Power of the Blood Covenant: Uncover the Secret Strength of God's Eternal Oath

by Malcolm Smith

  Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.

  Genesis 3:21

  It is obvious that for them to wear clothes made of the skin of an animal, an animal had to die. Some commentators see this as an act of God’s generosity in providing them with adequate clothing, but the context points to something far more significant. If it was only a matter of clothes, what was wrong with the fiber of clothes made of fig leaves that they already had? Does God prefer fur coats? Obviously something of far greater importance is taking place here.

  The key to what God was doing is in the fact that the skin coats were given to replace the fig leaves that the couple had made to cover the shame that engulfed them upon their disobedience. The fig leaves were directly connected to sin and their attempt to hide its results in their life. By giving them another covering, the Lord was saying that the fig leaves were inadequate to deal with the situation they found themselves in. Sin had left them in the state of death, of which the guilt and shame were but the immediate sensations. Something more drastic was needed that would deal with that death.

  Fig leaf fiber temporarily covered the shame they experienced in each other’s presence. It made them respectable. But it did not and could not deal with the guilt or the cause of it. They were in the state of death, and it was that condition that needed to be dealt with. God gave them a vivid picture that prefigured what the woman’s seed, who was yet to come, would accomplish.

  The first gift of God, outside of the gift of life itself, was His gift to the first man and woman of a sacrificial animal that would shed its blood in death and give to them its skin to provide for them coats to cover their nakedness. It must have been an unforgettable moment of horror in the life of the first couple. They had never seen death before, let alone death accompanied by the shedding of blood, and to know that the Creator was doing this in order that their guilt and shame might be covered would leave an indelible mark on their senses.

  They could never forget that God rejected their own, rather creative idea of a covering of fig leaves and first venture into needlework as an inadequate covering. He demanded the shedding of blood to cover the result of their sin, and He acted as the Priest on behalf of the sinful couple and made the first sacrifice to Himself from among the human race.

  Humankind would never forget that when approaching God they had to come as those under the penalty of death, bringing with them the gift of a substitute animal, which God had provided. Even when the nations had become lost in deep spiritual darkness and had replaced the true God with idols of every kind, still they knew by a vague memory imprinted in the race that they had to have the shedding of blood in connecting with the spirit world. Its meaning was distorted and used by demons; sometimes it took the most degraded form of human sacrifice; but the shedding of blood was always there and is so to this very day.

  This explains the story of Cain and Abel found in Genesis 4:2-7. The story takes place some years after Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. Their first two sons had become farmers. Cain grew vegetables, and Abel raised sheep. It would appear that there was a specific time when individuals came to worship God, bringing with them their offering. The phrase in the Genesis account “in the process of time” literally reads, “at the end of days,” suggesting a specific time that came around after so many days had passed. It also tells us that they brought their offering “to the Lord,” which suggests a specific place, probably the gates of the Garden of Eden, the dwelling of God.

  Genesis 4:4 tells us, Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. His offering was accepted. Why? Hebrews 11:4 tells us it was because of his faith:

  By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks.

  Biblical faith never initiates an action; it is a responsive act of trust in a word from God. What was Abel responding to? He was responding to what he had been taught by his father, Adam, concerning that first gift of sacrifice that God had given to them in the Garden. He was coming with the blood of a lamb, which would suggest that the animal God had slain was a lamb. It is ridiculous to think that Abel happened on the right sacrifice by chance and the acceptance and witness that God gave him that he was righteous was a whim on God’s part. Something was working out here that all parties knew about.

  Cain, on the other hand, chose to be innovative, to reject the plain word and gift of God.

  ...it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the LORD.

  Genesis 4:3

  Not only was Cain deliberately refusing God’s gift of the appointed way to cover sin and be accepted by Him, but he was going back to that which God had already plainly rejected. Adam and Eve had covered their guilt and shame with the fruit of the ground in the fig leaves, and God had refused it as an adequate covering.

  Abel brought the lamb appointed by God that its life may be poured out for Abel’s sin. Cain brought the vegetables and fruit that he had grown with his own hands and the sweat of his labor. He was bringing the best he could.

  Cain brought the harvest, as if to give thanks to the Creator for His provision. He appeared to deliberately ignore the fact that there was more at stake here than saying a thank you to the Creator and provider: Sin has to be faced and dealt with, and the results of sin cannot be covered by a harvest of the best that human hands can produce. Along with the rest of the race, Cain stood under the sentence of death; and the only way out of that was for another to take his place, a life offered up and blood poured out on his behalf.

  We cannot feel sorry for Cain, for he knew what God demanded. “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door” (verse 7). God gently reminded Cain that he knew what he had to do to be accepted, and if he didn’t do what he knew to do then sin like a wild animal was crouching ready to take him.

  The New Testament makes a strong statement about his offering:

  Not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother’s righteous.

  1 John 3:12

  The works that the verse talks about are the fruits he brought as an offering, and they are designated evil works. Cain was not misguided but the first to go further in sin than his parents, for he rejected God’s gift of salvation and substituted what he deemed to be better. It is one thing to sin; the greater evil is to refuse the God-appointed way of salvation.

  His evil was the evil of a manmade religion that seeks the way of salvation by the sweat of our brow and the works of our hands, by which we would presume to please God. Such must then reject the divinely revealed and only way, which is through the sacrificial blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, being poured out.

  These stories from the dawn of man’s history are the seeds from which the full understanding of the meaning of sacrifice would finally come. The Law of Moses developed these first offerings into a sacrificial system that gave a much clearer picture of Him who was to come. Every day, bloody sacrifices were made in the tabernacle and later the temple to cover the sins of the people. Each sacrifice looked forward with hope to the day when God would deal with sin in a final, all-sufficient offering.

  The hope and straining toward a final offering that would take away sin and bring man and woman out of their state of death was brought into focus on one solemn day each year called the Day of Atonement.

  At the center of the way of ritual and sacrifices that made up the old covenant was the high priest. He was the representative, the mediator, of the covenant on behalf of the people of Israel. When wearing his full ritual dress, he symbolically carried each tribe of Israel on his breastplate and on his shoulders by means of precious stones with the names of the tribes engraved in them. It was a vivid picture that declared to every Israelite that he or she was in the high priest, carried on his shou
lders in his strength, and was ever upon his heart. Where the high priest went, there Israel went.

  This all came into focus on the Day of Atonement. On this day, all the offerings that had been offered daily throughout the last year were to be summed up into one offering: a goat which was sacrificed by the high priest on behalf of all the people.

  It pointed forward to the coming day when one offering would end all offerings, for He would encompass the sin of the world and fulfill the hopes of all offerings because He would deal with sin once and forever.

  On that day the high priest laid aside his symbolic, richly embroidered garments and came to the people dressed in the simple white robe of a priest. Two goats that had been examined and found physically without blemish were brought, and one of them was chosen for death. The high priest, standing on behalf of the people as their representative, laid his hands on the head of the goat and confessed the sins of the people, symbolically transferring the condition of the people to the animal that would stand in their place.

  If you were there in the crowd on that day, as you heard the sins being confessed you would recognize that your sins were laid on the substitute animal. It would not be an empty ritual but God’s gift to you to bear away your sin. You would watch as with a quick flash of the knife the jugular vein of the goat was cut and the animal was slain and its blood caught in a basin. The sacrificed goat died as the substitute for the people, and its life-blood was poured out.

  The high priest then carried the blood into the sacred precincts of the temple to its holy center, a room where no person could venture except the high priest and he only on this day. The room was separated from the rest of the temple by a veil; the sacred room was the place within the temple where the glory of God was visibly made manifest. It was a symbol of heaven, the dwelling place of God.

  It takes us back to Eden, which was the first dwelling of God in His creation. Sin cast the man and the woman out of Eden, the way being barred by a sword of fire and the guard of the cherubim. The veil that cordoned off the Holy of Holies was embroidered by figures of cherubim reminiscent of the guardians of Eden. Humans could not enter the glorious presence, not because God did not love them but because their sin placed them in a relationship to God that would cause their destruction.

  Inside that room, the Holy of Holies, was the ark of the covenant, a box overlaid with gold and covered by a lid of solid gold called the mercy seat, with cherubim fashioned from the gold at each end. Between the cherubim and above the mercy seat the uncreated light of the glory of God, the presence of the God of covenant, was visible.

  The high priest took the blood of the goat and sprinkled it on the mercy seat. The slab of gold was already encrusted with the blood that had been sprinkled there each year for generations. The blood was the symbolic registry before God that one more time the sin of the people had been covered. The blood that stained the mercy seat was the promise of the blood of the final offering that one day would not merely cover sin but take it away forever. Every sprinkling of blood on that golden slab was a promise and an IOU given by God to God that awaited payment in the blood of Jesus.

  The sacrifice on the Day of Atonement was unlike other sacrifices that took place throughout the year; there was a second part to it. At this time, the living goat that had not been chosen for sacrifice was taken; again the high priest laid his hands on it and the sins of the people were confessed over it. It was then taken and led into the wilderness and sent away, never to return.

  The sending away of the second goat in full view of all the people declared in vivid imagery what had happened to their sin when the blood had been sprinkled out of sight behind the veil. Their sin was covered and lost from the eyes of God, and they could go to their homes rejoicing.

  However, as dramatically as the ritual on the Day of Atonement gave them the assurance that their sin had been covered, it did not deal with sin but in fact only brought it to remembrance.

  Although the animal taking the place of sinful men and women was the gift of God given to cover sin, the system had many weaknesses. To begin with, the blood of an animal carrying animal life could never be the substitute for human blood carrying the life of the one made in the image of God.

  The animal victims were not willing substitutes, giving themselves in love for those for whom they died. They had been chosen and volunteered for sacrifice without their willing participation. Nor were they obeying God in being led to the altar of sacrifice. They were non-rational creatures who made no decision to die and, therefore, offered themselves neither to God nor man.

  Such could never take the place of the one made in God’s image who had chosen willfully to disobey the command of God. The blood of animals never dealt with sin or took it away but covered it until the sacrifice to which they pointed was made that would take away sin.

  The continual sacrifices were a promise of the future day when the blood of infinite value would be shed by One who had fully obeyed God in life and in infinite love freely chose to offer Himself in death, shedding His blood on behalf of humankind. Such a sacrifice was the goal to which all animal sacrifices pointed; the shedding of His blood would bring an end to sacrifices. The need for sacrifices would be eliminated, for this offering would finally deal with sin and resurrect sinners out of their state of death. Reconciliation would be celebrated and enjoyed rather than continually reached for in the continual sacrifices of substitute animals.

  For these reasons, the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement were never finished. They could not be finished until the One they pointed to came and accomplished His work. There was no chair in the Holy of Holies; the high priest never sat down after he had sprinkled the blood. He did not sit down, because sin had not been put away—only covered, only promised. The Day of Atonement finished with his work still unfinished. Along with the people, he would be back the next year to sprinkle the blood again in hope of the final offering.

  For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.

  And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.

  Hebrews 10:1-4,11

  Imagine the shock and the thrill that would go through the hearts of those who first heard the prophets announce what the new covenant would accomplish:

  But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD...For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

  Jeremiah 31:33,34

  Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.

  Ezekiel 36:25-27

  Daniel speaks of a day that would

  To finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy...Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself...Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.

  Daniel 9:24,26,27

  God the Son would take to Himself our humanity, live out our human life, suffer and die as us, and shed the blood of God. Only then could sin be remembered no more. A blood had to be shed that transcended human blood as the Creator transcends the creature.

  Jesus, the God-Man, appointed to be the High Priest
of the new covenant, laid aside the glory that belonged to Him as the Son of God and came among us as a carpenter in Nazareth. He was both the High Priest and the sacrifice. On the cross He, as Priest, offered Himself as the final sacrifice that all sacrifices since the first blood shed in Eden had pointed to.

  Is it not a wonder that in Eden the man and the woman actually desired the death of God so that they might take His place, but in pursuing this desire they died. God responded to their rebellion with infinite love; He placed Himself in the hands of the creature human and died with the result that the human is made alive, is forgiven and reconciled.

  The blood began to be shed in Gethsemane when He anticipated the horrors that awaited Him. He sweat great drops of blood through the pores of His skin. When guards came to arrest Him, His tunic was stained crimson with the blood of the covenant. It continued to be shed in the vicious torture that was inflicted upon His body, the scourging and the crown of thorns’ being jammed into His forehead. It was completed on the cross with the nails through His hands and feet and finally with the spear thrust of the soldier into His side, releasing a flow of blood and water.