Days and months and years unfolding clearly showed what sin had wrought: fallen Adam’s children learning lessons fallen parents taught. All these sacrificial offerings crested as a crimson flood: Patriarchs and priests atoning for their sin with cleansing blood. – LSB 572, Verse 2
We have always lived with the consequences of the Fall. That may sound like a simple, obvious statement- we do not know what it is like to live without the pain of sin, death, and the power of the Devil. However, Adam and Eve had lived in that perfect Eden, and so every sin, every withered plant, every ache, sickness, and human death came as a shock to them as they saw exactly what the price of their disobedience cost themselves and their descendants. Sin was not just a misstep, one small action taken too far, or an accident. Instead, the Fall destroyed the perfect man God created. God, as the perfect father to Adam and Eve had passed on His image to them, yet Adam as an imperfect and sinful father to the rest of humanity passed on his fallen image to all his descendants. The curse of the fall was not just for Adam; it was for the whole human race which was now born innately corrupt and sinful, separated from God forever.
Yet God is merciful to His people. He does not allow us to remain separated from Him no matter how much our sinful nature would prefer to have nothing to do with God. All through the Old Testament, we see the Patriarchs (Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob among others) offering sacrifices on altars to God. They offered them in times of thanksgiving and in times when they knew God had spared them despite their sin. They understood the extent of God’s justice as well as His great mercy, and so they offered their sacrifices to Him in repentance and faith in His promise to send a Savior.
This continued with the sacrificial covenant God made with the Children of Israel. After bringing them out of Egypt, God set out the specific rules regarding sacrificial offerings: when they needed to be made, the amount of the offerings, and the rituals surrounding them. These sacrifices reminded the Children of Israel that God delivered them from slavery and preserved their lives both physically and spiritually. The blood of the animals slain on that altar covered the sins of the people and reminded them that God was not only just, but He was also merciful and did not hold their sins against them. From the outside, the blood of hundreds of animals scattered on the Children of Israel seems gory and unfair, but the price of our sin is death. It always has been since the time God killed the first animal to cover Adam and Eve’s shame. Yet these sacrifices were made in faith that God would in time send a Savior to fulfill His promise to Eve and crush the Devil.
