At-one-ment

⁷ and they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed. ⁸ Accept atonement, O Lord, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that their blood guilt be atoned for.’ ⁹ So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord.

Passage

Deuteronomy 21 - Accept Atonement, O Lord

Conditions

Very snowy. Good sleep in. Peace on earth between all siblings. By the time we were ready for food it was a lunch brunch.

Time

Unhurried.

Teaching

Here we zeroed in on the problem of guilt and the solution of atonement. In the situation the passage describes the guilty party is unknown. And yet still the guilt remains. Although it’s a sobering topic it is refreshing to read of sin and guilt being taken seriously. Something needs to be done about it. If we can learn anything from the passage we ought to take sin and particularly guilt very seriously. We are prone to avoiding addressing our guilt and needing to be prompted by another to do it. This is not a healthy reaction to guilt. Guilt requires action. 

I drew “Atonement” on the iPad so the children could see the ingredients of the reality in the word itself. This is a fun thing to do, because it isn’t immediately obvious to young children what At-one-ment means. But with some follow-up questions, the penny will drop. “What happens to the relationship between God and His creatures when they sin against Him?” “Does sin bring us closer to God, or distance us from him?” “Does sin place something between us and God that needs to be removed so we can be ‘at one’ again?”

Our situation is more similar to Israel’s than we might assume. We too need atonement, we too need the death of another to remove our guilt. And we have it. We have the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. We are often slow to confession, but we need not be. We ought to fly to the Lamb and cry as Israel did, ‘Accept atonement, O Lord, for your people… whom you have redeemed.’

Song

The Doxology