My kids are getting old enough that they will soon be driving.  It’s got me a little freaked out, to be honest.  They don’t seem old enough to be behind the wheel of a car.  One is 17 and the other is 15… 16 in a few days.  I was driving at 14, so I’m not sure what my hangup is.  But anyway…

As I’ve been teaching them a little bit about driving, I’ve found myself going to extremes in order to try to keep them safe.  Take speeding for example.  We’ve talked all about speed limits, speed limit signs, speeding tickets, and policemen with radar guns.  But what I’ve really tried to reinforce to them is that, “If you speed, you’ll get in a wreck and die.”  Pretty dramatic, right?  But it is the dramatic examples that seem to get through to them.  It’s what got through to me when I was in their shoes.  In reality, many other lesser things are much more likely to happen if they speed than a fatal car crash.  In fact, the vast majority of the time, nothing will happen at all.  They’ll get away with it.  Sometimes, but very rarely, they’ll get a ticket.  Every once in a great while they might get in a fender bender.  The chances of getting in a fatal accident because of speeding are real, but somewhat remote.  It’s hardly the likeliest thing to happen.  I realized I had used this same ‘extreme example technique’ to teach them lots of things.  Don’t walk alone or you’ll be kidnapped.  Don’t wander off or you’ll get lost and we’ll never find you. Don’t play near the street or you’ll be hit by a car.  Wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident (okay, I’ve never said that one, nor do I understand it, but that’s a different subject entirely). I realized that, when something is really important to get across to them, I tend to get really extreme to make my point.

Well, God does the same thing.  You see, I had been struggling with why there was so much blood in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament.  Lots and lots of animal sacrifices, sprinkling of blood on altars, and such.  I wondered why God would choose blood as the way to communicate with us the consequences of sin.  I realized that, just like me with my kids, God is using the most dramatic example He had at His disposal in order to communicate to us the seriousness of the danger.  He is sounding the most extreme warning He can of the real danger of spiritual death that comes from sin.  It’s effectiveness is evident by how much it affects people who read the Bible, and how much more it must have affected people who actually lived during the time of the sacrifices.  It is disturbing and a little overwhelming at times… but it’s supposed to be.  There is no denying that the images of bloody sacrifices communicates the very real danger of sin, just like the mental images of terrible car crashes just might help my kids make the decision to slow down when they are driving.  It is God being a good and responsible Father by teaching us as vividly as possible about the very real dangers we face.

The other thing that really spoke to me about this is that I suffered from the misunderstanding that God actually enjoyed these sacrifices… that it was something He took pleasure in.  Then I came across this incredible passage in Isaiah.

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?” Says the LORD. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats. When you come to appear before Me, Who has required this from your hand, To trample My courts?  (Isaiah 1:11-12 NKJV)

Here is God — the same God who required these sacrifices from His people — saying He doesn’t delight in them, He doesn’t desire them.  What’s up with that?  Almost immediately I had the image of a swear jar come into my mind.  It’s a method some people use to get people in their family to stop swearing.  Imagine you are a father and you institute a swear jar to help your son stop using bad language.  Every time he swears, he has to put another quarter in the jar.  A day later your son comes up to you with a great big smile on his face…

“Dad! You’ll be so proud of me,” he says.  “Look how much money I’ve put in the swear jar!  It’s really adding up!  You have no idea how many times I’ve had to swear today to get this much money collected!”

Your son has obviously missed the point of the swear jar, just like the Israelites (and us) miss the point of the sacrifices.  God did not delight in the sacrifices for sin.  His point was that He wanted them (and us) to stop sinning.  The swear jar wasn’t instituted as a way to make money, but to correct bad behavior.  The sacrifices for sin were not meant to be a pleasure to God but to correct bad behavior.  But as the scripture above says, the Israelites had become so confused that they were actually trampling His courts to make their sin sacrifices.  Even though we don’t have to make those kinds of sacrifices today, we can still suffer from the same misunderstanding that the Israelites did about them and start to believe in a God who delighted in blood and gore.

God does not delight in the shedding of blood.  Obviously neither do we, considering that is why so many people are turned off by all the blood in the Bible.  And that is precisely why He uses its symbolism so often throughout the Bible.  It speaks to us graphically, powerfully, and effectively.  Nobody can be left wondering about exactly how strongly God feels — and wants us to feel — about sin.