The Cost of Sacrifice

Exo 12:5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:
Exo 12:6 And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
Exo 12:7 And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.

Exo 12:46 In one house shall it be eaten; thou shalt not carry forth ought of the flesh abroad out of the house; neither shall ye break a bone thereof.

Deu 16:2 Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the LORD thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the LORD shall choose to place his name there.
Deu 16:5 Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee:
Deu 16:6 But at the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt.
Deu 16:7 And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which the LORD thy God shall choose: and thou shalt turn in the morning, and go unto thy tents.

2Ch 35:1 Moreover Josiah kept a passover unto the LORD in Jerusalem: and they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month.

The Passover was designed to point to Christ. This time of year brought a remembrance of delivery and the promise of the coming Messiah. I have recently been thinking about this religious rite of Jewish history and what it teaches, not about Christ, but about the Father and the sacrifice He made in sending Christ to die upon the cross.

Imagine the life of the typical Israeli man during the Old Testament and how his life was tied to his religion and its sacrificial rites. He would understand the need of providing a perfect lamb for the Passover so that the sacrifice would be accepted and thus prove that he, and his family, was accepted by God. He undoubtedly prayed for such an animal to born within his flocks. He was trusting God to provide what he could not render, a perfect lamb. He would examine his lambs and see if one was proper and right for the task of dying for him and his families' sins. When he found this lamb he might need to care for it for nearly a year making sure that on the 14th of Nissan the lamb would be accepted. Over this time he would keep it close and guarded, caring for it as his most prized possession. As an animal lover I can see him falling in love with this animal. The lamb coming to him and staying very near him would cause the man’s love to deepen. He would have joy in seeing the lamb in its perfect state but still some sorrow as the day appointed approached. There would come a time when he would travel to Jerusalem and there turn the lamb over to the priests. They would subject the lamb to four days of testing to ensure that the lamb was without spot or blemish, that it had been protected so that not one bone was broken, and then if accepted its blood would be shed and its body burned so that the man and his family might live. They would then make the lamb’s sacrifice a very personal part of their life and a part of them through eating the lamb. I can hardly imagine turning over one of my cats or my dog in such a way. The pain would be excruciating. I would not be able to watch their death but would have to leave the scene.

Now, remember how the lamb represented Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father. Imagine your child as the lamb. Do we really understand the cost to God and the cost of sacrifice when we have no great visual reminder of how greatly sin affects our lives? Have you seen The Passion of the Christ recently? We weep over the pain our sin caused Christ to go through but do we ever stop to think of the pain God felt? He turned over his perfect Son to be examined and killed by the people so that they might live. Hear again the words of Christ: “this is my blood shed for you” and “this is my body given for you”, and understand the cost of sacrifice that God made. Now turn to Him and thank Him with insurmountable gratitude and thanksgiving. Let not this sacrifice be in vain but make Jesus your life as the lamb become in a very real sense the life of the family.