Saturday, April 18, 2009

Today’s Passage: Leviticus 4-5


Today’s passage of Scripture reminds us of the wonderful sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God that He sent His only Son to be the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. Those in the Old Testament were required by God to make specific sacrifices for their sin in order for the sin to be atoned for. What this means is that God instructed them to have the priests offer up a sacrifice for the people’s sin, in order that God would forgive them and thus bring the relationship back into a right standing with God.

In the New Testament; however, we see that God’s Son, Jesus Christ was the sacrifice for our sins! You may have heard of the phrase, the priesthood of the believer. That is what this phrase is referring to. No longer are we (Christians) required to go and slay a goat or lamb and prepare it in a specific way for the priest to offer it up to God as a sacrifice for our sin. Rather, we as the believer can boldly approach the throne of God and confess our sin to Him and ask forgiveness of them c.f. Hebrews 4:16 (or Hebrews 4 for that matter). If we genuinely repent, God says that He forgives us and our relationship is thus back in a right/good standing.

I challenge you today, to mediate on the fact that Jesus Christ is our ultimate sacrifice. He died in our place so that our sins would be forgiven. This does not mean we only ask once and that’s it. Even in today’s passage, we see that God’s people had to keep sacrificing for sin. God does not want sin to come in between our relationship with Him. This is one reason why we confess our sin to Him. So again, I challenge you to confess your sin to God today, in genuine repentance. And meditate on the fact of God’s sacrifice for myself and you! If you would like more reading on this, I recommend I Timothy 3:5 and the whole book of Hebrews, or more specifically Hebrews 7:23-28.