God's Sacrifice

I have never killed anything. (Well, bugs.) I have never been hunting. But I watch a lot of survival shows, so I've seen some other folks do it. 

It's messy. 

And I've read the Old Testament, every word of Leviticus, and it sounds hard. I mean, I find it difficult to trim a piece of meat I just bought from the store that the store has already trimmed but left a little too much fat on for my liking. I never seem to have a knife sharp enough. I can't get the meat to stay still enough to get the fat off. All of a sudden, there's blood everywhere (some of it might be mine), and I decide, you know, it's fine. 

When I'm reading the Old Testament and thinking about the sacrifices, it's hard for me to switch my brain sometimes and realize just how much blood there was. The beautiful altar and table and tools that were made for the Temple would have lasted exactly one use before they were blood-covered. The garments for the priests? Blood-covered. I once joked about how everyone likes a good hog roast (except, apparently, God, since pork was unclean) and how roasting meet smells so good, but have you ever smelled that much blood? 

I work in healthcare. Trust me, you don't want to smell that much blood.

The point is - the sacrifice is tedious, messy work. It's nauseating for most of it. It's bloody and gooey and requires the sharpest of tools to do it well. Separate the fat from one lobe of the liver and the kidneys? It takes a certain skill...and an iron stomach...to prepare a sacrifice. 

And remember - the people of God were doing this themselves. The priest's job was to offer the sacrifice, not to prepare it. The Levites might have helped sometimes, but the Bible repeatedly tells the people to prepare their sacrifice. Even the big one - the Passover - every family was to slaughter their own lamb, smear their own doorframes with blood (again, the smell...).

This was a distasteful task that every (male) Israelite was responsible for. But I think that was the point. I think God wanted His people to understand how dirty and disgusting and laborious and messy this whole process was. I think He wanted them to be good and familiar with it, down to their bones. 

And then...

And then along comes a prophet who says God has prepared a sacrifice (Zephaniah 1:7). He's done the dirty work. He's got the sharp tools, the right knife. He's separating the fat from the organs. He's draining the blood at the side of the altar (some of it might be His...okay, it is His). He's smelling that awful smell. 

It wasn't the first time. When Adam and Eve sinned and found themselves in shame, it was God who slaughtered the first animal to make them coverings of animal skins. It was very early on in our sin that the smell of that blood hit our noses...and God's. 

But it would be the last time. 

Praise the Lord.