Shadows and Sacrifices – Hebrews 10:1

Hebrews 10:1 and the Question of Caiaphas and the High Priesthood

And if you're not there yet, will you please turn to Hebrews chapter 10 in your Bible, Hebrews 10. I always feel good when we go from one chapter to the next one, making progress. Nine last week, ten this week, eleven the week after that.

We get close to the end of the book and we all think, I wonder how it ends, we're getting close. Hebrews chapter 10, let's pray together before we begin. Father, we do pray for the illuminating work of Your Holy Spirit.

It's not that Your Word needs to be improved for our hearts and minds, it is that our hearts and minds need to be opened to receive Your Word, to understand spiritual things, to see the author's intended meaning in the passage and the work of the Spirit of God in giving it to us.

And so we pray that You would send Your Spirit to be our teacher and our guide to that end, and that You would be glorified here through the preaching of Your Word and our understanding of it, and of course, our obedient response to it.

Encourage our hearts together with the truth that is here before us, we pray in Christ's.

Name, amen.

Let's read together the first four verses, Hebrews chapter 10, for the law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw.

Near.

Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered? Because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of.

Sins.

But in those sacrifices there is a remainder of sins year by year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. There was a question that was raised to me this last week after last Sunday's sermon that I thought was a good question, I want to answer it, for two reasons, number one, because I think I said something last week that was confusing and wrong and that contributed to this error, and second, I needed a good introduction for today's sermon and this will serve to do that.

So the question was this, during the life of Jesus, particularly during the last few years of the life of Jesus, how could the high priest enter into the Holy of Holies and apply the blood of the sacrifice to the mercy seat of the ark, even while he was plotting to execute his plan to murder Jesus, and yet he wasn't struck dead?

That's a good question. How is it that Caiaphas was able to plot and plan the murder of the Son of God, and while he is doing that, he's also performing the sacrifices daily in the temple, and then offering the Yom Kippur sacrifice and stepping back behind the curtain in the tabernacle and applying that blood to the mercy seat, and able to walk out with a wicked heart, able to walk out and live to sin another day?

How is that possible? Why did God not strike him dead at that moment? Now, in formulating an answer to that question, it made me realize that I said something last week that I think gave rise to this question.

And what I said last week was I was talking about the ways in which a high priest could be killed if he didn't perform his duties correctly, and that he could walk back behind that veil, and if he had offered an impure sacrifice, or a bad sacrifice, or offered the sacrifice in a wrong way, or if he didn't have a heart right before God, God would strike him dead behind that veil.

It was that last phrase, if he didn't have a heart right before God, that was the cause of the confusion, because that is not biblically accurate. So in that, I misspoke. In Hebrews 7, 8, and 9, we've been comparing the work of the high priest, the Old Testament high priest, with the work of Jesus, and that Aaronic priesthood with the Melchizedekian priesthood.

We've seen some of the inconsistencies and the weaknesses of that old system, and seen how the new covenant and the new priesthood that Jesus occupies makes that better in every.

Way.

And so as we've been comparing those, do you remember back in chapter 7, we spent some time explaining how the Old Testament priesthood was inferior to the priesthood of Jesus, because that priesthood was entirely superficial.

It was entirely physical, not spiritual in any way. And so when I said that a high priest could step behind the veil and his heart was not right and God would strike him dead, that's not accurate at all, because we noted that that priesthood, that Old Testament priesthood, was entirely a superficial priesthood, meaning that a priest was not qualified to represent the people before God and step behind that veil by virtue of his piousness, or his righteousness, or his love for the truth, or his affection for God, or even his own faith.

Do you remember what it was that qualified a man to serve as a high priest for the nation of Israel? He had to be of the right tribe, he had to be of the right family, he had to be not balding, he had to have not a skin rash or eczema, he couldn't walk with a limp, he couldn't be blind in one eye.

Those were the type of disqualifications that disqualified a man from serving as a priest. None of it was spiritual. That old priesthood was entirely superficial, entirely physical. So he didn't have to have a right heart before God in order to step behind the veil.

All he had to do was offer the sacrifice in exactly the way that God said for him to offer the sacrifice, and to do it according to all of the physical requirements. And if he met those physical requirements, he could serve as a high priest.

And so he could, as long as he went through all of the functions, the physical functions, if he wore the right vestments, wore the right clothes, and the right robes, and put them on in the right order, and went through the physical purifications, and he offered the sacrifices the way that God prescribed, and he offered the sacrifices in the right order, and he did everything just as God had laid it out in the book of Leviticus.

He could step behind the veil and apply the blood to the mercy seat, even while plotting the murder of the Son of God, and step right out from behind the veil to live and sin another.

Day.

Because God, in terms of accepting the sacrifice on behalf of his people, was not concerned. He did not see the heart of that high priest in those terms. Physically, he went through all of the physical requirements and the steps.

His heart had nothing to do with that function of that priesthood. Remember, the Old Testament priesthood had nothing to do with the condition of the heart. Those sacrifices couldn't change the heart.

They couldn't cleanse you of sin, they couldn't cleanse your conscience, they couldn't change your heart, which is why a Jew could step up to the tabernacle and bring his sacrifice to the high priest, and know in his heart that that high priest who was offering the sacrifice on his behalf was a man more wicked than him by every measure.

Without faith, without any piousness, without any righteousness, and that guy's gonna go in and intercede for me. He's gonna offer the sacrifice on my behalf. That was the weakness of the Old Testament priesthood.

Now there were things that a priest could do, which he would be killed for. For instance, if he offered both the sacrifices together on the Day of Atonement, the sacrifice for himself and his household, and then the sacrifice for the nation, and he said, you know what, we're running a bit behind schedule, let's hurry this up a bit, we'll offer them both together since we're here anyway, we'll put the blood in the same cup, I'll take it back in there, it'll be one sprinkling.

For that, he would be killed. Or if he went back there and decided to pour that blood instead of sprinkle the blood, for that he would be killed. Or if he didn't go through the ritual purifications and step back behind that veil, for that he.

Would be killed.

Or if he decided to apply the blood to the mercy seat first and then come out and do it to the horns at the altar of incense, for that he would be killed. It was all physical. That was the weakness of the old system.

Well, comparing that old system to the new system, we see that we have a better high priest who has offered a better sacrifice, mediated a better covenant based upon better promises, and he has entered into a better tabernacle, the one in heaven, where he intercedes.

For us.

In all of the ways that the old covenant was inferior and all of its weaknesses, they are matched point by point with the superiority of the new covenant in Jesus Christ and his work as our high priest.

And that is the focus of this middle section in the book of Hebrews that we are in right now, chapter 7, 8, 9, and 10, all the way up to the faith chapter of chapter 11. This is the subject, this is the section, this big chunk in the middle that deals with comparing the forms and features of the old covenant with the blessings of the new covenant.

So again, we're here in chapter 10, we finished up last week, and I'll just give you a little bit of an overview of where we're going here today. Chapter 10 brings us face to face with the reason why Jesus was manifested and explains again some of the weaknesses of the old covenant and some of the weaknesses of that sacrificial system and does this in order to mark the differences and the distinctives between that old system and the new system.

And again, he's just simply comparing these two covenants and we have to keep that in mind as we work our way through. So we get to chapter 10, verse 1, and these first four verses of chapter 10 give us three reasons why the sacrifices of the old covenant were powerless to remove sin.

Number one, you'll see that it says that the law contained only a shadow and not the reality, that's the first reason. Second is in verses 1 and 2, that those sacrifices had to be repeated, right? They were offered continually, year by year, they never ceased to be offered.

They were a reminder of sins year by year. And the third reason is because those sacrifices were merely animals. Those three points, those four verses, that seems like a tall order to go through all of that on a day when all we can smell is food and all we're thinking about is the potluck which is to follow.

So something tells me that we're only going to get through one of these points today lest we be here all afternoon. See some amens to that. So let's look at this first one. The Old Testament contained only a shadow and not the reality.

It contained only the shadow and not the reality. You'll see at the beginning of chapter 10 that word for, it is what's called an explanatory conjunction in the Greek. In other words, he is connecting what follows with what has proceeded.

There's something that he has described that has preceded this and now beginning in chapter 10, he's explaining the reason for this. Why was it necessary that Christ be manifested to put away sins by the sacrifice of himself?

Why was it necessary that Christ come and bear the sins of many? Why was it necessary that Christ be appointed to come again and bring salvation to those who eagerly await him? Why were those things necessary?

Why has Christ done this? That's the end of chapter 9.

We looked at that.

The reason is because the law is only a shadow and not the real thing. So in chapter 10, he is explaining all the reasons why it is that that Old Testament sacrifice could not accomplish any of these things.

It was only a shadow. The law could not accomplish it because this thing, the law and the sacrifices it contained were only a shadow and not the real form of the things. I want you to notice there are two words in verse 10 and they are contrasted with one.

Another.

They're important words. The first is that word shadow. For the law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of the things. That's the second word. Shadow and form.

That second word form is in some translations, I think the NIV and other more modern translations translate it as image or as reality. So these two things are contrasted with one another. The shadow and the reality.

The shadow and the reality. One is the substance and one is the symbol. One is the essence of the thing and the other is a shadow of that thing. The law contained only a shadow of those things. Right here we have the author describing for us the true nature of these Old Testament sacrifices.

And by the term law, by the way, keep in mind he is not describing, when he speaks of the law, he's not describing the moral qualities of the law. He's not describing the 10 commandments of the law. He is describing specifically the sacrifices of the priesthood contained in the law.

When we talk about the law, we're talking about Genesis through Deuteronomy. Normally that's what we refer to as the law of the Pentateuch. You can use the term law to refer to the 10 commandments, so the moral qualities of the.

Law.

You can also use the term law to refer to the stipulations of sacrifices and festivals and feasts, et cetera, that are spelled out in the law. So the author is not describing here the moral qualities of the law of the 10 commandments.

He's not saying that those things are mere sacrifices. He is saying instead that the law, sorry, that those things are mere shadows. He is instead saying that the things attached to the sacrifices are the mere shadows of the good things that were to come.

The word shadow is a word that is used both figuratively as well as literally in the New Testament. It is used to describe literally a shadow that you would cast as you were walking by someone on a sunny day.

In fact, the account in Acts where people are healed because the shadow of Peter passed over them, it's the same word that's used here. So it's used of a literal shadow. It's also used in a figurative sense of something that represents a mere figure or a sketch or an image or an outline of something that was more substantial.

And that's how Paul uses it in Colossians chapter two to describe festivals and feasts and new moons and Sabbaths. He says in Colossians two, let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, which things are a mere shadow of what is to come.

In other words, the Sabbath was not an end in itself. The shadow forecasted, the shadow looked forward to, the Sabbath shadow looked forward to a rush that was to come and be fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

So why do we not keep the Sabbath today? Why do we worship on a Sunday and not a Saturday? Because that Saturday observance, that Sabbath observance was only a shadow of what was to come and that is the full rest that we have in Jesus Christ.

Now we enjoy the reality of what the Sabbath portended, a reality of what the Sabbath promised. The Sabbath was just a shadow. The feasts and the festivals were not an end in themselves. They were mere pictures of the deliverance that we have in Jesus Christ and the joy that we have because of what he has done.

That's what the feasts and the festivals pointed forward to. The same word is used back in Hebrews chapter eight verse five where the priests are described as those who offer the gifts according to the law.

They serve a shadow of the real things, the heavenly things. Again the tabernacle was merely a shadow of a heavenly reality, the presence of God. This is a great word picture for this concept because I want you to imagine for a moment how it is that you and I, or I want you to think for a moment how it is that you and I understand shadows.

When you see a shadow being cast, you don't mistake the shadow for the thing itself, do.

You?

You don't walk up, nobody here today walked up and tried to shake hands with my shadow. Some of you might think that's a clever thing to do now that I mentioned it, so I'm not going to shake your hand if that's what you try after this, but nobody tried to shake hands with my shadow because even though I might have cast a shadow at some point on the floor, you understood, you didn't even recognize the shadow really, you understood that the shadow and the substance were two different things.

And when you see a shadow, you don't confuse the shadow with the thing that casts the shadow. If you're sitting on a beach on a summer day and you see a shadow come up from behind you, you immediately do two things.

You say I turn around to see what casts the shadow. That's probably the second thing you do. The first thing you would do is you would look at the shadow itself and you might observe from either the shape or the motion of the shadow or both what it is that you probably think is behind you.

You might look at the motion of the shadow and the shape of the shadow and discern that it's multiple people walking up behind you, or you might look at it and discern it's just a car going by behind me, or you might think it's somebody riding a bicycle behind you.

You might be able to tell a lot about what is behind you, what is casting the shadow by observing the shape and the motion of the shadow itself. And then you would turn around and look and see what it is that is casting the shadow.

The law contained shadows of something else, but something else is the perfect work of Jesus Christ. So you can think of a shadow in this sense, that Jesus Christ himself is the form that casts the shadow into the Old Testament, which was the sacrifices.

The sacrifices pointed to him, they were the shadow that corresponded to the reality. And Christ is himself that very form. That's the second word that is used, not shadow, but also image or reality or very form as some translations translate it.

The word very form there is a word that is used of something that represents, that is an exact representation of something else. So it is what Paul uses in Colossians chapter 1 verse 15 when he says that Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

That word image is the word reality or form that is used here. Christ himself is the form of the invisible God. In other words, he is the exact representation of the invisible God. He is invisible form, the invisible God.

He is the substance itself. He is the reality itself of divinity. In physical visible form, that's what Christ is. And that's what we mean when we say he is the image of the invisible God. Well that's the word that is used here to describe Christ.

He himself is the form. The shadow is what is cast by him. So in the Old Testament, we see the shadows of the Lord Jesus Christ. Think of it this way as it were. Jesus Christ fits, his work and his person fits so prominently in the plan and purposes of God.

He stands over so high and so majestically all of redemptive history. That his person and his work are the singular point, the singular focus of all of human history from start to finish. And as such, he casts his shadow all the way back into the Old Testament.

So that we might see it in reverse as it were. As mankind is coming forward through time, God reveals first the shadow and then the substance. So that in the Old Testament, we see the shadows that Christ from later on would cast into the Old Testament.

So as man is coming through time, God reveals first the shadow. First we see our fall in Adam and Adam representing all of human history. Then we see Abraham being promised all of these things, David being promised a king.

We see foreshadowings in David and Solomon of a king that was to come. We see the foreshadowing in David's kingdom of a kingdom that is to come. We see in the Old Testament all of the representation of our sin and the illustrations of it and the justice of God against sin and his wrath turned against sin.

And all of those things tell us about a God who is holy and just and righteous. Then in the Old Testament, we see God's wrath against sin and how sin is dealt with in the Old Testament and how men can approach God but only through a mediator and never without a blood sacrifice.

There had to be a mediator. There had to be a blood sacrifice. Those are shadows. In the Old Testament, all we saw was imperfect mediators, high priests who could step behind the veil with wicked arts and apply blood and then step out and live in sin another.

Day.

We saw Old Testament priests who would die and pass that on to the next generation. We saw animal sacrifices that would be offered time and time again. Morning sacrifices, evening sacrifices, Passover sacrifices, Day of Atonement sacrifices, personal sacrifices.

All of those things pointed to Christ. We'd see the blood that was shed over and over and over again through the Old Testament. It was just a shadow that pointed to the blood that Jesus Christ himself was going to shed.

We would see that man could not approach God except by a substitute. See every Jew had to bring his lamb, every Jew had to bring his offering and offer up something that would die in his stead. That was a shadow of a substitute that would come later on.

Through those shadows and through those substitutes, men were taught that they could approach God but only through a mediator and only by a sacrifice. And only in faith that in offering that animal, God would approve of them and God would accept their sacrifice because they believed that that is what God required and they trusted that God would forgive their sins on the basis of a blood sacrifice.

That was a shadow of what was to come. Those are the outlines and Christ himself is the substance. The law was the shadow of the good things to come. Christ is the substance of the good things to come.

Now, what are the good things to come? That same phrase is used back in Hebrews chapter 9 verse 11. When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation.

In both cases, when the author describes the good things to come here in chapter 10, back in chapter 9, he is describing the blessings and promises, the good things of the new covenant. Remember, we have better promises, a better covenant.

We receive better things than they did under the Old Testament sacrifices. Some of these are eschatological blessings. We still are waiting for certain good things to come, right? We talked about that last week.

We're still waiting for a kingdom. We're still waiting for a king. We're still waiting for an earthly paradise. We're still waiting for our new bodies, deliverance from the presence in this body of sin.

We're still waiting for full eschatological salvation for God to fulfill all of his final promises with the new covenant. But yet today, we still enjoy, and we do enjoy, currently, presently, many salvific blessings.

We have, because of what Christ has done and because of his coming, we have forgiveness of sins. We have redemption. We've been bought out of the slave market to sin. We have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

We enjoy the fellowship with the saints. We have a complete freedom from all condemnation because we are in Christ Jesus. We can know that our sins are forgiven, our conscience has been cleansed. All of those blessings are ours in Jesus Christ because he is the substance.

And so our guilt has been removed, and we have complete and full and final justification, and all of that is sealed to us by the presence of the Holy Spirit. None of those good things, in the measure that we enjoy them, were ever enjoyed under.

The old covenant.

All it did was tell us that these things were coming. All the old covenant did was prepare us for the good things that are to come. And because the law and the sacrifices in the law were foreshadowings and shadows of the good things to come, therefore those things, the law and the sacrifices, were themselves good things.

And this is something to keep in mind. You'll notice that the author, nowhere in the book of Hebrews does he run down or disparage the Old Testament forms and functions. He doesn't do that. What he does do is be honest with us about the weakness of those things.

They couldn't forgive sins. They couldn't take away sin. They couldn't cleanse the conscience. They couldn't bring the worshiper near to God. They could not perfect the worshiper. They could not sanctify you.

They could not make you holy. They could not change your heart. They could not grant you faith. It could not do any of those things. And the author is not running down all of those Old Testament forms and functions.

Instead, he's just being honest. Look, these were weaknesses, but they were designed inadequacies. And because they were shadows of the good things to come, we can say with Paul, the.

Law is good.

Because that law, which was a shadow of the good things to come, told us what those good things to come would look like, what they would be, and how they would come to us. Now you may wonder, why is it that the Lord would go through all of the trouble of 1 ,500 years of animal sacrifices?

You ever wondered that? Why 15 centuries? If the Lord knew that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins, and he did know that, if he knew that, and if he knew that those priests could never really offer ever an animal sacrifice that would take away sin and deal with the sin problem, why did the Lord spend 1 ,500 years in a system that was just a shadow of what was to come?

Why 15 centuries of bloodletting? Why all of those animals? Why the repetition of the sacrifices, day after day, week after week, year after year, for 15 centuries? It seems like a lot of wasted effort, does it not?

Why didn't the Lord just skip all of that and get right to the good things to come, and just send his Son into the world to bear the sins of his people and to purchase redemption through his sacrifice?

That's a good question. I'm going to answer it. I don't want to wait until next week. So we'll put off lunch for just a second. Here's the answer to this. I want you to imagine for a moment that the Lord had done it some other way.

Imagine that the Lord had skipped all of his dealings with the nation of Israel. He had not called out a people for himself. He had not chosen Abraham. He had not delivered them from the exodus. There was no such thing as a Passover lamb.

Imagine for a moment that the Lord skipped all of that and skipped the Aaronic priesthood and all of the priestly vestments, that he skipped the animal sacrifices and the mediator. Imagine that there was no Shekinah glory.

Imagine there had never been any broken law, ten commandments, no Ark of the Covenant with a mercy seat above that. No priests, no festivals, no feasts, no animal sacrifices, no bloodletting, no sprinkling of blood over the broken law.

There had been none of that. Imagine no Passover lambs, no days of atonement, no shedding of blood, no innocent victim. Imagine that no person ever had to go out to his flock and find a perfect, innocent, blameless, spotless victim and take that animal, the best of his herd, out of his flock and take it down to the temple all the while contemplating the fact that this animal was only dying because he was a sinner.

Never had to do that. Never had to hand that animal off to a priest and watch it go away to its slaughter and never had to contemplate his own sin. Never had to deal with the fact that a substitute would bear his guilt.

Imagine that none of that had ever happened. Imagine there had been no priest to do any of that and then into the world steps the Lord Jesus Christ. And John the Baptist would say, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the.

World.

And what would our response be?

Lamb of God? What do you mean?

What do you mean Lamb of God? What does that mean? What is a lamb? Well, I know what a lamb is, but what is a Lamb of God? And how does that take away the sin of the world? That doesn't make any sense.

And what do you mean by sin?

What is sin?

I have no way of knowing what sin is apart from the Ten Commandments. I have no way of knowing God's justice against sin if it's not spelled out to us in the law. If we don't have the holy requirements that demonstrate what sin is and how we identify sin and what makes sin sinful and what sin has done for us, I have no way of identifying.

Any of that.

And what do you mean if somebody else has to die as a substitute in my stead? How does that make sense? Does that make sense to you? You've never seen anybody die instead of your sin. How can blood take away sin?

Why is blood necessary? Imagine Jesus stepping into humanity and preaching a message about the judgment of God against sin and the need for atonement and a sacrifice. Or Him saying, I'm going to give my life for the sins of my people, for the sins of the.

World.

Would that make sense to anybody apart from 1 ,500 years of the preparation for that?

It wouldn't.

You see, for 1 ,500 years, God was giving an object lesson. This is the brilliance of it. This is the brilliance of the way that God has worked. In His wisdom, He revealed first the shadow. First the shadow so that in seeing that shadow and getting to know that shadow really well, we would then begin and be able to appreciate the substance of it that He has provided in His Son.

So through the Old Testament, God demonstrated the cost of our sin. We see this tabernacle and we are separated from God. That's an object lesson. And the priest has to mediate for us. That's an object lesson.

And he has to offer a substitute. That's an object lesson. And he has to shed the blood to atone for that sin. That's an object lesson. And that substitute has to be pure and holy and spotless and blameless.

That's an object lesson. And by the way, that object lesson can never take away your sin because next year you're going to have to have the same offering all over again. That itself was an object lesson.

And what would the 1 ,500 years serve to do? It would make you long for a day when sin would be taken out of the way and dealt with.

Finally.

Imagine that you're on the tail end of that 1 ,500 years and you go to bring your sacrifice to the temple. And you realize, we've been doing this for 15 centuries. We can't even count the number of animals that have died in the place of sinners.

We can't even count that. We can't even imagine the amount of blood that has been shed. Innocent victim after innocent victim. When will it ever stop? When will it ever be enough? And you know what the answer to that question is?

Never.

It's never enough. And so you would long for the day when your sin would be gone. You would say, if only God could provide a sacrifice, a one-time sacrifice, that would bear all of my sin, take away all of my wrath, cleanse my guilty conscience, remove my guilt, take away my sin and free me from it and secure for me everlasting blessedness.

If only God could provide a sacrifice, instead of an animal sacrifice, a perfect sacrifice that would be powerful enough to deliver me from my transgressions and powerful enough to wipe out all of my guilt and all of my stain.

Powerful enough to secure me everlastingly. If only God could do that. If God could just give me a sacrifice, make a sacrifice that itself would give me access to God so that I could approach Him anytime, so that I could step into His presence.

Maybe that I would be able to call Him Father and not feel like I am distant from God, that I'd be able to come to Him through that one sacrifice. If only God would provide such a thing. And then into that situation steps John the Baptist who says, behold, God's Lamb.

He takes away the sin of the world. You see what 1500 years does? Spinning your wheels and waiting and waiting and waiting. It helps you to see and describe and understand and appreciate the shadow so that when the substance arrives, you can see it for what it is, appreciate it for what it is, and you've had 1500 years of object lessons telling you this is what you're waiting for, this is what you need, and this is what God has provided.

And because of that, I think we can learn two lessons just from the fact that those Old Testament sacrifices were shadows. First, this shows us just how accountable we must be for rejecting this truth.

1500 years of God speaking to us, humanity in shadows. We see it, it's portrayed for us, it's written out in the Old Testament, we knew exactly what it was that we should expect. We knew exactly what that substance was going to look like when He would finally show up on the scene.

We'd say He must be holy, He must be blameless, He must be a king to fulfill the promise to David, He must be perfect in every way, He must be divine, He must be a man, He has to act as my representative, it can't be an animal because the blood of bulls and goats obviously cannot take away sin, otherwise at some point an offering would have been made that would completely remove sin.