In the biblical story of Adam and Eve, God made clothing for them from the skins of sacrificed animals.
Genesis 3:21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.
Every person has been given the gift of life by God. However, when someone sins, it is a direct offense against God, and the punishment for sin is death.
James 1:15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
In ancient times, as outlined in the Old Testament, animal sacrifice served as a crucial means of seeking forgiveness from God for sins. The nation of Israel was directed by God to present unblemished or spotless animals as offerings to atone for their transgressions.
The person making the sacrifice had to identify with the animal and then inflict death upon it, spilling its blood. When done in faith, this sacrifice offered a temporary covering for sins.
You would bring an unblemished lamb to the Temple on a typical summer day in Jerusalem. Under the scorching sun, animals were being slaughtered everywhere.
When you bring your animal for sacrifice, it would be able to smell the blood of the other animals. As a natural reaction, it would become fearful and start struggling to escape the situation.
When you got to the priest, he would hand you a knife, and you would slit the white lamb’s throat. This would cause blood to splatter on your hands, arms, and on your clothes.
In that place, there was a supply of water that you could use to cleanse the blood from your hands and arms. The animal’s blood, apart from the small portion used for sprinkling on the altar, would have streamed across the pavement.
Water was necessary to wash the blood off the pavement, and flowing gutters would have carried the bright red blood water away. The fire would have roared under the altar, making a hot day hotter still, and the smell of meat cooking would have been in the inner court.
Your senses would have been overwhelmed by this violent, noisy, gruesome affair.
As you walked back to your home that day with blood all over your clothes and the smell in your nose, you knew that sin was an awful thing that you had done against a Holy God.
Hebrews 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission.
Animal sacrifices were only a temporary covering of sins and were a foreshadowing of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
John 1:36 And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!
Jesus became that final sacrifice when his blood was spilled on the cross for the sins of the world.
Hebrews 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.
Hebrew 10:4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
Hebrew 10:10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Hebrew 10:12 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God.
1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
Revelations 1:5 And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.
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