Once for All!

 There are some occurrences in the Old Testament that are really difficult to imagine. Listen to this story and imagine you are there. First, let me set the scene: God has delivered His people the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt through miraculous events. They have crossed the Red Sea on dry land; they have seen God lead them through a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. They have watched God provide food from the sky and water from a rock. Now they have come to a mountain, Mount Sinai. God speaks the law to Moses which he is to pass on to the people. God promises that if His people obey Him, He will drive out the enemies from the land they are about to enter. This is His covenant to the people – the Law and His promises. As the book of Leviticus outlines, His law includes the regulation for animal sacrifices to be offered by the priest in response to their sin. When Moses meets with the people, here is the account from Exodus 34:3-8:

Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.”  And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

            The author of Hebrews refers to this, and he writes that Moses “sprinkled both the book itself and the people, saying, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you’.” He goes on to explain that Moses also sprinkled the blood on the tent itself and the vessels used in worship (Hebrews 9:19-21). Can you imagine? Blood everywhere – sprinkled on the tabernacle, the vessels, and yes, even sprinkled on the people at the inauguration of the covenant that God was making with his people.

            One of the goals of the writer of Hebrews is to show how Christ is the better sacrifice, and in chapter 9, he deals much with the necessity of blood for the forgiveness of sins (22). He explains how the old covenant was just a shadow of the better thing that was coming. Christ too shed blood, but His sacrifice was a “once for all” sacrifice. His death and shed blood inaugurated a new covenant, and this time, the law of God would not just be written on stones. Hundreds of years prior, God had already told the people a new covenant was coming, “This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days…. I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it” (Jer. 31:33). The law was weak in that it could not make the Israelites perfect (Heb. 9:9). It was only outward, not inward. The blood was sprinkled on them, but it could not cleanse the inside of them. It could not change their hearts.

            “For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Heb. 9:13-14).

            Christ’s sacrifice, on the other hand, reaches our inside. It cleans our conscience. It is the law written on our hearts that is referred to in the Jeremiah passage. Christ’s death and his blood shed inaugurated this new covenant (Heb. 9:16-18). We are called to remember Christ’s death in a special way when we celebrate the Lord’s supper together. Part of that important time is the drinking of the cup of which Christ said, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”  In a talk by author Jen Wilkin that I listened to yesterday on Hebrews 9, she pointed out that in the drinking of the cup (that stands for the blood), we are also showing the contrast with the old covenant. We are not just “sprinkled” with it as the Israelites were in the old covenant; that couldn’t truly cleanse. No, we drink it; we take it in. It is the blood of Christ through His sacrifice on our behalf that cleanses our hearts. When we drink the cup, that is what we declare.

            Sisters, let’s praise God afresh for His wonderful plan of which the tabernacle with its sacrifices was only a picture and of which Christ is the fulfillment. Let’s praise Him for the cleansing that Christ’s sacrifice wrought in our own hearts ‘once for all.’

--Amy O’Rear