Our modern food supply is bloodless. Many of us eat meat without butchering an animal, plucking its feathers, or hacking the fat off its bones. Our steaks come packaged in plastic, with no sign they were ever alive.

The food that God demanded was not so sanitized. He told His people to take their best animals and slay them with their own hands (Malachi 1:7-9; see Leviticus 1). Judah's place of worship was a butcher's shop, drenched in blood and the dying bleats of doomed lambs. God didn't require these sacrifices because He was a carnivore. He only ″ate″ the food symbolically. He demanded death because of sin.

It must have been difficult to slit the throat of a pretty little lamb. That was the point. The pain of death pressed upon God's people the gravity of their sin. It was necessary for their forgiveness.

God is love and righteousness and life. If this is true, then what is opposite of God also has its own logical coherence. Selfishness is sin which is death. God wouldn't be true to His loving and righteous nature if He brushed aside our sin, pretending it didn't happen. He would violate himself, which would destroy Him and consequently everything else.

So God must forgive us without violating His character. But how? There was only one way. Someone would have to die, and that someone would have to be Him. God loved us so much that He sent ″his one and only Son″, the perfect lamb, to die for our sin (John 1:29; 3:16). The sacrificial lambs that God demanded were pointers to Jesus, God's ultimate sacrifice.

That's why God was outraged by Judah's shameful sacrifices–the blind, sick, and lame lambs (Malachi 1:6). They poured contempt on God's beloved Son, and foreclosed Judah's forgiveness. How could God restore them if they mocked the only path available? So God pled with them to ″plead with [Him] to be gracious″ (v. 9). He stood ready to forgive, if they repented and returned to Him.

Today, we no longer kill lambs to atone for our sins because Jesus, the Lamb of God, has come. The full price for sin has been paid. Like Judah, our worship also rests on sacrifice–Jesus' ultimate sacrifice–which we proclaim whenever we take the bread and the cup of the Lord's Supper. This meal provides perspective. We may be mired in a muddled mess, but our most pressing problem has been solved. We were stuck in sin with the whole world, but Jesus died to free us if only we confess our sin and put our faith in Him. What are you waiting for?