Q11. Cross

[Pastor Ralph]

Q11. How does an understanding of Old Testament sacrifice help us understand Jesus’ death on the cross?

[Krissi]

Today, many Christians want to incorporate Jewish rituals and the calendar as the basis of their contemporary Christian worship, and frankly, I've not understood their motives or logic for celebrating, say, harvest sacrifices. What's happening now on the cutting edge of Christianity, at least in the US, is very similar to how the Puritans fetishized the rituals of the Old Testament. Puritans imagined themselves as God's chosen who had been called to populate the land that was given to them... the "errand into the wilderness." THey adopted many Jewish ceremonies and even gave themselves OT names. THey dressed oddly, had long beards and incorporated aspects of the Hebrew calendar.

This is happening again. 

NOte that today's Christians who adopt Jewish ceremonies are not Messianic Jews, that is, Jews converted to Christianity who would be expected syncretize some of their old patterns of worship and belief to their new faith in Christ. They're "gentiles" without any Jewish connections.

But the question Pastor Ralph posed goes beyond worship/calendar/dress/food to the bigger question of how the OT and the gospel relate ... this is too much for me to answer. I can only say that the sacrifices and annual calendar of the temple era suggest that God is very particular about how we think of Him: He had wanted order, regularity and exacting obedience to the law. Pehraps these contemporary Christians are trying to achieve a similar exactness in worship that they believe God demands? It could be the case that because God's nature does not change, He still wants us to come to Him in a patterned, exacting and ritualized manner.

This poses theological issues. Jesus' death on the cross ended all ritual and sacrifices. HE was the final sacrifice. No further rituals were needed and the old calendar ceased to matter as it was integral to ways of forgiveness/worship that no longer applied.

Christians have to tie together, somehow,  the Old and New Testaments, while at the same time keeping is a red line drawn at the moment of the resurrection. That line demarcates the former from the Christian, the old and new -- that red line separates a system of rules and sacrifices from the supreme sacrifice in Christ that supersedes everything before it.

[Clelie]

In the OT regular animals sacrifices were offered as an atonement for the sins of the people. The blood of the sacrificed animals covered over the sins of the people but it could never cleanse the sin and made the people pure because the blood of animals could never take the sins away for ever that was why animals sacrifices had too be repeated year after year . 
But when Jesus offered Himself as an atonement once and for all, for the  sins of mankind by dying on the cross and shedding His own blood for the forgiveness  of sins of the whole mankind ,His blood was pure and the only acceptable offer before God in the  forgiveness of the sins of all mankind.Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin, Jesus sinless blood is the only blood that renders us pure before the Holy God .