The sacrifice of peace: peace of conscience and peace of heart. A Christian has peace. Read Romans 5:1 – ”Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” No one without Christ has peace. You may have pleasure, good times, and you may succeed for a time in drowning the voice of conscience, but way down in the bottom of your heart you don’t have peace. You will never have peace until you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, surrender to Him as Lord and Master and confess Him as such before the world.
The sacrifice of joy: the highest, purest, truest, most satisfying and most enduring joy that is to be found on earth. I am not talking about heaven now, but about the joy that comes to believers in Jesus Christ in the life that now is. Read 1 Peter 1: 7-8: ”Jesus Christ: whom not having seen ye love; on whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Ask people who have tried the world and afterward have tried Jesus Christ whether they have found a better and more satisfying joy in Jesus Christ than they had in the world, and you will always get the same answer. They have found in Jesus Christ a joy immeasurably better, more satisfying, more enduring and overflowing than they have ever found in the world.
The sacrifice of hope. A Christian has hope. Read Titus 1:2 – ”In hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised.” Has the world anything to put up against that? And you know that hope for the future is more important than present possession. I would rather be the poorest child of God who walks this earth tonight with the absolutely certain hope that with the rising of eternity’s sun I was to be for all ”joint-heirs with Christ,” than to be the richest man out of Christ with no outlook for all eternity except to be cast into God’s eternal prison house of hell.
The sacrifice of the highest manhood and womanhood. Through sin, every one of us has fallen away from God’s ideal. As the Apostle Paul puts it in Roman’s 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That is God’s ideal for us: “the glory of God” reincarnated in your life in mine. We have fallen short of it by sin, and the only way back to God’s ideal is by our acceptance of Jesus Christ and the regenerating and transforming power of God through Christ.
The sacrifice of God’s favor. We have all lost god’s favor by sin, and the only way back to God’s favor is by the acceptance of the Sin-Bearer whom God Himself has provided. John 3 36 says: “He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” The great God who made those wonderful worlds of light that we call stars, the God who holds those stars in the hollow of His hand, that same God loves me but is displeased with me. If I had to face that thought tonight, I would not try to sleep until I found peace with God.
The sacrifice of Christ’s acknowledgement in the world to come. Read Matthew 10: 32-32: “Therefore who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven.” Real faith in Christ always leads to open confession of Christ.
The sacrifice of eternal life and means to perish forever. Read John 3: 14-15: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Believe – have eternal life. Not believe – perish.
What “eternal life” means in the full outworking of an endless eternity in personal and intimate fellowship with God, no human language can describe, no imagination can conceive. But take that moment in your own life whose joy was purest, deepest, most overflowing, most glorious; then multiply that joy by infinity, and you will have some faint conception of what “eternal life” means.
What it means to “perish” in the full outworking of an endless eternity separated from god, no human language can describe, no human imagination can fancy. But take that moment in your own life whose sorrow was heaviest to bear, whose anguish was keenest, whose agony was most crushing; then multiply that midnight of anguish and despair and shame you knew by infinity, and carry it out to all eternity; and you will have some faint conception of what it means to “perish.”
AND THAT IS WHAT IT COSTS NOT TO BE A CHRISTIAN.