Read Leviticus 4:1-35 and Hebrews 9:16-28

I sat across the table from my mother-in-law at an Olive Garden in Sebring, Florida during a recent visit to my wife’s hometown. I try to make it a point to spend some one-on-one time with Momma Patty whenever I can because…well…she’s just that awesome. Momma Patty didn’t have it easy. She was a single mother who raised 4 kids on her own while working full time. How she made ends meet and provided for all 4 of her kids, I will never know. In many regards, I look up to Momma Patty, not only because she shares my love of action movies, but because of her strength and “do what you gotta do” attitude. As I stuffed my face with that incredible Olive Garden salad, I asked her simply, “How did you do it?”

“Jesus”

There are many things that Kelly and I do in parenting that was influenced by Momma Patty. Many lessons Kelly has learned from her mom that we are beginning to teach Mattie.

One of the main things that Momma Patty taught Kelly and her siblings was that there are consequences for your actions. If you chose to do something, you will have to live with the consequences from getting tattoos to getting involved in the wrong crowds.

This same consequence mindset is part of what makes the Old Testament so important. In it, we begin to understand the price (or consequence) of sin.

As you read (or skimmed) through our Leviticus reading today, you began to see just what consequences there were for sin back then. The Israelites definitely came to understand the price for sin as it was never something that God could just “forget and move on from”.

Sin was something that had to be dealt with completely.

For many, many years, Leviticus 4 was the solution.

Everything changed when Jesus came.

Hebrews 9 talks about how Jesus came once and for all to take away the sin of the world. When Jesus was on the cross, He bore the sin of the world and was the recipient of the wrath of God that was the punishment for sin.

What often goes unnoticed in Genesis 3 is the thread of promising redemption. Literally a verse after cursing the serpent (Satan), God reveals His plan for redemption. Sin would ravage the world and would make life so incredibly difficult but, in the end, salvation would come through the eventual offspring of the woman and the ultimate consequences of sin would be done away with.

This theme of redemption is a common thread throughout the Bible. We are introduced to the price of sin right away and, throughout the Bible, we read about how God’s plan of redemption unfolds.

How thankful are you that, regardless of the price of your sin, Jesus paid for it by dying on the cross in your place? Will you take a moment to thank Him for that and commit to live for and glorify Him?

Jake Lawson