You know that satisfying feeling you get when you do the dishes? I don’t just mean loading the dishwasher and pressing start. I mean the kind of cleaning that involves scrubbing the pans, wiping off the counters and drying the wine glasses by hand. It’s a very personally rewarding feeling.
And then someone in your household walks over with yesterday’s coffee cup, or tonight’s ice cream bowl, and thoughtlessly drops it in the once-sparkling sink. And just like that, the spotless feeling is gone.
That’s the thing about cleaning: You have to do it over and over and over again.
This week at Day Camp, kids as young as four years old are learning that very lesson. They are learning how it relates to sin and forgiveness. They are learning all about the tabernacle, the high priest, the curtain, and Jesus.
Imagine walking to Jerusalem each year with your own pet lamb. Imagine confessing a year’s worth of your sins and the sins of your family to the priest at the tabernacle. You give your lamb to be sacrificed. Its blood is sprinkled on the altar for your forgiveness.
As you turn toward home, you see your neighbor driving up in a tricked-out chariot, and you think, “What I wouldn’t give for a ride like that.” And just like that, you are guilty of the sin of coveting. And just like that, the spotless feeling is gone. That’s the thing with sacrifices: You have to do it over and over again.
Thanks be to God, In Christ we no longer have to live that way. We don’t have to sacrifice a perfect lamb over and over again! Let’s join with our little children and learn to never take for granted the beautiful truth that the blood of Jesus, our high priest and perfect Lamb of God, has cleansed us once and for all.
“For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.” Hebrews 7:26-27.
