I have been teaching a class on the Hebrew Scriptures. You might call them the Old Testament although they aren’t really old because most of what we read and understand in the New Testament really comes from the Old. The Lord used most of His words and thoughts from what God had given to His people Israel. Paul, the disciple to the Gentile world, based his teachings on what he had learned from the Old Testament…. of course, not binding certain obligations on the Gentiles that were given only to the Jews.
When I read where God ordained the High Priest, once a year, to offer the yearly sacrifice on the Day of Atonement it gave me thoughts of when our Savior was crucified and the cruelty of it all. Unholy men killing the only Holy Man in the whole world! Holy actually means, “set apart” and of course this was why Jesus came into the world. He was “set apart” just for this time. But how does that fit into the Temple services?
Were these unholy men, the High Priest, Caiaphas, and the others involved actually “set apart” for this work? Then I read the scriptures again (Leviticus 16). It was the High Priest, the sons of Aaron, who were ordained to offer the sacrifices. These Sadducees considered themselves the direct decedents of priestly line and therefore had the duty to offer the yearly sacrifice.
It was the duty of the High Priest himself who was ordained to offer up the most holy sacrifice….the atonement by which the nation’s sins were forgiven.
And so it was. The High Priest did offer up the perfect sacrifice. The Messiah himself was offered up by none other than the High Priest. Jesus was the perfect “lamb” given over to the Romans, to be the sacrifice, not only for Israel but for the whole world.
Our world is filled with evil, with the imperfect, and the wrong. But God causes all of these things, to work together for the good of his people The tears, the crises, the heartbreaks, the evil, and all the wrong done by evil men, will in the end, fulfill the sacred purposes and blessings God has ordained for us.
May the Lord bless us through the trials and sufferings we face in our world.
So let us live today, not by what we see, but beyond our seeing, beyond our hearing and beyond our sensing. Live the unseen….by faith.
AbideLines 