The Messiah Our Redeemer: Part 9 of 12

IX. Why Did The Messiah Have To Die?

We understand from scripture that death entered into this life because of Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden. Death was propagated by the subsequent sin of each person for it is written,

“we all like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way” (Isa 53:6).

Although difficult to comprehend in our present decaying body, death was given as a blessing from the LORD. For without death, mankind would be condemned to eternal life in this body with sin as our constant companion. This remains the state of the fallen angels who cannot be redeemed, but are held in darkness awaiting the “judgment of the great day” (Jude 6). Each man would await the same eternal fate unless the LORD provided a plan for restoration of man back to a sinless state to stand in the presence of God.

In the recorded history of the Bible, blood has been required as the means to atone for sin and bring about the restoration of fellowship back to God. In the Garden of Eden, “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Gen 3:23). This act is seen as the first recorded shedding of blood in scripture, from the animals who provided coverings, to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve who had previously been clothed in the glory of the LORD.

A pattern of blood atonement for sins was established and then repeated in scripture. Noah build an altar to offer sacrifice after he was preserved through the flood (Gen 8:20). Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all careful to approach God by means of blood. Jacob struggled with God on the mountain at the place of the future temple and would not let the angel of the LORD go until he received a blessing. “Then the man said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome’” (Gen 32:28). At this place, Jacob built an altar to God “who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone” (Gen 35:3).

Around four thousand years ago, the LORD used blood to make a covenant, an everlasting agreement with Abram. By the conditions of the covenant the LORD promised Abram offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands of the seashore (Gen 15:4). To fulfill his obligation under the terms of the covenant, Abram was required to “walk before me (the LORD) and be blameless” (Gen 17:1).

The term “covenant” can literally be rendered “to cut a covenant” because the act of making a covenant involved the splitting of animals to form a “blood path” (Gen 15:9-11). The act was a demonstration of the solemn nature of the agreement and a testimony to the pending judgment on either party who would break the agreement. For this reason, “Terror and great darkness fell upon him (Abram)” (Gen 15:12) when Abram realized that his inability to walk “blameless” before the LORD would result in certain death. At this very moment in history, a miracle is recorded in scripture.

“It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces” (Gen 15:17).

Although both Abram and God were required to walk the blood path, scripture tells us that the two parties to pass between the animals were first a “smoking oven” and then a “flaming torch”. The LORD is represented by the “smoking oven” because the greater party in a covenant relationship is always the first to walk the blood path.

Abram should have been the second party to walk the blood path. However, the Jewish Sages observed that fire, a “flaming torch”, was never used in scripture to represent man, only to represent God. For example, the LORD appeared to Moses as “flames of fire from within a bush” (Ex 3:2), the “pillar of fire” (Ex 13:31) that lead Israel by night, and as a “consuming fire on top of the mountain” (Ex 24:17). Somehow, the word of God is communicating to us, that the LORD walked the blood path as both the greater and lessor party of the covenant.

The consequences of the LORD’S action was unprecedented at the time and difficult to fully comprehend even today. If Abram was not blameless, then the LORD, and not Abram, would be held accountable and suffer the penalty of Abram’s failure. On that day, the LORD sentenced Himself to suffer for the sins of Abram. As spoken by Isaiah…

Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light [of life] and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isa 53:10-12)

It was the offering of Isaac that foreshadowed the future death of Yeshua. Isaac was the loved son (Gen 22:2) born miraculously to Abraham. The son of the promise went with Abraham to Mount Moriah, to the same place where the future Temple would stand. The word for the description of Isaac, as he went with Abraham, is “lad” (Gen 22:5-KJV). The Hebrew word is “naar”, which is best understood as an unmarried youth or eligible bachelor. By Jewish tradition, Isaac was thirty-six years old, derived in part by the age of Sarah when she became pregnant (90), and the age at her death (127), which is told immediately following the offering of Isaac (Gen 23:1). In this light, Isaac becomes the willing sacrifice, carrying the wood of the offering on his back (Gen 22:6-NAS), just as Yeshua carried His own cross (Luke 23:26). Isaiah then submitted to the binding by his 137 year old father, just as Yeshua submitted to the will of the Father saying, “Not as I will, but as You will” (Matt 26:39).

Isaac was spared by the voice from heaven, but the faith of Abraham was viewed as if he had offered Isaac and the blood that would have been given as if it had been given. The offering of Isaac became sufficient for the LORD to swear an oath to Abraham saying,

“I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed My voice” (Gen 22:16-18).

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When Moses originally received the law, He sprinkled blood on the altar, on the Book of the Covenant, and on the people proclaiming, “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words” (Ex 24:8). At the completion of the tabernacle, at the conclusion of the book of Exodus we read…

Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. (Ex 40:34-35)

As soon as the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle, it became impossible, even for Moses, to enter. As the Book of Exodus concludes, we are left with a paradox, how can sinful man approach a sinless God? The answer is revealed at the beginning of the very next book, Leviticus, the Book of the Levites. Leviticus sets forth a pattern of “offerings” man was commanded to follow in order to “draw near” to God. Many of the offerings required blood, as Moses wrote…

"For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life." (Lev 17:10-11)

The apostolic writings summarize the words of Moses in this manner,

“The law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." (Heb 9:22)

Even the seven annual feasts of Israel – Passover (Peasch), Unleavened Bread, First fruits, Pentecost (Shavuot), Trumpets (Rosh HaShannah), Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and Tabernacles (Shavuot) – all required the shedding of blood.

The law established a pattern of offerings where the animal sacrificed substituted for the individual and received the judgment due the individual. The law commanded the individual, not the priest, to lay hands on the animal offered. By laying hands on and sacrificing the animal (Lev 1:4-9), the individual was witnessing the gravity of their sin and acknowledging that they were worthy of the same fate. This pattern was repeated by Aaron for the entire nation of Israel during the feast of Yom Kippur…

"When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites — all their sins — and put them on the goat's head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert.” (Lev 16:20-22)

Through the laying on of hands, the offered animals received the sins of the individual and the nation. In return, the individual and the nation received the spotless, sinless nature of the animals offered. The sacrifice became a substitution, the just for the unjust, the sinless animal for the sin of the individual and nation. Suddenly the imagery of Isaiah becomes unmistakable in connecting the death of Yeshua the Messiah to the Temple sacrificial system…

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isa 53:5)(1 Pet 2:24)

The apostolic writers were drawing a direct comparison to the Temple sacrificial system when they referred to the offering of Yeshua in this way…

"He (God) made Him (Yeshua) who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Cor 5:21).

Consider the observations of the Jewish Sages in the forty years following the death of Yeshua until the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. The Talmud records four supernatural signs that occurred after Yeshua’s crucifixion in 30 CE, leading priests to conclude that God was no longer accepting, but rejecting their sacrifices and the sins of the Temple and nation were accumulating toward judgment. (Talmud, Yoma 39B).

The first sign involved the lots cast for the two goats on Yom Kippur (Lev 16:7-8). It was considered a sign of God’s favor that the lot for God, identifying which goat to sacrifice, came out in the High Priest’s right hand. It had consistently been this way up until the time of Yeshua’s death. During the forty years after Yeshua death, up until the destruction of the Temple, the lot for God came out in the left hand.

The second sign involved the scarlet cord tied to the door of the Temple. As a priest led away the goat for Azazel, the scarlet cord always turned white to show that God had removed Israel’s sin as the goat traveled deeper into the wilderness. This cord stopped turning white after Yeshua’s crucifixion, a sign seen by the rabbis that sins were not being removed, but were accumulating against the Temple and the nation of Israel.

The third sign involved the Golden Lampstand. Priests lit the lampstand every evening to burn during the night. Every morning, one lamp still glowed while the others had burned out. This lamp, on the western end of the menorah closest to the Holy of Holies, burned the entire day even though it had no more oil. Daily, it provided fire for re-lighting the other lamps. After 30 CE, the lamp stopped its miraculous burning (Talmud, Menahoth Tractate). The light of the world, as Yeshua had proclaimed himself, had departed.

The fourth sign involved the heavy Temple doors. From 30 to 70 CE, the doors would open supernaturally. Terrified priest believed judgment was coming. But like the tearing of the Temple veil from top to bottom at the crucifixion of Yeshua (Matt 27:51), this may have just been another sign that the Temple and Holy of Holies were now accessible to the nations.