The Blood of Forgiveness

“Then the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering and pour out all the rest of its blood at the base of the altar.” Leviticus 4:34

With the style in which Leviticus is written, it's easy to miss the absolute bloody mess the system of sacrifices really was for the nation of Israel. Whether it is a sin offering or a guilt offering, the blood of bulls and rams and goat and lambs and pigeons is being spilled out and sprinkled all over the altar. I don't believe I have any true frame of reference for how bloody all of it would be. At first in reading of the sacrifices my eyes began to glaze over, as many eyes do, and I began to 'read without reading' as can sometimes happen when reading Leviticus. After about the fifth description of the various sin offerings, it struck me. This is gory stuff! And then I began thinking of the verse in Hebrews that says, "Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins." The Israelites knew the price of sin because they saw the gore and the blood sin caused avery single day. Today, however, the bloody consequence of sin is lost. If we only could see the pain and suffering our sin causes, how would we act differently. If we had to kill our dog or our cat every time we sinned, would it changed the way we lived and more importantly, would it change our understanding of what Christ's blood did for us? Christ's blood was shed, just like the bulls and the goats, so that our sins might be forgiven. Our sin has consequences!

Lord Jesus, let us see the blood shed our sin has incurred and lead us to the altar of repentance!