5]

Eating Jesus in God's Next

A better insight on this is eating Jesus' flesh and drinking his blood. He said that his flesh was real food and his blood real drink [John 6]. He added that anyone who didn't eat his flesh "has no life in him." A better sacrifice then has lots to do with "eating his flesh," which means "eating" the Word of God day and night. Don't just read the Word. Eat it. You become what you eat.

What Jesus did physically has a powerful spiritual value for us throughout history. We now please God by faith, believing what Jesus did for us on the cross. And genuine believing seriously includes offering our lives as pleasing sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.

This is God's next-level wisdom: "I didn't merely give them commands on burnt offering and sacrifices, but also this: Obey and walk in all the ways I tell you" (Jer.7). That's LIFE.

A better sacrifice? A better worship? Quit tiring yourself. Give up your exhaustive worship service! It's NEVER by works or efforts. It's always simply by faith that moves mountains. That's God's next.