Celebrate the joy of surrender to the Lord.
God required many more sacrifices at the Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot than at his other appointed times. Numbers 29:12-28 lists them.
Most prominent and most numerous were burnt offerings. Indeed, the first day of the feast alone, God instructed, “You must present a burnt offering as a special gift, a pleasing aroma to the Lord. It will consist of thirteen young bulls, two rams, and fourteen one-year-old male lambs, all with no defects” (Num. 29:13 NLT).
For all the other animal sacrifices in the Mosaic law – the sin offering, guilt offering and peace offering – only the entrails of the animal were burned. The meat was made available either to the priests or to the people as food. By contrast, the burnt offering was wholly consumed. It typified total surrender to the Lord.
Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we now express our total surrender to God by becoming living sacrifices, instead of offering burnt ones.
In the classic, Absolute Surrender, Andrew Murray wrote:
The condition for obtaining God’s full blessing is absolute surrender to Him.
God does not ask you to give the perfect surrender in your strength, or by the power of your will; God is willing to work it in you.
When God has begun the work of absolute surrender in you, and when God has accepted your surrender, then God holds Himself bound to care for it and to keep it. Will you believe that?
Feast on the Word
Romans 12:1-2 speaks of surrender as one decisive act, followed by many day-to-day choices. Meditate on these two verses:
Decisive act. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship (v. 1).
(In The Message:) So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering.
Daily choices. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be [being] transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (v. 2).
(In The Message:) “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.”
Celebrate the Feast
Surrender happens in a decisive act – and in daily choices. In view of all God’s mercies, have you decisively dedicated yourself as a living sacrifice to him? If so, recall that time. Thank God that he gave you grace then and that he will “care for and keep” that surrender.
Will you also give him permission to show you any specific thing you’re now trying to hold back? Will you trust him today for grace to release that thing to him?
If you haven’t made the decisive surrender called for in Romans 12:1, will you press in to God and ask him to work in you what you in your own strength cannot do?
Celebrate the surrender that brings freedom, rest, victory and joy!
Image © David Ohmer, flickr, Evening Light on Cedar Lake Fountain, CC 2.0
See also
- The intro to this Feast of Tabernacles celebration guide and links to all 8 Days, at Sukkot: The Feast of Joy
- Celebrating God at his appointed times
