Perhaps because they didnt appreciate their sin and had hearts, this was what God had to accommodate as a teaching tool. However, before the law and the sacrificial system was instituted, Abrahams faith was credited to him as righteousness…suggesting that it was an open and trusting heart that God required all along, not the blood of animals on an altar.
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And yet he did just that too.
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Maybe it was stubborn humans that thought blood on an altar was required and God accommodated that primitive ANE religious understanding, while reframing the rules of sacrifice as much as he could to minimize its most harmful aspects and maximize its teaching potential. All the while intentending to subvert and replace that system when the ground was prepared for his own coming.
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Infer what you will. Massively important metaphors maybe were mandated for God’s good reasons. Maybe part of what was credited to Abraham as righteousness included sacrifice in faith and obedience.
Its not only inference though. There are those scripture passages in the OT prophets where God says he doesnt desire sacrifice (of animals on an altar), but an upright and contrite heart. This suggests fairly strongly to me that the sacrificial system was always an accommodation to human wishes and customs of that time, and not seen or instituted by God as an effective practice per se.
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Yes, we both agree that God ultimately values a right heart towards him. My point is that just because God issues instructions for something in the OT, does not mean it his his best or ideal will for the people, it may be an accommodation to their stubbornness and cultural blinders. Sacrifices in the same way as Kings and Temples.
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I can’t put the sacrificial system in the same category. It was a powerful metaphor of Jesus’ real and bloody sacrifice for our sin, regardless of the surrounding cultures. Distasteful? Absolutely.
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Ok, I respect your view. And it may be a conventional one. I hold my mine because i find it difficult otherwise to reconcile the character of God as revealed in Jesus with that of a God delighting in the blood of animals on altars… maybe its just my issue 
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The bloody death of a meek and spotless, perfect lamb? Just an accommodation?
ETA: Just an accommodation and no prescient metaphor?
We already talked about that.
No, as I said before, the voluntary and intential sacrifice of God himself I see as quite different than his supposed wish that another innocent creation be slaughtered…
I hear some echoes of YECism’s warm and fuzzy deathless creation in that, sorry. We are talking about the God who is praised for his provision of prey for lions in Psalm 104. (Jesus wasn’t entirely ‘nice’, either.)
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(A fun little co-instant: I’ve been listening to my favorite streaming music program and just after my last comment there was a marvelous choral piece but I couldn’t make out the words – it turned out to be an Agnus Dei by a Spanish Baroque composer and sung by Westminster Cathedral Choir. 
)
Jesus wasnt agreeable to everyone but he was nonviolent and never demanded the death of another. And although lions eat prey as a result of evolution which is “good creation”, this is never seen as the perfect or ultimate state God intends. Where there will be no death…lions lying down with lambs. Right?
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Thanks for the conversation. Gotta hit the hay for an early start tomorrow.
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He very definitely talks about a not comfy demise for those not with him at the end of days however.
Yes, but that is consistent with people simply being given over to experience the built-in consequences of sin by their own free will, as opposed to God punitively inflicting an arbitrary death. Recall C.S. Lewis’s old adage along the lines of: God never sends anyone to Hell, he simply grants them their own wish to end up there.
But here we’re probably straying from the topic of the thread…so probably a useful place to close.
One more note however.
There was an incident with tables he overturned and men he chased with a whip of cords.
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Read the text carefully. Any physical contact was restricted to inanimate objects (the tables). There is no indication the whip was used to physically beat people or animals.
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