Episode 2387 - Lesson 6 - Monday May 05 - The Blood of Bulls and Goats

Some have criticized the entire concept of sacrifice, claiming that it is cruel, harsh, and, in a sense, unfair. Yet, that’s precisely the point. Christ’s death was cruel, harsh, and unfair—the innocent dying for the guilty. That’s what it took to solve the sin problem. And Christ's death was what all these harsh, cruel, and unfair sacrifices pointed to.Read Hebrews 10:3–10. What does this passage teach us about the sacrifices God’s people offered in the Old Testament? If sinners could not actually be saved by them, why offer them at all?The lambs and other sacrificial animals were mere symbols pointing forward to the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God. They were acts of faith, giving sinners a tangible way to express faith in the work of the coming Messiah. We often refer to these kinds of symbols as types, which are fulfilled by an antitype, or the appearance of the thing or event they foreshadowed. Some have even described the sacrifices as “mini-prophecies” of the death of Jesus on the cross.The rituals associated with sacrifice were a little like paying for a trip. When you purchase a train, bus, or airplane ticket, you do not immediately receive the journey you paid for. Instead, you are given a ticket or boarding pass, a symbol or promise of the journey to come. You can sit on that piece of paper all you want, but it will not convey you to any destination. Once you have boarded and the journey begins, however, you have received what you paid for, and the paper ticket becomes unnecessary.So it was with the sacrificial animals. They had an important role to play, but once the real sacrifice was made, they became meaningless—a reality depicted when the veil between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place in the earthly sanctuary was rent asunder at the death of Jesus. “Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Mark 15:38, NKJV). The whole sacrificial system, temple and all, pointed forward to the death of Jesus on the cross. Once Jesus fulfilled His promise at the cross and rose victorious over death, the types became unnecessary.Think about just how bad sin must be that only the death of Jesus, the incarnate Word (see John 1:1–3, 14), could atone for it. What should this tell us about what our attitude toward sin must be?