The Lamb of God
What good is a lamb? Their wool makes great sweaters and socks that stay warm even when wet. A well-cooked lamb chop is pretty tasty. Beyond that, they don’t have much good purpose to us. However, to an ancient Hebrew, a lamb was so much more.
The Bible says that the tabernacle was designed as a representation of heaven. There was an outer court accessible to all men. Only the priests entered an outer room, called the Holy Place where they fulfilled various duties, but the innermost room, the Most Holy Place, was divided by a thick curtain that could only be entered once a year, and only by the High Priest after he had gone through a week long strenuous process of cleansing himself, and even then only with the blood of a perfect yearling lamb. Failure to follow these instructions to the letter resulted in instant death.
The Most Holy Place, often referred to as the Holy of Holies, was the holiest place on the face of the earth. It was representative of where God would dwell among His people. In the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant that had gone before the Israelites throughout their conquest of Canaan, the altar of incense, and a copy of the law to be a witness against the people.
The law exposes sin. It condemns. It was impossible to perfectly follow. It was designed to show that we all fall short of God’s perfection. We all do things we know we shouldn’t. We all leave undone those things we know we should do. The law witnessed against the Israelites just as it does before us today. There was no escaping the fact that humans were – and still are – imperfect and separated from God by that imperfection.
The blood of a perfect yearling lamb was sprinkled, atoning (covering) the sinfulness of the people. Until the next year when it would have to be repeated, the covering blood of a perfect lamb allowed our perfect God to stay in a relationship with imperfect people.
Then Jesus came and was proclaimed by John the Baptist to be “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus lived a perfect life. Even those who were with him nearly every day of the last three years of his life said they never saw him do even one thing wrong. He sacrificed himself and became the sacrifice whose blood permanently covers the sin that separates us from God.
Hebrews 9 (It explains this concept in detail, but especially verses 24-28 below)
For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
Hebrews 10:1-2 (NIV)
The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming--not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.
Hebrews 10:10 (NIV)
And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Challenge: If you haven’t done so already, be sure to seek out a sponsor and discuss how to claim Jesus’ sacrifice for yourself.
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