"It Is Finished" - But what was?

God had made this plan to bridge the gap caused by sin. But it was a temporary plan because it was insufficient. There was no single sacrifice that was good enough — it required more and more sacrifices. The temple became a holy butcher shop, and priests were basically glorified, religious butchers. All day long, all they did was offer sacrifices. Blood was constantly flowing in an effort to keep up with the sins of man. And it’s why I say that we are too detached from the price of our sin. We don’t have this same system. We don’t have the priests and the temples and the sacrifices and the altar and all that kind of stuff. We don’t have those pieces. We’re separated from the price of our sin because we don’t see the lamb’s throat get slit. We might live in more of a realization of our sin if we had to watch that every so often. We don’t walk into the temple and get the smells of the blood and the burning flesh and attach it to our own failures, our own sin, our own guilt, and our own shame. We don’t walk through a place of worship and step over pools or rivers of blood that are flowing from an altar. We don’t acknowledge that we need an intercessor – a priest. We don’t recognize that we need someone to go before God on our behalf. The system that God created — we’re detached from it. And it’s Jesus’s fault. These systems that made the Israelites very aware of their sin, and they became obsolete after Jesus’s sacrifice. Because it was all a temporary plan. It was all about getting to Jesus. That’s why Paul says in Romans 3 that, “God presented Him,” — talking of Jesus — “as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood.” Jesus Himself was the sacrifice. His blood was the one that was poured out for us, just as you would a small lamb or a goat or a bull in the Old Testament. A sacrifice was made by Jesus, and His blood becomes the payment for our sins. His blood is better than any other sacrifice. It perfect, untainted. He’s the one person who doesn’t have sin, and with it guilt and shame. But he still dies – for us. On our behalf. Jesus says, “It’s finished.” His work as a sacrifice for us is complete. It’s finished.