Monday, March 2, 2015
Romans 5:9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
BLOOD THAT SAVES
Picture yourself among the crowd of Israeli faithful gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai. The time, roughly 1500 B.C. Your leader, Moses, has ascended to the heights of Sinai to receive words from God. A detailed list of precepts, rules, and commandments the LORD expects you to obey. You witness lightning flashes and billowing smoke. You hear booming thunder and an eardrum -- piercing trumpet blast. All awesome displays of God's holiness. It makes you shrink in fear!
Now you see Moses descending the mountain. You watch as he builds an altar. You hear him tell some men to fetch some bulls from a nearby animal enclosure. You watch in wonder as the bulls are slaughtered and sacrificed. You see Moses take blood he's collected from the bulls, puts some in a bowl, sprinkles some on the altar. He walks to where you're standing and sprinkles blood from the bowl on you. As he walks among the people, doing the same to them, you hear him say: "This is the blood of the covenant the Lord has made with you in accordance with all His words" (Exodus 24:8).
Nor does Moses leave you in the dark about the meaning of this ritual. He says it's a reminder of blood that will flow from the wounds of a special Lamb of the future. Blood your Messiah will pour out for you so you may be cleansed of your guilt, redeemed from your missteps against God's laws, so that you need not tremble at His holiness but be His dear child and live with Him forever.
We can't go back to join the Israelis at Sinai nor need we. Yet the Bible says that "everything written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope" (Romans 15:4). We present-day believers derive much benefit from recounting events from those "B.C. years." It helps to show how extraordinary was the happening when God's Lamb appeared on earth, went forth to the slaughter, took up our infirmities, carried our sorrows, endured the shame, agony, and God-forsakenness we deserve but that we will never suffer -- because of His shed blood.
