Blood

Shalom Fellow Israelite,

The shofar and the trumpets have sounded and now we are on our way to Yom HaKippurim.  When we think of “Kippur” we mostly think about afflicting our souls with fasting, prayer, or reading scriptures all day.  Most do not like or tend to think about sacrifices and blood. But this is what the atonement is really all about - “blood”!   We don’t have a Temple and a Levitical Priesthood to give us a graphic example of what would have taken place on that day, being the only day in which the High Priest was allowed to enter the Holy Holies and be before the Presence of YHVH, but not without blood.  It is the atoning blood that appeased the Creator, propitiating and thus allowing a human being into His presence.  But why blood?  Leviticus 17:14 points out: "For it is the life of all flesh. Its blood sustains its life. Therefore I said to the children of Israel, 'You shall not eat the blood of any flesh, for the life of all flesh is its blood’”. 

  

Why does Elohim need to be propitiated?  He is Spirit, sovereign, all -knowing, all-powerful and has created everything.  Why would He need to be appeased?  Or is there something else being placated?  Perhaps it can be found in Paul’s words when he uses the term “justified” or “vindicated”.  Both words point directly to “Law”.  Sin is a violation of Divine Law, thus it is actually Elohim’s Law that has to be satisfied, as we see over and over in both the Tabernacle and the Temple - the true usage of a sacrifice and the need for the blood to be placed before YHVH.  When He saw the blood, He forgave the guilty party and in the case of Israel, the entire nation. 

At Mount Sinai, at the “giving of the Law”, the nation stood before the awesome presence and saw and heard the words.  They agreed with those words and so intoned: “we will hear and do”.  From then on they were bound to the blessings and the curses, and became aware of the “laws of sin and death” and “guilt and shame”. 

  

How was it possible to live with a conscience that condemned us every time we violated one single aspect of the “thou shalts” or “thou shalt nots”?   We, as a nation, now became totally depended on the mercy of the Law Giver. But how did we experience this Law Giver at Sinai?  It was with fire, loud sounds, mountain quaking, lighting flashing, along with knees buckling under us from fear.   We could not even touch the Mountain, let alone the awesome Presence.

     

The Bible is one book that is full of YHVH’s interventions in the life of humanity and the creation.  Every day Man has face to face encounters with a living Elohim, but due to his blindness (actually not blindness, just looking in the dark), he is ignorant of YHVH’s presence and reality.  Job understood the darkness, and also the Psalmist when he wrote:     “If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there…  Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You” (Psalm 139:8; 12).

Our spiritual enemy knows just how important blood is for the atonement of humanity.  And so he took it upon himself to make blood detestable, and irrelevant to redemption, using throughout history a variety of philosophical techniques and graphic images of blood, for example, war, violence and terror, in order to instill fear.  The consequence of that being that the shedding of blood solely means death not life.  Modern religions have tried to move as far away from anything that smacks of blood, especially tagging as outdated, immoral and inhuman blood sacrifices, pointing especially at the “Old Testament” covenants and Feast Days, all of which required blood sacrifices.  Modern man being still steeped in his own pride and self-righteousness, reels at the thought of God requiring a human sacrifice and blood.  He wants to appease God by some kind of good works that will remove the guilt of violating Elohim’s great Commandments and Laws, and also Elohim’s very words in regards to how He views “blood”.   There would be no “New Covenant” (or Renewed Covenant) without the “Torah of Moses” pointing out the requirement of blood for its implementation, nor would we have knowledge of “Sin” and its consequences. We would have no understanding of how YHVH sees “Sin” and what is required when His Laws are violated, and why blood is necessary for Him to grant forgiveness that leads to reconciliation and life.

Perhaps all the “blood moons” that we have been witnessing during the Feast Days are to remind us of “blood”, and the importance it has in the economy of the Almighty Creator of this world, and in our relationship to Him.  As “Hebrew Roots” believers, perhaps Yom Kippur makes for an opportune time to reading about and considering the “blood”, with special emphasis on Hebrews Chapters 9 and 10. 

I pray that we will be given more revelation-understanding about the blood that is required on the 10th day of the 7th month, called Yom HaKippurim.   

In His Unmerited Mercy and Love,  

Ephraim