NIV Once a Day Easter
Day 7
LEVITICUS 16:20-21
“When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites — all their sins — and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness.”
2 CORINTHIANS 5:21
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
1 TIMOTHY 2:5-6
For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.
READ ALSO PSALM 103:9-12 AND HEBREWS 9:11-14.
MEDITATION
For more than 1,000 years, the Jewish sacrificial system had been firmly in place, sometimes strictly followed, sometimes not adhered to at all. But the Jews knew that the only way to pay for the sins of the people required loss of life (blood) and the actions of a priest. By Jesus’ time, the system had become terribly distorted. Two groups fought over how sacrifices should be made and where people could buy those sacrifices. This was displeasing to God.
Prophecy spoke of the Messiah to come, and the time had come. God sent his Son into the world to be both priest and sacrifice—to be the final sacrifice and put the priests permanently out of the sacrifice business. From the cross Jesus, the perfect Man and the perfect high priest, while offering the perfect sacrifice (his own spotless blood), prayed, “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34). God raised him from the dead to show his acceptance of this perfect sacrifice.
Now, just as Jesus is the one who is our legal advocate for our crime, he is also the one making the sacrifice and paying the penalty for us. He is the sacrifice. Only the One who had lived a sinless life could have done this. Today, Jesus is our high priest, and we must never let anyone (not a priest or a saint or a pastor) come between us and God. And our heavenly, holy and human high priest is our assurance of eternal salvation.
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, you are our great high priest. Only you could provide the sacrifice necessary for the cleansing of our sins. I thank you for your love, shown most clearly in offering yourself as a sinless sacrifice on my behalf. You endured degradation, malice, betrayal, agony and death so that I, who would have no hope of ever being acceptable to you, can receive forgiveness and acceptance. I come to you in my uncleanness and corruption, asking for your forgiveness. I humbly thank you for the gift of life that I could never merit on my own. May I never forget the awful price you paid to make it possible. Teach me the dignity of offering myself to you in return, as a living sacrifice. In your holy name I pray. Amen.