As I studied about the lamb and the serpent, my study branched out into a massive tangle of ideas and directions. One glaringly obvious pathway is that of the Sacrificial lamb. There was no way to formulate all that into a single article, so I am splitting it up into segments. Hopefully, you will enjoy and benefit from digging deep into this topic as I have...
The wheels began to turn as I reflected back over the Bible. After the fall of man, God himself laid the foundation of animal sacrifice. He posed a "temporary" antidote for "covering of sin"--(Genesis 3:21-Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord make coats of skins, and clothed them.) As we flip through Genesis, even before the Mosaic Law was given in Exodus, we see that men seeking to please God and to atone for their sins offered up animal sacrifices to God as an atonement for their transgressions. (Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob)
In the story about the Passover of the death angel in Egypt, it was the blood of the sacrificial lamb that protected God's people from the death of their firstborns. Later, God gave specific protocols concerning offerings, sacrifices, and rituals to perform to offer temporary resolution and forgiveness for sins. God commanded the Levitical priests to offer animal sacrifices for their sins and the sins of the people. The sacrifical lamb had to be one year old. It had to be without spot or blemish. That alone took hard work and effort on the part of the owner. The family that owned the lamb had to cherish it and care for it. They raised up their family's lamb as a cherished pet, yet as the yearly atonement time came around, they quickly learned the high cost of sin. Their favorite little lamb had to be sacrificed so their sins could be forgiven. Having been a very avid animal lover as a child, I can only imagine how devastating this must have felt like to a Jewish child. The emotions that they must have felt would have been overwhelming
Sin (or the venom of the snake) infected and defiled God's good World. God in His mercy allowed a temporary resolution of atonement through the sacrifices of animals. The symbolism of animal sacrifice is a concrete expression of both God's grace and His justice. It reminded His people of the serious nature of sin and the high cost of its penalty. But just like the antivenin derived from the horses' blood, the sacrifices were just a temporary solution to the problem of sin. While they technically offered resolution and forgiveness, they were not the ideal sacrifice. The prophet Isaiah proclaimed that the long awaited restoration of God's people was not to come through the blood of animals, but rather through a human sacrifice. The "lamb of God" was to become the "guilt offering" for the people's sins. Just like a lamb in the physical sense was led to the slaughter, Isaiah prophesied of Jesus' complete and utter submission. He opened not his mouth...
It makes sense that God would chose a lamb as an offering --an lamb is a vulnerable animal...Jesus took upon him the form of man... He made himself vulnerable just like a lamb.
The book of Hebrew really correlates the comparison between the sacrificial blood of an animal and cleansing blood of Jesus. No matter how many sacrifices that were offered, the priests of Biblical days still had to offer more. Every sacrifice was just a temporary atonement. It had to be redone over and over. Jesus offered Himself as the supreme sacrifice. Like the symbolic lamb, He was a spotless, unblemished offering. His death however was much different than any previous sacrifice. His death offered up perfect blood!! There was no side effects or undesirable results. The perfect cure for sin (antidote/antivenin) was finally freely available for all those who desired it! Through His blood, fellowship was once again restored between God and man. No longer is any go-between needed. We are now able to come boldly before the throne of Grace.
All throughout Bible, sacrifice has always been a part of God’s plan. After the flood, we can see Noah as he offers burnt offerings to God for His mercy and His preservation. The Bible says that the offerings were a sweet smelling savor before the Lord. God honored his sacrifice by promising never to flood the earth again. Likewise, in the Bible, we observe that the smell of the burnt offerings continually ascended from the temple whenever the priests would sacrifice animals to atone for the peoples' sins. In today's society, we struggle to comprehend how such practices could have been necessary, but in some beautiful, mysterious way, those burnt offerings brought a "sweet smelling savor" smell to the nostrils of God. That smell demonstrated repentance of sin and represents God's offer of life, reconciliation with Him, and the covering of sin.
Remember the story of Abraham and Isaac? God asked Abraham to make a sacrifice, but this time, it wasn't to come from among his flock. God told Abraham to do the unthinkable-- to sacrifice his one and only miracle child--the son He had been promised and the one He had waited years to see. In obedience, Abraham took his son, bound the wood for the sacrifice onto the young man's back, and led him on a 3 day journey to Mount Moriah as God had commanded. Isaac, having associated offerings to God with animal sacrifices, asked his father where their sacrifice was. Abraham simply replied that God would provide himself a sacrifice. I can imagine Isaac's confusion and mounting anxiety as his father begin to bind him and hoist him up on to the altar. The Bible doesn't record any conversation at this point between Abraham and Isaac. Maybe, he too, as a type and picture of a sacrificial lamb, "opened not his mouth".
We know the story-- as Abraham raised the knife to slay his only son, the angel of the Lord intervened and stops him from killing Isaac. This story has confounded some people as to why God would ask a father to even do such a thing. It wasn't that God really wanted Abraham to slay his son. No! He was testing Abraham's faith and His love. This was the son Abraham had been promised. Isaac was a miracle given by God. God had promised Abraham that He was going to make of him an great nation and all of his descendants were to come through this child. Isaac was Abraham's most precious treasure--He was a gift given to him BY GOD. But Abraham also loved God enough to relinquish control or possession of his treasure to please God. God knew by Abraham's actions that HE had his complete heart. There was not one part of Abraham that he was holding back from God. As the story goes on, nearby stuck in a thicket, Abraham noticed a substitute sacrifice. Abraham took the ram and sacrificed it in place of his son.
Years later, another sacrifice took place. Another Son was led on a three-day journey of sacrifice to the same hills of Moriah. Like Isaac, Jesus too makes a long, painful journey carrying the wood for the sacrifice on His back. Unlike Isaac, however, no one intervenes on his behalf. There is no scapegoat stuck in the thicket this time. This time, the Son dies. He provided Himself as the ultimate sacrifice. Jesus' sacrificial death is the ultimate expression of God's love toward man.
AS one person so eloquently wrote:
More than the death of a holy man, this is the massacre of all that is good and true and beautiful. Yet what appears like a lost cause turns out to be a rescue mission. Three days later, Jesus returns to life and flips evil upside down. The once-and-for-all cleansing of sin that is accomplished through Jesus’s death and resurrection renders the sacrificial system obsolete. No more goats or sheep or bulls or sons. Through the bloody mess of Jesus’s death, the divine Son knows what it’s like to be betrayed by friends, crushed by powers that be, and feel searing pain. The divine Father knows what it’s like to watch a Son be misunderstood, mocked, and deserted by His friends, and worse, to lose a precious Child.
God could have sent His Son in a variety of forms, yet He chose a fragile human body with arteries that bleed, flesh that bruises, and nerve pathways that set the brain afire. In doing so, God experienced what we all experience living on this broken ball of dirt — pain, rejection, betrayal, loss, and grief. As a result, He became the type of God that no other religion claims to believe in: One who can offer His children not just sympathy but empathy. God doesn’t say He feels sorry for us but that He knows how we feel. And He really does.
When you’re crushed by the weight of a child who died before his or her time,
God whispers, “I understand.”
When you’re overwhelmed by chronic pain that befuddles the best doctors,
God whispers, “I know how you feel.”
When the person you love most fails to come to your defense,
God whispers, “I feel your pain.”
By becoming flesh and offering Himself as a sacrifice for humanity,
God crossed the great divide from feeling sorry for our pain to being present in our pain. He became, truly, God with us.
This good news gets better. The sacrificial Lamb wasn’t content only to feel our pain, He chose to rescue us from the source of our pain — sin.
Through His perfect sacrifice, the sting of death is plucked away
and the grave no longer has the final say.
- M Feinberg.
It is simply amazing to me that the God of all glory loved us enough to die for our sins. He wanted to restore the fellowship that sin had destroyed between us and God. He paid such a high cost that you and I could go free-that our sins could be atoned. He took our punishment so we didn’t have to go to Hell. He made a way of escape!
Sometimes, it would do us all good to go back and remember the sacrifice that was made for our redemption. If we truly valued His sacrifice like we should, it would change the way we live each day. We have been bought with a price!!
From my heart to yours,
-Tiphanie ❤️
here is extra study verses on the topic …
1 Corinthians 6:20— For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.
1 Corinthians 7:23—Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.
Hebrews 10:1-20 —
[1] For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. [2] For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. [3] But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. [4] For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. [5] Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: [6] In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. [7] Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. [8] Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein ; which are offered by the law; [9] Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. [10] By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. [11] And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: [12] But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; [13] From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. [14] For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. [15] Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, [16] This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; [17] And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. [18] Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. [19] Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, [20] By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;
Ephesians 2:13-22 –[13] But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. [14] For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us ; [15] Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; [16] And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: [17] And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. [18] For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. [19] Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; [20] And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone ; [21] In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: [22] In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.