Kitabı oku: «Power Of Sacrifice», sayfa 3

“God said to Solomon, ‘Because your greatest desire is to help your people, and you did not ask for personal wealth and honor or the death of your enemies or even long life, but rather you asked for wisdom and knowledge to properly govern my people, I will certainly give you wisdom and knowledge you requested. And I will also give you riches, wealth and honor such as no other king has ever had before you or will ever have again!”

2 Chronicles 1:11-12

My God! A divine surprise! Solomon did not bargain for this. What he wanted was just to show his love for God and his people, but see the Almighty embarrassing him with all the goodies. Sacrifice will not only attract wisdom and knowledge, but divine, unlimited riches, wealth and honor. If you want honor and prosperity, simply live for God and for others. God so much blessed this man that kings and queens from all over the world, from other continents were begging to hear his wisdom and to go into alliances and businesses with him. There was a super mysterious divine multiplication of wealth during Solomon’s reign in Israel. He became an international merchant with fleets of ships on the high seas trading for him. The wealth was so much that nobody could keep adequate record of them. In fact, the bible said that during his reign that gold and silver became common as stones on the street. Wow! Can you beat that? See it here:

“During Solomon’s reign, silver and gold were as plentiful in Jerusalem as stones. And valuable cedar wood was as common as the sycamore wood that grows in the foothills of Judah.”

2 chronicle 1:15

Jesus! Extraordinary wealth! He caused it. He over-provoked God by those sacrifices and selflessness, and heaven could not hold back again. This is the type that the scripture will call the hidden manna under the sand and the abundant wealth in the sea - that cannot be exhausted. God has everything, the whole universe and when He decides to off-load them anywhere or to anybody nothing can hold Him back. True. The wealth was out of control. Kings, nations, were competing, rushing to bring tribute and gifts to King Solomon. You remember the queen of Sheba that travelled all the way from Africa to come and hear the words of Solomon and to also see the splendor of his kingdom? She alone came with a caravan of camels loaded with spices, huge quantities of gold and precious jewels. And funny enough when the woman was going back Solomon gave her more than she brought to him. In fact, they were playing around with wealth, silver and gold during Solomon’s reign. May God turn the wealth of nations into your hands in the name of Jesus! Most of the furniture and the articles in the king’s palace and in the Temple were either wholly built or overlaid with pure gold. I think we better run part of this account from the scriptures and move on because we cannot say all about the blessings of Solomon in this work. This is what sacrifice can do. Check out this:

“Each year Solomon received about 25 tons of gold. This did not include the additional revenue he received from merchants and traders. All the kings of Arabia and the governors of the land also brought gold and silver to Solomon. King Solomon made two hundred large shields of hammered gold, each containing over 15 pounds of gold. He also made three hundred smaller shields of hammered gold, each containing about 71/2 pounds of gold. The king placed these shields in the palace of the forest of Lebanon.
The king made a huge ivory throne and overlaid it with pure gold. The throne had six steps, and there was a footstool of gold attached to it. On both sides of the seat were armrests, with the figures of a lion standing on each side of the throne. Solomon made twelve other lion figures, one standing on each end of each of the six steps. No other throne in all the world could be compared with it!
All of King Solomon’s drinking cups were solid gold, as were all the utensils in the palace of the Forest of Lebanon. They were not made of silver because silver was considered of little value in Solomon’s day! The king had fleet of trading ships manned by the sailors sent by Hiram. Once every three years, the ships returned, loaded down with gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.
So King Solomon became richer and wiser than any other king in all the earth. Kings from every nation came to visit him and to hear the wisdom God had given him. Year after year, everyone who came to visit brought him gifts of silver and gold, clothing, weapons, spices, horses, and mules.”

2 Chronicles 9:13 – 24

That is the power of sacrifice. Just one sacrifice opened this kind of door! Sacrifices are powerful. No other power or action can take a man to those heights. True.

And what is sacrifice?

Sacrifice is defined as the offering of something precious to a god, the giving up of something of great value to oneself for a special purpose or to benefit somebody else, and also personally, deliberately denying yourself pleasures, comfort, rights and privileges to achieve a purpose or a goal. If we would start from the first, it’s an established fact that humans cannot have any fellowship with spirits or the spirit world without sacrifices. And these come in form of altars, worship, dedication, devotion, offerings, etc. Whether it is the worship of God the creator of the universe or the worship of Satan and his host of demons, it is the same. You must be ready and willing to live a life of sacrifice to maintain the relationship with them. Sacrifice gives you access to the spirit world. It gives you access to the supernatural. It gives you spiritual privileges. It takes you beyond the natural. You cannot effectively serve or relate to God without living a life of sacrifice.

Now, from the beginning, God related to man through sacrifices. After giving man the freedom to eat every fruit in the Garden of Eden, he went ahead to warn him not to touch or eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yes, the fruit looked good and delicious but God told him, “Don’t touch it!” That was expected to be a mark of consecration, self-denial, sacrifice, but man fail woefully here. Look at Cain and Abel, it was the sacrifice they both performed to God that brought their problem. Abel’s sacrifice was accepted while Cain’s was rejected. Now, to Abraham, when God decided to make a covenant with Abraham, affirming His promises of protection, generational blessings, etc, it also involved a sacrifice. We will come to all that later.

The first sacrifice

Now, the earliest sacrifices you would find in the scriptures are in Gen 3:21

“And the LORD made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.”

Sure, an animal(s) was sacrificed before the skin was removed to cover them. Another is in Gen: 4:3-6

“At harvest time Cain brought to the LORD a gift of his farm produce, while Abel brought several choice lambs from the best of his flock. The LORD accepted Abel and his offering. This made Cain very angry and dejected. ‘Why are you so angry?’ The LORD asked him ‘why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you respond in the right way.”

Noah and the Rainbow

“Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and sacrificed on it the animals and birds that had been approved for that purpose. And the LORD was pleased with the sacrifice and said to himself, “I will never again curse the earth, destroying all living things, even though people’s thought and actions are bent toward evil from childhood. As long as the earth remains, there will be spring time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.
God blessed Noah and his sons and told them, multiply and fill the earth. All the wild animals, large and small, and all the birds and fish will be afraid of you. I have placed them in your power. I have given them to you for food, just as I have given you grain and vegetables. But now, you must have many children and repopulate the earth. Yes, multiply and fill the earth.
Then God told Noah and his sons, ‘I am making a covenant with you and your descendants and with the animals you brought with you all these birds and livestock and wild animals. I solemnly promise never to send another flood to kill all living creations and destroy the earth’. And God said ‘I am giving you a sign as evidence of my eternal covenant with you and all living creatures. I have placed my rainbow in the clouds: it is the sign of my permanent promise to you and to all the earth. When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will be seen in the clouds, and I will remember my covenant with you and with everything that lives. Never again will there be a flood that will destroy all life. When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth. Then God said to Noah, ‘yes this is the sign of my covenant with all the creatures of the earth.”

Genesis 8:20-22, 9:1-17

My God! Did you read that? There is nothing you cannot achieve with sacrifice. Nothing is impossible with a man of sacrifice. God could not hold back again after Noah performed this sacrifice according to divine specifications. Noah, his family and the animals were just emerging from the great flood that wiped away every other living thing from the face of the earth, and the first thing this man did was to build an altar and sacrificed to the LORD. And not just anyhow sacrifice, but to the approved specifications. And this pleased God and moved Him to start a ‘reckless’ release of blessings, promises and covenants to Noah, his family and all the earth-external blessings.

Going back, one would have expected Noah to rest a bit from all the troubles that came with the deluge first. Before the flood, there have been moral decadence and global apathy towards the things of God by people of that generation. Things were so bad that the fallen angels (demonic beings) were marrying humans, and were producing strange men - giants. And this was the most important factor that made God take the decision of wiping away everything. Look at this:

“When the human population began to grow rapidly on earth, the sons of God saw the beautiful women of the human race and took any they wanted as their wives. Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In future, they will live no more than 120 years.’ In those days, and even afterward, giants lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with human women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes mentioned in legends of old.” Genesis 6:1-7

God was so angry about this that He actually regretted creating man, and immediate took the painful decision of completely wiping out the human race. Then, the flood came with its own challenges - the preparations, the building of the ark, the mockery, the gathering and taking care of those animals – creeping, hopping, galloping and walking, the birds, etc. It was indeed a great task and I believe it is only God’s grace that could help anyone achieve such. Now, this was followed by the uncertainties and risks of floating and tossing over the earth that was covered by water rising to twenty-two feet above the peaks of the highest mountain. Wow! The floods that wiped away every living thing from the face of the earth - only Noah, his family and the animals in the ark were spared.

Noah was not too sure of how it will all begin and end. He didn’t know how all that was going to happened but he trusted God to keep him and He did. So imagine how he felt when the word of God came to pass. Even the receding of the flood was not very easy. It also came in phases. All these could shake even the most powerful man. True. So, Noah was right to have immediately built an altar for sacrifices as he was coming out of this harrowing voyage.