Without Spot or Blemish

If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish.  Leviticus 1:3a (ESV)

How many times have you carefully searched through bags of salad in the produce aisle to find the one with the furthest expiration date? The one that wasn’t all brown and wilted before you even got it home so it could be forgotten and brown and wilt in your refrigerator vegetable drawer?

Why do we do this? Not the let lettuce wilt part, but why do we look for the unblemished produce rather than settle for the soft-in-spots and somewhat gnarly looking fruit or vegetables?

It’s most likely because we only want to serve our family the best of whatever it is we are offering.

It doesn’t matter if our family consists of a spouse, spouse and children, pets as children, our parents, or our parents and siblings. No matter what our family looks like, those we love have our heart.

As such, our heart desires to give only the best because giving only the best demonstrates our love for and devotion to the recipient.

As much as my children may have plucked on my last nerve some days (their father too!), I still desired to give them my best. Whether that would be the best of who I was or the best of whatever I was physically giving to them.

Did you know God wants our best too? And for the very same reasons we want to give our best to our family—to show our love and devotion.

How do we know God wants us to show our love and devotion to Him?

Leviticus 1:3a says, “If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish.” (ESV)

We know God required a blood sacrifice for the atonement of sins and that He allowed an animal to be the Israelites’ substitution, but He didn’t allow for anything to be a substitution for their devotion. God would not accept their half-hearted, less-than offering because it wouldn’t be real, whole-hearted devotion to Him. It wouldn’t be pure.

God is a holy God.  He is perfect. He is untainted by sin. Only a substitute sacrifice without blemish would satisfy the need for the sacrifice to be pure; symbolizing the holiness of the sacrificial offering.

We shouldn’t confuse purity with holiness though. They are not the same. The purity of our sacrifice acknowledges and honors the holiness of our God.

Anything less than pure that is offered to God as an atonement for sin is rejected by Him.

Did you know we see the rejection of a less than pure atonement in Genesis 3:21, which, astoundingly, was 2,500 to 3,000 years before God gave the laws to Moses regarding offering sacrifices?

It’s true!

It is in Genesis 3 where we learn about the sin of Adam and Eve, but what I have never seen until now in doing research for this devotion is that God rejected Adam and Eve’s attempt at atoning for their sins.

You see, once they sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened to the fact that they were naked.  Being aware of their nakedness, to me, is the external evidence of their internal sin. Although they had always been naked, they were now aware of their nakedness and were ashamed of it.

Due to this shame-inducing revelation, they tried to cover themselves (and their sin!) by sewing fig leaves together (Genesis 3:7). But watch what happens when God comes to them in the Garden.

Surprisingly, He doesn’t unleash His wrath.  However, He does reject their attempt at trying to cover their sin (fig leaves), but He doesn’t reject them. Instead, He takes upon Himself the burden of their sins by shedding the blood of an animal in order to fashion clothes for them out of the animal’s skin. 

God Himself stepped in and covered their sin. Does this sound like anyone else you’ve heard of?

Friend, Adam and Eve could never have atoned for their sin by the works of their own hands—sewing fig leaves together. Nor can we.

The sacrifice offered to God as atonement for our sins must come from a pure heart. Not an act of works.

That is why Jesus was and still is the perfect sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins.

He was not only pure, as in without spot or blemish—sinless, but He was also pure in heart in offering His sacrifice to God—Himself.

I mentioned earlier that purity is not holiness, and this was true of the Old Testament sacrifices.  However, through the purity of Jesus Christ we become holy because of the sacrifice of Himself.

It leaves me in absolute awe to realize the same God who required a pure sacrifice so that His holiness would be acknowledged, in His holiness provided the sacrifice AND made us holy through it.

Jesus was without spot or blemish but He has left His mark on me.

How about you?