WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: Imagine that you are extremely thirsty. You see a picture of a delicious milkshake. Does it quench your thirst? See how this illustration fits today’s reading. Picturing Jesus When I taught children at Sunday School I often used felt boards. I would place brightly coloured figures backed in felt onto the background. The children would listen, enthralled, as they watched the illustration of the story. A figure of Jesus helped them ‘see’ Jesus and how he acted. It wasn’t the real thing, only a picture, an illustration. Sadly, many people today see Jesus like that – as a picture. They have not seen past the illustration to meet the real Saviour. Not the real thing The Old Testament sacrifices were only illustrations of the real thing, mere shadows. If they really removed people’s sins for ever, what would this have meant (v 2)? During the Day of Atonement, the high priest showed the people an object lesson. He symbolically laid their sins on the back of a ‘scapegoat’, which he sent out into the wilderness, lost for ever (Leviticus 16:10). This illustrated the removal of humankind’s sins, but it was an illustration, not the real thing. No animal could act as a substitute for people. Only a person – a perfect human – could take away our sins (vs 5–9). And as he was perfect, there is no need to repeat the sacrifice (v 10). Respond: Have you seen past the illustration, and laid your sins on the shoulders of the only one in all history who can remove them from you? For ever? http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-05-02