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“In
this way the priest will make atonement for him for the sin he has committed,
and he will be forgiven” —Leviticus 4:35b
Did
the religious authorities realize how “Old Testament” they were being when they
insisted that Jesus be crucified? Did they notice that the actions they took that
led to the Lord’s death paralleled closely the atonement ritual that their
ancestors had carried out so assiduously, and that they themselves practiced. The
death of the lamb, the sprinkling of the blood on the altar, was part of their
own religious observance, as familiar to them as their wives’ faces.
The
trouble with familiarity is that oftentimes doing the same thing over and over
again gets so routine that its true significance is lost in the science of the
script and the art of the ceremony.
Leviticus,
one of those books of the Bible that most of us avoid, describes the numerous sacrifices
that the ancients once offered. There were offerings for every occasion: for
priests, for the community, for community leaders, for individuals. There were
different animals that were part of the ritual: bulls, goats, lambs, and doves.
In
the case of an individual who committed a sin, Moses records this: “When anyone is guilty in any of these ways,
he must confess in what way he has sinned and, as a penalty for the sin he has
committed, he must bring to the Lord a female lamb or goat from the flock as a
sin offering; and the priest will make atonement for him for his sin”
(Leviticus 5:5, 6). The animal was killed. Some of its blood was sprinkled on
the altar, the rest was drained out at the foot of the altar. The animal was
then offered as a burnt offering to make atonement for the sin of the offender.
The
priests of Jesus’ day would not have recognized the cross-shaped altar, the
cleansing flood of blood that flowed from the Lord’s body to pool at its base.
Nor would they have understood that in the instant when the perfect Lamb died,
atonement was provided for them. The Lamb had been sacrificed for the guilty.
No, they would not have understood. They would not have confessed their guilt
because they saw Jesus as guilty and themselves as the righteous. That was
their fatal flaw.
In
a recent Bible study something the group was looking at triggered an “aha”
moment in my head. The Bible teacher was
talking about the temple mount in Jerusalem where once these sacrifices
described in the Scriptures were made. A mosque now sits on the site. It is the
greatest desire of every orthodox Jew to see that mosque destroyed and the
temple rebuilt where once it stood. I asked myself why God would have allowed a
mosque to be built on the site of the holiest of holy places for the people of
Israel, the place where once the cloud of His presence dwelt. As I thought about
the question, I also wondered if God would ever allow the Jews to rebuild the
temple, or if He would thwart every attempt to restore it.
Is
it possible that the mosque is there to prevent the Jews from returning to a
system that doesn’t work, to keep them from sacrificing lambs in the futile
attempt to do what has already been done once and for all time?
The
only completely sufficient sacrifice has been made. There is no need for
another.
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