Redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb

In the Old Testament, animal sacrifice was required by God to cover sin.

God killed animals to provide clothing for Adam and Eve.

Genesis 3:21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

God commanded the nation of Israel to sacrifice for their sins. The animal had to be spotless.

The person offering the sacrifice had to identify with the animal, and the person offering the animal had to inflict death upon it and spill its blood.

When done in faith, this sacrifice provided a temporary covering of sins.

You would take a lamb without blemish to the Temple on a typical summer’s day at the temple in Jerusalem. Under the hot sun, everywhere, the animals were being killed.

Your animal that you would bring for sacrifice would smell the blood of the other animals, and it would have reacted in fear, struggling to get away.

When you got to the priest, he would hand you a knife, and you would slit the white lamb’s throat. This would cause blood to splatter on your hands, arms, and on your clothes.

There was water there which you would use to wash the blood off your hands and arms. The animal’s blood, apart from the small part of it used to sprinkle the altar, would have flowed over the pavement.

Water was necessary to wash the blood off the pavement, and flowing gutters would have carried the bright red blood water away. The fire would have been roaring under the altar, making a hot day hotter still, and the smell of meat cooking would have been in the inner court.

Your senses would have been overwhelmed by this violent, noisy, gruesome affair.

As you walked back to your home that day with blood all over your clothes and the smell in your nose, you knew that sin was an awful thing that you had done against a Holy God.

Hebrew 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission.

Animal sacrifices were only a temporary covering of sins and were a foreshadowing of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

John 1:36 And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!

Jesus became that final sacrifice when his blood was spilled on the cross for the sins of the world.

Hebrews 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

Hebrew 10:4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

Hebrew 10:10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Hebrew 10:12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God.

1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

Revelations 1:5 And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.

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