This is the day which the Lord hath made; We will rejoice and be glad in it. Save now, we beseech thee, O Lord: O Lord, we beseech thee, send now prosperity. Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord: We have blessed you out of the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he hath given us light: Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. Thou art my God, and I will give thanks unto thee: Thou art my God, I will exalt thee. Oh give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good; For his lovingkindness endureth forever. Psalms 118:24–29.
We may not sense fully what this is talking about. What does it mean to “bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar”? A sacrifice sometimes objects to being a sacrifice; when it sees the priest coming with the knife, it is not exactly excited about it! So the priest would take the sacrifice and bind it on the altar.
Do you know how to slaughter a pig? Those who do are careful not to frighten it, for if a pig is butchered wrong, its meat becomes tainted with a discharge cause by fear. Have you ever been afraid of what God was doing to you? Believe me, it taints the meat! But the Lord says this is what you do—open your heart to God and bind the sacrifice (yourself) to the horns of the altar. Tie yourself! Will yourself to become that thing; do not run from what God wants you to be—a living sacrifice. The horns of the altar were little projections that came up at the corners. The idea was that they take the sacrifice to be killed and tie it right to the altar. Then they could go ahead and make the sacrifice unto the Lord.
“Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.” Do that with your own heart! “This is the day which the Lord hath made! We shall be glad and rejoice in it.” We rejoice because we are doing it unto the Lord. We are going to walk before the Lord, giving ourselves as living sacrifices. God grant that we can do it without fear, without reservation, without holding back anything in ourselves.
Have you sometimes been fearful of the price or the outcome of things? Don’t be! It taints the praise. It taints the worship. It colors everything that you give to God. Be a willing, expendable sacrifice to the Lord.
Always come to the altars to receive Communion with a great deal of faith. Is there anyone who does not need the precious blood of Jesus Christ, fresh, real, living right now? God has mercy on us. Sometimes He gives us mercy until He can show us mercy! Sometimes God sees in our hearts that we really don’t have the capacity to repent as we should. We don’t understand the enormity of what we do, what we have done, or even the attitudes of our heart. We don’t realize what we have done to ourselves in the years past by walking in fear, unbelief, and moments of rebellion. We just can’t know; we haven’t the understanding. But as we begin the process of repenting, He shows mercy upon us until He can show us more mercy. He shows us mercy until our capacity of understanding comes. Sometimes we fail to appreciate what God is doing for us now, what He meant to us in calling us into this Walk, forgiving the past, and just letting us walk on with Him. As we go along, our awareness increases. God opens our eyes and our hearts to a new awareness of how He loves us, what He has done for us, what He will continue to do for us, how He is blessing us beyond anything that we have the understanding to appreciate.
As I was walking down the street one day, I was thinking of some things that God had done for me; blessings He had given to me, deep forgiveness He had brought to me, and I remembered my own failure and withdrawal of spirit. I had repented of it, but I hadn’t realized the depths of what I had really done. Suddenly, it hit me. Brokenly, I began to really repent for the first time in depth. I thought about if afterward: I had repented before and had asked God to take the withdrawal out of my spirit, but suddenly it hit me how awful that withdrawal was; what an affront to God it was. A new level of understanding came, and I found my heart pouring out to God in repentance.
Some say, “Well, repent once and forget it.” I think that repentance should remain with a person continually. Repent as you go along. The host of heaven are those who are worshiping and adoring Him because He had washed them from their sins and redeemed them with His love. We don’t appreciate God now; we don’t appreciate our Lord; we don’t appreciate this Walk. We see superficially, but one day we shall see in depth as God grants to us deeper understanding.
It is not that you are going back over past sins, trying to repent again and again, but that you are coming to a deeper sense of continual repentance and turning from sin. You are turning to the righteousness of God and living for Christ, dedicated to Him, walking in the new day. If you don’t do this, you become overwhelmed by the shifting circumstances, by every tide and wind that blows. But if constantly you are aware of the depths of what He is doing in your life, how much He loves you, how much He has laid His hand upon you, how much He has kept you from that which would have destroyed you or would have brought His wrath upon you, it will overwhelm you. He has brought you into a deeper relationship with Him. It isn’t finished; it has just begun! He is going to continue until you are engulfed in His love; one with Him. You will have everything that you have ever wanted in this life in the way of a walk with God and a closeness with Him. Appreciate that His hand is upon your life.
Lord, these messages are from my heart, but I think they were born in Your heart, and our hearts but echo when we hear that You love us, that You have forgiven us. Our repentance is not a mourning and a sorrow, but it is a deep turning away and an abhorrence of evil, with the deep thanksgiving that You have cleansed us from our sin. You have removed our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. You have dealt deeply in our lives, deeper than we have realized and You are going to lead us on to everything that You have for us.
We call upon Thy Spirit to give us a new sense of what we are in Thee, what You have done, and what You are doing; what You shall yet perfect within each one of us. We rejoice that having begun a good work within us, You are able to perform it unto the day of the Lord. You will perfect that which concerns us, as the promise reads in Thy Word.
O God, we repent anew for every sin against Thee. We thank Thee for forgiving us. We thank You for Your grace. We thank You for what You are doing and embrace this above all else. Lord, You will complete what You have started. Search us to the depths until we are wholly Thine. We must walk with Thee. From day to day, stimulate the hunger of our hearts, that hunger and thirst after Thee. We shall yearn after Thee, walk with Thee, and love Thee, O Lord, above all else.
Our Father, we embrace by Jesus Christ, our Lord, the blessing of this hour and the faith to build our hearts. We take that encouragement from Thee and we believe Thy Word to be a living bread, broken, feeding us.
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; … bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. II Corinthians 10:4, 5. Where there is anguish, where there is confusion, where there is distraction, where there is self-pity, where there is pride, jealousy, arrogance, bitterness and every conflicting thing warring against spirit and mind, we take dominion over it that the Word of God may have free course, that it may bless and loose us, that our hearts be so set on Thee to believe for those things you have spoken and to move into the area of blessing that has been set before us in the name of the Lord.
We prepare our hearts for great things. This shall be a day of Thy miracle power being released to the people of the Lord. Lord, if the vision grows dim and if it looks as if objectives You have set before us are not going to be fulfilled, oh give us a faith like Abraham’s to stagger not at the promises of God through unbelief, but to become mighty in faith believing that what Thou hast promised, Thou art able also to perform. Lord, You don’t tease us—when You give us a promise, it means that You mean it, that You are willing and able to do it. We claim it now, in Jesus’ name. Amen.