It seems to us such a remote era when animal sacrifices played a vital part in religion - of Israel, and everywhere else. I find it difficult to place myself back in those days and culture and see why all this is so important to the writer to the Hebrews. But maybe the main reason why it got chosen for the canon of scripture - what the Holy Spirit wanted to be remembered for all time - is to ensure we understood the marvel of the whole story and the marvel of the one, consistent God who has been our Lover and Protector and Counsellor throughout. And of course, missionaries are still finding cultures who sacrifice animals.
Reading about it in the Old Testament, especially the Psalms, I don't get the impression Piper seems to, that Israel found the temple sacrificing gloomy. Festivals were occasions of huge rejoicing, celebration and feasting! David exclaims: "At his tabernacle I sacrifice with shouts of joy; I sing and make music to the Lord" (Psalm 27:6). When he brought the ark back to Jerusalem he was absolutely ecstatic and ordered the procession to sacrifice a bull and a calf every six steps of the way!
We know that God instructed such animal sacrifices, so they were good; yet He also reveals an apparently contradictory attitude towards them. Through Isaiah He said: "The multitude of your sacrifices - what are they to me? I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats" (Isaiah 1:11). The shock of such words is palpable, and there's much more as we read on.
The explanation is this: God allowed (and regulated) sacrifices like these because mankind needed them. God forgives, and He has no need of anything, no 'quid pro quo'. It is we, prisoners of "the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2), who cannot accept forgiveness unless there's a penalty and punishment somewhere. Retribution is hard-wired into our hearts - until they are "sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience" (Hebrews 10:22).
In fact, we do have blood sacrifice back amongst us in the UK, a veritable epidemic going on all around us - but you might not have recognised it for what it is. Hospitals deal with a steady stream of people coming in for treatment for cutting themselves. They are people who are the most troubled by sin, who are being abused, who are suffering - the most wounded inside. As they will tell us if we ask them, wounding themselves outside brings some kind of temporary relief inside. Most of them are young, and not yet hardened in heart to life's pains. Most of them are girls. Ask God for yourself why that should be.
Perhaps for many of us now, this modern form of blood sacrifice provides a key to understand that remote era of animal sacrifices, and what the writer to the Hebrews is speaking of. "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). God has met all our need for some sort of sacrifice by letting Himself be one. The best thing we can do for that young girl, bleeding from her self-inflicted wounds, is to show her a picture of Jesus, bleeding from the whiplashes, and nails, and spear thrust - just like she is.
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