‘He shall slay the young bull before the LORD; and Aaron’s sons the priests shall offer up the blood and sprinkle the blood around on the altar that is at the doorway of the tent of meeting.
The word “blood” appears in the Old Testament over 340 times. Sixty-five of those occurrences (about 20%) are found in the book of Leviticus. Leviticus reads as type of manual for the correct approach to the LORD God, in His tent of meeting, particularly when one has sinned against Him. Repeatedly, the Israelites are told that they must provide the blood or their unblemished male animals as substitutionary sacrifices for their sins, to re-establish the fellowship with God broken by their sins. All kinds of sins are covered in the book; purposeful, accidental, known, unknown—there seems to be no end to the guilt that humans bear before the Lord. But over and over again, the Israelites are told that fellowship with the LORD can be reestablished, renewed, if they simply provide a substitute to bear their punishment in their place. But it costs blood—the very life blood—of the best and seemingly innocent, to achieve this fellowship with the LORD. The sacrificial system of Israel was meant to accomplish both an immediate and a long-range purpose in the life of the nation. In the immediate sense, the sins of the people would be forgiven as they faithfully confessed their sins—as demonstrated by substitutionary animal sacrifice. In the long-term, the daily, endless need for animal sacrifice would build into the nation a desire, a hope, an expectation that one day a final, perfect sacrifice would be made on their behalf whereby they would experience a secure, eternal restoration with the LORD—a sacrifice which would forever end the need for animal blood to daily be sprinkled about the altar on their behalf. The staple of their religion, it seemed, was blood—unblemished, perfect, substitutionary blood, shed on their behalf, to secure forgiveness and restore their fellowship with God.
Fast forward 1400 years. On the banks of the Jordan River, a prophet named John looks up from the water and sees a Man approaching. He knows the Man Jesus (who is John’s cousin), but at this point, John announces to the gathered multitudes the identity of this Man. It is the first public proclamation of His identity in thirty years—“Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29) Very few of the people even knew their Scriptures well enough on that day to realize the shocking meaning of the statement John made about this Man, Jesus of Nazareth. But those who understood knew that they were laying eyes on the perfect sacrifice, the One promised who would bear their sins away, just as countless lambs, bulls, and goats had been bearing away their sins for centuries. Only this was a Lamb provided by God, not themselves. This one was different than all the rest…
Let’s not get squeamish about the need for blood in the Christian faith, for it is the blood needed by sinners like us to achieve a forgiveness and a fellowship that no animal blood could ever produce. Only, we won’t find this One’s blood sprinkled around the sides of an altar on our behalf; we will find it flowing freely down the sides of the stained, rough hewn wood of a Roman cross, on a hill, for all the world to see.
downtownpastor