The Acceptable Sacrifice

(part 1)

“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
John 1:29

Have you ever stopped to consider just how radical a statement that John the Baptist was making when he made this declaration about Jesus? It was such a magnificent statement that it would have stopped people in their tracks. If John was correct, they were gazing upon a man who was going to do the utterly impossible.

For generations, the Israelites only had one way of dealing with sin. According to Leviticus 4:27-28:

“If a member of the community sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands, he is guilty. When he is made aware of the sin he committed, he must bring as his offering for the sin he committed, a female goat without defect.”

Leviticus 4 goes on to tells us that the man was to lay his hands on the lamb’s head and slaughter it. The “laying on of hands” was seen as a symbolic transferring of sin to the lamb. Thus the man identified himself with it, and then sacrificed it. The priest then would take the blood of the lamb and put it on the horns of the altar and pour the rest on the base.

“In this way the priest will make atonement for him for the sin he has committed, and he will be forgiven.”
Leviticus 35b

This process would be a mammoth daily undertaking. It would take an entire priesthood to pull it off. Daily the people would make their way to the tabernacle with their lambs. The priest would examine each one thoroughly to make certain they were “acceptable” and then receive them to make atonement. For John the Baptist to point to Jesus and say “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” would have sounded too good to be true. The Israelites knew of no lamb that was capable of doing that! They were unaware that their endless sacrifices were but a shadow of things to come:

“The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming- not the realities themselves. For this reason in can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who drew near to worship.”
Hebrews 10:1

That is why Christ had to come into the world. So that by one sacrifice He could make perfect forever those who are being made holy. When Christ came to Calvary, the ultimate brazen altar, it is here that the “Priest of Heaven” examined the sacrifice to make certain it was acceptable. He must be perfect, pure and holy:

“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”
1 Peter 1:19




Pastor Scott Burr
http://faithandworshipseries.blogspot.com