5-26-19 With great victory comes great sacrifice!

Scripture   1 John 3:16-18

PLAY VIDEO - honor our military

SLIDE - Great Victory (Title Slide)

1 John 3:16-18

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

INTRODUCTION

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. It provides is a long awaited, 3-day weekend. Grills will be fired up. Pools will open. Friends will gather. Summer begins. Memorial Day is much more than burgers, pools, beaches, and friends. Memorial Day marks a day of sacrifice, when we remember those who have paid the ultimate price in service to our nation. It’s a day that will be difficult for some, even unbearable for families who have recently lost family in service to our country.

Besides the picnics and fun, Memorial Day reminds us of an important Christian concept= sacrifice. Most of us don’t like the word, let alone the concept, the inconvenience, the struggle we face when we sacrifice something for Christ’s sake. Imagine where we would be if Jesus had not made the ultimate sacrifice? We can sometimes think that Jesus was God so it really wasn’t that bad. Jesus was as much human as you and I and he felt every slap, every whip of his back, every thorn in his brown, the nail in his hands and feet along with every insult, ridicule and humiliation - and yet - at 33 years of age, he sacrificed himself for our eternal freedom.

Besides the physical pain, he experienced a pain that none of us can fathom, his body bore our sin - whether we believe it or not, whether we accept it or not - all sin of all humans of all time were placed in his body when he voluntarily sacrificed himself for the world.

Do Christians ever offer their lives as a sacrifice? Absolutely, there are many who have died over 2000 years for the name of Jesus - in battle, as missionaries, in school and church shootings, others for beliefs they would not recant and were put to death by the very church they were living for.

Is that the only way to show your absolute devotion to Jesus? Must I die to show I am truly a Christian? I DON’T THINK SO! “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship.”

          I am amazed at people who live this out in ways I could never imagine doing. I am inspired by people who truly make a sacrifice for someone else. Many of us hold so tightly to the things that are ours that we never experience the gift of sacrificial living. Like the family in this video.

PLAY VIDEO “The Joy of Sacrifice”

Military Illustration

During World War II a young soldier named David Webster of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne wrote his mother: "Stop worrying about me. I joined the parachutists to fight. I intend to fight. If necessary, I shall die fighting, but don’t worry about this because no war can be won without young men dying. Those things which are precious are saved only by sacrifice."

Scripture often refers to the Christian life as a war—a spiritual battlefield. To answer the question of hymn writer Isaac Watts, we will not be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease. And there is no victory apart from sacrifice. Just as our salvation was purchased at great cost, overcoming the enemy and walking in the Spirit requires that we be willing to live sacrificially in order to triumph.

People will not be saved if we insist on keeping the status quo and always do things the way we have done things. The church will not grow unless we give up our pew, our finances, our positions, our time, our preferences for the sake of others.  Living sacrificially is every person who has ever taken the time to study a lesson and teach it to others in Sunday School or a small group, anyone who has been willing to meet month after month to make ministry plans for the church, anyone who had something else they had planned on doing and left those plans to sit with a friend who just received some bad news. Living sacrificially means giving a tithe 10% of your earned income to the ministry of your local church, it means being present at church events to welcome guests even when it is an event that doesn’t particularly interest you. Living sacrificially is getting out of your comfort zone and serving on a prayer team or missing out on adult Sunday school so you can invest in the lives of our children and youth during that time.

PLAY VIDEO Usain Bolt

Preparation is the sacrifice that matters

It took less then ten seconds for Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt to cover the one-hundred-meter distance on the Olympic track and win the gold medal in London. Those few seconds cemented his status as the “fastest man alive” and placed him on the winner’s podium once again. But the race was not won in those seconds—it was won by hours and hours of practice, workouts, weightlifting, special diet, and coaching.

The race was not won in the performance but in the preparation. It is our desire for something greater that causes us to sacrifice some things, even some good things, for the sake of things that are better.

          Being a living sacrifice means the daily work of prayer, reading your bible, being in worship 52, not 40 Sundays a year, serving when no one else knows. The only way to make an impact for Christ on the big stage is to make an impact for Christ in your prayer closet where no one sees and knows except you and Jesus. To be victorious, it takes sacrifice.

          Jesus gave us the perfect example - the greatest victory in all of humanity is God’s creation being redeemed for eternity - that happened after Jesus did the daily work or preaching, teaching, miracles until he blasted away the sting of death by dying on a tree and destroyed the hold death had on us by being raised from the grave and will show that redemption in full when one day he steps out on the clouds with a trumpet blast reining as the King of kings and calling his church home to glory forever.

1 John 3:16-18 THE MSG

This is how we've come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God's love? It disappears. And you made it disappear. My dear children, let's not just talk about love; let's practice real love.

Is there anything in the bible that shows us in simple terms what it looks like to live life as a living sacrifice?

SHEEP & GOATS were driven together.

Cain

Standard of Ur by Abraham’s time

Both source of meat. Milk, & fabrics

Large flock sign of wealth - Nabal had 3000 sheep 2000 goats

- The Day of Atonement you might bring a spotless lamb/sheep for your sin, but on behalf of the  entire people, the priest would bring a bull for himself and his family and two goats - one sacrificed who’s blood is mixed with that of the bull’s blood and sprinkled by hand on the altar - the priest with blood covered hands puts his hands on the head of the live goat which takes on itself the sins of all the people and is taken to the desert and released.

GOAT represents our sins.

SLIDE Sheep & Goats

Matt 25:31-46

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' 

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

To live a victorious Christian life - means to live like Jesus - become a living sacrifice for others - this is your spiritual act of worship!

With great victory comes great sacrifice!