My journey in scripture today took me through the first seven chapters of Leviticus. Chapter 4 fed my soul all day and it related to the sin offerings that were to be presented to the Lord. In this chapter God makes mention that if the anointed priest should sin and it brings guilt on the people the priest must offer a bull before the Lord. Now if you read further in the chapter you find that if a king or ruler sinned they were to offer a male goat and the same went for the people of the land yet for the high priest a bull was required.

Why a bull and not a goat? I thought about this all day and I have come to some conclusion. For one, a bull was like a Camry in those days and to lose one was a big sacrifice and loss so it may have acted as a deterrent for the priest in committing a telling sin. Secondly, a bull is a very large animal and if you had to lead it through the procession to go and sacrifice it the whole village knew you messed up big time, so there was some amount of shame and penitence involved. Thirdly, I believe that because the bull was so large, in fact the largest sacrifice prescribed by God it sent a direct message to the priest that he was held to a higher standard than even the king/ruler in the land.

Now how does Christ come into all of this? If the sacrifice of a bull meant that there was a great loss to the income of that household it tells me that had Christ sinned, had the plan of salvation not succeeded there would have been a great and horrific loss to mankind. Thankfully Christ did not sin but in a strange paradox the bull also represents Christ for He is our sacrifice.

Remember that no one can miss a bull being led in the streets; no one can miss a bull being manhandled and slaughtered like a dog. It is a public thing and a public shame when a bull is being brought to the slaughter. Jesus was publicly stripped before his persecutors. He was publicly beaten, publicly paraded down the streets and publicly nailed to the cross. He did this all for us. If we could only stop and think before we sin and realize that we are publicly shaming Jesus, the Savior of infinite price, maybe our love for Him would serve as a deterrent to sinning.