On the 37th day of Christmas my true love gave to me a burnt offering for all of my sins (Leviticus 1:1-17).

“Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid? Your heart does the Spirit control? You can only be blest, and have peace and sweet rest, as you yield Him your body and soul.”

This is the refrain from the classic hymn Is Your All on the Altar? The title is a good question to ask when things are going haywire in our lives. I typically check to see if I have an unresolved issue with someone because when I don’t have peace and sweet rest and it seems like God’s blessings are skipping over me, I usually have to get something straight with somebody. This ought, as the Scriptures call it, often keeps me from being able to answer yes to the hymn’s questions. Sometimes I have not laid that issue on the altar; I think I have a right to have an issue so I don’t try to resolve, it. I want and go my way.

But Jesus Christ, the Him that the hymn refers to, yielded His body and soul to God the Father, even to the death of the cross. Jesus is the only way that we, Christians, can yield our bodies and souls to God, to walk in God’s will, and be accepted by Him. We see a symbol of Jesus’ total sacrifice in Leviticus with the burnt offering.

If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish. He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the LORD. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. [B]ut its entrails and its legs he shall wash with water. And the priest shall burn all of it on the altar, as a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the LORD (vv. 3-4 & 9).

Hebrews 10 tells us that Jesus came to be a burnt offering, once and for all, for those who accept Him.

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.'” When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (vv. 1-10).

Just think about this: When you want to do like I do and hold on to something, remember that Jesus Christ died for that something. His death symbolized the total consumption of our flesh so that we wouldn’t have to be consumed by it. Through the power of Jesus, we can lay our all on the altar and have peace and sweet rest. Is it a sacrifice? Yes, but Jesus made a greater one so we wouldn’t have to.

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith