The Once-And-For-All Sacrifice

In Exodus, we see the great lengths to which God will go to have a people set apart in holiness so that he can be among them in the most personal way. The sacrifice of animals became the intermediary of that holiness. But while that sacrificial system was meaningful to the Israelites, in the wider context of the Bible, it was just a foreshadow of a better reality that God had in mind: the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Jesus. You see, at just the right time in history, Jesus became our once-and-for-all sacrifice when he shed his blood on the cross. Our sins were laid on him in that exchange, and his righteousness was imputed to us. His blood became the perpetual intermediary in the exchange of holiness that is necessary for God to walk among us and for us to be his set apart people.

The Journey // Focus: Exodus 29:43-46

I will meet the people of Israel there, in the place made holy by my glorious presence. Yes, I will consecrate the Tabernacle and the altar, and I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests. Then I will live among the people of Israel and be their God, and they will know that I am the Lord their God. I am the one who brought them out of the land of Egypt so that I could live among them. I am the Lord their God.

To the modern educated and sophisticated mind, this bloody chapter describing the ordination of Aaron as the high priest of Israel, and his sons as priests, is strange at best, and abhorrent at worst. It doesn’t make sense, it is hard to read and it is next to impossible to draw any uplifting devotional from.

Since we don’t live in an ancient, pastoral setting, the slaughtering of animals even for food is something we don’t want to think about. I travel regularly to rural Africa to train leaders and engage in humanitarian activities, and it is traditional that on our last night in a village, a lamb will be slaughtered for a celebratory meal. Sometimes the lamb is tied up the day of the event right in the area where we are coming and going. We pass the lamb throughout the day knowing that he will be our meal later that evening. It is the hardest meal for me to swallow, literally, and one that on so many levels, I really don’t enjoy. I don’t want to know my meal before I eat it. Give me a steak at Ruth’s Chris, but don’t tell me how it got to my table.

We just don’t get it. And we just don’t live in that kind of a setting anymore. When I was ordained as a pastor many years ago, there was meaningful ceremony surrounding the event, but thankfully, it did not involve the slaughtering of a bull.

So having acknowledged the difficulty of Old Testament passages like this, here is just one thought that I do believe we can pull from this chapter for devotional use—and when you think about it in this light, it is totally uplifting and definitely a cause for gratitude. Furthermore, this application is truly the point of the whole Bible:

In this portion of Exodus, what we are seeing is the great lengths to which God will go to have a people set apart in holiness so that he can live among them and be their God at the most personal level. And he needed priests as intermediaries of that holiness. Therefore, to be those priests, Aaron and his sons themselves had to be made holy, that is set apart for God’s purpose, by the sacrifice of a bull. That was an act, by the way, that was to be repeated in the generations of priests to come. But while that act was very meaningful to the Israelites, in the wider context of the entire Bible, it was just a foreshadowing of a better reality that God had in mind.

You see, at just the right time in history, Jesus became our once-and-for-all sacrifice when he shed his blood on the cross. Our sins were laid on him in that exchange, and his righteousness was imputed to us. His blood became the perpetual intermediary in the exchange of holiness that is necessary for God to walk among us and for us to be his set apart people. By the way, not only was Jesus our once-for-all-sacrifice, he also became our perfect, fully empathetic, High Priest forever.

I would encourage you, after you have read this chapter, to re-read Hebrews 10 with a grateful heart as it so beautifully contrasts the Old Testament system of sacrifice with Jesus’ once-and-for-all sacrifice. Hebrews 10:14 tells us,

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

While Aaron and his sons had to lay their hands on the bull as an act of transferring their sin to the animal, and while that animal’s blood was sprinkled on them, thank God he went to the greatest length to offer his very own Son, Jesus, who

Once for all time, has appeared at the end of the age to remove sin by his own death as a sacrifice. …For where there is forgiveness of these [through the sprinkling of Christ’s blood], there is no longer any offering for sin. (Hebrews 9:26, 10:18)

Thank God that he goes to such great lengths to make us holy.