The Personal Sacrifice

I Chronicles 1

Jesus fulfilled this for each of us. God saves us one-by-one.

Tell the Israelites: if any one of you bring a sacrifice to the Lord, you must offer an animal from your own cattle, sheep, or goats.

When you bring a burnt offering, ... you must offer a male that has no defects. 

Jesus is God's Lamb, with no defects.

Offer it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting so that the Lord will accept you.

Don't go inside, while your sin is still on you. Stop at the door.

Place your hand on the animal's head.

To identify with the animal.

The burnt animal will be accepted to make peace with the Lord.

As your substitute.

Then [the priest will] slaughter the [animal] in the Lord's presence.

Because we are all born "in sin" with that Original Sin we inherited from Adam (the "sin-nature"), which entices us to make wrong choices; and the paycheck sin earns for us is the debt of death (Romans 6:23); so the animal dies instead of the person.

Showing how Jesus would take our place, individually, in death.

Aaron's sons, the priests, will offer the blood. They will throw it against all sides of the Altar that is at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.

Without the blood shed on our behalf, there is no forgiveness for sin (Hebrews 9:22). This animal blood was splattered on the sides of the Altar to cover the sins of the penitent, so he could be forgiven; but animal blood can only cover, not take away, sins (Hebrews 10:4). 

Jesus' Blood was splattered on the sides of His Altar, the Cross, and God's own Blood has unlimited value and power to wash away every trace of sin from each of us. Enough to save every person who ever lived, if they would only accept it (John 3:16-17).

The rest of this chapter goes into all the technical details of how this sacrifice was to be performed. 

The tribe of Levi was scattered throughout all the other Tribes (Genesis 49:7), for the Levites were the teachers of God's Law to all the people. This was given by God to Moses to have the Levites teach this as the first sacrifice each person was to offer, before any other. We need to first be right with God before we can go on and walk with Him. 

God's holiness is absolute. Anything that is not in agreement with His perfection would detract from the goodness of His Presence. That's why Jesus came. He came to live among us as one of us, so that He could cleanse us and make us fit to live with Him where He is. The whole Law was given to show us what Jesus would accomplish. He said that He would not destroy the Law, but fulfill it (Matthew 5:17), because the Law is only a "shadow" of the reality (Hebrews 10:1). 

With His life, Jesus fulfilled all the civil and moral Law. And by His death, He fulfilled all the sacrificial Law. Beginning with the first one, the personal sacrifice each individual person was to offer first. 

We must be clean for God to accept us and hear our prayers. He cannot accept anything that is dirty or wrong, or polluted by sin. When we admit to Him that we deserve death, and let Jesus take our death for us, as though we're the only one, individually; then God accepts that payment putting our sin on His side, and puts Jesus' righteousness on our side of His ledger. That's the only way to balance His book on us. He's the only One Who could pay our debt. 

Any other view makes it not worth His leaving His Glory in Heaven to live as a human in this vale of tears and die a painful and humiliating death. 

He considers you and me worth all that. His desire is for us to live with Him where He lives (John 17:24). So He suffered all that for you, and for me, and for each one of us who will accept His payment, receive Him as Lord (Boss) over our life, and follow in His footsteps into righteousness and Love. 

He did all the work. We only need to change our thinking to realize He did it all, and just let Him do it. Then we will respond by loving Him back, and loving who He loves. 

May we all who know Him tell everyone we know how much God loves us to do this for us. Find all His lost sheep, to draw them into the safety of His fold. 

And He will reward us for what He is doing through us. He is so generous! We only need to be available for His use. He only requires of us faithfulness to Him and His ways. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!