Priests, Alters and Blood - Oh My!

Oh My is kind of an understatement! In my daily bible reading plan I am reading chronologically through the Bible and am in Leviticus right now. Talk about a book that is hard to grasp. It is full of rules and regulations that God gave to the children of Israel while they were in the desert headed to the promise land.

Right now I am in the middle of the book, and it struck me this morning how incredibly hard the job of a priest was during that time. I think for some reason we have this view in our minds (at least I do in mine) of a guy in a robe walking around a church, facilitating services and hearing confessions (among other things.) But back then, it was much more than my small view. I won't go into all 19 chapters worth of rules with you, feel free to read them on your own, but sufficed to say there were lots of them. Things he had to do to keep himself "clean" before the Lord, to atone for his sins, and things he had to do to help the people atone for theirs.

I think what struck me most as I read this morning is the sheer magnitude of the blood that he had to deal with. There were approx. 6 MILLION Israelites and sacrifices that had to be made for each one of them. These sacrifices usually involved some sort of animal being killed, dismembered and various parts of it being handled in various ways (buried, burned, eaten, etc.) But it was the blood of these animals that struck me most. In a lot of the cases the blood of the animals was thrown up against the side of the alter. Shocking enough to picture it being done for one animal - one sacrifice, but imagine millions! Imagine the priest was was responsible for doing all that day in and day out for the people God put under his care. What a difficult, messy job he was given.

In Lev. 17:14 it says "For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life". Symbolism there is amazing. We all know that we can't live without our blood. God had them sacrifice these animals and use there blood as an atonement for their sin so that they could live in the presence of a holy God.

Now, we are no longer required to bring the family ram to the tent of meeting to being slaughtered to cover our sins so that we can be in the presence of the Lord. Jesus made that sacrifice for us once and for all by shedding His blood on the cross to cover our sins before God. The final, ultimate blood offering. And all I can do is thank Him for that sacrifice because His blood not only saved my life, but it saved me from a lot of unpleasantry regarding animal sacrifice. YUCK!

But going back to the priests for a minute, I believe that in some ways the "modern day priests" have just as difficult a job. Now before you get all hung up on the fact that we are all "priests" according to the new covenant - I know that! My point is those that have been called into vocational ministry still have a very difficult job. They still have to deal with peoples YUCK every day and are held to a standard of rules and regulations (whether real or perceived) that is higher than most - living under a microscope, if you will.

So today, stop and pray for the ministers in your local church. Pray that God would hold them up and give them strength to do the job He has given them, no matter how difficult, no matter how much YUCK. Pray that they would fully rely on Him and that His peace and blessing would fill their lives as they go about their work.