The sacrifices we offer as spiritual priests include prayer and praise in our worship, and service and obedience in our life in the world. This kind of holiness infects everything we do. The housewife’s sign over the kitchen sink – ‘Divine service is conducted here three times every day’ – that’s practical holiness. The teenager who surrenders to Christ, then sweeps under the mats rather than around them – that’s holiness. The business-person who will lose the possibility of making thousands of dollars to keep his or her conscience clean – that’s holiness…

Stephen Neill’s book Christian Holiness describes holiness in these all-embracing New Testament categories: Holiness, he says is ‘never a fugitive and cloistered virtue’. It’s practised in the church and out in the marketplace. So we will reject ‘the unbiblical division of life between the sacred and the secular; if we do not meet God in the most ordinary and banal of daily occupations we shall not meet him anywhere’.

May ‘Holiness to the Lord’ be like a title for everything I do, this day and this night. Amen.

SPIRITUAL WORSHIP (2)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Romans 12:1.

In England, on August 24, 1662, two thousand Puritan pastors were expelled from their pulpits and forbidden to preach.

The Act of Uniformity invited them to conform to the liturgical worship of the established Church of England, but many pastors preferred silence to compromise.

One of them – Thomas Watson – delived his final sermon to his small flock at St. Stephen’s Church in Walbrook. You could call it ‘Twenty Pieces of Advice for Practical Holiness’. Among them: ‘Keep your constant hours of prayer every day with God’; ‘Collect good books for your homes’; ‘Always be at the job of self-examination’; ‘Be on guard in your spiritual life’; ‘The people of God should often associate together’; ‘Do not be idle, but work for your living’; ‘Be more afraid of sin than suffering’; ‘In the business of the Christian life, serve God with all your might’; ‘Do all the good you can to others as long as you live’; ‘Every day think upon eternity’. Good ‘holiness value’ for today, too!

Lord, if you have challenged me today in any of these areas, help me now to determine to change and grow and become more holy. Amen.

SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES

A royal priesthood… to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:5.

What do these Christian priests – all of us together – do? Peter says we offer spiritual and acceptable sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ (2:5). We ‘obey’ Jesus Christ (1:3).

What are these sacrifices we’re offering together? Various Scriptures provide some clues. Peter says (2:5) they take place in a ‘spiritual house’. I think he has Isaiah 56:7 in mind here: ‘My house is a house of prayer’. In Revelation 8:3 we find the saints – ‘holy ones’ – offering with the incense, their prayers. If you read Revelation 8 sometime you’ll see how these sacrificial prayers change the destiny of the world. Then Hebrews 13:15 talks about ‘the sacrifice of praise’, and Romans 12:1 enlarges the concept to include our whole beings, ourselves, everything. Philippians 2:17 refers to the ‘sacrifice of your faith’. These’s also the sacrifice of service: ‘Do good … for with such sacrifices God is well pleased’ (Hebrews 13:16).

We don’t offer animal, but rather human sacrifices everything we are and everything we do, everything which will please God and honour him, and advance us in a life of holiness. That’s why Peter stresses obedience as the first outcome of holiness he mentions (1:3). Indeed, the Holy Spirit is only given to those who ‘obey God’ (Acts 5:32).

I offer to you, Lord, my sacrifices of prayer, praise, faith and service: may my whole life be an acceptable sacrifice to you. Amen.