WordLive - Year OneVoorbeeld

Prepare: Have you paid your monthly bills? What would happen if you didn’t?

Obedience or love
Every month we pay our electricity bill. That’s the law, and we obey. (Besides, if we didn’t, they’d cut off the power!) During the year we buy presents for family birthdays. We don’t do that because of any law. We do it out of love.

In the tabernacle, the priests had to make sacrifices in order to obey the law. How does that compare with Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross (v 12)?

Blood offering
On the Day of Atonement, the high priest sacrificed many animals in order to fulfil the law (v 13). Remember the word used for ‘covenant’ here also means a will, and that only comes into play when the testator dies (v 17). So Jesus offered up his own blood to make us pure before God (vs 13,14).

Have we perhaps become so used to talking about blood sacrifices that we no longer think of the horror? When the high priest went into the Holy of Holies, he sprinkled the blood of a bullock, and later a goat, onto the mercy seat.

Stains removed
Imagine what this looked like. There were no cleanup crews in the holy of holies. The evidence of man’s sin remained there, staining the wood, for ever.

Have we become so used to the picture of Christ on the cross that we’ve forgotten the horror of Calvary? Yet because of his resurrection, the stains of our sins are gone. He took them away – for ever.

Respond: Give thanks today that Jesus willingly gave up his life out of love, for you.

http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-04-30