Dec. 7, 2015 Why were animals sacrificed?

If it is true, as some want us to believe, that the only law Jesus fulfilled was the sacrificial then answer this. Why were the animals sacrificed? As an offering to God for mankind’s breaking of the moral code (as some call it, trying to split the law and separate it into the moral, the sacrificial, and the ceremonial law). When Jesus became our sacrifice once and for all, it was once and for all of mankind and once and for all breaches of the law. Now what about the feasts, each came with their own animal and meal sacrifices. When Jesus sacrificed His life once and for all it included all sacrifices commanded under the law, moral or ceremonial – there never was a sacrificial law free standing from the law.

You cannot separate the law or ceremony from the commanded sacrifice, or the sacrifice from the commanded law or ceremony without changing the law or ceremony. If so then Jesus died to save animals and not humanity. The animal sacrifices could never remove the guilt and shame and death, only our Savior could, does, and will. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son from the formation of the earth so the world might be saved in Him. The sacrifice God was willing to make was known in the heavens before He divided the waters from the waters and before the dry land appeared – before the creatures of the sea and the beasts of the field – before mankind – before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The law, as we know it, began when God said, “Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you will truly die.” And except that grace covered mankind from creation all that would exist of our history would be, they ate and they died. But God covered them with animal skins as a sign of the covering the human eye could not see. The covering of a sacrifice yet to come of a God who always was.

God did not plan the sacrifice of His Son after the children of Israel refused to obey. The sacrifice was not a covering of only law spoken or written in the days of Moses. The death penalty on Adam and Eve was covered, and Cain for the life of Abel. What is this that Paul wrote, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:16-19). With all the saints would not exclude Seth, Enoch, and Noah and other saints of God from the days of old. Before Moses was there was Jesus Christ and grace.

“And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the Lord” (Genesis 4:26). God was not a stranger to mankind before Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. The Lord was not unheard of before Mary delivered a child in Bethlehem. The journey of mankind did not begin with Abram leaving his father’s family. God has been on a journey with mankind since the creation. God has always been our Savior and a God of mercy and grace. There ae some things we do not understand about the relationship between God and mankind, but that does not change the fact that one has existed. One thing repeated over and over again is mankind’s refusal to acknowledge our need for God. Thank God we are saved by grace, because of the faithfulness of God and separate from mankind’s ability to perform.

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