Faith Well Grounded

Well, I’m back. I’m hoping to be able to post more often, and I apologize for the lay-off to anyone out there who may enjoy reading my posts. As excuse, my college-age ministry has been taking quite a bit of time. But anyway...

I’m reading through the Bible-In-A-Year again, and decided to use a chronological plan this time. It takes you through God’s Word as it happened, instead of as it is laid out in the Bible. It’s a pretty cool way to do it, as it gives it a different feel (especially if you add in some New Testament reading as you make your way through Exodus and Leviticus; read the Law in the morning and its fulfillment in the evening.).

Anyway, I’m reading Leviticus, and it naturally brings me back to e-dogg and his questions that I and others (thanks watchman) tried to answer—why all the blood and death in God’s sacrificial system? Isn’t God pretty bloodthirsty? On one hand, I think we succeeded in offering some theology on the subject, but on the other, I think we failed miserably to get someone on the outside of Christianity to understand why it needed to be that way. I think it boils down to the fact that we gave the attention to the sacrifice (blood) and not the one giving the sacrifice.

As noted earlier, there is no remission of sin without blood, because the life is in the blood Lev 17:11. Why? It just is. The wages of sin is death Romans 6:23, and a just God MUST judge sin. God, being both just and gracious/merciful, chose to allow a sacrificial system involving animals as scapegoats for our sins. Ever since God replaced fig leaves with animal hides in the Garden of Eden, animal sacrifices were instituted.

Now, with all of that said, imagine that sacrifice from Adam and Eve’s point of view. They had a special relationship with animals, much different than ours. Adam was made their “master”, their overseer. It was his job to tend them. He named each as God brought them before him. And then, because of his sin, he had to watch one of them die as his covering. He had to wear its hide as a daily reminder that he had cost it its life, that he had been ransomed, and that his works (symbolized by the fig leaves) could not make remedy. Adam was forced into a confrontation with his own guilt, and his own helplessness to that guilt.

In a nutshell, that’s what we shouldn’t miss in the sacrificial system that God instituted. The sacrifice is three-fold. It reminds us that we are sinners, and deserve death. It allows God to be just in judging sin. Yet it also reminds us that God is merciful, and has provided a way for us to enter life and a relationship with Him.

In my next post, I’ll carry this thought along and look at the specifics of the atonement sacrifices as set forth in Leviticus. For now, I invite you to examine yourself before the one true God. He’s not bloodthirsty at all. As a matter of fact, He gave His own blood that you could experience the living waters and never thirst again.

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:13, 14

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