Sacrifices For The Gods

Animal sacrifice is another concept that is very foreign – and even offensive – to many modern believers.  If you were to buy a goat and bring it to your local church as an offering, the chances are good that your local pastor will have no idea just what to do with it.  (I know I wouldn’t.)  But the giving of offerings WAS worship.  In the Old Testament era there were no choirs, no pulpits, no pianos, no padded seats, and no air-conditioned worship centers.  Worship wasn’t about singing and preaching nearly as much as it was about giving.  The first act of worship recorded in the Bible is in Genesis 4.  Cain and Abel brought their offerings to God to show Him their devotion.  Abel, it says, brought the best of what he had – the fatty portions and choicest pieces of his butchered animals.  The quality of Cain’s offering is not described.  The implication seems to be that Cain gave what was left, while Abel gave what was best.  And God blessed Abel’s offering because he was willing to give a gift that showed his love for the Lord. 

This was the attitude behind the giving of offerings.  If you wanted to gain the attention of your god, then you needed to give something that was a real sacrifice.  The gods could apparently tell the difference between a gift that meant nothing to the giver and a gift that was a true sacrifice.  While seeking a location to build the temple in Jerusalem, David is led to build an altar on the summit of Mount Moriah which is just outside his existing city walls.  But that land belongs to a man named Araunah the Jebusite, who uses it as a threshing floor for his grain.  Araunah wants to give the land to David, along with animals for a burnt offering, but David refuses and demands to pay the man a fair price.  His reasoning is thus: “I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.”  It is here that we gain some real insight into the theology of sacrifices.  This was not just a pittance given to one’s god… This was truly a sacrifice that would be costly and might force the giver or his family to go without so that God may have their best.  A true sacrifice is painful to give, and shows your god how devoted you are to them.

You can imagine where this line of thinking will eventually take a society.  If there was a season of drought and the people needed it to rain, they might petition their god with the limited gifts from their fields.  Then if it still didn’t rain, then might bring the gift of animals – showing that they were willing to kill in order to gain their god’s favor.  And when the giving of their food and animals was not enough, and the rain still did not fall, they would look for something even more important that they could give to their god.  Some societies eventually turned to human sacrifice in order to gain their god’s attention… showing that their desire to please him was so great that they were willing to give up one of their own. 

Sometimes a human sacrifice would take the form of slaves, showing the god that his people were willing to give up their possessions – for slaves were seen very much as beasts of burden, like giving up an ox.  Or the human sacrifices might be captured prisoners, showing the gods that they owed their victory in battle to divine power.  But eventually human sacrifice led to the giving up of a society’s future in the form of its children.  Children represented the next generation; the workforce of the immediate future.  They were the link that would carry the chain of civilization to the next level.  And to show their gods that they were willing to place the future in divine hands was the ultimate show of devotion.  They were giving up the children they loved, the most innocent among them, and the possibility of future strength in order to appease the gods they worshiped.

God commanded Abraham to take his son – his promised son – and sacrifice him.  Abraham obeyed, trusting that God would keep His promise to bring nations and kings out of this son’s generations.  And God stayed Abraham’s hand before the knife cut young Isaac’s throat.  In great faith, Abraham had been willing to put his son and the promise of the future on the line.  Much later, God would do the same for us.  His own Son became the sacrifice.  God alone has the power to do this.  He alone is the giver and taker of life.  He alone has the plan to redeem us by the blood of His perfect Son.  We do not.  Whether it was slaves, prisoners, or children, those who offered sacrifices preyed on the weak and powerless of society and sought divine prosperity by the blood of others.  But Christians are commanded to be LIVING SACRIFICES.  We serve a sacrificial God; and if we are to be His children, then we must also be people of sacrifice.  We give Him all that we are because we love Him…  He has done nothing less for us.