Did you ever consider that God is an artist? Of course, we see His handiwork in nature with the variety of flowers, trees, landscapes, mountains and great vistas to name a few examples.
The verses in Exodus 24:6-8 triggered the thought. God is an artist. He painted word pictures all throughout Scripture to illustrate and foreshadow spiritual truths, so the human mind could better grasp them.
In our Scripture today, we see Moses taking the blood of the sacrifices and putting half in bowls and sprinkling the other half on the altar. Then, Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people. This act pointed to a twofold aspect of the covenant: blood splashed on the altar demonstrated God’s gracious forgiveness in accepting the offering; blood sprinkled on the people bound them to God.
Of course, the blood of the sacrifice was a picture of the perfect sacrifice, the unblemished Lamb of God. The priest had to inspect and declare the sacrificial animal acceptable.
In the Messianic writings, we read that John the Baptist was the son of Zacharias, who was a priest; therefore, John was in the priestly lineage. When he declared two times in the gospel of John as he spoke of Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” He was declaring Jesus as the unblemished acceptable sacrifice.
What does the blood sprinkled on the people picture for those of us who have accepted the blood covenant Jesus’ sacrifice provided for us?
We read in Isaiah 53: selected verses, “Surely He has borne our griefs (sickness, weakness, and distress) and carried our sorrows and pain (of punishment) He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities. The chastisement needful to obtain peace and our well being was upon him and with the stripes that wounded him we are healed and made whole.”
It is awesome to really consider what His sacrifice made available to us. Do we experience this perfectly? The answer is no. I did hear what I consider to be a profound piece of advice once – that is we should endeavor to bring our experiences up to the level of Scripture rather than bringing Scripture down to the level of our experiences.
The word of God is the final authority and according to Isaiah 55:11 it will not return void and will accomplish that which the Lord pleases and purposes.
We are blessed as we read of the foreshadowing of the blood of Yeshua in the Hebrew Scriptures, but we are more blessed to live in the age of the fulfillment of all that the shedding of the blood of perfect Lamb, Jesus opened to us as His followers.
