"His blood makes us fully clean from the things we have done."
When I was in high school, a couple of friends and I were working on a skit to do in Young Life. I played the role of Quebert while my buddy played the role of Cletus.
Over the course of a month, we developed a narrative about how we were two rednecks who lived in a trailer with our mama and our pet opossum Ralphie.
The only problem was, we needed to find a opossum so we could take it to our next skit.
So, as any normal person would do (hee hee), we set out the night before to go hunt for a opossum.
We spent hours driving up and down the streets with a spotlight looking for Ralphie. We searched people's yards, trees, and ditches, but couldn't find what we were looking for.
Finally, we saw one about three hours into our search. As soon as the opossum's eyes glimmered in the headlights, we parked the car, jumped out, and started running.
With thoughts of leprosy racing through our heads, we made sure to carry gigs and baseball bats.
The opossum squeezed through a hole in someone's fence, so we jumped the fence and continued our pursuit. The opossum ran under the deck in someone's backyard, so we grabbed the flounder gig (and, if you don't know what that is, imagine a two-pronged spear), and started poking it through the gaps in the deck to make contact with Ralphie.
Finally, Ralphie raced out from under the deck - and, to his own demise - cornered himself in the backyard. He made noises that sounded like demons, which made us want to use the bat.
I won't get into the details of how it actually went down, but we slaughtered Ralphie. We were too afraid to keep him alive because surely he would kill us in our sleep as repayment for not minding our own business.
Looking back on this night, it sounds barbaric and heartless. I have no desire to kill animals anymore unless I'm planning on using them for food.
While this story sounds disgusting and ruthless, all throughout the Bible we have stories of blood being shed - both animals and people. And, what's more confusing is, the blood was used in ritual offerings to God.
Cows and doves and rams and oxen and goats were all slaughtered with their life still in them. And the high priest would take this blood into a place called the Holy of Holies to pour it onto a thing called a Mercy Seat, which symbolized where God sat.
The blood acted as a visual and symbolic atonement of the evil things the priest and all the people had done for that period of time (which meant that people would do more evil things so this same process would need to be repeated again and again and again).
Sound barbaric and ruthless and inhumane?
If you said yes, then you're on the right track.
Fast forward to the book called Hebrews. In this book, the author outlines the whole process of worshiping God and being forgiven. It requires blood, which requires killing something.
But, the author brings in a totally breakthrough concept about a guy named Jesus - who shed blood and who was killed in that day by both the high priests and the Roman government at the time.
The author tells the audience that his blood makes us fully clean from the things we have done.
Does it sound impossible to wrap your head around?
Good.
But for the person listening to this story being read aloud, which was how the book was learned, blood making people fully clean was a completely new concept.
Why?
Because people messed up over and over and over. Therefore, killing animals and pouring their blood out was required over and over and over to make up for the people messing up over and over and over . . . and there was no end to the bloody cycle.
Until,
people started talking about this man Jesus in terms of sacrifice, and
blood, and atonement, and sins being cast as far as the east is from the
west.
While the actual process of killing animals to use their blood to atone for our stupidity isn't used in America, the underlying principle remains: we are being cleaned and atoned by a God who doesn't need our sacrifices.
This God doesn't want another church service that makes people feel guilty.
This God doesn't need anyone else to sacrifice anything out of guilt.
The author is saying that this God did something that completely eradicated the need to ever . . . sacrifice . . . again.
This God has eradicated the need to listen to that voice in our heads that tells us we need to do more to make up for the bad that we've done.
This God took on a whole new concept of how the gods were supposed to be. Love. Forgiveness. Grace.
The author is telling us that we are forgiven, we are being cleansed, and that death is not the final answer.
When I was in high school, a couple of friends and I were working on a skit to do in Young Life. I played the role of Quebert while my buddy played the role of Cletus.
Over the course of a month, we developed a narrative about how we were two rednecks who lived in a trailer with our mama and our pet opossum Ralphie.
The only problem was, we needed to find a opossum so we could take it to our next skit.
So, as any normal person would do (hee hee), we set out the night before to go hunt for a opossum.
We spent hours driving up and down the streets with a spotlight looking for Ralphie. We searched people's yards, trees, and ditches, but couldn't find what we were looking for.
Finally, we saw one about three hours into our search. As soon as the opossum's eyes glimmered in the headlights, we parked the car, jumped out, and started running.
With thoughts of leprosy racing through our heads, we made sure to carry gigs and baseball bats.
The opossum squeezed through a hole in someone's fence, so we jumped the fence and continued our pursuit. The opossum ran under the deck in someone's backyard, so we grabbed the flounder gig (and, if you don't know what that is, imagine a two-pronged spear), and started poking it through the gaps in the deck to make contact with Ralphie.
Finally, Ralphie raced out from under the deck - and, to his own demise - cornered himself in the backyard. He made noises that sounded like demons, which made us want to use the bat.
I won't get into the details of how it actually went down, but we slaughtered Ralphie. We were too afraid to keep him alive because surely he would kill us in our sleep as repayment for not minding our own business.
Looking back on this night, it sounds barbaric and heartless. I have no desire to kill animals anymore unless I'm planning on using them for food.
While this story sounds disgusting and ruthless, all throughout the Bible we have stories of blood being shed - both animals and people. And, what's more confusing is, the blood was used in ritual offerings to God.
Cows and doves and rams and oxen and goats were all slaughtered with their life still in them. And the high priest would take this blood into a place called the Holy of Holies to pour it onto a thing called a Mercy Seat, which symbolized where God sat.
The blood acted as a visual and symbolic atonement of the evil things the priest and all the people had done for that period of time (which meant that people would do more evil things so this same process would need to be repeated again and again and again).
Sound barbaric and ruthless and inhumane?
If you said yes, then you're on the right track.
Fast forward to the book called Hebrews. In this book, the author outlines the whole process of worshiping God and being forgiven. It requires blood, which requires killing something.
But, the author brings in a totally breakthrough concept about a guy named Jesus - who shed blood and who was killed in that day by both the high priests and the Roman government at the time.
The author tells the audience that his blood makes us fully clean from the things we have done.
Does it sound impossible to wrap your head around?
Good.
But for the person listening to this story being read aloud, which was how the book was learned, blood making people fully clean was a completely new concept.
Why?
Because people messed up over and over and over. Therefore, killing animals and pouring their blood out was required over and over and over to make up for the people messing up over and over and over . . . and there was no end to the bloody cycle.
While the actual process of killing animals to use their blood to atone for our stupidity isn't used in America, the underlying principle remains: we are being cleaned and atoned by a God who doesn't need our sacrifices.
This God doesn't want another church service that makes people feel guilty.
This God doesn't need anyone else to sacrifice anything out of guilt.
The author is saying that this God did something that completely eradicated the need to ever . . . sacrifice . . . again.
This God has eradicated the need to listen to that voice in our heads that tells us we need to do more to make up for the bad that we've done.
This God took on a whole new concept of how the gods were supposed to be. Love. Forgiveness. Grace.
The author is telling us that we are forgiven, we are being cleansed, and that death is not the final answer.
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