Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Exodus 24:8 And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, "This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words."
BLOOD OF THE COVENANT
I am what you would call a city boy, not having grown up around agriculture or animals of any kind. Consequently, I have not had the pleasure of shedding the blood of animals in my lifetime. I have only heard stories of the slaughter of chickens, or of the dressing of deer or other animals after the hunt. The closest I come to bloody meat is discarding the pad under the meat in the foam tray from the grocery store which has trapped some of the juices from the cut. It's hard for me to envision what went on in Old Testament times, specifically those spoken of in this chapter of Exodus 24.
Though hard to imagine, these sacrifices of animals and the use of their shed blood as payment for sin was necessary. God prescribed the way in which this blood was to be used to pay for sin. It was the blood of the covenant.
For you and I, living in this age of neatly shrink wrapped meat products, this blood of the old covenant seems far away, as it is. We are now living under the new covenant, the old having been taken care of.
The bloody sacrifice is still necessary to pay for our sins, however. The shed blood of sacrifice that pays for our sins is not found on the floor of the butcher shop, but at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ on Calvary.
As difficult as it is to imagine the cut meat and the blood of bulls and goats, it is equally mind numbing to imagine the sacrifice that God's Son, Jesus, made on that cross so many years ago. Yet it is there for us to behold. A sacrifice so incredible, that it was good enough to make payment in full for your sins.
And the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).
